Jake stopped the car at the end of the track. The windscreen showed them a slowly narrowing path, overhung with looming pine trees. Bella felt a momentary qualm. Jake had been so silent, so strange all morning… Feeling her heart begin a slow, queasy thudding, she fumbled for the door catch and pushed the heavy door open.
The air was mild, damp against her face. Bella pulled her scarf more tightly about her neck. She felt wrung dry, empty – drained. Jake stood beside her. After a moment, he reached tentatively for her hand.
“I thought we’d go for a walk,” he said. “If that’s all right by you.”
“Fine,” said Bella, too exhausted to demur. They set off slowly, hand in hand. Like the Babes in the Wood, she thought, with a tired, inner giggle.
Soon the path brought them to a clearing in the trees, looking out over a valley. There was a stone bench by the edge of the path, greened with lichen and glistening with damp. Jake gestured to it.
“Want to sit down?”
In another life, Bella would have protested. Instead, she nodded mutely and settled herself on the cold stone. Damp immediately began to seep into her jeans.
Jake sat beside her and took her hand.
“I’m not sure what you’re thinking,” he said. “Once I was pretty sure I knew what you were thinking all the time. It’s what you want in a relationship, isn’t it, a bit of knowledge of the other person, an insight into what they’re thinking. It was never like that with Carl or Veronica. I could never tell what either of them were thinking, not even my own brother. He was a closed book to me. More so, now. And V – well, who knows what she thinks? Who knows who she is? She’s just as much of a mystery now as she ever was.”
Bella shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t want to think of Veronica, or how Jake thought of her at this moment. Jake continued, clearing his throat.
“I was lost, after what happened. I mean, I was truly lost. I didn’t even have a sense of myself, or of the future, or the past or anything. Everything ended when – when she went down the stairs. And afterwards, I was in a daze, I was in a mess, such a – such a mess… It took me so long to feel normal again, even slightly normal. And then I was just getting a bit better, just a bit, you understand, maybe regaining a percentage point of myself, my original self – well, then you know what happened.”
“The bombs,” said Bella.
Jake sighed. “Yes, the bombs. It was punishment, you know – that’s what I thought. It was punishment for what I’d done. For what we’d done. And then, there you were, coming out of the smoke and you grabbed my hand…”
“You grabbed mine.”
“We grabbed each other’s.”
They were silent for a moment.
“You saved me, Bel. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I would have made it this far. But now you know, now I’ve told you, I feel – “ Jake paused. Bella stole a sideways glance at his face. It looked wiped clean; rapt, stripped of the glowering look that had dominated it ever since she’d known him. He looked like a little boy again. She gripped his hand hard. He went on. “I feel reborn. I feel cleansed. I feel – new.”
Bella’s heart swelled. She put her face against his, cold nose against cold nose, warm lips against warm lips.
“So, you see Bella, I can’t do this without you. I need you now. Will you – “
He stopped abruptly. Bella held her breath.
“Will you help me with the body?”
It was as if she’d suddenly dropped into glacial water. Bella sat back in shock. Jake grasped her hand as she leaned away from him, babbling in his panic.
“I need to see it, don’t you see Bella – we can’t do anything until we see it – the police will need to see it – I need to go into the shed but I can’t do it without you – please don’t leave me to do this on my own. Please – “
Bella stood up abruptly. Her heartbeat actually hurt – she could feel it thudding against her ribcage, making her catch her breath. For a second there, she’d actually thought… you idiot, she told herself in fury. You have no idea what’s going on.
She looked out over the valley, holding her clenched hands in her pockets. Behind her, she could hear Jake shifting from foot to foot.
“Bella – “ he said, tentatively. There was a plaintive, hopeless note in her voice that made her throat close up. Oh God, what to do… She heard herself give a gasp that was close to a sob.
Then Jake’s arms were around her, warm and close and holding her tight. She buried her face against the roughness of his jacket, her tears making a small damp patch on his shoulder. She heaved with sobs, holding Jake about the middle, feeling his hand stroke her hair, hearing his small, wordless soothings.
Eventually, her tears ceased. She disentangled herself gently and stood back, swiping her hand under her running nose. I must look like hell, she thought, before the following thought came immediately – who cares?
Jake put a hand on each of her shoulders. She stared into his face, his well-known face, drawn and tired and furred with stubble, but still beautiful to her. She’d seen that face in first morning light and in the last rays of the evening sun; in the ash-choked darkness of a London tube tunnel; twisted in pain, clenched in ecstasy, swollen with tiredness; had seen it smiling, laughing, crying. It was more familiar to her than her own. She put a hand up to his cheek.
“I’ll help you,” she said and listened with a thudding heart to his sigh of relief.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bella went to work the next day. She’d been off for nearly a week. She had no sick note and no real excuse, but after a glance at the black smudges under her eyes and the bones that were showing through her skin, no one commented. She went through the motions of the day, keeping quiet, nodding and smiling when required. At lunchtime she bought a cheese and ham sandwich and threw it away after one bite. She’d lost her appetite totally; even the smell of food made her feel sick. Her heart beat erratically at times, bringing her odd bouts of breathlessness. She subsisted on paper cups of coffee, holding them to her for warmth as much as refreshment.
At five thirty she left, without a goodbye to her colleagues. Her feet took her automatically to the bus stop but as she approached the crowd of people that were waiting there, she slowed and faltered. Could she bear going home? How could she face Carl and Veronica? How could she face Jake? She dithered miserably for a moment, shivering in the harsh little wind that had picked up at dusk.
She ended up in a cinema, having had a hasty evening meal of a burger oozing grease, of which she managed to eat half. She sat in the cinema in the warm dark, surrounded by strangers, staring unseeing at the fluffy comedy unfolding before her eyes. What was she going to do? When she was away from Jake, when he was physically absent from her, she could understand the enormity of what he was asking her. He was asking her for her silence. He was asking her for her complicity in covering up a crime. Concealing a body – that was a crime, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if it was murder – but still… Did an accident count as a murder? Bella rubbed her temples. Her head hadn’t stopped aching all day.
Eventually the film finished and she was driven out into the cold. She stood in the foyer of the cinema, holding her mobile in her hand. Having switched it off for the film, she could somehow feel the weight of the myriad text messages and calls from Jake that were no doubt clogging her voicemail inbox. She dropped it back into her bag, still switched off, and pushed open the door, making her reluctant way to the bus stop.
She turned into Fever Street and began to walk hesitantly towards the house. The streetlights here were wide spaced and she stepped in and out of pools of light and blackness, a chiaroscuro walkway that her feet now knew better than the driveway of her mother’s home. She stared down at her toes, slipping in and out of her view, as her footsteps became slower and slower. At the entrance to the front garden, she paused. Inescapably, she thought of what lay behind the house, beneath the shed and a galvanic shudder ran through her.