“We didn’t nail them down very securely,” he said, almost to himself. “We can’t have done, anyway, I can’t feel the nails.”
“Are they loose?” said Bella, just for something to say. She felt light-headed, swamped again with another wave of unreality. I’ll wake up in a minute, she told herself. Jake will be lying next to me, in our bed.
“Yes.” He pulled tentatively at one and it pulled away from the floor with a thick, grinding sound. Bella cringed back against the wall of the shed, terrified of what was about to be revealed.
“Help me then,” said Jake, looking at her in appeal. His eyes were lost, his mouth held in a tight grimace. Something moved inside her – he could still do that to her, even now. She bent to help him.
They pulled up four boards, each one coming loosely away in their hands. Jake was frowning now, his black brows stitched together. The beam of the little torch was beginning to grow dimmer. Jake seized it and directed it at the earth beneath the hole in the floor. Holding her fingers over her eyes, as if she were watching a horror film, Bella looked, shrinking, along its beam.
The earth lay flat, dotted here and there with ghostly tufts of grass that had tried to grow in the darkness, withered and died. A large black beetle scurried across the failing beam of the torch. Frost crystals glittered in the soil.
For a moment, the two of them regarded it in silence. Then Jake leant forward and began to slowly scrape away at the earth. Bella heard herself make a small sound of protest. He took no notice, the rhythm of his hand beginning to gain in speed, his other hand beginning to dig, dirt beginning to shower against them both, clods of earth caught momentarily in the fading light of the torch. Bella gasped out something, some protestation, some inarticulate plea for him to stop. The earth gaped beneath his plunging fingers. Soon he had dug a hole some two foot deep and eighteen inches wide. Bella stood frozen, her eyes wide. Before the torch beam flickered and died, she could see that there was nothing buried beneath the shed, in the cold earth. There was nothing there at all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They sat at the kitchen table. After a moment, Bella got up and switched on the overhead light. They both blinked against the sudden glare. Bella stood, dithering, by the light switch. Then she sat down again, unable to think of what to say or do.
Jake was staring down at the tabletop. Occasionally, his lips would move. She wondered what, if anything, he was thinking. I must have been more miserable than this at one time, thought Bella, but I can’t remember when. She was so cold, still shivering from the frosty air outside. As if he’d heard her thoughts, Jake raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed.
“I’m not lying,” he said, as if she’d told him he was. “I’m not mad. There was a body there, there was.”
“Okay,” said Bella. She held onto her legs under the table to stop her hands from shaking.
Jake glared at her.
“Don’t tell me I’m lying!”
“I’m not,” she said hurriedly. “Really, I’m not. I believe you.”
“You’d better – “ he said, before the rest of the sentence slurred away into a mumble.
Bella sat still but her mind was racing. What the hell am I going to do? She fought against a backwash of unreality. This couldn’t really be happening, could it? I don’t know what’s real anymore, she thought and blinked against the sudden sting of tears.
Jake was whispering something under his breath. Trying not to appear as if she was eavesdropping, Bella strained to hear. Something about cherries… surely not? She held her breath, trying to hear. Treachery. That was the word he kept repeating. She felt the chill that gripped her begin to deepen.
She got up slowly, trying to move quietly. Not quiet enough for Jake, who snapped at her. She jumped, she couldn’t help it.
“Where are you going?”
“Just thought I’d get us a drink,” she said carefully, trying to keep her voice steady. His eyes held her, glittering through his reddened lids.
“Whisky,” he said, flatly. She didn’t argue. She fetched the bottle from the cupboard and two glasses from the dish drainer. It was a new bottle, unopened – none of them were big whiskey drinkers. She struggled with the plastic smothering the top of the bottle. Jake took it from her without a word and cut the wrapping with one of the kitchen knives lying on the table. The neck of the bottle chimed against the glass as he poured.
Bella sat back down. She took a sip of whisky and tried not to gag. Jake began to speak very quietly, almost too quietly for her to hear.
“I should have known this would happen,” he said. “But if you can’t trust your family, who can you trust? That was the only thing that got me through this, the idea that we were all in it together, that we three, and only we three, knew what had happened. It bound us together, don’t you see? It bound us. That’s why we had to go on living here, the three of us together.”
He stopped speaking and Bella opened her mouth, to say something, anything. But after a second, she closed it again. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Jake began to speak again, not looking at her. He stared down at the glass in his hand, rocking the whisky gently from side to side. Bella could smell the fumes, pungent in the cold air.
“I know why he’s done it,” said Jake. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. He’s punishing me, you see. He’s punishing me for Veronica. For what happened with her – and what came before. I thought I hid it well enough but I guess I didn’t. I should have known anyway. You can’t hide anything from Carl.”
“No, you can’t,” said Bella. Jake looked at her in surprise.
“You agree with me then,” he said. “He’s not normal. He’s… I shouldn’t say this about my own brother… but it’s the truth. He’s evil. He pushed her, you know.” He looked at her, a quick sideways glance. “That’s probably shocked you.”
“No,” said Bella, tiredly. “Not really. I know she didn’t really fall.”
“She didn’t,” said Jake. He threw the remaining whisky into his mouth, swallowed and coughed. “Carl pushed her. Sometimes I wonder if she really did die because of the fall. Perhaps she was still alive and he killed her later. How would I know?”
Bella’s skin was crawling. A million unseen insects were spreading over the skin of her back. She held herself rigid, trying not to shudder.
Jake poured himself another glass of whisky, a full glass this time.
“Anyway,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter anymore.”
Bella stared at him.
“Why not?”
Jake didn’t reply for a second. He took a gigantic mouthful of whisky.
“It just doesn’t,” he gasped. “It’s over now.”
Bella opened her mouth to ask him what he meant. In the same instance she heard something that, in other circumstances, would be a wholly innocent sound. Here and now, it froze her to her bones. It was the scrabble of the key in the lock of the front door, and the scrape and thud of a pair of feet coming into the hallway. Two pairs of feet. Bella felt her entire torso go rigid. She could feel her heart fluttering like a trapped bird against her ribs. As the footsteps moved closer to the kitchen door, it was as if a giant hand had run an icy finger along the ridge of her spine. Across from her, she saw Jake, across from her. She looked at his face, at his mouth drawn back from his teeth, and clenched her hands under the table.
“Can’t believe they’re still up – “ was what she heard Carl say as he pushed open the kitchen door. A second later and he was framed in the doorway, wrapped in his dark coat, Veronica’s blonde head just visible behind his shoulder.