Tana French - The Likeness

“You were heading out for your walk,” Rafe said helpfully, flopping back onto the sofa, “around, what, just after eleven? And Abby and I discovered we were both out of smokes. Funny, isn’t it, what little things make all the difference? If we’d been nonsmokers, this might never have happened. When they talk about the evils of tobacco, they never mention this.”

“You said you’d pick some up on your way,” Abby said. She was watching me carefully, hands clasped tight in her lap. “But you’re always gone for at least an hour, so I figured I might as well run out and get them at the petrol station. It looked like it was going to rain, so I threw on the jacket-I mean, it didn’t seem like you wanted it, you were already putting your coat on. I stuck my wallet in the pocket, and…”

Her voice trailed off and she made a small, tense gesture that could have meant anything. I kept my mouth shut. No more leading, if I could help it. The rest of this story had to come from them.

“And she pulled out this piece of paper,” Rafe said, through a cigarette, “and went, ‘What’s this?’ Nobody paid much attention, at first. We were all in the kitchen; we were doing the washing up, me and Justin and Daniel, and arguing about something or other-”

“Stevenson,” Justin said, softly and very sadly. “Remember? Jekyll and Hyde. Daniel was going on about them; something to do with reason and instinct. You were in a silly mood, Lexie, you said you’d had enough shop talk for the night and anyway Jekyll and Hyde would both have been crap in bed, and Rafe said, ‘A one-track mind, and it’s a dirt track…’ We were all laughing.”

“And then Abby said, ‘Lexie, what the hell?’ ” said Rafe. “A whole lot louder. We all stopped messing about and turned around, and she was holding out this ratty bit of paper and looking like someone had slapped her across the face-I’ve never seen her look like that, ever.”

“That’s the part I remember,” I said. My hands felt like they’d been melted onto the arms of the chair by some blast of heat. “Then it goes fuzzy again.”

“Luckily for you,” Rafe said, “we can help you with that. I think the rest of us will remember every second for the rest of our lives. You said, ‘Give me that,’ and grabbed for the piece of paper, but Abby jumped back, fast, and passed it to Daniel.”

“I think,” Justin said, in a low voice, “that was when we started to realize there was something serious happening. I’d been about to say something silly about a love letter-just teasing you, Lexie-but you were so… You lunged at Daniel, trying to get it away from him. He shot out his other hand to hold you off, sort of reflexively, but you were fighting him, really fighting-punching at his arm, trying to kick him, grabbing for that thing. You didn’t make a single sound. That’s what frightened me most, I think: the silence. It seemed like people should be shouting or screaming or something, like then I might be able to do something, but it was so quiet-just you and Daniel breathing hard, and the tap still running…”

“Abby caught hold of your arm,” Rafe said, “but you whipped round, with your fists up; I honestly thought you were about to go for her. Justin and I were standing there gawping like a pair of morons, trying to figure out what the fuck-I mean, two seconds ago we’d been on Jekyll sex, for God’s sake. As soon as you let go of Daniel, he shoved the paper at me, caught your wrists from behind and told me, ‘Read that.’ ”

“I didn’t like it,” Justin said softly. “You were flinging yourself back and forth, trying to pull away from Daniel, but he wouldn’t let go. It was… You tried to bite him, his arm. I thought he shouldn’t be doing that, if it was your paper then he should let you have it, but I just couldn’t catch up enough to say anything.”

I wasn’t surprised. These were not men of action here; their currencies were thoughts and words, and they had been catapulted into something that blew both of those right out of the water. What did surprise me, what set warning lights flashing at the back of my mind, was the speed and ease with which Daniel had snapped into action.

“So,” Rafe said, “I read the thing out loud. It said, ‘Dear Lexie, have thought it over and OK we can talk about 200K. Please get in touch ’cause I know we both want to get this deal wrapped up. Best regards, Ned.’ ”

“Surely to God,” Justin said softly and bitterly, into the airless silence, “you remember that.”

“The spelling was shit,” said Rafe, through his cigarette. “He actually had a number two for ‘to,’ like a fucking fourteen-year-old. What an utter moron. Apart from anything else, I would’ve expected you to have better taste than to mess about making shoddy little deals with someone like that.”

“Would you have?” Abby asked. Her eyes were very steady on mine, searching, and her hands had gone still in her lap. “If none of this had happened, would you really have sold out to Ned?”

When I think about how breathtakingly cruel I was to those four, this is one of the few things that make me feel any better: I could have said yes, then. I could have told them exactly what Lexie was planning to do to them, to everything they had put their hearts and minds and bodies into building. Maybe that would have hurt them less, in the end, than thinking it had all been over nothing; I don’t know. All I know is that the last time I had a choice, and much too late to make any difference, I lied for the right reasons.

“No,” I said. “I just… God. I just needed to know I could. I freaked out, Abby. I started feeling trapped and I panicked. It was never about actually leaving. I just had to know I could leave, if I wanted to.”

“Trapped,” Justin said, and his head moved in a quick, hurt jerk. “With us,” but I saw Abby’s fast blink as she realized: the baby.

“You were going to stay.”

“Oh God, I wanted to stay,” I said, and I still don’t know and never will whether this one was a lie at all. “So much, Abby. I really did.”

After a long moment she nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“I told you,” Rafe said, tipping his head back and blowing smoke at the ceiling. “Fucking Daniel. Up until last week he was still practically hysterical with paranoia about that. I told him I’d talked to you and you had no intention of going anywhere, but God forbid he should listen to anyone.”

Abby didn’t react to that, didn’t move; it looked like she wasn’t even breathing. “And now?” she asked me. “Now what?”

For a light-headed second I lost the thread, thought she had made me and was asking if I wanted to stay anyway. “What do you mean?”

“She means,” Rafe said, his voice cool and clipped and very level, “when this conversation is over, are you going to phone Mackey or O’Neill or the village idiots and turn us in. Shop us. Rat us out. Whatever the appropriate expression is, in these circumstances.”

You’d think this would have sent guilt shooting through me like pins and needles, spreading from that mike red-hot against my skin, but the only thing I felt was sad: a huge, final, dragging sadness, like an ebb tide down in my bones. “I’m not going to say anything to anyone,” I said, and felt Frank, off in his little humming circle of electronics, approve. “I don’t want you guys going to jail. No matter what happened.”

“Well,” Abby said softly, almost to herself. She sat back in her chair and smoothed her skirt, absently, with both hands. “Well, then…”

“Well, then,” Rafe said, and drew hard on his smoke, “we made this whole thing an awful lot more complicated than it needed to be. Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

“Then what?” I said. “After the note. Then what happened?”