Before We Met(110)

‘Yes, I’m sorry – I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t have done it like this, given the choice, but . . . Anyway, I’m not going to hurt you and I’m sorry for frightening you.’

Hannah stared at him but he seemed to be serious. ‘What the hell are you doing then? You abducted me.’

‘You were hardly going to get in the car willingly, were you?’

‘But . . .’

‘Getting you here is the only way of getting my brother here. He wouldn’t meet me and he wouldn’t answer my calls so . . .’

Hannah nearly laughed. ‘He’s been trying to reach you for days, ringing and ringing, since before you got out of prison, until—’ She stopped herself from saying it. Hermione.

‘No,’ Nick said simply. ‘He hasn’t called me once.’

‘You’re lying,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He told me he’d tried everything to talk to you. He came to visit you in prison. He—’

‘Yes,’ Nick admitted, ‘he did visit me, that’s true at least, but I’m pretty confident he didn’t tell you why he came. Anyway,’ he gave a light shrug, ‘believe me when I tell you that I wouldn’t have gone to this sort of trouble unless I had to. Imagine how it would look to the police as well – my third day out.’

He walked over to the part of the room with the units and she watched him open a cupboard and take out a bottle of whisky and two glasses. Bringing them to the table, he sat down opposite her. He kept his coat on but pulled off his beanie and stuffed it into his pocket. Underneath, his hair was shaved almost to the scalp. He poured an inch of Scotch into both glasses and handed her one. ‘Here. I should think you need it.’

She looked at it for a second then took a swig that made her cough again.

‘I’ve sent him a text to let him know where we are.’

She smiled. ‘Then the police will be here any minute, won’t they?’

Nick regarded her over the rim of his glass. ‘I doubt it.’

From inside his jacket he took a cheap-looking red mobile phone that he put on the table in front of him, and a new pack of Embassy. He tore off the cellophane and pulled out the slip of silver paper inside. ‘I don’t know what he’s told you about me,’ he said, ‘but from the way you ran off the other night, I’m guessing it was the full works. I want to tell you the truth.’

‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘Well, that’s bad luck, isn’t it?’ he said, with a dry smile. ‘Given that you’re literally a captive audience.’ He unscrewed the bottle again and poured himself a modest top-up. ‘You need to hear the truth about what happened. To Patty – all of it.’

‘I told you, I’m not interested,’ she said, but there was something about the directness of the way he was looking at her that made her heart start beating very fast. He’s a psychopath, she told herself, an expert manipulator; this is what he does, but his face was open and she thought of his parents, tucked away in their bungalow in Eastbourne, alive after all.

‘You might be more interested,’ he said, ‘if I told you that Mark was there, too.’

‘Yes, at the club that night. I know.’

‘Not at the club – at my flat. He was there when Patty died.’

Hannah went cold. ‘You’re lying,’ she said.

Nick shook his head. ‘No.’

He put a cigarette in his mouth and flicked the lighter. When he inhaled, the tobacco crackled in the silence. ‘He’s told you the official version, obviously – I’m the monster who watched Patty die and didn’t call an ambulance.’

‘He didn’t tell me.’ Hannah felt a surge of relief. ‘I read about it online, in the old newspaper reports. You were tried and found guilty.’

He nodded. ‘I was. But the jury can only base a verdict on the evidence they’ve heard.’

‘Oh, come on,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t even try—’

‘The key to a successful lie is to stay as close to the actual facts as possible. It’s the first rule of deception, isn’t it?’

‘You tell me.’

He ignored her. ‘So, a lot of it was true. I’d reached the end of my rope with Mark and I wanted to piss him off, so one night when his girlfriend was wasted, I chatted her up and took her home.’ He took a pull on the cigarette, watching the end as it glowed red then faded again. ‘I’ll never forgive myself for what happened to Patty – I dream about her all the time. She didn’t deserve that, no one would, and what I did was . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It got totally out of hand. We were both so messed up; we’d drunk so much and done so many lines, and . . .’