“Come in, Mac, I know you’re there.”
Mac walked in stiffly. She looked wan, face drawn and skin sallow. She obviously wasn’t taking advantage of the freak heat wave that had descended upon the lower half of Scotland. Mac opened her mouth and Anjuli braced herself to hear her gloat about the fire or spew more abuse.
“I set fire to your house.”
Anjuli’s jaw dropped so fast she heard the bones crack. “Why?” she cried.
Mac bowed her head. “I was angry. No, I was infuriated at you for keeping the truth from me. I knew you would never come on to Craig, but I wanted to believe Sarah’s article. I didn’t want to accept that he didn’t love me anymore. The night of the fire Craig phoned and we fought. He said I was boring, unlike you and Ash, or the other women he’d slept with.”
“I never—”
Mac held up her hand. “I know you didn’t, but I was furious anyway, and I got drunk. I knew where you kept the spare key to Castle Manor so I drove over and found it.”
Anjuli stared at Mac, struggling to come to terms with her confession, uneasy at the idea of anyone—never mind her best friend—opening the door as she slept.
“I took a look around, wanting to destroy something of yours the way I thought you and Ash had destroyed my marriage. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but when I saw the wood in the fireplace, it was easy.”
Bloody hell. “You could have killed me!”
“I didn’t know you were home—I swear! Someone said you stay at Ash’s flat a lot and in my drunken state I assumed that you were there when I didn’t see her car.”
“But why, Mac?” Anjuli cried. “Why try to burn down Castle Manor?”
She swallowed, and for a moment didn’t speak. “I wanted to hurt you like I was hurt, to take something important from you like Craig was taken from me. I didn’t want to kill you, never that. I was halfway back home when what I had done hit me hard. My head cleared and I was horrified.”
Anjuli gasped. “It was you who called the emergency services, wasn’t it?”
“But by then it was too late.”
Anjuli stared at Mac as if seeing her for the first time. After losing Chloe, she knew better than most how grief and loss could affect your heart and brain, didn’t she? She’d lost touch with reality and done some pretty bizarre and stupid things, but she hadn’t turned into a raging psycho. Mac hadn’t just become unrecognisable overnight, she’d become a genuine candidate for sectioning.
Emotions travelled across Anjuli like the images on her laptop, slowly gaining focus and then merging into the next. Shock, anger, disgust and, finally, empathy. Surprising, perhaps, given the circumstances, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to hate the woman who had almost killed her.
Memories of a teenaged Mac, laughing as they galloped over the moors, of her sweet face welcoming her back to Heaverlock, forgiving her for hurting Rob competed with the vicious woman she’d become and won hands down.
She couldn’t hate Mac any more than she could hate Rob. Warily, she scrutinised her old friend. She looked lost and tormented, a state she understood only too well.
Mac had gone to stand at the window and was gazing outside, her shoulders slumped. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose the person you love, to suddenly find yourself abandoned with no warning. Alone.”
How I wish that were true.
“I’ve been a monster to you,” Mac said. “So weighed down by hatred it’s like my body is saturated in poison. What I did at the Common Riding Ball was inexcusably cruel. If it’s any consolation, I hated myself afterwards.”
“But you set fire to my house anyway?”
Mac bowed her head in shame. “Alcohol and bitterness clouded my judgement. I’ve never driven drunk in my life, but I didn’t care about anybody’s safety, least of all my own.”
“Lucky you didn’t kill anyone,” Anjuli couldn’t resist saying.
“All I wanted was to lash out, and I’m so sorry for what I did. I know you’ll never forgive me, and I hope that one day you won’t hate me.”
Anjuli’s throat hurt with the effort not to cry. “I don’t hate you, Mac.”
“But I’ve been so awful to you! I don’t even know who I am anymore, or how the hell to cope day after day. How could I turn into an arsonist over Craig?”
A sombre sigh, and Anjuli looked at Mac and shook her head sadly. “Sometimes we do stupid, terrible things when we’re in pain. I think we never really know who we are until we pass that threshold.”
“I’m going to turn myself in.”