‘Don’t be,’ he says.
It annoys her, how dismissive he is of her concerns. As if he thinks she’s simply being neurotic. ‘How can you be so relaxed about it?’ she snaps. ‘He thinks we murdered Greg.’
‘So what? He can’t prove it.’
‘Maybe he’s the one sending the texts,’ she suggests. She regards Ted as he considers it.
‘It’s possible, I suppose. But why would he?’
‘To freak us out. To be nasty. Who knows?’ She continues, ‘He obviously suspects us.’
Ted says slowly, ‘I think it’s because of how we reacted when he said there were cameras on the boat. I think we gave ourselves away.’
She remembers. She was sitting in the very same spot she’s sitting in now. She recalls her sudden terror. The recognitionof it registering in Ramirez’s sharp eyes, those eyes that miss nothing. That moment– the feeling of the floor giving way beneath her– will stay with her for ever, as will the panic of every moment up until they learned there were no cameras on the boat after all. She finds herself staring at Ted. He looks as if he’s wrestling with whether to tell her something. ‘What are you not telling me, Ted?’
He finally says, ‘When I saw him, the day after, when he told me there were no cameras on the boat– he said to me, “I bet that’s a relief.”’
She continues staring at him, completely still. ‘So he knows.’
‘He doesn’t know!’ Ted says. ‘He suspects, that’s all.’
‘Fuck!’ She finishes her drink in one go, puts her empty glass down on the coffee table. ‘I don’t think he’s going to give up.’
‘Jill, he wasn’t there. He didn’t see us push Greg off the boat and leave him there to die. There’s no evidence! You need to stop worrying.’
But she can’t stop worrying. Not with Ramirez snapping at their heels. She stares blindly at the pattern in the wallpaper, grateful for the liquor slowly numbing her mind and body.
Ted says, ‘I spoke to John.’
She abruptly turns her attention from the wallpaper back to her husband. ‘What did he say?’
‘He said he didn’t send the texts.’
‘Do you believe him?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looks uncertain.
‘What are we going to do?’ she whispers. This isn’t how she expected it would be. She wishes that whoever is sending the texts would show themselves, so they would know who they’redealing with. She doesn’t like having this person lurking like a shadow in the dark.
Ted asks quietly, ‘Do you really think Lara could do something like that?’
She thinks about Lara at the memorial– how she’d watched her and Ramirez. That bastard had planted the idea of murder in Lara’s mind, so it’s possible that Lara is sending the texts. But she has been so supportive, so protective. ‘I don’t know,’ she says wearily. It’s awful to think of a friend doing something so vile. Suddenly she reaches for her purse and pulls out her phone, turns it back on. It’s been off since Ted turned it off that morning.
‘Don’t,’ Ted says, seeing what she’s doing.
She sees the last text,MURDERERS. And responds:WHO IS THIS?
‘Why did you do that?’ Ted exclaims. ‘We shouldn’t engage! That’s what they want!’
She glares at him defiantly and then looks back at her phone. But long moments pass and there is no answer.
‘We’ll change your number too,’ Ted says, after a while.
She drops the phone onto the sofa beside her. She’s staring at nothing again, in a sort of light trance. Her eyes rest on the bookshelf between the two tall windows while her mind catastrophizes.How did they get here? How did it come to this?She tries to remember her happiness right after Greg was dead. Their glee at what they’d done, at all the money coming their way. It’s not guilt she feels now, but the fear of being found out. Of going to prison for the rest of her life.
‘We just have to hold our nerve,’ Ted says. ‘If you want, we can go away for a while. Maybe we should.’
But she’s not really listening. She’s staring at the bookshelf, at something glinting at her. She’s transfixed by it. The liquor, after the wine at the memorial, has made her stupid, slow to react. ‘What’s that?’ she says suddenly, coming out of her torpor.