The Guest, page 24
I can still remember the terrible fear that gripped me as I’d walked back to the hotel, leaving Pierre on the beach. I already knew, with a certainty that now seems strange, that Pierre and I had just created a new life. As I sat on the bed, watching Gabriel sleep, I was more frightened than I’d ever been, frightened not just by what had happened with Pierre, but what it would do to Gabriel, to us, if he ever found out. My mind was in turmoil; since our marriage a year before we’d been trying for a baby without success. If I was right, and there was new life growing inside me, what would happen, in two or three months’ time, when I announced that I was pregnant? If the news got back to Pierre, would he suspect that the baby was his? And he would find out. The four of us got on so well together that we’d already exchanged contact details. I could have deleted theirs, but they had our address. We’d been living in London at the time. What if they came to London on one of Pierre’s frequent business trips and looked us up, as we had urged them to do?
I was so stressed that I even considered telling Gabriel, once we were home, that I wanted to move to another part of the UK. But he wouldn’t have understood; we’d only moved into our flat a year before and we were happy there. I loved Gabriel and wanted to stay married to him at all costs, at any cost. So I took what I felt was the only way out.
The next morning—it was the day before we were due to leave—I told Gabriel that I was pregnant. I said I’d taken a pregnancy test before leaving for the Bahamas, which had been positive, and that I’d wanted to tell him the wonderful news on the last night of our holiday. He was so happy, but agreed we should only tell his parents once the first three months had gone by; mine had died years before. He was so excited that he wanted to share the news with someone, and asked me if we could tell Laure and Pierre, which is what I’d been hoping. That evening, over dinner, we told them I was five weeks pregnant. I managed to make it sound as if Gabriel had known before we left on holiday, and they were delighted for us. It was then that they had told us about their decision not to have children, and I’d felt a mix of relief and guilt, relief that there would be no half siblings to physically compare our child to, guilt that Pierre’s decision not to procreate had possibly already been thwarted. It was another reason why he could never know about the baby.
If I’d been wrong about being pregnant, I would have pretended I’d had a miscarriage. A pregnancy test a few weeks later confirmed that I was. By then, I was being constantly sick, a mix of incapacitating fear and hormones. I was frightened of the baby growing inside me, afraid he or she would look like Pierre, and Gabriel would know instantly that it wasn’t his. I never considered terminating the pregnancy, because of the values instilled in me by my upbringing, and which still stuck with me.
I didn’t see a doctor until I was five months pregnant. Before that, I’d pretend to Gabriel that I’d been for an appointment, and when he wanted to come with me, I’d invent a last-minute change, saying that the doctor had asked me to go in earlier, so that he wouldn’t be able to get home in time. When I eventually saw a doctor, I lied about my dates, and the doctor accepted what I told her, that I was six months pregnant, believing that the baby was smaller than it should have been because I’d been so sick. The doctor was sympathetic when I told her that I hadn’t been able to accept I was pregnant because I had a fear of giving birth. When the time came, I was so scared to see the child I’d conceived with Pierre that I’d had to have a caesarean.
I was lucky; Beth took after me. Pierre and I were both dark-haired, but Beth had my eyes, my mouth. She was perfect, but I wouldn’t let myself love her because I didn’t feel I deserved her. Instead, I pushed her into Gabriel’s arms, desperate for him to create a bond that he’d never be able to break if, one day, he discovered she wasn’t his.
Our only real argument came when Gabriel wanted Pierre to be Beth’s godfather. I was adamant that he should choose his oldest friend, citing hurt feelings and a longer friendship. Gabriel stood his ground, saying he wanted to bring Pierre and Laure into our family, and the only way I’d been able to appease him was by suggesting that we asked Laure to be Beth’s godmother.
We carried on seeing Pierre and Laure two or three times a year, for weekends and holidays abroad. I hadn’t wanted to, but Gabriel and Pierre adored each other and if I’d made a fuss, there was the risk that Pierre might wonder if there was more to my reluctance to see them than simply being uncomfortable because of what had happened that night in the Bahamas. We had never taken Beth on those trips, choosing to leave her with Gabriel’s parents instead.
Because she was Beth’s godmother, it was normal that Laure saw more of Beth than Pierre did. She would come over from Paris to take her out for her birthdays, or during the Christmas holidays. On the rare occasions that Pierre saw her, there was never anything in his behavior to suggest that he was wondering if she was his. Until last December, when Gabriel, still grieving over the recent death of his father, invited Pierre and Laure to spend the New Year with us.
Beth had planned to stay with friends over the New Year and I did everything to make her leave before Pierre and Laure arrived. But she’d wanted to see them, and had hung around. I wasn’t too worried, until I saw Pierre’s eyes rest on Beth more than once as she flitted around the room, laughing and talking with us. And even then, because he didn’t look my way with a question in his eyes, or try to contact me in the weeks that followed, I’d thought I was safe.
Until I saw Laure standing at the top of the stairs.
* * *
I have this ability to appear calm when I’ve just received the worst possible news, when my insides are twisting in a frenzy of fear. It served me well when Laure dropped her bombshell about Pierre having a child, and I was grateful that Laure suspected Claire as the mother, as my plan, during that first long night, had been to point my finger in her direction. But when Laure told me about the DNA test Pierre had conducted, I knew that everything I’d sacrificed over the last twenty years had been for nothing.
I tried to stop Pierre from taking it further. I didn’t want to risk messaging him or calling him as I didn’t want any trace of communication between us. But I needed to contain it before it got out of hand. To do that, I knew I’d have to talk to Pierre face-to-face. But I couldn’t just say I was going to Paris without giving a reason. Then Laure asked to see my designs for the town house in London and suddenly, I had the perfect excuse. If I could get to Paris and back in a day, I could pretend I was going to London to see my client Samantha Everett. In reality, I would go to Paris to see Pierre.
Four days after Laure told us about Pierre having a child, I surprised him outside his workplace. It was the first time we’d been alone for any length of time, and it was horribly awkward. I couldn’t pretend that Beth wasn’t his; he knew that she was. All I could do was beg him to understand why I’d deceived everyone. He was angry that he’d missed out on so many years of Beth’s life, and I called him a hypocrite, reminding him that he had never wanted children, and that Laure had sacrificed being a mother for him. To my relief, he understood why I’d done what I had, because he was a kind and decent man, and when I told him that I hadn’t let myself get close to Beth and that I’d sent her to a boarding school because I didn’t feel I deserved her, he had hugged and comforted me. But more than that, he loved Gabriel, and Laure, and eventually agreed that saying anything, especially after so many years, would do more harm than good. In return for his silence, I promised that whenever he and Laure came to stay, I would do my best to ensure that Beth was there so that he could at least see her.
I explained to Pierre that his refusal to engage with Laure and Gabriel was adding to everyone’s stress and asked him to message them, once I was back home. He was to say that after thinking about it, he’d decided not to cause problems for his child and her mother and wouldn’t be seeking contact with either of them. Ten agonizing days later, he still hadn’t messaged, and I was out of my mind with worry. All he’d done was call Gabriel to say that he wasn’t ready to talk because he needed more time. I was terrified; more time for what?
Worried that he was going to renege on our agreement, I returned to Paris, again using a meeting in London with Samantha Everett as an excuse. Laure was due to go back to Paris the following weekend and I pleaded with Pierre not to destroy both our marriages. I pointed out that if Beth knew the truth, there was no guarantee she would accept him as her father. On the contrary, she might resent him for destroying mine and Gabriel’s marriage, and he would be left with nothing. I thought I’d got through to him, but when Laure changed her mind and decided not to go, my desperation at having to put up with her for even longer was tinged with relief. I wasn’t sure I could count on Pierre not to implode our lives.
It helped that Gabriel was so traumatized by what had happened with Charlie Ingram that he kept losing his focus with regard to Pierre. When he told me that he planned to go to Paris to see him, I realized I’d have to prevent him from going because I knew Pierre wouldn’t be able to keep the truth from him. I’d planned to hide Gabriel’s passport—but then, two days before he was due to leave, Pierre messaged Laure, asking her to go to Paris, saying he didn’t want to lose her. My initial reaction was one of huge relief; Pierre had finally come through. Then Laure dropped a new bombshell; he wanted to tell her everything.
The subsequent dread I felt was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Devastated, my only solution was to return to Paris and try to get to Pierre before Laure arrived. I couldn’t use Samantha Everett as an excuse again, so I told Gabriel—who by then had canceled his own trip to Paris—that as a surprise for him, I’d arranged a lunch with my friend Jade on the day he’d planned to go and see Pierre, so that we could travel to London together.
On that Friday, I made the same journey that Laure would make the following day. I went to Pierre’s workplace and caught him on his way for his lunch break. He saw me and came over.
“I hope you haven’t come to make me change my mind,” he said, kissing me on each cheek, because there was no reason for him not to; we were friends. “I’ve given it so much thought, and it’s the only way forward. Life is short, Iris. I want to be a part of Beth’s life. I want her to know that I’m her father.”
My world crumbled around me. “Okay. I know I can’t make you change your mind,” I said, wanting him to think that he had won, because I needed time to think. “But could we go somewhere to discuss how we’re going to tell Gabriel and Laure? We need to talk this through, Pierre.”
“Of course. There’s a brasserie over there, we can talk about it over lunch.”
As we crossed over to the restaurant, I couldn’t help but notice the change in him. There was a lightness about him, as if he’d been relieved of an enormous burden. It was then that I understood there was nothing I was going to be able to say that would make him change his mind.
I played along. When he said that the best thing was for him to come back with me, so that we could tell Laure and Gabriel together, I agreed. He asked the time of my train to London, and when I told him it was leaving Gare du Nord at 4 p.m., he sent a message to his boss, saying that he wouldn’t be back that afternoon because he had something to sort out.
“In fact, I will take the whole month off,” he said. “They’ve been bugging me to use up my leave from last year, and Arnaud suggested this morning that I take some holiday.” He gave a wry smile. “He knows I haven’t been in a good place lately, although he doesn’t know why. And after we’ve told Laure and Gabriel, we’ll need time to sort things out.”
“Good idea,” I said, hiding my rising panic at the realization that if he was going to come back with me, it really was going to happen.
“I’ll message Claire too,” he went on. “She’s been worried about me, so I’d better let her know I’m going away, otherwise she’ll think something terrible has happened.”
I think it was those words that gave me the idea of killing him. It seems unbelievable now that the thought even entered my mind; it seems unbelievable that I actually did it. But all I could think of was Gabriel and Beth, and a rage began to build inside me at Pierre’s disregard for everyone’s happiness but his own. He didn’t seem to care that he was about to destroy four other lives despite there being no guarantee that it would make his better. I knew Beth; she adored Gabriel, he had been her father for the last twenty years. If the truth came out, she might have rejected me, but she would never have rejected Gabriel.
The waiter came to take our order. My mind was spinning. If I was to kill Pierre, I would need a weapon, and I would need somewhere to do it, somewhere where his body wouldn’t be discovered for a while. I thought of the storeroom in the basement of their building where they kept their bikes and tools and bits of broken furniture. There was even an old chest freezer, and Laure had laughed one day that it was the perfect place to hide a body.
“What would you like to eat, Iris?” Pierre smiled at me, and the thought that I was going to kill him made me so dizzy that I had to grip the table to stop myself from falling.
“Steak frites,” I said, because somewhere in my subconscious, I connected the need for a murder weapon with a knife. Not just an ordinary knife, but a sharp knife.
Our lunch came promptly. I picked up my knife and let it slip from my hand. It clattered to the floor and I stooped quickly and put it in the tote bag at my feet, then told Pierre I couldn’t find it. It didn’t matter, he explained. I would be brought a clean one, and someone would fish the errant knife from under the bench when they tidied up after the service.
“I’ll need to go back to the apartment to get some things,” he said.
I nodded. “Of course. And while we’re there, could we go down to your storeroom? The last time I was here with Gabriel, I left my umbrella in the basket of Laure’s bike. Beth gave it to me, so I’d really like to get it.” He nodded in agreement.
Lunch over, we walked the ten minutes to his apartment, the oppressive heat, with its hint of a storm to come, only adding to the tension inside me.
“Aren’t you hot in that?” Gabriel asked, because the weather had been cloudy when I’d left home so I was wearing a long cardigan over my dress. On the train, I’d been annoyed to discover in the pockets, a tissue, a hair clip and a pair of the thin, flesh-colored cotton gloves that Laure wore when she was sunbathing or running. I’d got used to her borrowing my clothes, but had wished on numerous occasions that she would empty the pockets before putting them back in my wardrobe. Now I was glad that she hadn’t.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
We arrived at their building and I suggested going to the storeroom first, to get the umbrella. As I followed him down the stairs to the basement and along the rabbit warren passageways, I took Laure’s gloves from my pocket and slipped them on. I felt strangely detached. Pierre was no longer a friend, just an obstacle that had got in my way. My focus was not on him, but on getting done what I had to do as quickly and cleanly as possible.
He unlocked the door, snaked his hand around it for the light switch, and stood back to let me pass in front of him.
“You still have the freezer,” I exclaimed, heading for it, noting its lid wedged slightly open by a piece of wood, indicating that it was empty. Using my body to shield my gloved hand I pushed up the lid and peered inside. “I thought you might have got rid of it.”
He came into the room. “We keep meaning to,” he said. “We’ve just never got around to it.”
The confined space meant that I only needed to turn, take a small step toward him. I already had the steak knife in my hand. He was the same height as me, and narrow-bodied. Without giving myself time to think, I plunged the knife into his chest.
He took a surprised step back, but I followed his movement and drove the knife in farther.
“What—” He shook his head slightly, trying to work it out, and then the pain must have hit, because a gasp of shock expelled from him. I caught him as his legs buckled, and then, in a macabre dance, I twisted our clasped bodies around to the freezer behind me, stooped, hooked an arm under his knees and tipped him in.
He landed on his side, and lay immobile, apart from his eyes, which flickered upward, searching for an answer. I reached in and pulled out the knife and watched as blood seeped from him, staining the floor of the freezer red. Then I took his phone from his pocket and closed the lid.
It was only when I looked down at myself, saw the knife in my hand, its blade red with blood and the red stain on my cardigan, that shock hit me with a force so great I almost collapsed. I closed my eyes, summoned Beth’s face and used her image to fight the weakness in my limbs and calm my panicked breathing. I focused on what I needed to do. I took off my cardigan and bundled the knife into it, then added the SIM card from Pierre’s phone. I thought for a moment, then dug out the hair clip. Several of Laure’s hairs had been caught in the clasp, so I pulled one out and let it drop to the floor. I checked my dress; no bloodstains had seeped through from my cardigan and I was grateful I’d had the presence of mind to remove the knife from Pierre’s chest once he was in the freezer. Stooping, I plugged the freezer into its socket, and left the storeroom.
Pierre had left his keys in the door, so I locked it behind me, slipped the keys into my rolled-up cardigan, put it in my bag and walked back through the narrow corridors and up the basement steps. I made it to the front door without meeting anyone; the whole building was silent.
