Because She Loves Me (25 page)

I hadn’t been listening properly, because I’d been remembering the phantom text I’d received from her the night I’d taken the sleeping pills, asking me to call her. The text that I was sure I’d hallucinated. I snapped out of my reverie. ‘What was weird?’

‘You. Sending your girlfriend round there to get your money.’

It took a moment for this to sink in. ‘What?’

‘Karen said that you sent your bird round to see her, to have a go at her about making you do all that work again. She was really surprised, thought you’d turned into a right wanker. Karen said your bird said something about how no one could get away with trying to take advantage of you anymore. Hey, are you all right, mate? You look like you’re about to have a funny turn.’

I sat down. All I could think about was what Charlie had said the night Sasha had come round for dinner.
If you wanted to murder someone, the best way to do it would be to make it look like a drug overdose.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ I said.

Twenty-nine

Victor took me back to my flat in a taxi and escorted me up the stairs, huffing and puffing behind me and exclaiming loudly about how someone ‘should put a fucking lift it here.’

Sat down at the table with a cup of tea – three sugars – in front of me, Victor said, ‘Fucking hell, Andrew, talk about an attack of the vapours. I thought I was going to have to carry you to the cab.’

‘It’s the hangover,’ I said. ‘Low blood sugar.’ I sipped the hot tea, the sweetness bringing me back to life. But my heart was skittering, banging.

‘Whatever you say.’ Victor had found a can of Coke in the back of the fridge, which he cracked open, a little wisp of condensation rising and catching my eye. ‘So are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

I couldn’t meet his eye. ‘Finding out about Karen – that’s all it is. It’s such a shock.’

He scrutinised me. ‘So you knew your girlfriend had been to see her?’

‘I . . . Yeah. I didn’t want her to, but . . .’ I trailed off, unable to force the lie out.

‘Pretty shitty thing to do, if you ask me,’ Victor said. ‘Maybe I got you all wrong, Andrew. Maybe you’re not the decent bloke I thought you were.’

I couldn’t speak.

‘Anyway, I need to get home. The missus is cooking a special celebratory dinner tonight.’

‘All right. Thank you for, well . . .’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Better make sure I don’t piss you off, hadn’t I? Don’t want your girlfriend paying me any unexpected visits.’

I watched from the window as he headed off down the road, then sank onto the sofa, head in hands.

I hated lying to him, but I had no other choice, not until I had all this straight in my head. If I had told Victor that I hadn’t known about Charlie going to see Karen he would have started asking questions – questions which would lead on to me telling him all the things I had suspected her of, before Tilly had sprung to her defence, including setting him up. And if I told him that, he would go to the police.

I couldn’t have that, not now. Not before I had figured it all out. I couldn’t risk it. I loved her. If she was innocent and got the slightest hint that I suspected her of doing these terrible things, I’d lose her. No relationship could survive such an accusation.

I made myself a coffee, splashed my face with freezing water from the tap. My head felt clearer.

Here was what I knew: Charlie had said, albeit in a jokey way, that if she were going to murder someone, she would fake a drug overdose. Karen, who had never been into drugs, as far as I knew, had died from a heroin OD. Charlie had secretly visited her shortly before Karen died. Also, she had said to me, by text, that she thought Karen had taken advantage of me – the words she had used when she went to see Karen.

If I was on a jury, would I convict her on that basis? It was – what was it called? – circumstantial evidence. Charlie’s defence would be that she was only kidding about the heroin overdose, that she would never actually kill anyone.

What about her motivation?

That was simple: jealousy. Charlie hated me working for Karen, loathed me having anything to do with her. Maybe she thought I was still interested in her, that we would have an affair. But I hadn’t shown any signs that I was still into Karen, had been moaning to Charlie about how annoyed I was with her. I could picture Charlie going to see Karen on my behalf, thinking she was doing me a favour, getting my money. But why do it without telling me? And where was the cheque? She hadn’t given it to me.

I tried to think it through, how it might have happened. Charlie goes to see her, on the pretext of getting my money, and then – what? Did she always intend to kill her or was it only something that happened after she’d met Karen? Did Karen say something that enraged her, that made her flip out, her jealous fury driving her to do something terrible? She hadn’t done anything on their first meeting, so she would have had to go back.

How do you give someone a smack overdose anyway? I imagined the possible scenarios: Charlie slipping a loaded syringe out of her bag, plunging it into Karen’s arm; hiding in her flat when she was asleep and slipping the needle into her skin; holding a gun to her head and instructing her to inject herself. None of these scenes, especially the one involving the gun, seemed realistic. They were like snatches from
noir
films, with Charlie in the role of the deadly
femme fatale
. Maybe Karen really was into drugs. Thinking about it, it did fit with her experimental, hedonistic persona. She had told me on many occasions that she was willing to try anything once, that she believed in having as many interesting experiences as possible before she died. Karen had seemed ill and pale the last time I’d seen her; her tardiness in paying my invoice was uncharacteristic. If she had been addicted to heroin, and Charlie had somehow found out, all she would have to do would be to turn up with a narcotic peace offering, some extra-pure gear that Karen couldn’t cope with.

The light-headed sensation was returning, like there were huge, rubbery bubbles floating in my skull. Could I picture Charlie doing those things? I’d already been through this once, had shared my fears with the group the night before, and convinced myself it was ridiculous. Charlie was lovely. Warm, generous, kind, nurturing, sensitive. Almost everything she had done for me had been sweet and selfless, the actions of a woman in love. She had a strong moral core too: she loathed exploitation, as I had seen when she’d discovered I had a cleaner; she cried if she saw someone being bullied on TV; she refused to watch films or programmes in which children were hurt because it affected her too much. She had told me she worked for the NHS, when she could have made more money accepting contracts to work for private companies, because she believed in the cause.

‘They helped my mum when she had cancer,’ she told me. ‘For a while, I wanted to be a nurse or a doctor, but I wasn’t cut out for medicine in the end. Hence project management.’

The Charlie I knew and loved was a good person.

And yet.
There was her jealousy. The explosion of fury and self-destruction the night I’d stayed over at Sasha’s. She had shown a violent side that night, even if it had been directed at herself. She could be confrontational. The very first time I’d been out with her, she’d started an argument in the pub. She definitely had a dark side, a wild aspect to her personality that made her do things that most other people wouldn’t do: like have sex in a freezing lake in the middle of winter. These were just the things I knew about. Because as Henry had said, all the weird stuff in my life had started after I met Charlie.

I vacillated. Could she have done it? As I grappled with the question, a voice inside my head shouted at me to stop. The word ‘love’ wasn’t strong enough for how I felt about her. I could hardly imagine life without her. So how could I entertain the notion that she was a killer? This notion was like a virus invading my bloodstream, and my love made antibodies that fought and rejected every negative thought.

I got up and made another coffee, leaned on the worktop – one of the many places in the flat that bore a ghostly imprint of our lovemaking – and waited for the kettle to boil.

What did I really know about Charlie? I hardly knew a thing about her past. She was cagey about her entire existence before she’d met me; was equally secretive about the parts of her life that didn’t involve me now. I’d never been to her place, though she told me it was because it made sense for her to come here, where we had privacy, no housemates listening outside the door.

I had never met any of her friends. But she hadn’t lived in London long, said she didn’t know anyone here.

I imagined myself in court again, a witness – for the prosecution! – explaining my relationship with Charlie. Would I look like a fool? The guy who doesn’t know anything about the woman he’s been sleeping with for the last two months, who he’s about to move in with. I tried to justify it to myself. It had been an insane rush, passionate, exciting, with no pause for reflection. Charlie had a talent for diverting me if I asked her anything. I had been concerned about it at first, about how little she gave away, but then I decided to let it go. All I really cared about was what she was like in the present, who she was when she was with me. There would, I had thought, be plenty of time for us to share stories about the past.

This was agony. I knew people would say that if I refused to go to the police, I should talk to her about it. But what was I supposed to say? ‘Charlie, did you kill Karen and arrange to have me pushed down the stairs? Oh, no reason – just curious.’

It wasn’t funny though. It really wasn’t. Because this was not just about me and Charlie and the things I thought she might have done. It was also about what she might do in the future if I didn’t act.

If Charlie had killed Karen, then surely any woman I had a relationship with would be in danger. Like Sasha, I realised. Could Charlie be responsible for the stuff that had happened to her too? Sasha was convinced it was Lance and Mae, but she might change her mind if I told her about Charlie’s jealousy. There was Harriet, too. She’d already been burgled – and the thief appeared to have targeted the lingerie I bought her, a detail that made my head hurt. What if that was only the beginning? Again, I found it painful to contemplate. But if Charlie was really behind this, then everyone I knew, including me – especially me – was in danger.

What could I do? I tried to think of it in a legal way again. I either needed hard evidence or, failing that, I needed to know more about Charlie and her past, find people who knew her. Did she have a criminal record? Had anything like this ever happened before? Maybe I would uncover an alibi for the night Karen died.

I grabbed a piece of paper from the printer and listed the various crimes Charlie might be behind, starting with the attacks on other women:

Karen’s death.

That was the big one, the worst. Could Charlie really be capable of murder? Had her jealousy really spun so far out of control? With a swirling sensation in my gut, I carried on.

Threats against Sasha.

Harriet – burglary.

Kristi – acid in face.

My hand trembled as I wrote these down, each name. My best friend, my ex, my attractive cleaner, whose now-ruined face had been so pretty. To do these terrible things, my girlfriend would have to be insane. Could I really be sleeping with someone who was capable of these terrible things? I moved on to the other weird occurrences that had impacted on my life since I’d fallen for Charlie.

Victor framed for paedophilia.

Why would she do this? To stop me working for Victor. But why – to stop me working with a bunch of cool, attractive women? There was a certain warped logic to it. But was Charlie capable of such a complex set-up?

The thing was, I didn’t know what she was capable of. Large parts of Charlie’s life, her past, were still shrouded in secrecy. I shook my head, was tempted to screw up the paper, rip it to shreds. Was I the crazy one, entertaining these possibilities? I forced myself to carry on, to write down the last suspected crime.

Me pushed down steps.

Why would she do this? If she loved me, why would she want to hurt me? The answer came quickly:

To keep you trapped in your flat. To stop you starting your job. To make you her prisoner, like a pet in a cage.

Was that her idea of love?

I got up, paced the room, feeling light-headed and nauseated, then returned to the list, trying to view these possible crimes coolly, rationally.

All of them had a logical explanation that didn’t involve Charlie. She definitely hadn’t been there the day I’d fallen down the steps. Did that mean she had enlisted someone else’s help? The more I studied the list, the more my head hurt. Perhaps I should go to the police, let them gather the evidence . . . No, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to risk her leaving me before I knew for certain. But if I distrusted her enough to suspect her of any of this, could I really love her as much as I claimed? Yes, yes I could.

Another little voice in my head whispered:
And if she is guilty – would you forgive her? Would you want to be with her anyway? Maybe it excites you, turns you on?

I shook my head violently.

It came down to this: I loved her. I wanted her to be innocent but I didn’t know if she was. I needed more proof before I went to the police or confronted her. And if, as I prayed, she
was
innocent, I could clear my head of all this and we could go on as before. But she could never know I had suspected her. I had to be discreet.