‘Shit,’ Bill said suddenly. ‘This is just everywhere. The media are crucifying Dudley.’
‘Can I have my phone back, please?’ Lizzie said. ‘I want to talk to Dudley. And I really need to tweet how sorry I am to hear about Amelia.’ She waited, but Bill was engrossed in scanning his own phone and didn’t move. So was Kat; the brightness of the screens lit up the interior of the car and made Lizzie’s eyes sting.
‘I don’t see what fault it is of Dudley’s,’ Lizzie said, annoyed that they were both ignoring her. ‘I mean, he wasn’t even at Oakhangar when it happened, was he? He told me he was going to see friends in Brighton—’
Bill interrupted her. ‘They’re saying that Amelia may have taken her own life,’ he said. ‘That she threw herself down the stairs because Dudley had told her a couple of weeks ago he was divorcing her. Shit. Fuck. This is a mess.’ He shot Lizzie a quick look over his shoulder. ‘Did you know about the divorce? Did Dudley tell you?’
Lizzie wriggled on the sumptuous leather seat. She had the same feeling she had had on numerous occasions as a child, a sense that something very bad was about to happen and it wasn’t her fault but that was beside the point and she would take the blame anyway.
‘He might have mentioned it to me last month…’ she muttered.
‘Shit, Lizzie!’ Bill exploded again. ‘He mentioned it to you before he told his wife? What is wrong with the pair of you?’
‘We’re friends,’ Lizzie said mutinously. ‘We’ve been friends since I was six years old, Bill, so it’s no wonder we’re close, is it? Dudley confides in me.’
Bill muttered another expletive under his breath. ‘It’s unhealthy, Lizzie,’ he said. ‘Frankly you both come across as weird and needy.’
Lizzie ignored him and looked out of the window. It was dark outside the car now, the last vestiges of evening light fading from the sky. They were driving fast, on a motorway somewhere but she had no idea where they were or where they were going. No one had told her. Suddenly she felt so tired. They moved her around like a piece on a chessboard and never told her a damn thing.
Bill turned in his seat so that he could look at her properly. Lizzie felt a rush of irritation that another lecture would be forthcoming and kept her gaze firmly averted from his. ‘Did you also know that Amelia had been in hospital?’ Bill asked, his voice deceptively soft. ‘Apparently she was suffering from depression and she’d become addicted to prescription painkillers. She was taking them for migraines or something, and seeing a whole raft of specialists.’ He shook his head irritably. ‘Whatever. Anyway, Dudley had been paying for her rehab at Melton Abbey until last week when she went home to Oakhangar.’
Lizzie hunched deeper into her jacket. She felt a coldness seeping through her body, a mind-numbing, bone-crunching chill like frost setting hard. She had had no idea that Amelia was ill. She thought about the paralysing sense of despair that depression brought with it, the flat darkness that stretched for ever, the lack of any sense of joy and the hideous loneliness. She knew what it felt like to be on one side of that plate glass pane so that nothing, no sound, no sight, no love, could touch her. She’d lived with that, off and on, for so many years, ever since her mother’s death. It seemed she had more in common with Amelia than she had known.
Lizzie shuddered. Desperately she rummaged in her pockets but the bag of marzipan, she was disappointed to find, was empty. Instead she let her fingers creep to her throat and the oak leaf necklace she always wore. It was a talisman; it grounded her.
‘Where are you getting this stuff from?’ she asked. ‘It sounds like tabloid rubbish to me. You know how they exaggerate.’ She tucked her chin into her collar, seeking warmth, but the car was stuffy and the coldness was within her not outside. ‘We’ve all been depressed,’ she said, hating herself even as she said the words. ‘It doesn’t mean you throw yourself down the stairs.’
‘Jesus, Lizzie,’ Bill said. ‘We’re talking clinical depression here not feeling a bit low one day. Sometimes it’s hard to like you, you know.’
‘Don’t say that, Bill,’ Kat said, putting a comforting hand on Lizzie’s arm. ‘Don’t forget what Lizzie’s been through herself. Can’t you see she’s hurting? She doesn’t mean to sound callous.’
Lizzie felt Kat’s hand on her sleeve. Kat’s touch was comforting; it said that she understood that Lizzie was miserable, lost in painful memories, and that she wanted to pretend she wasn’t. In that moment Lizzie hated her for knowing. The trouble was that Kat had known her for ever, since she had been a baby. Kat, her mother’s best friend, had stepped in when a car crash had claimed Annie Kingdom at a shockingly young age. She’d taken Lizzie under her wing, attempting to soften the haphazard and destructive parenting methods of Lizzie’s father. She’d been in Lizzie’s life ever since. There could be no secrets from Kat.
She shook Kat’s hand off. She wasn’t going to show her that it mattered.
‘I still don’t see that it’s Dudley’s fault even if Amelia did kill herself,’ she argued. ‘They hadn’t been close for years. They never saw each other; it was as though they were already separated really and Amelia must have known that Duds would want a divorce sooner or later.’
‘Amelia’s friends are queuing up to say how unhappy she was.’ Bill was scrolling through his Twitter feed now. ‘Jeez, this is bad. They’re saying she killed herself because Dudley spent all his time with you.’
‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Lizzie said, through her teeth. ‘And do they know it’s suicide? It might just be an accident.’
‘Or murder,’ Kat said. ‘One of the gossip sites is insinuating Dudley might have arranged it.’ Her head was bent; long dark hair falling forward to hide her expression. Lizzie thought she sounded excited. ‘They say he wanted to save on the settlement so he bumped her off.’
Lizzie felt a clutch of fear. ‘They’re saying Dudley killed her? That’s just…’ She raised her hands in despair. ‘Please stop this, Kat. It’s stupid and you’re scaring me now.’
Neither Bill nor Kat paid her the slightest notice. They were both too engrossed in the breaking news.
‘Didn’t they have a pre-nup agreement?’ Bill was saying. ‘Christ! Doesn’t everyone have one these days?’
‘They married so young.’ Kat looked up from her phone. ‘Don’t you remember, Bill? It was very romantic. Love at first sight. Amelia was only about seventeen and Dudley not much more. They married at Oakhangar and there were thrones and a crystal horse-drawn carriage, and they released rare butterflies—’
‘Which all died because they couldn’t cope with the British climate,’ Lizzie interrupted. ‘The RSPCA threatened to prosecute Dudley for cruelty.’ The scar in her palm itched sharply. She clenched her fingers over it. She hadn’t thought about Dudley and Amelia’s wedding for years. It hadn’t been a favourite memory.
Bill made a huffing sound, ‘Cruelty, huh? That seems like a metaphor for the whole marriage.’ He shook his head. ‘Whether it’s murder or suicide, this is a godawful mess.’