The Marriage - K.L. Slater (story books to read .TXT) 📗

health and privately, I’d told the programme’s counsellor I had doubts about my own father. I didn’t know Coral was involved with Audrey and that she’d come up with a scam to get money out of Dad. When I saw she’d given you a sealed letter today, I knew it would be the truth about the DNA match showing that me and Ellis shared the same father. I never wanted you to find out that way.’

‘But still, you’ve never said a word until now. Until Coral was dead.’

‘It killed me to see you hating Bridget so much when you were living with the enemy under this roof all that time. But I struggled exactly how to do it. I knew so many people would be shattered by the truth: you, Bridget, Ellis … the list goes on.’

‘And Coral?’ Jill said carefully. ‘Do you know exactly what happened to her?’

He looked her in the eyes. ‘No. I don’t know what happened, Mum, but once I’ve spoken to Bridget, I have to tell the police the truth about Dad.’

Fifty-Six Bridget

‘There’s something I have to tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago,’ Tom said.

‘You’re scaring me now.’ I swallowed, my wet fingers fluttering to my throat. ‘What is it?’

My shoulders and neck had been tight and painful when Tom had dropped Ellis and I back at the house after visiting the police station. Ellis had gone to his room to catch up on sleep and Tom had insisted on going back to see his mother alone. I’d got in the hot tub to ease the tension and dissipate the fury I felt towards Tom for lying to me about the gym and then sloping off to see Jill when we badly needed his support here.

He had returned from his mother’s house looking like a beaten man, and when I refused to go back inside the house and talk to him, he’d got in the tub with me.

‘We should have had this conversation before now but I didn’t know how, Brid.’

He touched my arm. His eyes looked haunted in the soft light reflecting off the water. The smell of chlorine seemed overpowering all of a sudden and I struggled to breathe. On some level I felt – I knew – he was going to tell me something profound.

I almost told him to stop, to say nothing, but I didn’t speak or move. I sat there, the sound of the water rushing in my ears, and stared at him. Silently pleading with him not to end my world.

‘I love you Bridget,’ he said sadly. ‘I’ve loved you for a long time and it’s because of that – and everything that’s happened – that I have to tell you the truth about the night Jesse died. I can’t keep quiet about it any longer, because it’s the gateway to the truth about everything else.’

Everything else?

‘Oh no, no …’ I whimpered, covering my face with my hands.

My entire body ached. Was my worst fear about to be realised? What if I loved a man who had killed Jesse on purpose? Who had intended knocking him unconscious with that punch, fully aware it might finish him?

He pulled gently at my hands, forcing me to look at him.

The water frothed and bubbled all around us, the firm underwater jets shooting into the bottom of my back. What usually felt relaxing pained me now, my entire body feeling raw. Exposed.

The lights set around the edge of the tub danced innocuously through their repeating spectrum under the dark sky. The colours merged into one swirling mess in front of my swimming eyes.

Tom’s face looked pale and damp as he began. ‘As you know, that night we had a drink in the Mayflower bar first. We were chatting normally about sport, gaming, all the usual stuff, but I could tell there was something bothering Jesse. It’s hard to explain, he wasn’t his usual self. Then later, he was drinking more than usual, shots with his pints, but there was something else, too.’ He pressed his lips together and frowned, reaching for the words that would better articulate what he meant. ‘He was naturally a chatty guy, but when we got to the club, he hardly drew breath. He sounded almost … I don’t know, manic, somehow. Like he was regurgitating all the words he knew so there was no space to think at all.’

He’d told me this before but my muscles felt tight as a drum, braced for the shock that might be coming.

‘It was quiet in Movers, so we didn’t have to queue. When we got in, we landed a booth, which was unusual.’ Tom seemed to slip into a world of his own momentarily, staring out over the garden as he remembered the details of that terrible night. ‘That’s when Jesse started drinking in earnest. He ditched the pints and switched to vodka plus the shots, which were all on two-for-one as it was midweek. I told him to slow down, reminded him I had a training session the next morning, and he called me a wuss. But I kept trying to pull him back because I saw whatever was up with him, the drink was making it worse.’

I opened my mouth and a strange noise came out, halfway between a cry and a wail.

Tom looked at me. ‘I know this must be really painful for you, Brid, but you have to know.’

I focused on keeping my face from crumpling. I imagined the two of them sitting together in the nightclub, the music almost too loud to speak, so loud, you felt the bass beat reverberating off your face, your body. I’d been in Movers twice in my twenties with some of the other office cleaners when someone had a birthday, so I visualised the interior as it was back then.

I couldn’t help wondering why Tom hadn’t told me all this in the two years I’d been visiting him. We’d covered the