‘Walk.’

‘Tom. Please. Don’t do this. Just leave. Start a new life somewhere. I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Just don’t do this. Please.’

He doesn’t answer me, but instead presses the knife harder against me until I start to walk, deeper and deeper into the woods.

54

We reach a small clearing and Tom gestures for me to sit down on the trunk of a fallen tree. It’s damp and falling to pieces, but I’m in no position to question seating arrangements right now.

We sit in silence for a couple of minutes before Tom speaks.

‘Why did you have to do it, Grace? Why did you have to go and visit that fucking bitch?’

‘She contacted me. She told me things. I wanted to find out the truth.’

‘I don’t know what this obsession is with the truth. Why do things have to be “true”? Sometimes the truth isn’t the most convenient thing, you know. Sometimes there are very good reasons for things not being true. Sometimes it’s a hell of a lot easier if they aren’t.’

‘But you can’t hide from what happened, Tom,’ I say, almost pleading. ‘I know what happened to Erin. It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. It’s not healthy for you to not come to terms with that. You need to be able to accept what happened.’

‘Accept it? Accept it?’

‘You know what I mean. It wasn’t your fault, Tom.’

For the first time, I see a tear running from his eye.

‘Yes it was. It was my choice to go out drinking and leave them on their own. It was my choice to demand they came to pick me up. I could have got a taxi. But I didn’t.’

‘There’s no way you could have known what was going to happen. For all you knew, you could’ve got a taxi, they stayed at home and the house could’ve caught fire. You can’t take responsibility for that.’

‘That’s not the sort of thing you can dictate,’ he says quietly. ‘I thought you were what I needed. You reminded me of her.’

‘I know,’ I say, thinking back to how similar Jess and I looked, and how she told me Erin had looked the same too.

‘I didn’t want to kill her,’ he says, almost as if he’s followed my exact train of thought. ‘She left me no choice. I had to protect myself. I had to protect the memory of Erin. She wanted to destroy that. She wanted to destroy us. I lost Erin, then thought I had it back with Jess. When I found you, I had it all again. Until she popped back up and tried to ruin it.’ There’s an anger in Tom’s voice that’s almost visceral. ‘I’ve been through too much. I’ve lost too much. And every single time I’ve had to build it back up from scratch. I can’t risk that happening again.’

‘It doesn’t have to be that way, Tom.’

He shakes his head. ‘It does. We both know it does. We know the way this ends. I don’t want it to have to be like that, but it does. We’ve got no choice now. I don’t want to have to do this, but I can’t face you leaving me alone again, like she did. Like they both did. I can’t have that being my fault again.’