Yes, admittedly, Kit played hard and fast with his sexual morals, but that hardly made him evil. And he’d shown no indication of being the sort given to violent rages. Molly’s account just didn’t tally up straight.
Evie gulped a mouthful of steaming coffee to dislodge the lump in her throat. The liquid scalded her tongue, and brought stinging tears to her eyes, but also finally loosened her tongue. “You’re mistaken, surely. Not Kit. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. That’s not him.”
Molly abruptly pushed herself upright and paced around the coffee table. “You don’t know what he’d been asking her to do. It wasn’t the sort of stuff you wanted passing around the neighbourhood. It was disgusting. Really crude.”
Disgusting as in threesomes and anal sex, Evie wondered, though she kept the thought to herself. There’d be no placating Molly’s moral outrage.
“Was he charged?” she asked, fearing for a moment that the six year stint in Japan was fiction to camouflage a stint in jail.
Molly shook her head. “The police reckoned there wasn’t enough evidence. No signs of any obvious scuffles and they never found her body. They just stuck her on the missing persons register and forgot about her.”
“But Kit—”
“Was the last person to see her and the only one with a motive. Of course, he denies everything. And your boyfriend backed him up.”
“Ross!”
The possibility that he was somehow involved in this too threatened the contents of her stomach. Evie flailed blindly seeking a reassuring purchase, some slice of sanity, but there was only Molly and her vitriol, black tears streaking her face where her mascara had run.
Evie rose and hurried back to the conservatory. If the police hadn’t charged him, there had to be reasonable doubt despite Molly’s insistence.
“Did she tell you?” Lillianna turned her head as Evie pulled a tenner from her purse and left it on the leather chair as payment for her nails.
“Why didn’t you?” Still fevered with shock, Evie stared at her friend. Lillianna refused to make eye contact.
“Not everyone sees it the same way as Molly.”
“Do you believe it?”
Lillianna thoughtfully chewed her lips. “I don’t know. I can’t deny that the relationship was rocky. They were both pretty wild, but on the other hand, regardless of what I think of Ross, he’s always been honest. I don’t think he’d lie even to cover Kit’s back. He claimed Kit was with him so he couldn’t have had anything to do with it, in case Molly didn’t say.”
Lilli dug her teeth so hard into her lower lip that they came away stained with burgundy lipstick. “I’m sorry, Evie. I just thought you should know, and I figured they hadn’t told you.”
Snapshot images of Kit touching her, of the three of them entwined, were suddenly overlaid with the frozen image of Sammie smiling and her body lying naked in a ditch.
“Go home, Evie. Talk to Ross. Talk to Kit. Draw your own conclusions.”
“Right.” Evie glanced up and caught a glimpse of the scene playing out next door. Jason and Saul smeared in baby oil, Greek wrestling, while a woman in thigh high leather boots and a PVC cat suit half-heartedly flogged them with what looked like a suede jellyfish. “I thought you said it was kinky, not surreal.”
“It’s kinkier in my head. There’s a bit more sand in there and some trees, and they have two nice matching slave collars, and when they’re disobedient I have them lick my shiny boots clean. She—” she nodded at the woman, “—isn’t exactly cut out for the role. She’s much better as the naughty nurse, or the naughty schoolgirl, the naughty anything, really. She’s pathetic when they make her top. One of these days, I’m going to work up my nerve and offer to give them a proper work out.” She tugged the cord so that the blinds swivelled, obscuring the view. “I didn’t do this to wreck it for you, Evie. I just thought you deserved to know a bit about him. I’d hate to think you got yourself into something without ever having seen the full picture.”
Chapter Fourteen
Kit was sitting on the sofa playing video games when Evie arrived home. He had his long legs, encased in supple black leather, folded up before him, so that the controller rested upon his knees. Evie remained in the doorway to the lounge for several moments looking at him. It wasn’t specifically nerves that held her there, more a heartfelt desire to be able to read what lay beneath his outward visage. He’d blown into their lives like a whirlwind, changing everything, reshaping everything in new and interesting ways. She loved him for it, and no number of unfounded accusations changed that; still it struck her how very little she did know about him, and how secretive he and Ross had been over the past.
“Hey,” he said, spotting her. He patted the space next to him and offered up a welcoming smile. “Been out somewhere?”
“Molly’s, getting my nails done.” She took a tentative step forward, trying not to seem too uptight, and raised her hands to show him.
“Not bad.”
“Ross not back yet?” She went back into the hallway and took off her coat.
“He sent a text. Said he’s been called out to some farm to help deliver a calf. I figure he’ll be awhile. I stuck lasagne in the oven.” Kit came over to the lounge door and watched her pottering about at the bottom of the stairs. “Something on your mind?”
“No.” Evie sucked the end of her new acrylic thumbnail. It tasted vile.
“I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? I thought maybe you had a nice story lined up for me, since we’ve got a bit of quiet time together.” The way he said nice implied dirty.
She had a story, but not one he’d appreciate hearing. Evie left him to fix the drinks and sat down at the bottom of the stairs. Really she wanted to ask Ross about the allegation first. He wouldn’t outright lie to her face, even if he was being cagey. It seemed unbelievable that despite three years together he’d never mentioned that someone he knew from the village had vanished, even when they’d been desperately waiting for a house here. You’d have thought he’d want to be anywhere else. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure she knew Ross all that well anymore.
She gave a deep sigh and rubbed her eyes. When she opened them up, she found Kit knelt before her, holding two steaming mugs, with a liquid sheen of concern glazing his dark eyes.
“What’s up?”
When she looked down at the mugs to avoid his gaze, he rested his hand upon her knee.
“Evie? Did something happen while you were out? Did you run into Tony again?”
Hell, she’d almost forgotten Tony. Clearly he took Molly’s view of the situation.
She shook her head, and relief visibly washed some of the strain from Kit’s features. It came right back again as soon as she began talking. “I’ve been hearing things. Things about you and the past.”
Kit rubbed the tip of his tongue against his upper front two teeth. “Where’d you say you’d been?”
“Molly’s. Molly Dean,” she replied, taking one of the offered mugs.
Kit took a nervous slug from his.
“She says—”
He fell away from her, shaking his head. “Don’t. I know what she says.”
“But did you?”
Horror crept across his face, followed by waves of crushing disappointment, betrayal and distrust.
“Kit, I’m sorry, but you have to realize I want to know what’s going on. I kept hearing these whispers that you were a bad boy and I just thought you’d been the village teenage tearaway, but what Molly’s accusing you of is way more serious. I mean, what happened?” She stretched forward to grasp his arm, but he shuffled backwards out of reach. “Tell me, please. I’m trying not to judge. I just want to hear your version of events.”
He didn’t answer, just stared at her like a hunted beast.
Behind him, the front door swung open. Ross loomed up, his face cast in shadow. “What’s going on?” He dropped his work bag at his feet.
Kit remained silent.
“I asked about Sammie,” Evie stammered. “And why neither of you thought it important to mention her.”
Ross’s gaze swept between her hurt and Kit’s blanched expression. “Holy fuck!” he swore and pushed his hand into his hair. “I was going to tell you. There’s just never been a good time.”
“When the hell did you think was going to be a good time? Every bugger in this village seems to think he’s responsible for her vanishing and you were waiting for the right moment to mention it.”
Okay, so that outburst had just undone everything she’d been painfully trying to avoid. There was enough doubt in her words for it to sound as if she believed in Kit’s guilt.
“Vanishing—that’s a good one!” The little bark of laughter Kit gave caused a knot to tighten in her guts. “It’s certainly the most complimentary way of putting it I’ve heard so far. Like I’m a stage magician and I’ve poofed her to some alternate dimension from which I can pluck her back for dramatic effect. Only, I don’t know where she is. It’d make life a hell of a lot easier if I had the answers everyone seems to think I have.” He turned on the spot and bolted out of the open front door.
Ross gawped at her. “Fucking hell, Evie! How bloody insensitive was that?” He ran after Kit.
“Wait!” Ross ran into the street. He caught up with Kit just as his lover was wrenching open the car door. “Wait! Where are you going?”
Kit clasped the top of the driver’s side door, his knuckles every bit as white as his face. “I can’t do this. I was a fool to come back and even think it would work. I can’t make it right for them, Ross. They’ll never forgive me.”
“Kit, most of them already have.”
“I should have walked her home. It’s my fault.”
Exasperated, Ross shoved Kit hard up against the metal chassis, oblivious of the neighbours and their twitching curtains. “Don’t say that. It’s no more your fault than mine.”
Kit struggled in Ross’s embrace a moment, his arms awkwardly pinned in the small of his back, while his stomach lay flush to the driver’s side window. Ross leaned in closer, holding him tight and refusing to let go. Kit had run out on him before. Destroyed what they had and flown to Japan, leaving him behind to deal with the mess, and to question everything he knew. He wasn’t letting it happen again.
Slowly, Kit stopped struggling. “She’ll never trust me now.”
“I doubt she trusts either of us at the moment. We should have told her what happened, instead of letting her hear all the crap on the rumour mill first. Me especially. I should have mentioned it before you came to stay, when it wasn’t such a contentious issue. She’d have listened, and we wouldn’t be saddled with this shit.”
Darkness continued to creep across Kit’s face so that worry lines creased his brows and formed crow’s feet around the corners of his mouth and eyes. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets so that he stood with his shoulders hunched, a far cry from his more familiar confident posture.
“I should have walked her home.”
“We all made choices that day, Kit. We have to live with them, because we sure as hell can’t turn back time.”
Kit made a noise deep in his throat that sounded suspiciously like a sob. Ross had never seen him cry. He’d seen him paled and shocked, angry even. Devastated, when the police knocked on the door with the news that Sammie was missing, but he’d never seen Kit cry over what had happened. That in itself was a mark against him in some eyes. Plenty of others had bawled over her disappearance. Folks like Tony, who’d elevated her onto a pedestal when she was neither martyr nor an angel, just a black and white image on a missing poster. Ross pulled Kit close again and felt the other man’s fists tighten upon his clothing.
“Where did she go, Ross? What the hell happened to screw everything up so badly?”
Ross shook his head. “I wish to god I knew, but we went over everything with the police. People go missing all the time. Some of them just wake up one morning and walk away, leave everything: families, kids, job, mortgage. They just can’t handle it any more so they wipe the slate clean and start over. It’s not so different to what you did, jetting off to Japan with no warning.”
“It is different. It’s very different. What if she came back and saw us, Ross?”
Ross had wondered that himself. He’d gone over and over it in the early days after her disappearance, when Kit had left him too. Sammie probably had returned and seen them there making out. Maybe that had been the last straw. Kit had been the only thing keeping her in the village. She hated the place, screamed for someplace with more of a heartbeat. Simply walking away was probably easier than fighting it out with the family and certainly easier than challenging him and Kit. Sammie had always been the mistress of the snap decision. “Come back inside,” he pleaded.
Kit shook his head. “You go and make your peace with Evie. You don’t need me standing over you making things more awkward.”
“What are you going to do?”
Kit shrugged, but the action was composed. “I might go up to the ruins, or I might just go home to bed.”
“Your bed is here with us.”
“Not tonight it isn’t.”
“Well, I’m going to come and find you in the morning.”
Kit squeezed Ross’s shoulder. Then surprisingly, he leaned forward and kissed him hard. “You do that.”
He pulled away, and Ross stood in the dark until the tail lights of Kit’s car faded into the distance.
Evie sat on the sofa cuddling Mimmy until Ross came back in. As much as she hated his lack of trust in her, she found some of her anger had faded. Truthfully, while Molly’s words had momentarily given her cause for reasonable doubt, she deep down she simply didn’t believe Kit was a killer. She needed to hear Ross’s version of events though to feel absolutely certain.
“Kit?” she asked, curiously relieved to find her boyfriend was alone.
He shook his head.
“Do I get to know what happened?”
“He wanted some space.”
“Ross, that’s not what I meant.” She followed him into the kitchen and watched him as he stood before the washing machine and stripped off. Beneath the bright spotlights, she could see that his clothing was speckled with blood and dung from the farmyard he’d been called out to earlier.
Ross stuffed the clothing into the drum and set it washing.
“Was the calf all right?”
“Eh? Yeah. Touch and go for a while because she got her leg stuck coming out, but it worked out okay.”
Although she initially hung back, seeing Ross standing in his pants and socks made her want to hold him. He looked sexy in a vaguely ridiculous way. That and seeing Kit run and Ross follow him had shaken her. For a moment, she’d wondered if either of them would come back.
She offered him the juice carton as a peace offering, which he accepted and swallowed in thirsty gulps.
“I didn’t tell you because it’s not something I like thinking about, and it’s awkward around Kit. You’ve seen how he reacts. I wasn’t deliberately trying to keep you in the dark. I just didn’t want to bring it up and spoil everything when we were all getting along so well.”
“And now? Will you tell me now?”
A dark shadow drifted across the blue of Ross’s eyes, but he nodded. “Make some drinks. We’ll go sit down and talk.”
It was a simple enough story, once they were settled on the sofa nursing steaming mugs of Yorkshire tea. Three of them—Kit, Ross, and Sammie—out by the ruins enjoying a sunny afternoon. “Sammie left to go back to the village to meet Molly. I think they were going out somewhere. Instead of walking back with her, Kit decided to stay out there with me. It was broad daylight and a five minute walk; there didn’t seem any need to escort her. Unfortunately, she never arrived home. The first we knew of it was when the police hammered on Flora’s door demanding to see Kit. Molly had reported her missing.” He turned to her, and cupped his hands around the outside of hers. “Kit was devastated. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for not walking her home.”
“And you’re absolutely sure he didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance?” Though it felt insensitive to ask, she needed to be clear on that point.
“I’m positive, Evie. One hundred percent.”
“What about indirectly?”
“Meaning what?”
“Like she was pregnant or something.”
Ross shook his head. “I don’t think so. She was real careful about that stuff, and she’d have told Kit. And he wouldn’t have stayed with me if that’d been the case, and I was with him the whole time from the moment she left until the police arrived.”
Evie cocked her head, considering that hereto unknown bit of information and what it meant. “Then technically you were both the last to see her.”
He nodded.
“And when you say you were with him, what, you were just hanging out?”
He started to nod, then stopped and nervously wetted his lips. “Do you remember I said there’d only been one time between me and Kit before he came back from Japan? Well, that was it, Evie.”
“You were shagging when she went missing?”
“Things came to a head that afternoon. We’d been pussyfooting around each other for ages, both too afraid to make an actual move. It was okay while we were doing the threesomes thing, but then Kit starting seeing Sammie and it started getting awkward. I think he thought it’d be different, that she’d jump at the chance of a three way relationship, but it was never actually going to happen.” His eyes glazed a little, as if he were seeing flashbacks of the past. “I lost count of the number of times I watched the two of them make out, but it never progressed to me joining in. She liked teasing me, and she was a rampant exhibitionist, but that’s as far as it went. For all her talk, when it came down to it, her tastes were spectacularly vanilla.”