She looked taken aback at the force of his emotion. She squeezed her eyes shut, then snapped them open before she spoke again.
‘I’d been advising on a gallery renovation in the East End. I overheard a couple of the scaffolders saying they’d had someone roughed up for not paying a debt. I knew they could help me.’
‘Poor Claudia,’ whispered Amy, wondering at how little she really
knew about the woman in front of her.
‘Josie was beautiful, sexy, useful. I didn’t want her to go back to Bristol or wherever it was she came from.’
‘You wanted her to come to Provence and seduce my husband instead,’ Amy said.
Juliet’s voice hardened. ‘She was another low-rent tart who saw what she wanted and would stop at nothing to get it.’
‘Really? Admit it, you planted the bra, bought the necklace. Josie didn’t do any of that,’ said Amy, imagining Juliet scuttling to the village, buying the pendant that Josie had remarked on and planting the receipt in David’s wallet. The number of times over the years they had all been out for dinner, gone on holiday, to the theatre or Sunday brunch . . . and all that time she was trying to ruin Amy’s marriage.
‘I did it for you,’ Juliet said, clutching the glass to her chest as if she would never let it go, looking at David with absolute devotion. ‘I did it all for you, David, because I love you.’
‘If you cared about me at all, you’d want me to be happy.’
‘We could have been happy. We would have been happy if it wasn’t for her. Remember that night. The night in the Highlands. Our whole life could have been that magical. I thought we could recapture it at Oxford. But we didn’t. I wanted to tell you how much I loved you at the ball that night, but it was never the right moment, and then it passed . . .’
‘That was a long time ago, Juliet. We were only ever friends. I moved on, and so did you.’
A noise escaped from Juliet’s throat; a sound of pain and longing. She put her glass on the mantelpiece and tried to compose herself.
‘Go and get Tilly,’ said Amy, squeezing her husband’s hand. She didn’t want to be here another minute. The longer she listened to Juliet, the more she admitted, the more she was convinced that the woman was mad, that envy and bitterness had twisted her core, her values and her mind.
David disappeared upstairs. When he had gone, Juliet took a step closer to Amy.
‘I didn’t get the man, but at least I got the job,’ she said. ‘Let’s see how dynamic and interesting and sexy you are when you’re just another stay-at-home mother killing time between yoga classes and school pick-up. Let’s see how long it is before David finds himself a pretty, ambitious thirty-year-old he can mould into wife number two.’
‘Don’t get too comfortable at Mode,’ said Amy, wanting to lash out in return. ‘The police will find out about the car on the train tracks. They’ll find out it was done deliberately. David spoke to them this afternoon and they’re pulling together their evidence. They might even link it to Claudia’s mugging.’
‘I doubt it,’ replied Juliet.
‘You could have killed people with that stunt, Juliet. The police aren’t going to ignore that.’
David came back downstairs holding Tilly in his arms. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, touching Amy on the shoulder in a tender gesture.
They turned to leave the house and didn’t look back as they descended the stone steps towards the car.
‘Stop! Don’t go. I’m sorry,’ shouted Juliet behind them.
It was cold outside, a chilly wind seeping between the folds of Amy’s coat. David fastened Tilly into her car seat in the Range Rover and got into the driver’s seat. Amy was desperate to go home with them, but they had come to Hampstead separately and she didn’t want to leave her own car here. After all, she had no desire to come back to Juliet’s house ever again.
The engine of the Range Rover growled into life.
‘Please, don’t go!’ screamed Juliet, running down the steps, her grey trapeze-line dress floating out to either side of her body. With her pale face and red lips, she looked like a banshee. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything.’
Amy got into the Fiat and put the key in the ignition, ready to follow her husband. She watched Juliet scrabble around in her pockets and run towards her own car. As she waited for David to pull out, she glanced in her rear-view mirror and saw Juliet behind the wheel of her little Triumph.
‘Shit,’ she muttered, following David towards the junction at the end of the road. The lights started to change and she put her foot on the accelerator. With a bit of luck, Juliet would get stuck on the red and she could shake her off. She was hardly going to chase her back to Notting Hill.
As she glanced behind her again, everything seemed to contract into slow motion. There was a huge bang and a flash of light, the screech of metal against metal. Amy slammed her brakes on and jumped out of the car, running as fast as her heels would take her.
A 4x4 had gone into the side of Juliet’s tiny sports car as she jumped the lights. The front of the car was crushed like a tin can trampled by a heavy boot, spirals of grey smoke rising from the bonnet.
‘No!’ screamed Amy, pulling out her phone and desperately dialling 999. ‘Ambulance. We need an ambulance,’ she barked.