‘What good would that have done?’
‘You could have told them what Alexa was like. How she was struggling. How she felt about Otis.’
‘What Alexa told me was private. Personal. Not to be shared.’ Jim tosses the ball in the air and catches it. Bernie barks at the teasing, the sound jarring my already fraught nerves.
‘Well, you could have at least helped the police figure out what she did every day.’
Jim shakes his head. ‘That’s not my job.’
‘Alexa’s missing. If you had nothing to hide, you would have gone to them.’
Jim throws and catches the ball once more. The sound of it hitting his coarse skin rings out like a slap. ‘Like I said, it’s not my job.’
‘Some friend you are,’ I retort, then immediately know it was the wrong thing to say. Jim’s face clouds over.
‘You think if I’d gone to the police, they’d have listened? Someone like Alexa talking to someone like me? Tut tut, they’d say. Look at the size of him, listen to the rumours. It’s got to be him.’
‘But if you’re innocent—’
‘Since when do people care about innocent and guilty, right and wrong? They only care about what makes a good story. You only have to listen to what everyone around here says about me to know that. What, you struggle with your marriage ending and get angry once after too many drinks, and that’s it, you’re a bad guy forever? How is that fair?’
I flinch as Jim hisses that last question at me, but he isn’t finished with his rant yet.
‘My family have lived in Bramblethorpe for four generations. When I was younger, I helped half these people tend to their land, but a few bad decisions made at the worst time of my life and now I’m an outcast! You’d think your wife leaving you would earn you a bit of sympathy, but not around here. Not with these folks. Alexa was the only person who bothered to look beyond that, and now she’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ I echo.
As Jim looks me dead in the eye, my blood turns to ice.
‘Gone,’ he repeats, and all hope that I will leave this field alive deserts me.
CHAPTER 47
‘Alexa didn’t care about stupid rumours and mindless gossip,’ Jim continues, taking another step towards me. ‘She was my friend. She loved Bernie, too. We talked. There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘I never said there was.’
‘No, but you’re acting as if there is. Standing there looking at me as if I’m evil personified. What about the woman she walked with, huh? The nosey neighbour. You don’t have a problem with her. But me? Me you do.’
‘I don’t have a problem with you,’ I squeak, but the terrified pitch of my voice makes Jim scoff.
‘Sure you don’t. You’re acting as if I’m what they say I am, and I don’t like it.’ Jim brushes aside strands of grass that are only inches away from me. ‘What, do I scare you? Do you think I’m a monster, too?’
My brain roars at me to move, but fear has me paralysed.
‘Do you? Do you think I’m a monster?’
Jim’s so close to me now that I can see a smattering of scars on his left cheek from teenage acne. I see a kink to his nose, telling me that it was once broken. Probably when he was a boxer.
My breathing rasps with fear, making Jim come to a sudden stop.
‘I’m not, you know. A monster, that is,’ he says, then the corners of his eyes squint. ‘Not unless I’m pushed to become one.’
Something inside me kicks into life at those words. I don’t think, I don’t rationalise, I just move. Launching myself forward, I shove Jim in the centre of his chest.
The level of my aggression is so unexpected, he stumbles and topples over a clump of grass. Bernie barks in outrage, but I don’t waste a second of the head start I just bought myself. Leaping past Jim, I sprint towards the treeline ahead, heading for the safety I pray is on the other side.
‘Stop!’ Jim calls, scrambling to his feet to chase after me, but his shout only makes me move quicker.