‘Right then,’ he said. ‘I’ll be getting off. When I get home, I’ll see if I can dig out some old photos of me and your dad. If I can find them, I’ll make copies and send them to you.’
‘I’d like that very much,’ Dee said. ‘Thank you.’
As he walked past her, a memory flickered at the back of her mind. Something about him felt familiar to her. It was more than the fact she’d recognised his face from the research she’d done on him. It was something else. A feeling that she’d been close to him recently. But when she tried to focus on the memory it kept sliding away from her until she let it go.
She decided to take one last look around. Maybe as she did, she’d remember why she was so sure she knew him from somewhere. Again, she walked around the outside of the house, peering through the windows. Everything looked the same as it had done yesterday. No sign of anyone hiding behind the stylish furniture in the living room, or beneath the polished wooden table in the dining room. No half-drunk mugs of coffee or dirty plates in the kitchen.
It was only when she reached the back of the house that she saw something had changed. A pane of glass in one of the doors to the extended kitchen had been broken, and the patio was covered in shattered glass. Tentatively, Dee pushed the door and it creaked inwards.
Sunlight streamed through the glass roof and a wave of heat hit her as she stepped inside. She paused, her ears listening out for noises inside the house. But when she heard something, the sound came from behind her. She swung around, but she was too slow. He had already grabbed her, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arm as he shoved her forward, towards the granite-topped island in the middle of the room.
She started to scream, but he clamped a hand across her face, blocking out the sound.
‘Shut the fuck up.’
Irish accent. Robert O’Brien. The charming politician with the twinkling eyes that had reminded her of Ed. The heat in the kitchen was intolerable, especially with his body pressed against her and the thick stink of his expensive cologne clogging the air. The cologne, she recognised it now. It was why she thought she’d been with him recently. She’d smelled it as he’d walked past her. The same smell she’d got inside the block of flats in Stockwell. Panic flared inside her. He’d killed Michael Holden. And now he was going to do the same thing to her.
Pressing his hand into the back of her head, he shoved her face down onto the worktop. Behind her, she could feel him moving. For one terrible moment, she thought he was going to rape her.
There was a knife rack just in front of her face. She saw his hand wrap around one of the knives. The silver blade glinted in the sunlight as he pulled it towards her face. Cold metal against her cheek. The blade of the knife, right beneath her left eye.
‘If you try anything,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll cut your eye out. Is that clear?’
She tried to nod her head but he was holding it too tight.
‘Is that clear?’ he repeated, louder this time.
‘Yes,’ she managed. ‘I won’t try anything. I swear.’
She could feel his breath, hot against the side of her face. He pressed the blade deeper, cutting the skin. Warm blood trickled down her cheek. Her stomach contracted.
He pulled her up by the hair and pushed her through the kitchen towards the garden. A shock of cold air hit her as he opened the door. Outside, across the patio, down the steps, onto the grass. Towards the ice house.
Dee screamed, her body jerking and struggling against him.
‘I told you to shut up.’
The tip of the blade pierced her skin again. More blood. She tried to pull her head back, but he had her in a grip so tight it was impossible to move. Impossible to do anything except allow herself to be forced forward towards the stone igloo.
‘Please,’ she begged, too scared to do anything now except plead for her life. ‘Don’t do this. The police know where I am. I called them right after you left. They’re on their way. They know you killed Michael. You were seen at the flats that morning. You won’t get away with this.’
‘Bullshit.’
They were at the entrance to the ice house now. The door was open. He must have opened it when he saw her arriving at the house. A black gaping darkness lay in front of her. Every fibre in her body was protesting at having to go in there.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to do this.’
‘You know too much,’ he said. ‘I should have shut this mess down earlier. I would have done, if she hadn’t lied to me.’
‘Who lied to you?’
‘What the fuck does that matter now? I need to fix this, and I can’t do that with you sticking your nose in. I’d never have involved you if I thought you’d take it this far. But you couldn’t let it go, could you? Do you know how hard I’ve had to work to get where I am today? No, of course not. No one knows what it takes to do what I’ve done. And I can tell you now, there’s no way I’m going to let some interfering nobody take it all away from me. No one will hear you in here. Walls so thick you can scream as loudly as you want to. The only person who’ll ever hear you is yourself.’
He shoved her, hard, and she fell forward into the darkness.
Behind her, the door slammed shut and suddenly there was nothing except the darkness and the sounds of her own screams, bouncing back at her off the stone walls.
Forty-one
‘It was Robert?’ Emer said, when she was finally able to speak.
‘I don’t think he meant to hit Lucy,’ Kitty said. ‘That was my fault. But it suited him to have her out of the way. We’d both seen things we shouldn’t have in that house. By the time the car had stopped, Lucy was already dead. I remember wanting to run away, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t recognise him at first, but as he got out of the car I saw his face. I think I tried to scream, but he was fast. He grabbed me and put his hand over my mouth and bundled me into the boot.
‘I thought I was going to die, Emer. I was sure he’d kill me. Instead, he drove me back home. Mum was already there. Dad was in the kitchen, passed out like always. After Robert left, Mum sat me down and made me swear not to tell anyone I’d been out that night. I was so scared I did everything she told me to. I told the Guards I hadn’t been with Lucy that night; said I’d been home in bed like I was supposed to be.’
Emer stood up, went to the window and looked out at the sea. It was rough and grey today. Waves lashed the shore, splashing against the sides of the gold-domed pier. She wished she could open the window and fly out, over the sea, across to the silver line on the horizon where the sky and ocean met. And when she reached it, she would keep flying.
She thought of Kitty and Lucy. Two little girls, both so innocent, walking in on that scene in the bedroom. The shock and the horror as they tried to comprehend what they’d seen: how could any child cope with something like that?
‘Emer?’ Kitty’s voice dragged her away from the horizon and back into the room. It had seemed so big when she’d first come in, but felt too small now because there wasn’t anywhere she could hide away and pretend none of this had happened.
She wished she’d never seen Kitty on the train that afternoon in June.
‘Are you okay?’ Kitty asked.
Emer shook her head, keeping her back to the room, her eyes fixed on the horizon.
‘Robert’s been like a father to me,’ she said. ‘I thought he really cared about me. But all this time, he’s been lying to me.’
‘He paid Mum and Dad to get rid of me,’ Kitty said. ‘I’m pretty sure they would have killed me, if they thought they’d get away with it. But maybe faking my drowning was an easier solution. No body, no evidence of any wrong-doing. Or maybe Dad realised, even then, that keeping me alive could be a way of getting extra money further down the line.’
‘Why involve Dad at all?’ Emer asked. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to keep him out of the picture?’
‘Robert was in love with our mother,’ Kitty said. ‘It suited him to get Dad out of the w
ay at the same time. So he paid Dad to make both of us disappear. I didn’t want to go. All I wanted was to go to the Guards and tell them everything that had happened. But Robert threatened me. He said the people who’d been at the house that night knew I’d been there. He said if I ever told anyone what I’d seen, they would kill me. Not just me, he said they’d kill you as well. So he gave me a choice. Keep my mouth shut and you’d stay safe, or speak up and let you get killed.’
‘No.’ But she knew Kitty was telling the truth. The only person in her fucked-up family who hadn’t lied to her.
‘How did they get you out of the country without anyone noticing?’
‘Robert paid for us to go on holiday,’ Kitty said. ‘That day, when Mum took us to the beach, Dad was hiding in the dunes, waiting for me. Mum had already told me what to do. I was to start a row with you and pretend to be angry. Then I had to wander off by myself. When no one was looking, I had to take off my shorts and let them drift into the water. After I’d done that, I ran back up the dunes to where Dad was hiding. We sneaked into the hotel through a fire escape at the back of the building. No one saw us. Then I hid in their room. No one even thought to search the room. Isn’t that remarkable? They all believed our mother that I’d gone into the water and been pulled out by the current. When it was time to go, I knew I couldn’t leave without seeing you one last time. I came to say goodbye, do you remember?’
‘Of course I remember,’ Emer said. ‘It’s why I was never able to believe you’d died. I thought it was my fault. We’d had a row and you went to a different part of the beach. When they told me you’d drowned, I blamed myself.’
‘But the row was my fault,’ Kitty said. ‘Don’t you remember? I’m sorry, Emer. I was only doing what Mum had told me to.’
The relief was overwhelming. And so was the rage that followed. All these years, her mother and Robert had convinced Emer it was her fault Kitty had drowned that day on the beach.
‘We left the hotel in the middle of the night,’ Kitty continued. ‘Out through the fire escape again. We drove to some town – I can’t remember what it was called – and Uncle Frank was there, waiting for us. Dad told me Frank was his brother and he was going to look after me. I didn’t want to go. I was terrified, but Dad insisted. So I got into the car with Uncle Frank and we drove to Belfast, where we got the ferry to Liverpool. From there, we drove to Uncle Frank’s home in Eastbourne.’
‘Your father’s brother was a friend of mine,’ Fiona said, picking up the story. ‘Somehow, Eamon persuaded Frank that Kitty’s life was in danger. Together they came up with a plan for keeping her safe. Michael and I weren’t able to have children of our own. When Frank asked us to help, it felt like a gift. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy taking on a traumatised child, but it was worth it.’ Fiona smiled at Kitty with such genuine love, Emer felt a sudden, unexpected pang of jealousy. ‘She was the best thing that ever happened to us.’
A wave of nausea washed through Emer. The room started to spin. Somehow, she managed to get back to her chair before her legs gave way. She put her head down between her knees, waiting for the worst of the dizziness to pass. As soon as she was able to, she looked up at Kitty.
‘And that was it,’ Emer said, ‘you started a new life and forgot all about me.’
‘I never forgot about you,’ Kitty said.
‘I know how hard this is to hear,’ Fiona said to Emer. ‘But your father wasn’t a good man. After we took Kitty in, after we’d begun to love her as if she was our own child, Eamon started blackmailing us. We paid him as much as we could for years, but he was so greedy… no matter how much we gave him, it was never enough. We should have gone to the police and told them everything, but we were scared. We were already in too deep. We knew if we told anyone what was going on, we’d lose Annie. And we couldn’t bear that.’
She stopped speaking and a silence descended. Emer could hear her own breathing, loud and fast. Seagulls screeching outside the window. People in the corridor outside the room. Normal people going about their normal lives. While in here, Emer’s whole world was falling apart.
‘The man your husband killed,’ she whispered.
Fiona looked at her, and didn’t look away when she said it. ‘Eamon.’
Her father was dead. Now she knew, with absolute certainty. And the knowledge was harder to bear than she’d imagined.
‘I thought finding you would make everything better,’ she said to Kitty. ‘But it hasn’t. It’s done the opposite.’
‘Isn’t it better to know the truth?’ Kitty said.
‘No.’
Until this moment, she hadn’t realised how important Robert was to her. She’d loved him and believed he’d loved her too. She’d talked to him and told him things about herself that she would never tell her mother. She’d trusted him. But now she knew the truth. Even if he hadn’t meant to kill Lucy, he had hidden her body so her family would never know what had happened to her. He was a manipulative, cold-blooded killer.
Forty-two
‘He’s here,’ Emer said, ‘in the UK. It’s my fault. I told him you were still alive. You said you were in the house earlier. You must have missed him by minutes. But I still can’t believe…’
Her voice trailed off. There was no other reason for Robert to be here. He’d found out that Kitty was still alive, and he’d come to kill her. So she could never tell anyone the sort of man he was. Because if people realised what he was really like, that would properly ruin Robert’s plans to become Ireland’s next Taoiseach. And not just Robert’s plans, but Ursula’s as well.
‘What about Uncle Frank?’ Emer asked, remembering Dee’s beautiful house on the beach. ‘Did he know what Eamon was up to?’
‘He knew all right,’ Fiona said. ‘He tried to warn Eamon off, more than once, but Eamon just ignored him.’
‘Uncle Frank always kept in touch,’ Kitty said. ‘He was wonderful.’
‘And Dee? You never met her?’
‘Uncle Frank didn’t think it was safe,’ Kitty said. ‘Don’t forget, he really believed my life was in danger. The only way to keep me safe was for as few people as possible to know who I really was.’
‘But you changed your name, your whole identity. How is that even possible?’ Emer asked. ‘How can you get a national security number or a passport if you’re not who you say you are?’
‘We ran a pub,’ Fiona said. ‘You meet all sorts of people through that job. It was easier than you’d imagine to pay someone to arrange a new identity.’
‘So Kitty became Annie and I was told to accept my sister was dead.’ Emer shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it was that easy.’
‘It didn’t feel easy,’ Kitty said. ‘It still doesn’t. Fiona and Michael were brilliant, but I was a difficult kid. I was pretty messed up.’ She smiled. ‘Most people would say I still am.’
‘That makes two of us then.’ Emer leaned over and squeezed her sister’s hand. The contact gave her strength. She looked at the two women sitting opposite her.
‘What happens now?’
‘We do what we should have done years ago,’ Fiona said. ‘We go to the police. If I’d been brave enough to do that earlier, we might not be where we are today. Michael would never have gone to prison.’ She looked at Emer. ‘And you’d have had your sister back. I’m so sorry.’
‘I met Michael,’ Emer said. ‘I went to visit him yesterday morning. I thought he might be Dad.’
‘What made you think that?’ Kitty asked.
‘It’s a long story,’ Emer said, ‘and it doesn’t matter now, anyway. He was very kind to me.’
‘He’s okay then,’ Kitty said. ‘Thank goodness. I tried to call him yesterday but he didn’t pick up, which is unusual.’
‘When he got out of prison,’ Fiona said to Emer, ‘I wanted him to move back home. He refused. He’s never been able to forgive himself – or me – for what he did to your father. It destroyed our marriage.’
Emer wanted to tell the woma
n she wasn’t surprised. Michael Holden was a murderer and his wife was complicit in that murder. They didn’t deserve a happy marriage after what they’d done.
Instead, for the first time since she’d stepped inside the room, Emer felt in control.
‘Maeve is here,’ she said. ‘She’s in a hotel in Polegate, waiting for me to call her. She doesn’t know I’ve come to meet you. We should go and see her so you can tell her what happened to Lucy. She deserves to know the truth.’
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, Kitty was parking her Mini Clubman in the car park of a boutique hotel just off the A27.
‘I’ve heard of this place,’ Kitty said, getting out of the car. ‘But I haven’t been before. Maeve must have money if she can afford to stay here.’
The hotel was in the grounds of an eighteenth-century coaching inn. A plaque on the wall informed visitors that the inn had been ‘sensitively’ restored and converted four years ago.
‘I hope she’s here,’ Emer said, as they approached the elegant building. ‘She sounded a bit funny when I spoke to her earlier.’
‘You’re absolutely sure she wants to see me?’
‘I think so,’ Emer said. ‘It was just the shock, you know? But you’re the reason she’s here, Kitty. She’s spent her whole life wondering what happened to Lucy. Now she’s finally got a chance to find out. I can’t imagine what that must feel like.’
They were inside the hotel now, standing in the lobby.
‘She said she’d be in the bar,’ Emer said. ‘That looks like the bar over there.’
They found Maeve sitting at a table by the window that overlooked the grounds at the back of the hotel. Emer stood back, letting Kitty approach her first.
‘Hello Maeve.’
Maeve stood up, but when Kitty leaned forward to give her a hug, she stepped sideways, avoiding contact.
‘It really is you.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t think I fully believed it when Emer called to tell me.’
Before You Were Gone Page 24
