The Accusation: An addictive psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist

by Victoria Jenkins

  I went to the kitchen, resisting the urge to open one of the bottles of wine that had been stored in the cupboard beneath the stairs since the previous Christmas. I had never been one to turn to drink when times were tough; I preferred to keep a clear head so that I could maintain some control, or the appearance of it at least. The footage was still playing on the laptop on the kitchen table. I had no idea whether anything had been captured in my absence, though I doubted it; when I checked the time on the tape, it was past closing time.

  I let it run for a while, distracted by my thoughts of Damien and everything he had been trying to do for me. If he didn’t hate me already, he certainly would now. Pulling myself from my self-pity, I pressed a button and watched as the footage sped forward, the empty, lifeless scene in front of me unchanging with the passing of those late-night hours. I was ready to give up when something stopped me dead. My fingers lingered over the keyboard, my body frozen at the sight of what was playing out on the screen in front of me, the images captured in the grainy sepia of the CCTV.

  I watched as Lily looked up and down the street before putting the key in the lock of the shop door and disappearing from view, presumably tapping in the code to deactivate the security alarm. I’d had no idea she knew it, though she could easily have watched me when we’d been there together. It didn’t seem to matter. By then, I was watching something else, and my thoughts were no longer with Lily but with the figure of the man who followed her into the shop.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘Move in with me.’

  Damien was lying in his hospital bed, propped against the mountain of flimsy pillows that I had arranged behind his head. Lily was sitting in an oversized armchair at my side, her attention captured by the pages of a book we had borrowed from the children’s ward; she had collected quite a pile of toys and books during the previous weeks, and I had marvelled at just how calm she had been, taking our new routine of weekly train trips and hospital visits in her stride. She often talked about Damien when he wasn’t around, though as she wasn’t yet quite able to say his name, for the time being he was ‘Damon’. There was no denying the effect he already appeared to have had on her: she was speaking more and interacting with other people with a greater confidence; she seemed happier than she had ever been. It seemed she needed a father, and though we had only known each for four months, I had seen enough to understand that Damien was a good man.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you reckon? Jim’s hardly ever at the flat – he hasn’t said anything yet, but I’m guessing he’ll probably move in with his girlfriend soon; he’s over at hers all the time anyway, and there’s no point in them paying rent on two places. I know it’s not the biggest house, but the garden’s all right, and there’s a school just down the road; we could get Lily’s name down, and––’

  He stopped abruptly, his face changing as he studied mine. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not trying to take over; I would never do that. I got carried away. Sorry. Forget I said it. I don’t want to spoil things.’

  ‘What’s that? A horse?’

  I looked down at Lily, who was pointing at something in the book on her lap. ‘It’s a zebra. A bit like a horse, but stripy.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Damien said when I looked back at him.

  ‘You don’t need to keep apologising. It’s a lovely thought, but…’

  ‘But?’

  We were interrupted by one of the nurses, who came over to check the notes at the end of Damien’s bed. ‘The doctor shouldn’t be long,’ she told him. ‘He’s been held up on another ward.’

  ‘No rush. I’m not going to be running off anywhere just yet.’

  She smiled at his humour, and I wondered how he could remain so cheerful in the aftermath of what had happened. The Ironman event he had taken part in on the day after we first met would be his last, though at the time he could never have predicted the turn his life would take within a matter of months. His career was likely to be over. I ran my fingers along my temple, tracing the scar there. Our worlds were opposites, mine and Damien’s, and yet in some ways they had been brought together by our shared experience of disaster.

  Even so, I couldn’t share my own experience, not all of it.

  He waited until the nurse had left before saying, ‘It’s a lovely thought, but…?’

  ‘I don’t exactly have a lot to offer, do I? I’ve got no qualifications, no savings. I’d have to find a job, but then there’d be childcare to pay for… I wouldn’t make enough to cover everything.’

  ‘You’ll get a job easily,’ Damien said, with his usual enviable optimism. ‘Lily will be in school for part of the day and I can look after her the rest.’

  ‘You need time to recover. You can’t commit to looking after a child.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, with a nod towards Lily. ‘Look at her… she’s a nightmare, isn’t she?’

  I smiled. Lily was a good girl, but she was my child and my responsibility. For years I had been her sole provider, and I wasn’t ready to relinquish that role. Though I had wanted a third person in our lives, I didn’t know how to let him in. A part of me was scared at the thought that everything would change, though I knew that Lily’s life – my life – was never going to get any better unless that happened, and I feared losing a chance at happiness that might not offer itself again.

  ‘What if Jim isn’t going anywhere?’

  ‘I’ll kick him out. You smell a lot nicer – it’s a no-brainer. Plus, it turns out I’m not in love with Jim. Who’d have thought it?’

  The room fell so silent, I almost wished Lily would burst into an uncharacteristic tantrum just to offer a distraction. No one had told me they loved me for as long as I could remember; no one, at least, who had meant it. And I believed that Damien did. I had heard enough lies and seen enough badness to recognise the truth and know where there was good.

  ‘I love you and I want to look after you – both of you. You’ve been looking after me, haven’t you? Let me do the same. Unless you’ve decided you love Llangovney and can’t be parted from the smell of cow shit, which I’d completely understand.’ He slapped a hand over his mouth and glanced at Lily, who was still looking at the book, now engrossed in a page of jungle animals she was naming softly to herself one by one.

  ‘Cow shit,’ she said, without looking up, and I poked Damien’s arm, trying not to laugh at the innocent repetition.

  ‘Damien said a naughty word,’ I told her. ‘Don’t say it again, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘That’ll be a great way to start school, won’t it? Going in and repeating that on the first day.’

  Damien’s eyes met mine and the cautious start of a smile played upon his lips. ‘Is that a yes, then?’

  I nodded, still too unsure of myself to say the word.

  ‘Lily,’ he said, and she looked up from the book. ‘See that drawer there?’ He pointed to the bedside table, nodding encouragingly as she reached for the handle. ‘That’s the one. Can you pass me that pair of socks?’

  She handed him a rolled-up pair of blue cotton socks, which he opened out on the blanket. Shoving his hand into one of them, he produced a ten-pound note and held it up with a flourish. ‘Could you take your mum to the shop and get some chocolate and some drinks, please? This deserves a celebration.’

  ‘You keep your money in your socks?’

  ‘Would you have thought to look there?’

  Lily’s face had lit up as soon as chocolate was mentioned, and she was already at the end of the bed, clutching the note in her fist. I followed her out into the corridor with a smile on my face. I was blissfully happy, yet at the same time filled with trepidation about the new chapter in our lives that was about to begin.

  Within a month, the three of us were living in Damien’s rented house. Lily had started at the nursery attached to the school just down the road and had settled surprisingly quickly. Everything was going well, though I had been greeted with a frosty reception by Damien’s mother.

/>   It was a Sunday and we were at her house for dinner. As the four of us sat at the table together, I’d watched Nancy silently assessing Lily’s use of her knife and fork, her lip curling when Lily chewed with her mouth open. The table had been cleared, the dishes washed and put away, and Lily was playing on the rug near the television when I’d gone to use the bathroom.

  ‘She should be seeing someone about that child’s speech delay.’ Nancy’s voice carried up the stairs.

  ‘She’s fine, Mum. She’s a quiet kid, that’s all. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong.’

  ‘Your speech was better at two than hers is at four.’

  ‘Well, wasn’t Master Damien a clever little bean.’

  I paused halfway up, listening to the conversation behind the closed living room door. I couldn’t see Nancy’s face, but I could guess her reaction to Damien’s sarcasm, and I had to suppress a smile.

  ‘She’s been through a lot, Mum. Who knows what’s going on in that little head of hers?’

  ‘Through what? She was only a baby when her father died, wasn’t she? She won’t even remember it.’

  I heard Damien sigh. ‘I thought you of all people would have been a bit more understanding.’

  ‘You were nineteen when your father died – it’s completely different. And anyway, this isn’t about me. Just be careful, please, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Careful of what?’

  ‘Careful that you’re not a rebound. She’s lost a partner, she’s a single mother… Make sure you’re not being used.’

  ‘She’s hard-working and she’s honest. You’re not really giving her a chance here, Mum.’

  ‘You barely know the girl,’ Nancy said, her voice lowered to a hiss. ‘She’s not exactly baggage-free, is she, and now she’s living in your home. Don’t you think it’s all a bit rushed?’

  There was silence for a moment, and I wished I could see whatever look was on Damien’s face at that moment. Was he hesitant because he was tired of her judgement, or did he fear deep down that she was right?

  ‘You don’t know the first thing about her, that’s all I’m saying.’

  I’d heard enough, so I trod gently up a few steps before hurrying back down, letting my presence on the staircase be known. As expected, the conversation came to an abrupt stop. Lily’s attention had been stolen from her toys by the cartoon playing on the television.

  ‘We were just saying how pretty she is, weren’t we, Damien?’ Nancy gestured to Lily, offering her a moment of attention that had been withheld until then. ‘That lovely thick hair. Gorgeous.’

  I didn’t want to hate her – I didn’t know her well enough to harbour feelings of such intensity – but there was one thing I was already certain of. Nancy would be watching me like a hawk, just waiting for me to trip up, and when I did, it was unlikely she would offer me any help in getting back on my feet.

  Twenty-Seven

  I tried Lily’s phone again, and again there was no answer. I had put my coat on and was by the stairs looking for my house keys, ready to go out searching for her, when she burst through the front door. I didn’t have time to hide the tears I’d shed so freely ten minutes before; the dark clouds of the last couple of weeks had opened over me, drowning me in their downpour. We were a mirror of each other in that moment, her wet face and reddened eyes a reflection of my own. I thought she might say something, but she didn’t; instead, realising the path to her bedroom was blocked, she hurried down the hallway and disappeared into the back room, slamming the door behind her.

  The back room was a small corner of the house furnished with a sofa, a television and a disproportionate number of blankets and cushions. The people who had lived in the house before us had used it as an office, but with no real need for one, we had decided to get a second TV in the hope of avoiding the common argument of what to watch. As it happened, it tended to get used most when someone was in a bad mood – when Amelia had taken something from Lily’s bedroom without asking first and Lily refused to be in the same room as her for the remainder of the day; or when Damien and I had disagreed over something and had used conflicting viewing preferences as an excuse to keep the argument from the girls. The conversations that took place within the room’s four walls tended to consist of reprimands and apologies, and I regretted having a space in the house that had become so associated with tension and discord.

  I knocked tentatively on the door and waited for Lily to tell me to go away. When she said nothing, I opened it slightly. She was curled up at the end of the sofa, her long dark hair falling in front of her face, concealing her from sight.

  ‘What’s happened, love?’

  ‘Other than the fucking obvious?’ She spoke through tears, snotty and snivelling. Anger radiated from her, but then she did something I wasn’t expecting.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

  She flung herself against me, her arms wrapping around my waist in the way she had held on to me when she’d been a little girl.

  ‘Oh sweetheart. I am so, so sorry.’

  As she sobbed against me, I was taken back to those days in the flat when it was just the two of us, when she would cling to me as though I was the only other person in the world. But then I had been the only person in her small and fragile world. No one should have been inflicting this suffering on her now, least of all me.

  ‘Are they going to send you to prison?’

  She sounded like a small child, her words so like Amelia’s, and it struck me then just how vulnerable she was. Despite the attitude she often tormented me with, she was still just a little girl, and it made that man paused in the image on the laptop screen all the more hateful.

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know. There are things that have come up that are going to help me, though – things Amy’s brother has found out about this woman.’

  Lily looked up and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. It smeared her make-up, leaving a black smudge at her temple. ‘What things?’

  ‘I can’t go into it, love, I’m sorry. It’s enough to prove she’s a liar, though.’

  Lily took a deep breath as she tried to calm her breathing. It seemed she had regained some of her lost composure, but a moment later she was crying again, her head slumped against my arm as she sobbed like a little girl. This wasn’t just about me, I thought.

  ‘Where have you been this evening?’ I asked gently.

  Her tears came hard and louder, and I felt her body shudder against my own. Her breath caught in ragged gasps as she tried to form an answer. ‘He’s not who he said he was, Mum.’

  I didn’t need to ask her who she meant. I wanted to shake her for lying to me for so long, while at the same time wanting to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay, regardless of my uncertainty about such a promise.

  ‘You have to tell me who he is, Lily. Everything you think you know about him – I need to hear it all.’

  I couldn’t tell her that I’d seen them together on the CCTV from the shop – not yet. If I did, she would hate me for it; she would consider that I had spied on her, and she wouldn’t thank me for it regardless of what this man had now done. Any chance of getting her to confide in me would be lost. I thought of him sitting in the coffee shop, sipping at a black coffee as he browsed the titles on the bookcase. I hadn’t needed to see his face any more clearly to know that I recognised him. I was sure he had been there more than once, though he was just like any other customer passing through, coming and going. Yet he wasn’t, was he? He had been there for a purpose, and I was beginning to think that purpose was me.

  ‘Where did you meet him?

  ‘In the canteen at college. I dropped a folder and he helped pick up the papers that fell out.’

  I cringed at the cliché of it, imagining myself as I had been just a couple of years older than Lily was now. Her father had approached me in much the same way, striking up conversation when I had dropped a tray of cutlery in the café where I was working. Listening to Lily�
�s words, it was as though history was repeating itself, and I wanted to scream at the thought of it and at all those things that might follow that I never wanted for her life.

  ‘And then what happened?’ I already knew how it went. Girl meets boy and the rest is history, though this was no boy and there was still time to put an end to whatever might come next.

  ‘He asked me my name, said he’d seen me around the campus. He told me his name was Matthew Cartwright, that he was doing an art course. I liked him, Mum. I know it was stupid, that he’s too old for me, but he was different to all the other boys.’

  I tightened my hold around her and kissed the top of her head. She wasn’t the first to be fooled by a handsome face, and she wouldn’t be the last. ‘You said he’s not who he said he was. How did you find out?’

  ‘I just… You know when you get a feeling something’s not right? Maisie knows someone on the art course, and this girl had never heard of him. And sometimes he was just so weird, like his phone would go off when we were together, and he’d just become really quiet.’

  When we were together. The words made me feel sick, and I wondered exactly what she meant by them.

  ‘Lily, I know I’ve asked you before and I’m sorry to do it again, but I have to. Have you had sex with him?’

  There was another surge of tears as she shook her head against my chest. ‘No. I swear to you, Mum, we never did anything.’

  She must have felt my body sag against hers as relief surged through me. For the first time, I finally believed her.

  ‘I think he lied about his name. No one seems to know who he is. When we met, he told me he didn’t have Facebook or Instagram or anything like that, and I liked that about him, it made him different, you know? He wasn’t loud like some of the boys at college – he was thoughtful, more interesting to talk to. And he used to listen, you know, like really listen to me when I was speaking. But now I think it was all just lies.’ She sat up and put her head in her hands.