by Helen Cooper
“Is it?” Mum pinches each end of the fag, little crumbles of tobacco escaping. “Becca’s always been unpredictable. And she’s had an obsession with Nick since she got here.”
I shake my head. “No. The pills . . . he took them accidentally, surely . . .”
“Then why would she lie about her meds? Why would she change them, try to cover it up?”
There’s a falling in my chest. “I don’t know.”
Tears shine in Mum’s eyes: the first I’ve seen since Nick died. “I should’ve made her leave when she started saying all that stuff about him.” She starts to sob, then folds over and cries so hard she can’t keep herself upright.
I can’t stand to see her so upset, can’t stand to think of Becca in a cell, can’t imagine what will happen once I’ve confessed. Because I have to now. How can I live with myself if I don’t?
53.
STEPH
She was alone at last. George and the other police officers had gone, though their search continued and a helicopter still droned in Kingston’s night sky. Even the journalists had dispersed for now. Heather and Brian were driving around rechecking places where Freya or Paul might be. Clutching at straws, really, and Steph shared their desperation but she hadn’t joined them. She had her own leads to follow.
Her bare toes cut a route through the empty flat, into her own room and to her wardrobe. Her tailored dresses and silk shirts were like ghosts from a previous normality in which she’d worn makeup and gone out for date nights with Paul. She reached beneath the swish of hems, grasped the edge of a dusty shoebox, and slid it out from its long-term hiding place. There was another box concealed inside; she cradled the second on her knee, running her finger across the dried-out brown tape sealing it closed.
It seemed heavy in her lap. Almost hot with the memories it contained. She had to confront them now. Had to know whether she had done this to her daughter, her family.
Steph emptied the box onto the bed, its contents cascading out. The crumple of a newspaper article. The patent shine of a red ball. The photos that were aged and grainy, in contrast to the framed family portrait that smiled from the wall above.
Stretching up, she unhooked the newer photo. It left a square of bright wallpaper behind it, unspoiled by sun. She remembered the day it had been taken: Freya’s fifteenth birthday. They’d let her get her ears pierced, then gone out for burgers afterward. In the photo, her newly adorned lobes were pink and puffy, but she was beaming, a tall banana milkshake in front of her. Steph’s favorite flavor, too, as a child.
She laid the picture on the bed among the other things, as though trying to slot her newer life into the old, trying to understand how the two might have collided. She envisaged more things in the gaps: the banknotes with her drawings on them; the silver pillbox; the snaps of Freya and Zeb.
An image of Freya’s bloodstained jacket cast a shadow over everything else. Where was it now? In a lab, with samples being scraped from the sleeves that were a fraction too short for Freya’s long arms?
And where was Freya without it? Why would it be buried unless—
Steph caught herself, stamping out the thought before it could crush her. As she stuffed all the items back inside the shoebox, tears poured down her face. How could it have come to this? At what moment, precisely, could she have diverted the chain of events that had led her here? Because she was sure there must have been a moment. Perhaps several. A different choice or choices that might have kept all her loved ones safe.
She jumped off the bed, clutching the box, and left her flat in a daze. At the top of the stairs she paused and turned back inside. Swerving into the kitchen, she tried not to think too hard about what she was doing: opening a drawer, groping for a sharp knife, holding it at her side as she hurried back through the flat, the box still under her other arm. Just in case, said a voice in her head, steadier than she really felt. She pulled on Paul’s wax jacket and dropped the knife into one of its deep front pockets, where she could forget it was there, unless she needed it.
As she was stumbling down the stairs, she heard their letterbox clatter open, then snap closed. Reaching the hallway, she saw that a piece of paper had been shoved through. She stood staring at it, nerves stirring. The door to Emma’s flat opened and her neighbor appeared.
“I heard something . . .”
Steph pointed at the note. Both women hesitated, as if unsure who should investigate it. Emma plucked it from the letterbox and Steph stood beside her, eyes zigzagging over the block capitals.
MOTHER OF THE YEAR?
TRY LIAR OF THE DECADE.
INNOCENT VICTIM?
NOBODY BUT YOURSELF TO BLAME.
Steph made a guttural noise in her throat. The shoebox slipped from beneath her elbow and its contents scattered, the red ball bouncing against her foot. It was the truth of the words that cut so deep. And it was the person who must’ve written them, the message Steph could no longer deny, not even the tiniest amount. She looked at Emma, who had turned pale, too, and didn’t even appear to have noticed the things Steph had dropped. She just seemed lost in her own reaction to the note.
Steph was about to start scooping up the items when it hit her. The note had been hand-posted. Its deliverer had been there only moments ago. Steph thrust open the exterior door and they spilled out into the sharpness of the evening.
“Hey!” Emma shouted.
Steph looked to where Emma was gesturing and saw the silhouette of a figure down the far end of the street, wearing a baseball cap and a hooded jacket. Then suddenly they were running, chasing, and the person was bolting away, swerving trees and charging across roads. Steph felt Emma’s arms knocking against hers, heard the other woman panting almost in unison with herself. When Emma stumbled, Steph flung out a hand to steady her. When Steph ran out of breath, Emma clasped her wrist and pulled her on.
It seemed to be a man. That was all Steph could make out. Her head was pulsing, her lungs screaming, so there was barely any room to process what was happening and who specifically the man might be. She just knew he must have been sent to threaten her . . . even summon her. And she had to get to him.
Driven by a blast of emotion, she pulled ahead of her neighbor. Then she heard Emma cry out as if she’d tripped. The man must have heard too: He glanced briefly over his shoulder, but still Steph didn’t fully glimpse his face.
“No,” Emma was saying from behind her. “No . . .”
Steph staggered to a breathless halt. Emma was lying on the pavement clutching her leg, but that didn’t seem the main cause of her distress. She was gesturing toward the disappearing figure, shaking her head and sobbing.
54.
CHRIS
“Can I make a phone call?”
“Excuse me—please. Can I have my phone call?”
“Don’t walk away! I’m entitled to a call!”
Chris had no idea how long he’d been in custody. Inside the police station it was neither night nor day. He’d been charged with theft and perverting the course of justice. The Freya Harlow investigation was ongoing, they told him, so he wouldn’t be released on bail yet.
He’d been locked in a cell with a man who was trying to pull off his own toenails. Chris felt he was inhaling human waste with every breath. Each time an officer appeared on the other side of the bars, he asked if he could make a call.
Finally, someone came to fetch him and led him to the phone.
Chris dialed the hospital—he was fairly sure Vicky would be back on shift now—and was put through to her ward.
“Chris?” She sounded frantic when she came on the line. “Are you still at the police station? What’s going on?”
Chris imagined her standing beside a reception desk in her uniform, her dark fringe pinned back from her face, her fingers scrunching the blunt edges of her hair. Yearning swelled behind his ribs. “I’m still at the police sta
tion,” he said.
“And?”
“I’m being questioned about Freya’s disappearance. And I’ve been charged with . . . theft.”
“Theft?”
Chris was conscious of the custody officer, watching and listening. He had to choose his words carefully.
“Freya found out I’d been stealing things,” he said. “She’s been blackmailing me.”
“You . . .” Vicky trailed off and Chris imagined her glancing around her ward, checking who was eavesdropping. Her voice dipped: “Found out you’d been stealing?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” Chris continued to speak cautiously but clearly, for the benefit of his guard. “I’d been taking things from my learners, just bits and bobs, small tokens . . .”
Vicky fell silent. Perhaps she was utterly confused, or perhaps she was beginning to realize what he was trying to tell her: Let me do this for you.
What he really wanted to say was that he understood why she’d always felt the need to steal. From the other kids in her care home; from her flatmates at nursing college; now from the patients on her ward. He understood her desire for trinkets of other people’s lives, knew she’d grown up feeling that nothing in the world belonged to her. But he couldn’t articulate any of that right now. All he could do was try to put the message across: He would never betray her, no matter how strained things had become between them.
“I’d been keeping the stuff in my car,” Chris said, still hoping she was reading between the lines. “I was going to get rid of it all, or even give it back to the people it came from, if I could. But Freya saw it and took her chance to get some money out of me.”
“You were keeping them,” Vicky murmured, and Chris knew his meaning was sinking in. The things he’d found in their bedroom, the things he’d immediately known she had stolen, which would lose Vicky her nursing license if anybody discovered them . . . He’d panicked and shoved them all into his glove box. And that was what Freya had discovered. Even the pillbox, which Freya had seen as confirmation of his thefts, had been a kind of confirmation for Chris, too. He knew Jess’s cousin had had a brief spell on Vicky’s old ward, having her tonsils out.
“They think you did something to Freya?” Vicky asked. “Because of that?”
“I’m a suspect.”
“Oh, God—”
“It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry.”
“How can I not worry? You’re in there because of—”
“Time’s up,” the officer barked from behind.
“I’ve got to go,” he told Vicky.
There was another pause, during which Chris hunched protectively over the receiver, as though he could stop the policeman wrestling it from him.
“I’ll come and pick you up,” Vicky blurted. “When they let you out, I’ll be there.”
Chris smiled again, and saw the officer shoot him a look, as if to say, What the hell have you got to be cheerful about?
“That would be good,” Chris whispered down the phone.
“Chris . . . thank you,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”
He swallowed. “You never need to say that to me, Vic.”
Then they were quiet, breathing in synchrony, until the officer snatched the receiver and hung it up.
55.
KATE
Twenty-five years earlier
“Mum,” I say, my voice offbeat with nerves. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
I have no idea how I’m going to say it. How she’s going to react. Once it’s said, it’s said. As irreversible as what I did to Nick.
She’s still doubled over after her fit of crying. When she raises her chin, I’m startled to see blood leaking from her nose. “Oh, Mum! You’re having a nosebleed!”
She blinks and raises a hand to her nostrils. The blood ribbons over her fingers, across her chin, onto the collar of her gray T-shirt.
I dash to the bathroom for a wad of toilet paper. She tries to stem the bleeding, then tips back her head and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Damn,” she murmurs in a way that makes me think this isn’t the first time she’s had a nosebleed this bad. She doesn’t seem surprised, just annoyed, frustrated.
But I’m scared to see her losing so much blood. Disturbed by the puddle of red on the front of her top. Uneasy, as I remember a different top, a similar stain. Scarlet against pale blue.
“You okay, Mum?” I ask when the bleeding’s stopped. She’s slumped in the armchair, burrowing her feet beneath our scruffy flowery rug.
“Oh, Kate,” she says in a strangled voice, shutting her eyes. “What are we going to do?”
A tremor passes through me. “What do you mean?”
Her tears brim again, slipping from beneath her closed lids. She opens her eyes but doesn’t wipe them; pearls of water cling to her skin.
“Maybe Nick was right. I should’ve told you months ago.”
“Told me what?”
She massages her cheeks with the heels of her hands. There are clots of dried blood around her nostrils, like little splodges of paint.
“What, Mum?”
“Things are going to be difficult now, love. Nick’s gone. Becca and Rach won’t be coming back here. And it’s going to be hard. Even harder than it would’ve been if I didn’t . . . if I wasn’t . . .” She leans forward, grasping my hands. “I’m ill, Kate.”
Everything freezes. I feel a door swing shut in my brain as though it’s rejecting this information, refusing it entry.
“It’s called MDS, love. Myelodysplastic syndrome. It’s a kind of cancer.”
Her words fall through me but still I can’t speak. It’s like my mouth is anesthetized.
“I didn’t want to upset you, love. Didn’t want to jeopardize your exams, I thought it was best . . .”
No, no, no. I would have known. My eyes roam her face, searching for some chink in her act. All I see is her white skin and jutting bones. She is sick. Cancer. Fear wells from my chest, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. “Are you going to die?”
“The doctors are doing everything they can to help me.”
I don’t like her answer. I didn’t hear the word no. My face collapses and she pulls me into a hug. “It’s okay, Kate. We’re going to stick together. Get through this.”
“When did . . . ?”
“I was diagnosed at the beginning of April. Nick was the only one who knew, and I wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.”
“You should have told me!”
She says nothing and I feel horrible for shouting at her. I want to yell at someone, though. Want to hit something solid and knuckle-crushing.
“You’re going to get better, aren’t you?”
“I’m on drugs to slow the progress of the disease.” There it is once more: the non-answer. Some distant part of me is gathering up all these non-answers and rearranging them into what I want to hear. “If they don’t work, I might have to have some chemo. Possibly a stem-cell transplant. I’m staying positive, Kate, and you should too.”
I hug her tighter, craving the lily smell of the perfume Auntie Rach bought her, even the cling of cigarettes. Then I pull back, blinking at her stained T-shirt. Déjà vu returning.
She follows my gaze. “Sorry if the nosebleed alarmed you, love. I’m getting used to them now. The illness makes me bleed and bruise really easily. And this crappy tiredness . . . It’s a relief to tell you, really. I don’t know how much longer I could’ve covered it up, especially now Nick’s gone.”
My heart batters my ribs. Realizations are stirring, half forming.
Mum studies me as if she can see what I’m thinking. “I know you picked up on the tense atmosphere sometimes,” she says. “It’s been so tough, dealing with the symptoms, the appointments, the decisions about treatment . . . I wouldn’t have blamed Nick if he’d bac
ked away completely, but he never did . . . and he respected my decision not to tell you, even though he felt pretty strongly you ought to know. We argued about it a lot. And maybe he was right after all.”
I press my hands to my mouth, tasting salt on my skin.
All this time she was being attacked by something I couldn’t save her from. And I still can’t.
As we fall quiet, listening to the buzz of the fridge that still threatens to clap out any moment, more realizations move through me. I can’t fend them off now: They just keep coming, like waves of heat and ice.
He wasn’t hurting her, was he? He was helping her keep the secret. I killed the one person she relied on. Killed him for no reason at all.
56.
PAUL
It was ten p.m. when Paul finally limped toward home. His body felt broken, his mind lagging. He’d discharged himself from the hospital against medical advice, and Yvette had driven him to her place, lent him some of her partner’s clothes, then dropped him off, at his request, around the corner from his house.
Leaving him to try to come to terms with a new, almost incomprehensible truth.
Half of him still could not believe what Yvette had told him as she’d grasped his wrists in the hospital corridor a few hours before. The other half had to acknowledge that her revelation made sense of everything. Shadowed thoughts that had been knocking at the back of his brain for years had emerged into the light as she’d spoken. But that hadn’t made it any easier to take in.
She wanted to escape, Yvette had said. From Daniel, from his hold over her, from whatever he may or may not have done to Billie. And . . .
And from me, Paul had finished for her, still not fully comprehending.
Yvette had looked down. In a way, yes. She thought you’d try to follow her or track her down if you ever knew. She just wanted to disappear, and we thought we owed her that. A new life and some protection.
