The First Cut
Page 57
Cathy’s searing words on the page from a generation ago came back to Nicky. The depths of what I’ve got that you’ll never have . . .
Connie started to moan again. The anger was spent now, fear contorting her features instead. Her voice was a whisper. ‘They were going to fly to France, so I damaged the fuel line. I never imagined that Greg would survive and she would die. I had destroyed the life of the brother I loved. I couldn’t tell Lawrence what I had done. It was my burden to carry that secret alone.’ Her tears were back now, flowing silently into the cotton beneath her. ‘His thirst for revenge gave him a kind of peace, and my guilt meant I went along with it to ease his suffering.’
Nicky stared in disbelief at the pathetic bundle of bones in the hospital bed. ‘Your brother lived his last twenty years carrying out a revenge on the wrong person?’ Connie’s breath was becoming shallower; she grabbed the tracheotomy tube and pushed it tighter to her throat, willing it to give her the air she needed. ‘And you nurtured that lie, allowed it to flourish, to save yourself?’ Connie stretched her neck, strained to get it higher, as if she was drowning in a rising ride. Her eyes were wide with terror.
Adam stood up so suddenly the chair banged back on the floor. ‘I lost my parents because of you!’
Connie was trying to say something, clawing at the tube in her neck, her skinny legs thrashing under the bedcovers. The veins in her neck stood proud, bulging and straining for oxygen and life. They were a horrid tableau: the two of them staring open-mouthed at the struggling figure in front of them. Connie’s eyes were white circles of fear in her face as she stared at Nicky, her dry mouth working but incapable of speech. Nicky looked down at her. She saw a woman stricken by terror and remorse, a woman whose passions from long ago had unleashed a sequence of events that had cast Nicky into a hell on earth.
‘You’re asking for my forgiveness but it’s not mine to give. It’s the others, whose lives you’ve taken, that you must ask forgiveness from.’
Connie’s thrashing intensified as every sinew in her body strained to cling onto life for a few more seconds.
‘Only God can judge you, Connie. Good luck with that.’ Nicky turned her back and headed for the door.
Adam cried out in agony as Connie went into cardiac arrest. He grabbed the emergency call button and the buzz of the alarm exploded in the room as the door sucked itself closed behind her. She walked away down the corridor while an untidy line of nurses and doctors ran past her to force Connie back to life.
56
Nicky bent down in front of the grave and arranged the flowers in the pot. A weak sun shone through the bare branches of the large trees that dotted the cemetery, crunchy autumn leaves swirled in the light eddies. It was so peaceful here. It was a good place to end up, she thought, all things considered. She was trying to be positive, but it wasn’t really working. It had all been too soon, so desperately early in the course of a life. She leaned forward and brushed some dust from the grooves of the letter F. ‘For ever in our hearts’ it said. She stood back but she didn’t cry. Not this time.
‘Revenge is cleansing,’ Lawrence had said before he’d thrown himself out, but Lawrence had been wrong. Resolution was what had helped; getting answers was the salve to the nightmare that had started all those years ago on a hot night in Tangiers, that had carried on through that evening she wrestled with Grace’s body in the lake, to her capture at Hayersleigh and the plane ride to hell.
It was cool up here on the hill. Nicky leaned over and caressed the top edge of the gravestone: Grace Peterson, 1976–2006.
She felt a hand close over her own and squeeze. ‘You ready?’ Greg asked.
She nodded. He handed her a trowel. His leg was still in plaster – he had broken it when landing the plane – and he had difficulty moving, so she bent over and dug a hole in the soft grass. He handed her Grace’s wedding ring and she held it in her palm for a minute, watching the light bounce off its smooth edges, before she buried it in the soil. She stood as Greg gently trod on the dirt to fix it all together again. She reached out for his hand and felt his warmth radiate back to her.
Greg turned to her and gave her a weak smile. He had a scar on his forehead now, still purple but beginning to fade. In some ways he had aged terribly in the last two months, but in others the weight had lifted from him and even with his injuries and his crutches he seemed years younger than she had ever known him. He was going to counselling and the nightmares had stopped. His sleep was free of the terrors that had dogged him most of his adult life.
Nicky stood still and looked at him for a moment. He was not perfect; he had made mistakes. But she understood that she too had made bad choices and stupid decisions, and that he was perfect for her. They turned away and walked slowly up the hill towards the cemetery gates, Greg’s crutches tapping out a plaintive note on the concrete path. The road curved away in front of them. Nicky didn’t know where it led, but she was happy to be on the journey with him.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the great team at Hodder for all their help on this book and for their enthusiasm, insight and guidance: Carolyn Mays, my editor, Francesca Best, Jaime Frost and Clare Parkinson. A big thank you also to my agent, Peter Straus, and to my family.