by Alison Keane
“I don’t understand. Why would you sell the company?” My heart pounds and there’s an uncomfortable lurch in my stomach.
“You should rest. Perhaps I can come back later when—”
“No. You said you didn’t want secrets. You need to tell me.”
He stands up and paces to the window. “It seemed like such an open and shut case, Ellie. You have to forgive me. It’s hard for me to say this, but I believed you were the one who’d hurt Mikey. I should have suspected something was off last week when you spoke as if you didn’t know what had happened to him, but I put that down to some sort of avoidance. I don’t know.”
I shake my head. “What’s Mikey got to do with this?” I don’t understand why Dad is bringing him up. It’s too painful for me to think about him just now. I still feel so guilty for shutting myself away instead of asking the difficult questions I should have asked. My eyes widen as I remember the invoice DS Hobson showed me. “The hospital…”
“When I thought you’d hurt him, I went to his mother. I offered to pay for his care.” He bows his head. “Yes, it was partly out of guilt, but it also meant she wouldn’t push the police to press charges.”
“Oh God…”
“It’s not your fault, Ellie. It’s not.”
“You sold the company to cover up what you thought I’d done.”
“That doesn’t matter now,” he says, though he can’t hide the pain in his eyes. “We’ll figure something out. The main thing is you’re safe. I’m so sorry I doubted you.”
I close my eyes. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that he’d still think I was capable of murder if Tony hadn’t burst in and stopped Jason when he did. He would have made it look like a suicide. He came so close to pulling it off.
“Has Jason spoken to the police?”
Dad squeezes my shoulder. “I’ll go and call Hobson. He’ll be better able to fill you in.”
“No.” I shiver. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“There’s no need to be afraid, Ellie. It’s over now.”
“Is it?”
“I’ll go and call Hobson.”
My body breaks out in a cold sweat. “Wait.” I want to believe him, but I can’t imagine the police being on my side. He doesn’t understand.
“What is it?”
“I heard you talking about me. On Thursday evening. I went to your house.”
His face falls. “I had no idea.”
“Steph was saying you had to tell me. I thought it was about your relationship. But it can’t have been. What did she mean?”
“There was no love lost between us, Ellie. I feel sorry for the poor girl, but we weren’t friendly by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t even know you two were friends until that night. She came over and suddenly she was your biggest advocate. She wanted me to tell you everything. I didn’t think you could handle it—not after she’d insinuated herself into your life like that.”
“Do you think she sought me out?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps she genuinely wanted to be friends. Maybe she wanted leverage. Who knows?”
Who knows. It’s the story of my life. I have to accept the fact that I might never know the motivation behind the people who’ve been pulling the strings in my life this past year. It’s a hard thing to admit.
“You said I had issues.”
Dad closes his eyes and I wish I hadn’t said that. “Jason fooled a lot of people, Ellie. Myself included. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“Ellie.”
My eyes flicker open. I can’t remember falling asleep, but I must have because Dad is gone. DS Hobson is standing alone at my bedside.
I stare up at him, not knowing what to think. Is he going to get angry again? I don’t think I can handle that right now.
I sigh. The pain is worse now that it was earlier. The painkillers must be wearing off. My throat hurts every time I try to swallow.
DS Hobson stares at my neck and I realise I’ve not even seen how it looks. “Ellie, I owe you an apology.”
Tears come to my eyes. It shouldn’t make a difference what he thinks, but it does. He thought I’d hurt Mikey and Steph. But then so did everyone.
He points at the chair beside my bed. “Do you mind if I sit down? Or would you prefer if I came back later?”
I sigh. It’s going to take a while to get used to the fact that the police aren’t out to get me. And I owe it to Mikey and Steph to do everything I can to make sure Jason is locked up for a very long time.
“Please,” I say, gesturing to the chair.
He sits down and I take a breath. “It was so messed up. I thought Mikey had come back because he was annoyed at me for going out with Nathan. I had no idea what happened to him. As far as I knew…” I stop myself and take a breath. “I’m sorry. It’s all muddled up in my head.”
“Take your time.”
I shake my head. “No. I need you to get Jason. The rest of it doesn’t matter. There was that break-in I told you about yesterday. I didn’t think anything was missing, but there was. He’d taken a knife from my kitchen. He showed it to me last night—it was in a plastic bag and had what looked like blood on it.”
I take a breath, trying not to imagine how that blood got there.
“We can stop and take a break if you want.”
“No, I need to do this.” I stop and try to collect my thoughts. If only I’d not said anything to Jason about seeing him in the pub. Was that really the thing that set him off? I shake my head. No. Of course not. He set this off himself a year ago when he hurt Mikey. I wish with all my heart that I could remember more.
“I got home last night and fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, Jason was there. He’d taken my phone so I couldn’t call for help. I tried to get past him but he threw me back and I hit my head against the table. He slapped my face a couple of times. He also said he was going to poison me and burn the house down around me.” I flinch as I imagine how differently this might have turned out if Tony hadn’t come when he did. “It was in the orange juice. I hope there’s still some trace of it left—it spilled when I threw the glass at him. I…”
“Ellie, we’ll leave it there for now. This is a hard thing to come to terms with. We’re going to do everything we can to get justice for Steph and for Mikey.” He gets up and goes to the door. He pauses. “One more thing, Ellie.”
“Yes?”
“Your friend Nathan has been into the station wanting us to arrest you.”
I groan. “Oh God. I’m sorry. I thought this was him. I got him drunk last night and stuck him in a taxi so he couldn’t… I thought he was the one setting me up.”
“It’s alright, Ellie. I’ll have a talk to him.”
I worry at the frayed skin around my fingernails. “I can’t shake the feeling that he was involved in this,” I whisper. “There were too many weird things about him. I didn’t see it at the time, but—”
DS Hobson comes back to my bedside and pats my hand. “If Nathan’s involved in this, we’ll get him. Don’t you worry.”
I smile, but I can’t stop worrying. I know his intentions are good, but I can’t just sit here and leave my problems for other people to sort out.
Not after what happened.
When I get out of here, I’ll do my own digging.
48
Ellie
One week later
I knock on Nathan’s door and wait. It feels weird to be doing this, but I’m sticking to the decision I made when I was in hospital. I’ll never bury my head in the sand again. Jason is refusing to cooperate with the police, but from searching his phone and computer records, they’re confident he was working alone and that Nathan wasn’t involved in Steph’s murder. Still, that doesn’t explain why he had that photo of me—I’m not going to be able to relax until I find out.
Nathan opens the door. The colour drains from his face when he sees it’s me.
“What do you want?” he asks. He
tries to close the door in my face, but I’m too quick for him. I shove my foot in the door.
“This won’t take long.”
“You’re not coming in.”
I smile tightly. “I don’t want to come in. I just need to ask you some questions.” Perhaps it was foolish of me to come here, but I’m sick of being afraid and living my life in the shadows.
“You want to ask me some questions? After you drugged me and stole my stuff? I had to spend a night in the police cells because of you. When I was the victim.”
I shrug. Should I feel bad? Because I don’t. “I’ll pay for a replacement phone when I get the money.” It might be some time before that happens: I quit BE Call Solutions as soon as I could. It doesn’t matter if Jason is going to prison for a long time. The place will always remind me of him.
Nathan scowls. “It won’t make up for the inconvenience.”
I reach into my bag and pull out the photo I found in Nathan’s flat. “Recognise this?”
The colour leaches from his face again. “Where did you get that?”
“In your flat,” I say breezily. “When I was looking for the dehumidifier.” I take a step closer. “I only sent you off on that wild goose chase taxi journey because I found this and assumed it was you who was trying to set me up. What were you doing? Stalking me?”
“You had no right to go through my stuff,” Nathan says huffily. “And I wasn’t stalking you.”
“What would you call it?”
He shrugs. “I just found that photo on my phone and printed it to show you. It was a coincidence. There was no need to overreact.”
I shake my head. I’m done with giving people the benefit of the doubt. “You didn’t just find a picture of me that you’d coincidentally taken a year before we met, Nathan. That’s bullshit.”
“Oh alright, fine,” he snaps. “I knew who you were. I’d always fancied you and I’d heard the rumours. I figured you’d be lonely so I chanced my arm. I pretended I didn’t know who you were.” He folds his arms and juts his chin defiantly.
I shiver. “You sat there listening to me tell you about how I was scared Mikey was coming for me. You let me believe…”
“I couldn’t do anything. I felt bad, but if I told you the truth I’d have to admit that I lied to you.”
“You manipulated me,” I spit. “You let me believe I was in danger.”
“I didn’t know you really were.”
I shake my head. “It’s pathetic. You used the fact that I was afraid—”
“I didn’t force you to go out with me.”
I sigh. “What about those times you drugged me. What was that about? Control?”
He flushes. “What?”
“You know what I’m talking about. I woke up on two separate mornings feeling like my head was going to explode and with a horrible taste in my mouth.”
He shoots me a withering look. “Perhaps if you didn’t drink so much you wouldn’t have been hungover. I never drugged you.” He tries to close the door on my foot again. It hurts, but I don’t move it.
“What about when you insisted we had to go to that cafe even though I was in work. Why would you do that if you weren’t trying to sabotage me?”
He looks at me like I’m mad. “It was a nice place. I thought you’d like it.”
Is this really the truth? Is Nathan just a creep who saw an opportunity? It fits: that’s why he told the police he was with me all of Saturday night. He wanted me all to himself.
“What I don’t understand is why you texted me to say you didn’t want to see me anymore. Why do all this and then stop seeing me?”
His face twists into a grotesque grin. “Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen. I knew you’d be back and you were.”
My stomach lurches. What am I doing here? Nathan’s a creep—that’s all I need to know.
I take my foot out of the door frame and turn away.
As repulsed as I am by him, it was his actions that saved me. If he hadn’t come to the police station and told them we were together, they might have kept me in custody—giving Jason enough time to plant that knife with my fingerprints somewhere the police would find it.
“You’re dreaming if you think I’m going to see you again after this.”
I shake my head without looking back. “That’s absolutely fine by me.”
“Well? Did it help?” Tony asks as I sit down.
I think about it for a moment. “Yes and no. I understand things a bit better, but the real mystery is Jason, isn’t it?”
He takes my hands. It’s hard to believe this is the man who was watching me; the man who almost frightened me to death when he tried to grab me outside Dad’s house that night. I understand him better now too: he spent so long locked away that he doesn’t have the same way of communicating as other people. He was just trying to talk to me but he didn’t know how to approach me.
I still haven’t worked out how I feel about him. There’s a lot of bad blood between him and Dad that I’m just going to have to ignore. There’s also the fact that he didn’t treat my mother very well. There’s only one thing I know for sure—he saved my life. If it hadn’t been for him, I can’t even imagine what would have happened.
“Some people are just bad, Ellie. I know from being in… you know.”
I shake my head. It’s not enough. The need to know is consuming me.
Tony squeezes my hand. “You’ve got to try and let it go.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You have to try. You spending all your time thinking about him is what he wants.”
I shudder. That sounds a lot like letting him win, and I won’t do that. “Will you stay for the court case? It could be months yet, but I’d…”
“Yes,” he says. “Of course I will. I’ll stay as long as you want.”
Our coffees come and I empty a sachet of sugar into mine. “Tell me about her, will you? Even if it’s something you think is boring. I want to know what she was like.”
49
Ellie
Six months later
I have my own theories about what drove Jason to do the things he did. And it’s looking more and more like that’s all I’ll have: theories. Jason never spoke to the police. All the proof we’ve got that he was the one who murdered Steph is what he said to me that night in my flat when he tried to kill me. His fingerprints weren’t found on the plastic bag with the knife, nor was there any other evidence to pin it on him.
I had prepared myself for that.
I had also prepared myself for there being no evidence left that it was Jason who attacked Mikey.
But in terms of the case against him for attacking me, I thought it was clear-cut: there was a witness. I was injured—my neck was marked from where he tried to strangle me, for goodness sake. I thought it was a sure thing—my only worry was that he’d be out in a few years.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the way his defence team twisted the truth. They said the fact that there was no evidence of forced entry proved that I’d let him in. They said the marks on my neck were from a sex game gone wrong; one that I’d willingly participated in. They destroyed Tony’s credibility, painting him as a junkie criminal and they did a similar number on me.
The police weren’t sure if Jason would be found guilty on the attempted murder charge, but now it’s looking like he might get off the assault charge too.
I lean my head against the wall and take a deep breath. We’ve been waiting here for hours for the jury to come back. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting here lately and I don’t care. I need to be here when the jury comes back with their verdict.
Jason was unrecognisable in court. He was never particularly warm in work, but I’d never seen anyone so cold and unemotional. He claimed I’d become fixated on him when he tried to help me through a mental breakdown. He denied everything and painted me as a scorned lover out for revenge.
It was terrifying—he was so convincing.
So why did he do it?
I’ve finally accepted that we’ll never get an answer from him beyond what he let slip in my flat that night. The police have had him seen by psychiatrists, but they can’t do much when the subject of their investigation stubbornly sticks to his lies. I’ve gone back over every single interaction I’ve ever had with him and I’m still none the wiser. He never gave me any indication that he was interested in me. But he must have been on some level.
That’s what bothers me. Why did he pick me? What did he see in me that he didn’t see in other people?
I don’t think he intended to hurt me—that’s the impression I got from what he said in my flat that night. I know his word means nothing, but I believe he hurt Mikey in the hope of getting closer to me. I was hurt too, so he had to lay low for a while. There were a few times in his office over the past year where he tried to get me to talk about my life, but I always brushed him off, wanting to keep it professional between us. Then Steph came into my life and so did Nathan. That’s why I think he snapped. Even when I was completely alone, I found someone new instead of leaning on him like he wanted.
I sigh. I could be completely wrong, of course. I’ve got to stop thinking about him. Tony is right: I can’t let him occupy my thoughts forever.
He won’t.
I won’t let him.
Whatever the outcome of this trial, I’m moving on with my life when it’s over.
I shiver as doubts start to grow inside me. What if he’s found not guilty? What if he gets out?
I’ve decided not to move away. I’ve learned the hard way what happens when you’re isolated from your support network. Mine may not be perfect, but it’s all I’ve got and I’m trying to mend relationships and build new ones. I’ve found a new job in a different call centre.
I’ve also kept my promise to stop drinking. I know what happened wasn’t my fault, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept. I made it easy for Jason. I’ve started Ju-Jitsu training too. It’s early days, but I want to be stronger. I still wake myself screaming in the middle of the night. I don’t want to be scared anymore.
