by Sibel Hodge
I stared at her but I wasn’t really listening.
‘Mum?’ She waved a hand in front of my face.
I snapped to attention, standing up and retrieving the necklace from the drawer. ‘Do you mean this?’
She reached out for it. ‘Hey, you found it! Thanks, Mum. I think I could get quite a bit for it if I clean it up. You’ve got some silver cleaner, haven’t you?’
I enclosed it in my clenched hand. ‘Where did you get it from?’ I asked.
So she told me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chris opened his front door, looking even worse than before, if that was possible. A waft of alcohol fumes engulfed him. He smelled like Rose, and it made me want to throw up all over him.
‘Hi,’ he said to me, then turned to Anna and ruffled her hair. He stood back. ‘Come in.’
I followed him into the kitchen. Lucas sat there nursing a coffee, although judging by the half-empty whisky bottle on the table, it was laced. We’d need shares in a distillery at this rate. His usually tanned skin was pale and shiny, as if he was one of those lifeless wax dummies at Madame Tussaud’s.
‘I’m so sorry about Charlotte,’ I said to him.
He sighed. Ran a hand over the back of his neck. ‘Yeah. We’re all sorry. Don’t know if that’s going to do her any good, though.’
‘Is she OK?’ Anna asked him.
He laughed. It sounded bitter. ‘She’s up in her room. She’s looking forward to seeing you.’
Anna galloped out of the room as fast as her legs would carry her.
‘Where’s Nadia?’ I asked.
Lucas pointed through the open bi-fold glass doors out into the garden. At the end was a wooden bench overlooking their pond. Nadia sat with her back to us, smoking.
‘She’s started smoking again?’
‘Me, too.’ Lucas picked up a packet of cigarettes on the table and dropped them back down.
‘That’s not going to help.’
‘Thank you, Nurse.’ He shrugged.
‘Want a drink?’ Chris tilted his tumbler in my direction.
I looked at it. ‘No. And you should give it a rest, too. How much are you drinking at the moment?’
He wouldn’t meet my gaze. ‘Who cares?’
‘You just missed Ethan,’ Lucas said.
My heart jolted in my chest. I’d accused my husband of murder. I hadn’t trusted him. Hadn’t believed his explanation. Automatically, I’d believed the worst of him. How could I ever have thought he was capable of something like that? I was a horrible person. Would we ever be able to get back from that? Jagged shards of remorse ripped at my heart.
There was no time to think about it now, though. I pushed the thoughts into a corner of my mind to deal with later and walked outside towards the pond. There was a swell of dark clouds moving in. The wind danced on my skin. A summer storm was on its way. The end of the heat wave.
I sat next to Nadia. She kept her eyes fixed on the water, blowing out a line of blue-grey smoke before throwing the butt on the grass and squashing it with her sandal.
I pulled the necklace out of my pocket and held it out to her in my palm. ‘Do you remember this?’
She looked at it. Frowned. It took a while, maybe half a minute, for the light of something to spark behind her eyes. I thought it was recognition, but I couldn’t be certain because her gaze whipped away from me.
She took another cigarette from a packet resting on the bench, even though she’d just put one out, and lit it with a shaky hand. She inhaled deeply. ‘No, I don’t recognise it. Why?’
‘Don’t lie to me, Nadia. Anna found it when she was going through your things for the car boot sale. She found it in the magic box Tom gave you for your twenty-first.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She flicked the ash off her cigarette a few times. ‘Anna must be mistaken. There was nothing in that box. She must’ve got it from somewhere else.’
I leaned forward and gripped her arm. ‘Chris said Katie was wearing this the day she ran away. How did you get it?’
I prayed to be wrong again. Wanted with all my heart to be wrong.
‘I don’t know anything about it.’ She shook my hand off and laughed, but I knew that laugh. I’d heard it many times over the years. It was higher than usual, a tinkling sound she took on when she was nervous.
I gripped her arm again, harder this time. ‘Nadia. Do. Not. Lie. To. Me.’ I pronounced each word slowly, the tone of my voice letting her know I wasn’t going to drop this. ‘I want to hear it from you. You owe me the truth. Or do you want me to go inside and tell everyone else about what I’ve found?’
She looked down at my hand that held the necklace, then closed her eyes briefly, her blonde lashes fluttering against her cheeks. She inhaled on the cigarette. Exhaled slowly. Opened her eyes.
‘If you don’t tell me, I’m going in there right now to show them this.’ I jabbed a finger towards the bi-fold doors into the kitchen beyond and stood up.
‘Wait!’ She grabbed hold of my arm. ‘Wait.’ She pulled me back down again. She took a deep breath and licked her lips. ‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ she said softly. ‘All this time and I’d completely forgotten. It was . . .’
‘What? It was what?’
‘It was mine.’
‘Yours? Then why—’ And I suddenly knew. ‘Katie stole it from your room, didn’t she?’
She stood stiffly and glanced into the house. She smoothed her sundress down with her hands, threw the cigarette on the ground next to the last one and ground it into the grass. ‘Let’s go for a walk and I’ll tell you everything. Not here, though. I don’t want to do it here. Not with everyone around.’
We walked down the street, heading towards our usual dog-walking path along the side of the barn and into the woods. We didn’t say a word. My heart felt heavy with adrenaline, anger, resignation and sadness. The sky was black over our heads now. In the distance I could hear thunder, see the spikes of lightning flashing on the horizon. The air was thick with electricity. When we got through the woods and came out into the sprawling fields that led over the hills to Abbotsbury, she finally spoke.
‘Yes. Katie stole that necklace from me. Lucas had just bought it for me, and I couldn’t believe she was wearing it that day.’
I grabbed her shoulder and spun her round to face me. ‘How did you get it back, Nadia? What happened?’
Her anguished eyes stared into mine, glistening with tears. She folded her arms across her chest and gripped her elbows.
Thunder rumbled over our heads.
I clutched both her shoulders. ‘Tell me what happened.’
She bit her trembling lip. ‘Katie was sleeping with Lucas. I caught them at it one day. Over there, in the woods.’ She pointed back to where we’d just emerged. ‘Do you remember Sparky, our old dog? I was walking him. He was a bugger for running off when he wasn’t on the lead. He’d caught sight of a squirrel or something in the distance and belted off through the trees, so I was off the beaten path looking for him. I heard them before I saw them. Lucas had his back to me, sitting on this fallen log. She was on top, facing my direction. I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe he was cheating on me. I love him, Liv.’ She sank to her knees, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. ‘Love him with all my heart.’
Rain started to pour down in fat pellets. A bolt of lightning lit up the sky.
‘What, so you killed her to get her out of the way? How cold and callous can you be?’ I shrieked.
‘No,’ she wailed. ‘No, it wasn’t like that. She . . . um . . . she looked up when she was fucking him. I don’t know if she saw me through the trees but she had this weird smile on her face. Triumphant. Part of me wanted to run over there and punch both of them, but I didn’t. I covered my mouth to stop myself screaming and ran home, trying to think
of what to do.’ Her head dropped back and she turned her face up to the sky, her tears mingling with the rain, and she groaned. ‘I was hoping it was just a one-off. That it wasn’t going to happen again. I could deal with that. I could forget about it.’
‘So what did you do?’ I sank down next to her, ignoring the water lashing down, soaking my hair and clothes, dreading the next words out of her mouth.
She didn’t speak. Just stared in the distance.
‘What did you do, Nadia?’ I yelled over the thunder.
‘I kept an eye on Lucas. When he wasn’t with me, I followed him,’ she said, head bowed.
‘What?’
‘I’m not proud of it, but I couldn’t lose him. Not Lucas. He’s the love of my life. My soul mate. He’s everything to me. I couldn’t lose him to her.’ Her shoulders stiffened. ‘But as far as I knew he never saw her again, so it was a shock when months later I was at his house and she put a letter through his door. Lucas never knew. He was in the shower and I was in the kitchen cooking dinner for us. His parents were away for the weekend so we were making the most of having their house to ourselves. I heard the letterbox go, and when I looked out the window she was going back down the path. So I opened the envelope and inside was a letter that said she had to meet him on Sunday at the barn. She knew there would be no one there on a Sunday, and it would be somewhere private they could talk. It said she had something of his and she wanted to make sure he paid for it. I thought she’d stolen something from him at first. I didn’t think she could be pregnant.’ Nadia let out an almighty sniff. ‘So I went instead of Lucas and . . .’ she trailed off, shaking her head.
‘Go on,’ I said stiffly, guts churning.
‘We were in what would be the kitchen now at the back of the house. All the doors and windows were fitted so there was no chance we could be heard from the outside, but the place was still unlocked while the other contractors were coming in to do stuff. She was obviously pretty surprised I was there and not Lucas.’ Nadia took a deep breath. Held it. ‘Everything happened in a hazy blur of anger. I told her to leave him alone. She laughed at me and said it was too late for that. I noticed she had my necklace on. My necklace that Lucas had given me and she’d stolen. I tried to grab it but she darted away from me. She undid the chain and threw it at me, saying she’d let me have it back, seeing as she had something much more valuable now. I put the necklace in my pocket and asked her what the hell she was talking about. That’s when she told me she was nearly six months pregnant. She’d waited all this time to tell anyone so no one could try and talk her into getting rid of it. She said she wanted money from Lucas to support her and the baby or she was going to say he’d raped her and get him put in prison.’
I cupped my hands around my mouth and sucked in a breath.
‘I told you she was a liar. I think she did it on purpose, you know – got pregnant. She wanted one of the rich boys from the village so she could use him to get away from Rose and Jack. She didn’t get anywhere with Chris so she tried it with Lucas. She used him to get herself knocked up, although obviously he didn’t need much persuading.’ She let out a laugh devoid of any humour.
‘She was fucking pregnant, for God’s sake! She was about to be a mother!’ I wiped the hair now sticking to my forehead away from my face and shivered involuntarily.
‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I was screwed up with emotion. When she told me about the baby and the rape I just snapped. She was prepared to get Lucas sent to prison if he didn’t go along with her blackmail. And she didn’t give a toss about anyone she hurt in the process. So—’ She stopped abruptly. Stared at the ground, tears splashing down her cheeks, mingling with the rain.
‘They wouldn’t have found Lucas guilty of rape! Especially not back then, when rape convictions were rare and there was no evidence. Was that worth killing her over?’ I cried.
‘I just lashed out and pushed her. It was one split second! I didn’t realise how hard at first, but I was raging with anger and jealousy. She fell backwards and hit her head on a pile of quarry tiles.’
‘Oh, no.’ I closed my eyes and tried not to picture it, but an image of the scene flew into my head. I sucked in lungfuls of air, my head spinning.
‘I thought she was pretending at first. I yelled at her to get up. I kicked her foot but nothing happened. That was when I noticed the blood pooling out onto the tiles beneath her head along with some kind of other fluid.’
I fought the urge to retch. We’d been walking over that floor for years and all that time it was where Katie had been killed. No matter how much scrubbing and cleaning you do, how can you ever get rid of that?
‘We’d done a first aid course a few months before at college and I felt her pulse. There was nothing there. She was already dead and it was too late to do anything. It was an accident. A terrible accident. I didn’t mean to kill her. I didn’t know what to do next. I panicked. I panicked and ran home. I expected the police to knock on my door any second. But they didn’t. No one came. No one said anything about Katie being dead.’
‘Because everyone thought she’d run away,’ I said bitterly.
‘Yes.’ Her hands trembled at her sides.
I stood up and walked a few paces, hands on hips, staring at the ground, fighting for breath. ‘I can’t believe it.’ I thought about the scene in Tom’s room when DI Spencer and DS Khan were questioning him. Nadia had said Please, Dad. At the time I’d thought she was pleading with him to tell the truth but it was the exact opposite. She was pleading with him to stay quiet.
‘He was protecting me. Everything he did was to protect me.’
‘So you just let Tom take the blame for it? How could you? How selfish could you be? What did he say to you afterwards? “Oh, hi, Nadia. I’ve just cleared up that little mess you left in the kitchen and buried her under the garage. Don’t worry – it’ll be our little secret! Oh, and can you pass the mashed potato, please? I’m starving”?’ I screamed out. ‘You let everyone think it was Tom! You let me think it was Ethan! You put us through all this and you had the bloody cheek to blame me for it all!’ I slapped her hard across the face, my chest heaving with rage.
Her head jerked sideways and she put a hand to her cheek. Her shoulders sagged. ‘I deserve that.’
‘Did Ethan know?’ I glared at her.
She dropped her hand and stared out in the distance.
‘Did he? ’ I grabbed her chin between my forefinger and thumb and forced her to look at me.
‘No. No one knew. It wasn’t my decision in the end. When I came home Dad was working in the garden. I told him what had happened. I cried and cried and told him how it had been a horrible accident. He told me to stay where I was and not to tell anyone. Not a soul. Ever. Maybe if there had been a trial I would’ve been convicted of manslaughter, not murder, but in those days if you killed someone you were sent to prison for life, not the few years you get now. And what if the jury didn’t believe it was really an accident?’
I shook my head, dropped my hand, unable to bear touching her anymore. I clenched my fists. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘Dad didn’t want shame on the family. He didn’t want us all to suffer. He disappeared and came back in the middle of the night. All he said was that he’d dealt with it, and I could never tell a soul. When the police didn’t come knocking and everyone was saying Katie had left the village I thought that maybe I’d got it wrong. That she was still alive and really had got up from the floor after I left and just run away. That I hadn’t really killed her, it was all just some horrendous nightmare. But then . . . I understood. Sometimes I’d catch Dad looking at me in a certain way. As if he was in agony. And I knew that if she was really alive she would’ve never left me and Lucas alone. She would’ve done everything she’d threatened to do and more. Lucas would be in prison for rape and I’d be right alongside him for attempted murder or something. Dad covere
d it up − buried her body, somewhere they’d never find her. So as the days went on I knew Dad had done what he had to do to protect me. He kept the secret until he couldn’t remember not to anymore.’
I shook my head, my bones feeling too heavy to stand. Dizziness took over, and I sank back to the slippery, sodden ground again. ‘You have to go to the police. Tell them now what happened.’
‘I can’t. Don’t you understand? Not with Charlotte like this!’
‘So we just carry on hiding this, do we?’ I wanted to slap her again, then caught myself. I was letting my anger unleash itself, just like she’d done all those years ago with dire consequences. ‘Can you live with this?’ I let out a mirthless laugh. ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot. You have been for twenty-five years!’
‘It was an accident. A horrible, horrible accident. I never meant for it to happen. There hasn’t been a single day that I didn’t wish I’d done something differently. But I’ve tried to make up for what I did. Doing the volunteer work for children’s charities, being a good wife and mother. Looking after my family. It was my redemption. I’ve tried to be a good person. Tried to pay for it all. To balance the good with the bad. And now I’m paying the worst kind of price. Charlotte. It’s motherly karma, isn’t it? Maybe she has to die for it all to be made right.’
The wind grated on my skin; the rain stung my eyes. A chill worked its way through my bones, like spiders crawling deep inside.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
I stared down at Tate Barn in the distance, wanting to set the place on fire. ‘I don’t know.’
Epilogue
I used to think that everything was black and white. Crimes should be punished. People shouldn’t tell lies. Not big ones, anyway. Not important I’ve-just-killed-someone lies. But then, I’d never been in this situation before.
