Finding Grace

by K. L. Slater

  Fifty

  The days that followed were full of wedding plans, but this time it was so exciting because they were her own.

  Since seeing Stefan, Lucie had thought about him every day. The change in him had been so pronounced, it had totally messed her up. On the one hand, she felt inexplicably lighter inside, as if his apology had untethered the burden of her guilt and it had finally begun to dissipate. On the other hand, her natural mistrust of him stirred uncomfortably in her guts, and the terror of the day he killed Rhonda seemed fresh in her mind.

  She felt run down and had picked up a nasty cold. She felt sure the constant unsettled feeling in her stomach was something to do with the downturn in her wellbeing. Yet she felt as if facing Stefan again, looking him in the eyes, had given her permission to be happy with Blake. She appreciated her fiancé’s qualities of honesty and kindness more than ever.

  Four days after she’d met up with Stefan, Blake came over to the house. Her dad was working the late shift at the factory, and she’d cooked Blake his favourite meal. Nothing fancy, just a quality rib-eye steak, hand-cut chips and a bottle of a particular Shiraz he was rather partial to.

  ‘To what do I owe this honour?’ His mouth fell open in surprise when he arrived and she ushered him over to the beautifully set table. Usually they’d order takeout during the week, as Lucie always felt too tired to cook.

  ‘Can’t a girl treat her man now and again?’ She grinned, carrying through his plate. ‘Just appreciating you, that’s all. Excited that I’m going to be your wife very soon.’

  ‘You can’t possibly be as excited as I am,’ he said, sitting down at the table and feasting his eyes on the meal in front of him. ‘I can’t wait to be your husband.’

  At Pete’s suggestion, they’d decided they’d live with him in the two-bed terrace for a year while they saved for a deposit for somewhere of their own. Blake had a small flat on the wrong side of town, and he was due to exchange contracts on its sale the following week.

  Lucie set some background jazz to play and sat down at the table, occasionally sneezing into her tissue.

  ‘Cheers.’ They clinked glasses. ‘To us.’

  ‘To us,’ Blake agreed.

  If she was completely honest, Lucie had to admit that part of the reason for the slap-up meal was to allay the guilt she felt for not telling Blake she’d gone for a coffee with another man.

  But how could she possibly do that without opening a can of worms? If she’d told him an old university friend had tracked her down, he’d have asked how they knew where to find her, and why they wanted to speak to her, and… Blake was no fool, and she’d get all flustered and then he’d know there was something she wasn’t telling him.

  Besides, when she’d first got to know him, she’d already passed off her short time at university as a disaster, where virtually nobody spoke to her from one day to the next.

  He wasn’t going to believe that someone had gone to the trouble to meet up with her just for a coffee, was he?

  So she’d said nothing at all. Hadn’t mentioned it. It would become just another thing to pop in the terrible memory box and push as far away as she could manage into the archives of her mind.

  Blake wasn’t late leaving; he had an early breakfast meeting with the council about something or other. He had his sights set on working as a local councillor one day and he’d explained to her that this was how he’d win the trust of local communities, who’d hopefully end up voting him in.

  She set the bath running and began to clear the table, carrying the dirty plates through into the kitchen.

  The handle of the back door rattled and she unlocked it, rolling her eyes.

  ‘What have you forgotten this time – oh!’

  She tried to close the door, but Stefan was too quick for her. He pushed it forcefully open, sending her skittling back on her heels into the kitchen.

  He calmly closed the door behind him and locked it.

  ‘I’ve just seen lover boy leave, so I thought you might appreciate a little company.’ A couple of strides and he was right in front of her. ‘Bet you could use some attention from a real man instead of your wet Green Party fella. Told him about our little tête-à-tête, have you?’

  She swallowed hard and spoke firmly.

  ‘Stefan. Remember everything you said the other day at the café. How you’ve regretted the things—’

  He threw his head back and laughed. ‘That was all bollocks, you daft cow! I couldn’t believe you swallowed it so easily.’ His reached out and touched her breast. ‘Now, where did we leave it, last time we slept together?’

  ‘No!’ She pushed him hard and turned to run from the room, but his fingers tangled in her hair and jerked her head back.

  She screamed as she felt hair ripping out of her scalp.

  ‘You’d do well to remember how Rhonda died, Lucinda. I did it then and got away with it, and I could easily do it again.’ He pressed his body up close against her from the back. ‘One more time for the road, doll, what do you say?’

  ‘Please… no… just leave, now. Don’t do anything you’ll regret…’

  ‘That’s not going to happen. I want you. I’ve thought about you for a long time, imagined the two of us having some of that wild fun we used to enjoy. Remember those days?’

  She squeezed her eyes closed against the moving pictures in her mind.

  ‘I want you one last time before you marry him. Just between us, because if you tell… well, you know what will happen.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I’ve still got them, you know. The photographs. My evidence against you.’

  Lucie groaned, the food she’d eaten earlier churning in her stomach.

  He propelled her forward, out of the kitchen and into the dim lounge. She’d already pulled the curtains when she and Blake had sat down with coffee earlier.

  Please come back to the house for something, Blake, she willed silently. Please.

  Wordlessly, Stefan pushed her down on the carpeted floor and peeled off his T-shirt. His face looked wolfish, feral as he advanced on her.

  And Blake didn’t come back.

  Fifty-One

  When Stefan had left, Lucie lay curled up in the foetal position for a long time.

  At that moment, she knew with all her heart there would be no escape from him. Even if she married Blake, there would be no new life waiting for her. Her life was simply an extension of the one she thought she’d left behind in Newcastle.

  Stefan had the power to reclaim her at any time because he held the ultimate card: he could frame her for murder and she couldn’t do a thing about it. He could make sure she spent the rest of her life in prison.

  Every day she’d live in fresh fear Stefan would return.

  There was only one outcome that would give her peace. In that moment, she didn’t want to live any more. She didn’t want to see the look on Blake’s handsome face when he realised what she was, that she’d been lying to him all this time.

  She wasn’t the woman he thought he was marrying. She was a fraud, someone who would stand by and let a monster like Stefan O’Hara get away scot-free with murdering an innocent girl who’d had her whole life ahead of her.

  She’d been incredibly selfish by not going to the police all those years ago. Yes, she’d been worried about her father’s health, but really, if she was honest, it was worrying about herself that was the strongest motivation. She hadn’t had the courage to do the right thing and hope that truth would prevail.

  The die was cast the minute she walked away and did nothing. She’d handed power over her life, her freedom, to Stefan O’Hara on a plate.

  And he was still using it.

  Her stomach hurt, her legs and arms hurt; she felt bruised and battered inside.

  She rolled over and managed to get up on to her hands and knees. Using the edge of the couch, she hoisted herself up to standing. Her head felt woozy, her knees almost too weak to bear her weight.

  It took a few minutes to slowl
y limp into the kitchen. Her throat felt so raw, she would have a coughing fit if she didn’t get some water, and that would crucify her sore stomach.

  She reached the kitchen door and gasped. Water was gushing through the ceiling; the kitchen floor was swimming.

  She’d completely forgotten she’d left the bath running upstairs.

  Ironically, the bath flooding saved her. All thoughts of doing away with herself were forgotten and her practical side kicked in.

  She locked the back door and bolted it, took a gulp of water straight from the tap and crawled upstairs on all fours, the wrenching ache in her lower abdomen worsening as she advanced.

  When she reached the narrow landing at the top, something inside her seemed to take over. She turned off the bath taps, pulled out the plug and stepped across the soaked floor to take a quick shower.

  After checking herself over and gingerly dabbing her body dry with the softest towel she could find, she was relieved to see that apart from the odd red carpet burn here and there, she had no other visible marks that would alert Blake that she’d been attacked.

  She pulled on some elasticated leggings and a soft T-shirt and went back downstairs.

  Before she could call Blake to come and help with the flood, her phone started ringing.

  ‘Blake?’

  ‘There’s been a terrible accident at the end of your road, Lucie, and I wanted to check you were safe and sound inside the house.’

  Something made her drop the phone and walk ghost-like to the window.

  A cluster of flashing blue lights and white emergency vehicles blocked the road to her right. She walked outside in bare feet. Stepping out on to the pavement, she saw other residents watching from their front gardens.

  A little further up the road, a police officer stood talking on her radio.

  Lucie padded towards her, focused on the vehicles.

  ‘Can I help you, love?’ the officer said, looking down at Lucie’s feet. ‘You really need to put something on your feet; broken glass flies out miles from collisions.’

  ‘What happened?’ Lucie said faintly, her heartbeat racing as she gained a better view of the smashed vehicles.

  ‘A three-way collision,’ the police officer said gravely, stepping in front of Lucie as she started to move again. ‘There are fatalities and life-changing injuries. Please stay where you are, madam. It’s not very pleasant up there.’

  Lucie craned her neck around the officer and squinted at the tangled metal. She couldn’t stop staring at the white van with insignia and print on the side.

  Its whole body was buckled and bent; it looked to have been virtually sheared in half.

  She’d seen the van before. Four days earlier, parked at The Carlton, in fact.

  It belonged to Stefan O’Hara.

  Fifty-Two

  Blake came over to mop up the flood. He took one look at her and put his arms around her.

  ‘You’re shaking. It’s OK, only a bit of water.’

  She nodded, pressing her face into his warm chest.

  ‘You look terrible, Luce. Give me your house insurance details; I’ll sort it out for you. Go and sit in the lounge and I’ll—’

  ‘I can’t… I don’t want to sit in there,’ she said, calming her alarmed tone. ‘I’ll go up to bed if that’s OK. It’s probably just a bug.’

  He made tea and brought it up to her.

  ‘It looks a mess but it’s not actually too bad. The ceiling hasn’t come down and it hasn’t affected the electrics.’

  She didn’t care about the damage. She just wanted to get out of this house.

  She waited for the conversation to come around to the accident. Blake made it his business to find out everything that happened in and around the community. He had good contacts in all the emergency services.

  ‘It’s terrible. Two dead and one with life-changing injuries, apparently.’

  Please God, she prayed inwardly. Please let Stefan be dead.

  ‘The two dead are both female. A man has survived but is in a pretty bad way.’

  ‘Do you know what his injuries are?’

  ‘His legs were crushed, apparently. It’s bad. They’ve taken them all to the Queen’s Medical Centre.’

  Damn. Damn. Damn. Her one chance to be rid of him for good, and he’d managed, as always, to escape.

  Stefan didn’t die, but Blake said the doctor had told one of the traffic officers that he would be paralysed from the neck down.

  Three days after the accident, and posing as a close friend, Lucie telephoned the Queen’s Medical Centre and got Stefan O’Hara’s ward details from the main reception.

  At visiting time that evening, while Blake was attending a meeting at the town hall about a nearby power station, she entered the ward with the group of visitors waiting to see patients.

  When she explained she was a friend of Stefan’s from university, a young nurse pointed out his bed. ‘He’s not awake very much; he’s been heavily sedated since his operation.’

  ‘Is it true what I heard… he’s paralysed from the neck down?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, yes. He can only move his head.’

  Lucie walked over and gazed down at him. His eyes were closed, his face terribly pale. His arms, covered in tubes, already looked thinner, wasted.

  He didn’t wake up. She’d rehearsed what she would say to him, how she would finally have power over him, but he never even knew she was there.

  It didn’t matter. It felt as if she’d just emerged from a tiny locked room and walked into a wildflower meadow.

  She felt vindicated. She felt free.

  ‘Thank you, karma,’ she whispered into his ear.

  Fifty-Three

  Lucie

  Tuesday morning

  I lie awake, but with my eyes closed. Once they are open, I will know it’s time to face another day without Grace.

  I must have got up three or four times in the night. Oscar woke, fractious and unsettled in the early hours, no doubt picking up on the upheaval and tension in the house. I told Blake to go back to sleep and I tended to him. Relished the closeness of holding him safe in my arms. One child, I can still keep secure. Can still shower with my love.

  Twice last night, I honestly thought I was going to be sick. I rushed to the bathroom and sat next to the loo for what seemed like ages.

  And I was sick. Sick inside, sick in every cell of my body. So sick, I felt like I might just stop breathing. But I didn’t stop breathing. I just kept thinking and thinking about everything. About Grace… and about Barbara Charterhouse and her shocking revelation.

  How could I have been so stupid? Believed Stefan’s lie for so long?

  I open my eyes and see that Blake is lying on his side watching me, a strange expression on his face. It’s almost as if he can read my thoughts.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ I stare steadily back at him. This man I’ve loved and borne his children. I want to tell him what I know but I can’t. Not yet.

  ‘I’m looking at you. My beautiful wife who I love more than anything.’

  I sit up and swing my legs over the bed. We desperately need to talk, but it can wait until after the television appeal today. It has to wait.

  Emotion washes over me like a tidal wave, and without warning, I start to sob. Great wet, messy sobs. Then Blake is next to me, trying to put his arm around me.

  ‘Lucie, come on. We have to pull together on this. We have to.’

  Today, we’re doing a live television appeal for information about our daughter. It’s another step in what I can’t believe is our new reality, a terribly serious development that Grace has been missing long enough that we need to do an appeal. But it could be the turning point. This could bring her home.

  Is Grace coming home? Nobody can say. Only her abductor knows, and I firmly believe now that she has been taken. Hope has begun to seep away and is gathering speed. Soon there will be none left. For all my anger and disappointment with Dad and what he’s done, I wish he was
here with me now.

  I walk into my son’s room and watch him sleep. His tiny chest, rising and falling with each precious breath. He is here. He is alive. He needs me.

  I shower, wash and dry my hair and pull it up into a ponytail. I dress in a loose striped blouson top and black trousers with low-heeled black shoes.

  Downstairs, the hallway is a hive of activity. Uniformed officers and the two detectives mill around endlessly making and taking telephone calls.

  Nadine arrives. Blake has arranged for her to look after Oscar while we’re at the television studios. He leads her to the kitchen, where I spot them through the open door, their heads together, speaking in low voices.

  I walk into the living room and stand by the window. The press crowd has doubled in size.

  Fiona comes in and stands next to me. I continue to stare outside.

  ‘Morning, Lucie. I know you’ll be dreading the televised appeal, but you’ll get through it. This could be so powerful in progressing the investigation. Try to remember that.’

  I nod. I can’t think what to say, so I stay quiet.

  An hour later, Blake and I are in the back of an unmarked police car on our way to the BBC studios in Nottingham.

  We’re escorted into the building and taken straight inside. When we walk into the big room filled with journalists and television cameras, silence falls.

  We are the main event.

  We stand behind a screen in one of the studios. When I peek around it, there’s a long table with chairs and microphones. A crescent-shaped group of journalists, photographers and film camera operators wait, buzzing with a nervous excitement.

  My palms feel damp and my body is aching, as if I’m coming down with something. Blake smiles and squeezes my hand but his face looks grey and drawn.

  DI Pearlman appears and I feel gratified to see a friendly face.

  ‘OK, just like we said on the way here… be as natural as you can. Just be yourself.’ He looks at me. ‘I know it’s hard, but remember you aren’t on trial here, there’s no script, no right or wrong things to say so no pressure. If you can manage to say how you’re feeling, both of you, how life is without Grace, then today will be a success because people will want to help. We’re confident they will respond.’