Simon takes a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to call the police because you’re my daughter, Cara. I want to help you.’
‘Is what she says true, Simon?’ I can barely get the words out.
Simon looks down at the floor again.
Oh God, it is. ‘You’ve watched me?’ I can’t keep the horror from my voice. ‘All this time? Years of watching me, and I never knew?’
‘I was watching over you – there’s a difference. I kept my promise; I didn’t interfere with your life. I stood by when you married Ed. I let you live it exactly as you wanted to.’
Cara exclaims. ‘You “let” her live it? Wow Dad. Just… wow.’
‘I never intruded on anything intimate,’ Simon says quickly. ‘I’m not a voyeur, or a pervert.’
Cara bends down and the knife slips diagonally across my throat, making me catch my breath as she whispers in my ear: ‘Now might also be the time to ask him about the pushing incident.’
This time Simon turns completely ashen and his mouth falls open. ‘What pushing incident?’
Oh Jesus Christ – that’s true too? It can’t be! He can’t have done that. ‘Cara tells me that either you or Louise told her to hurt Beth the day she died. Cara did as she was told and pushed Beth.’ I swallow, and the blade gently presses on my skin with the pressure of the movement of my throat.
‘What?’ Simon whips his head round and looks at his daughter in astonishment. ‘That’s an outright lie. I would never do that, and I don’t believe your mother would have either. Just stop this at once! This is an unforgivably cruel thing to do to Jessica. You were five, Cara! You couldn’t possibly have remembered that, even if it did happen, which it didn’t.’
‘Mum discussed it all with me the day before she died,’ Cara insists, unfazed by her father suddenly adopting such an authoritarian tone. ‘She told me it wasn’t an accident.’
‘Don’t listen, Jess,’ Simon says. ‘This simply isn’t true.’ He turns back to Cara again. ‘Mum said I told you to hurt Beth? Why on earth would I have done that? Darling, Mum was very, very ill. You know that. Please don’t tell me you believe her? You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t hurt anyone. Least of all Beth. It was an accident. You were just a little girl.’
There is a pause. I can’t see Cara’s face but I feel the slight tremble of her hand before I hear her say: ‘The problem is, Dad, you’re a habitual liar. Even if Jessica and I were to believe what you just said, now, we’re always going to have that element of doubt. Anyway, I think I can remember doing it.’
‘You can’t. Cara. It didn’t happen. Stop this. Please.’ Simon takes a step forward.
She pushes the flat of the blade against my throat so hard I cough. ‘Don’t! Don’t come any nearer!’
‘Is that what this has all been in aid of?’ He is aghast. ‘You think I made you kill someone?’
‘You completely disgust me!’ she cries suddenly. ‘I am angry, really angry. I can’t keep listening to my friends’ shitty little problems that aren’t really problems. I don’t fit in any more. I can’t concentrate. I can’t sleep. My head feels fucked.’
‘You’re grieving, Cara,’ I say. ‘That’s exactly what it felt like after I lost my mum.’
‘Shut up!’ Cara says. ‘I told you already, we’re not doing the bond over our dead mothers bit. Was it you here yesterday, Dad? You were the man the neighbours saw looking in at the window, weren’t you?’
Simon nods. ‘I found your Larsen trap hidden in the shed at home. When your daughter suddenly develops an interest in trapping magpies, you can’t help but be a little concerned. Then Jess came to see me about the nasty little tricks someone had been playing on her: broken mirrors, messages from beyond the grave – omens, frankly. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. I came here yesterday to see if I was right, to see if you were here, and if I could persuade you to stop, but the neighbours called the police.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Cara laughs incredulously. ‘That was what you noticed? The trap? Something offline and in real life… How ironic. I’m pleased to hear you went to the school though, Jessica. I hoped you might. Did you think she was about to fall back into your arms, Dad? That you were about to get everything you’d ever wanted?’
I see Simon’s jaw clench.
‘She doesn’t love you,’ Cara says. ‘She told me.’
‘But I heard you,’ he turns to me. ‘I heard you say that you miss me. You were in bed, on your laptop, and you said out loud that you didn’t understand how we’d not taken our chance, and that you missed me so much.’
My eyes widen. ‘Simon, did you deliberately come to teach at the school Beth was going to attend?’
‘No. That was actually the first time I’d seen you since we split up. It really was coincidence – or fate – I swear.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Yes, I decided to accept a job in Kent after you had moved to this area from London, and yes, I did put our house on the market before Christmas with the same agents you were selling with, and I was aware you were looking to buy something exactly like our property, but no, I don’t apologise for coincidence creating opportunities for us.’
‘And there you have it.’ Cara looks at her father incredulously. ‘Playing God and creating opportunities… is that what I was doing when you told me to push Beth?’
‘I didn’t tell you to do anything! I would never—’
‘When Mum phoned me the night before she died,’ Cara talks loudly over him, ‘she told me she had made some terrible mistakes. She told me about Jessica, what you told me to do and what then happened to Beth. She tried desperately to keep us together as a family, and it hadn’t worked. She admitted she had finally accepted your marriage was over. She was going to quit drinking for good this time, she was going to leave you – and she was going to be a better Mum to me. I told her to detox safely and take her meds, and she swore she would.’ Cara takes a deep breath and continues: ‘Then when she died, I came home, and you told me she’d been trying to detox so we could all be a family again. Pretty much the exact opposite of what Mum said. Not only that, but when one of your parents dies, you kind of expect the one left might lift their head up out of their computer for more than five minutes, come out of the study and sit with you in the sitting room for a bit. I get why you used to live in your room while Mum was alive – but I really could have used some company when I got back from France. Do you know, I took James to the park the other day and there was a father on the seesaw with his little girl. She was sat on one end, looking confused, just holding on, and he was sat on the other, bouncing up and down while staring at his phone. That’s bad enough – but you take that shit to a whole different level, Dad.
‘I actually couldn’t believe what I found on your laptop when I went through it while you were at the solicitors. Not only was the woman I’d seen driving away from the house the morning I got back clearly not the estate agent, like you said – it was Jessica in a hundred different files, screen grabs, and emails. I can only suppose you didn’t feel the need to hide it all away as Mum wasn’t there any more; perhaps you didn’t think I cared. Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, Dad, but you’ve always been a fucking disappointment as a parent and do you finally see what you’ve done, now? What your actions have caused?’ Her hand starts to tremble again. I can’t tell if it’s with fear, or excitement. Then she steps to the left of me so we are side by side. ‘Jessica doesn’t get Beth, Beth doesn’t get a life, I don’t get a Mum… you don’t get Jessica…’
She suddenly lifts her hand aloft, the knife high above my head.
My mouth falls open in horror, and I hear Simon shout: ‘STOP!’
Cara pauses, as if she can’t quite believe what she’s about to do, and then says in a tiny voice: ‘and you lose another daughter too.’