‘You ripped it off – that’s what you told me earlier, isn’t it?’ She looked down at her notes. ‘You “ripped it off that whore’s wrist”?’
Patrick nodded. ‘Yes. I was angry, I’ll admit. I was angry that she had been carrying on with my son, threatening his marriage. She seduced him. Even the strongest and most moral of men can find themselves in thrall to a woman who offers herself in that way …’
‘In what way?’
Patrick ground his teeth. ‘Offering a sort of sexual abandon he might not find at home. It’s sad, I know. It happens. I was angry about it. My son’s marriage is very strong.’ Patrick saw DS Morgan’s eyebrows shoot up, and again, he had to steel himself. ‘I was angry about that. I ripped the bracelet from her wrist. I pushed her.’
PART FOUR
SEPTEMBER
Lena
I THOUGHT I wouldn’t want to leave, but I can’t look at the river every day, cross it on my way to school. I don’t even want to swim in it any more. It’s too cold now, in any case. We’re going to London tomorrow, I’m almost all packed.
The house will be rented out. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want people living in our rooms and filling up our spaces, but Jules said that if we didn’t we might get squatters, or things might start to fall apart and there would be no one there to pick up the pieces, and I didn’t like that idea either. So I agreed.
It’ll still be mine. Mum left it to me, so when I’m eighteen (or twenty-one, or something like that) it’ll be mine properly. And I will live here again. I know I will. I’ll come back when it doesn’t hurt so much and I don’t see her everywhere I look.
I’m scared about going to London, but I feel better about it than I did. Jules (not Julia) is really odd, she’s always going to be odd, she’s fucked up. But I’m a bit weird and fucked up too, so maybe we’ll be fine. There are things I like about her. She cooks and fusses around me, she tells me off for smoking, she makes me tell her where I’m going and when I’ll be back. Like other people’s mums do.
In any case, I’m glad it’ll just be the two of us, no husband and I’m guessing no boyfriends or anything like that, and at least when I go to my new school no one will know who I am or anything about me. You can remake yourself, Jules said, which I thought was a bit off because, like, what’s wrong with me? But I know what she meant. I cut all my hair off and I look different now, and when I go to the new school in London, I won’t be the pretty girl that no one likes, I’ll just be ordinary.
Josh
LENA CAME OVER to say goodbye. She’s cut all her hair off. She’s still pretty, but not as pretty as she used to be. I said I liked it more when it was longer and she laughed and said it’ll grow back. She said, it’ll be long again next time you see me, and that made me feel better because at least she thinks that we’ll see each other again, which I wasn’t sure about, because she’ll be in London now and we’re going to Devon, which is not exactly close by. But she said it wasn’t that far, only five hours or something, and in a few years she would have her driver’s licence and she’d come and get me and see what trouble we could get into.
We sat in my room for a bit. It was kind of awkward because we didn’t know what to say to each other. I asked if she’d had any more news and she sort of looked blank and I said, about Mr Henderson, and she shook her head. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. There’s been lots of rumours – people at school are saying that she killed him and pushed him into the sea. I think it’s rubbish, but even if it isn’t, I wouldn’t blame her.
I know it would have made Katie really unhappy for something to happen to Mr Henderson, but she doesn’t know, does she? There’s no such thing as an afterlife. All that matters are the people who are left, and I think that things have improved. Mum and Dad aren’t happy, but they’re getting better, they’re different than they were. Relieved, maybe? Like they don’t have to wonder any more, about why. They’ve got something they can point to and say, there, that’s why. Something to hold on to, someone said, and I can see that, although for me I don’t think any of it will ever make any sense.
Louise
THE SUITCASES WERE in the car and the boxes were labelled and just before noon they would hand over the keys. Josh and Alec were doing a quick tour of Beckford, saying their goodbyes, but Louise had stayed behind.
Some days were better than others.
Louise had stayed to say goodbye to the house where her daughter had lived, the only home she’d ever known. She had to bid farewell to the height chart in the cupboard under the stairs, to the stone step in the garden where Katie had fallen and cut her knee, where for the first time Louise had had to face that her child wouldn’t be perfect, she would be blemished, scarred. She had to say goodbye to her bedroom, where she and her daughter had sat and chatted while Katie blow-dried her hair and applied her lipstick and said that she was going to Lena’s later and would it be all right if she stayed the night? How many times, she wondered, had that been a lie?
(The thing that kept her awake at night – one of the things – was that day by the river when she’d been so touched, so moved, to see tears in Mark Henderson’s eyes when he offered his condolences.)
Lena had come to say goodbye and had brought with her Nel’s manuscript, the pictures, the notes, a USB with all the computer files. ‘Do what you want with it,’ she said. ‘Burn it if you like. I don’t want to look at any of it again.’ Louise was glad that Lena had come, and gladder still that she would never have to see her again. ‘Can you forgive me, do you think?’ Lena asked. ‘Will you ever?’ And Louise said that she already had, which was a lie, spoken out of kindness.
Kindness was her new project. She hoped it might be gentler on the soul than anger. And in any case, while she knew that she could never forgive Lena – for her dissembling, for her secret-keeping, for simply existing where her own daughter did not – she couldn’t hate her either. Because if anything was clear, anything at all, if anything in this horror was without doubt, it was Lena’s love for Katie.
DECEMBER
Nickie
NICKIE’S BAGS WERE packed.
Things were quieter in the town. It was always like that with winter coming, but lots of people had moved on, too. Patrick Townsend was rotting in his cell (ha!) and his son had run away to find some peace. Good luck to him with that. The Mill House was empty, Lena Abbott and her aunt off to London. The Whittakers had left, too – the house was on the market for less than a week, it seemed, before some people with a Range Rover and three children and a dog turned up.
Things were quieter in her head, too. Jeannie wasn’t talking as loudly as she used to, and when she did, it was more of a chat, less of a tirade. These days, Nickie found she spent less time sitting at the window looking out and more time in bed. She felt very tired and her legs ached more than ever.
In the morning, she was going to Spain, for two weeks in the sunshine. Rest and recreation, that was what she needed. The money came as a surprise: ten thousand pounds from Nel Abbott’s estate, left to one Nicola Sage of Marsh Street, Beckford. Whoever would have thought it? But then perhaps Nickie shouldn’t have been surprised, because Nel was really the only one who’d ever listened. Poor soul! Much good it did her.
Erin