‘Hannah—’
‘You all lied to me. All of you. You are all responsible, and you’re not going to get away with it. None of you.’
I stood up. ‘Hannah, please, Doug and I, we love you so much, we’ve looked after you since you were a baby, we have always thought of you as our daughter. I only ever wanted you to be happy!’
She turned on me then. ‘Happy? I have never been happy here. You never loved me, not like you love Toby. I felt it, always, and when I overheard you and Rose talking that day I finally understood why: because I’m not yours. You lied to me my whole life and I’ll make sure you get your fucking punishment too.’ She turned to go. ‘But first it’s Oliver and Rose’s turn.’
‘What are you going to do?’ I cried.
She glanced back at me. ‘All these years I’ve been watching them, following them, seeing how they doted on those kids of theirs. Those three spoilt little pricks have had everything they ever wanted. So one by one I’m going to show them what their father’s really like. Maybe then Oliver will wish he’d treated me a bit better, maybe he’ll regret how he threw me away.’
And then she walked slowly from the room, leaving me staring after her, reeling in shock.
I heard her go out an hour later. The first thing I did was to try to call Rose to warn her, but the phone rang and rang until in the end I gave up. I paced the house, adrenalin and fear shooting through me while I went over and over what Hannah had said, driving myself mad trying to work out what her next move might be. What did she want with Emily? What was she planning to do? No matter how many times I tried Rose, there was no answer: nobody picked up, nobody, it seemed, was home.
When Doug got back later that evening I pulled him into the kitchen and shutting the door in case Toby should overhear us, told him what had happened. ‘I can’t get hold of Rose,’ I said anxiously. ‘Maybe they’ve changed their number since the last time I saw her, it was nine years ago, after all.’
‘Christ,’ he said, looking at me in dismay. ‘And you have no idea where Hannah has gone?’
‘No. She left but she didn’t say where.’
At that moment, Toby came in. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, stopping dead and looking from one to another of our faces.
‘Nothing!’ I said brightly. ‘Nothing at all. Go and wash your hands for tea, will you?’
We tried to eat a normal meal, but I couldn’t stop the panic pulsing through me. The look in Hannah’s eyes had been so triumphant, so spiteful. Maybe she’d been bluffing, I told myself, maybe I should just wait and see, but I couldn’t ignore the fear that was slipping and sliding in the pit of my stomach, and though I kept trying Rose, no one picked up. As the clock crept closer to ten o’clock, I made up my mind. ‘I’m going to drive over there, to Suffolk,’ I told Doug.
He looked worried. ‘Maybe I should come with you.’
‘No,’ I said decisively. ‘Wait here with Toby in case Hannah comes back. She was probably only trying to scare us.’
It took me forty minutes to drive to The Willows, the clock on my dashboard telling me it was ten forty-five when I pulled up outside. I half expected the house to be in darkness but in fact I could see a light burning brightly from the living room. They must have changed their phone number, I thought, and remembered how Rose had told me never to contact her again, the last time we’d met. When I knocked, the look on Rose’s face told me all I needed to know. She nodded silently at me to come in, and when I followed her into the kitchen Oliver was there, white as a sheet. Fear trailed its fingers along my spine. ‘Do you know?’ I blurted. ‘That Hannah has been meeting with Emily? I came here to warn you, I don’t know what she’s planning to do but—’
‘You’re too late, Beth,’ Rose replied quietly. ‘Emily got a phone call and she went out, saying she was going to meet her friend Becky. When she came back she knew everything. It was Hannah she’d been meeting all along, she’d told her everything.’
I sank on to a chair. ‘Oh, Rose.’
Her face twisted in pain. ‘She’s gone,’ she said. ‘Emily has gone. We don’t know where she is. She says she never wants to see or speak to us again. She hates us, she thinks we’re monsters!’ And then Rose told me what had happened. Emily had come home from seeing Hannah, beside herself with fury. ‘She kept shouting, “Is it true? Is it true?” She knew everything. About Oliver’s affair, Nadia’s death, how Hannah had been given away. Hannah even told her that I had killed Nadia, that I’d pushed her into the sea in revenge for sleeping with Oliver!’
‘My God,’ I said. ‘Did Emily believe her?’
She put her head in her hands. ‘I don’t know. I hope not, I don’t think so … I don’t know! She said that even if it wasn’t true, it was still Oliver’s fault she jumped, that he drove her to it.’ Rose burst into tears. ‘And she said I was as bad as Oliver, because I’d known all along about Hannah, about Oliver’s affair and Nadia’s death, and didn’t tell her. She said I’d covered up for him, that I was as disgusting as he was. God, it’s all such a mess. She hates us, absolutely hates us.’
I looked at Oliver, and he put a hand on his wife’s arm, but she snatched it away, continuing to cry bitterly. ‘She said she never wanted to see us again, that we repulsed her, and then she ran off and locked herself in her bedroom. When I went up to see her an hour later she was gone, there was only a note, saying she never wanted to see us again.’ Her eyes welled with fresh tears. ‘I don’t think she’ll ever forgive us.’
‘Oh, Rose,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me she’d been there that day?’ she asked angrily. ‘That she’d overheard us talking? We would have had some warning, we could have been prepared!’
‘Because you told me not to contact you!’ I cried. ‘And I had no idea that she would go looking for you all, that she’d been watching you all this time and would eventually do this! How could I have known? I told you nine years ago that I wanted to come clean, that I wanted to put this right, but you said no, you told me to stay out of your life and leave you alone!’
I stayed with them for a long time, and it was gone midnight by the time I left. On the drive back, the feeling of dread built and built. Would Hannah be home when I returned? What would I say to her if she was? I thought about Emily, how distressed she must be, and then of Oliver and Rose, their shock and devastation. It made me think of Toby, of how I’d feel if he told me he hated me and the idea of it made me physically sick. I longed suddenly to be home with him and Doug, and I put my foot on the accelerator and headed back as fast as I could towards Cambridgeshire.
As I turned the corner into our road it was almost 1 a.m., and I was met by a scene of such pandemonium that at first my eyes couldn’t make sense of it. The street was full of our neighbours, black smoke billowed from the upstairs windows of our home. My stomach dropped. I heard the sound of sirens, followed by two fire engines screaming down the street after me. I screeched to a halt then scrambled out of the car, stumbling and tripping in my haste as I ran towards my burning house.
Doug and Toby died that night. I could describe the horror of those hours, the brutal, freeze-frame panic as I watched the firefighters battle their way through the bonfire of my house, the endless awful waiting for my husband and son to be saved. And when all hope was lost, their bodies being dragged out into the cold night air, I remember the arms and hands of strangers, neighbours, police, restraining me, stopping me from running to them, the ungodly sound of my scream.