I’m wrapped in a blanket, shivering in the first aid tent as uniformed police come and go, several of them checking that I’m OK but none of them brave enough, or perhaps qualified enough, to ask or answer any questions.
“Shh, it’s OK,” soothes Leon, as he pulls me into him. I wince from the pain; every grain of dirt stabs like a needle. Every tear I’ve cried stings like acid.
“You’re going to be OK,” he says, breathing me in.
“He killed her,” I cry. “I saw him do it.”
“I’m so sorry,” he says, his lips resting on my forehead. “I can’t begin to imagine how it must feel to see that happen.” He has to stop himself from saying “again.”
“I never thought I’d allow a man to hurt a woman after what happened to Mom, but there was nothing I could do.” I fall into him.
“To think that he’s been in our house, in the office with you for all those sessions…” he says, almost to himself. “Did you have any idea he was capable … of this?”
I shake my head. “What have I learned?” I wail. “After all these years, I’m no more able to save someone than I’ve ever been.”
Blue lights flash by the marquee windows and I keep looking up, hoping to see an ambulance coming away from the stables with its emergency siren on, giving me a sign that skilled paramedics are miraculously bringing Vanessa’s stricken body slowly back to life. But there’s such a flurry of noise and lights that it’s impossible to see which direction they’re going in, let alone what vehicles they are.
There’s a sudden shift in atmosphere as the policemen by the door, who I was assured were for my protection rather than to prevent me escaping, stand taller and cough awkwardly.
If they were wearing caps, they’d no doubt doff them as Detective Inspector Robson walks in.
“I told you I had nothing to do with it, didn’t I?” I croak. “If you’d just concentrated on finding him instead of wasting your time on me, then … then…” I’m unable to finish the sentence as an image of Vanessa, floating facedown with her blonde hair swimming all around her, blindsides me.
“What happened here tonight?” she asks. Her face is oddly emotionless.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I found him tied up in the stables, but just as I was releasing him, she came and … and…” My mouth is having trouble keeping up with the speed of the sequences that are racing through my brain. “I had a hammer, but he came at me, throwing me onto the floor. I thought he was going to kill me but suddenly he was off me and bearing down on her. There was a knife and he must have…” Hot bile pushes up through my chest as I picture her falling backward. “She was just lying there and I ran to get help, but then I heard the splash…”
I pause for breath.
“You know her as Vanessa Talbot. But she was my client and called herself Anna. She talked to me about losing her son and the empty marriage his death had left behind. She always said that they were destroying each other, but I didn’t think for one second he would ever go this far. They were grieving for the little boy they’d lost, blaming each other for what happened. But it seems that in his efforts to relinquish any responsibility for the part he may have played, he created such a deep and convoluted backstory that even he didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. He certainly fooled me.”
I wipe a tear away as Robson scratches her head, looking genuinely perplexed. “But you said Michael Talbot was your client.” She opens her notebook and flips over the pages until she finds what she’s looking for. “You said that he used the name Jacob.”
“He lied,” I say.
“What exactly did he lie about, Naomi?” she asks, fixing me with a steely glare.
“He lied about everything! His name, his wife, his life! No doubt he’ll lie about what happened here tonight as well. But I saw what he did. I saw him kill her.”
“But Mrs. Chandler,” says Robson, leaning in and tilting her head to one side. “It wasn’t her body we found. It was his.”
29
I feel like I’m falling, as if I’ve jumped out of an airplane without a parachute, turning and tumbling through the air, waiting for someone to catch me.
How can that be? That’s impossible. I saw him strike Vanessa with my own two eyes.
Just like you saw your mother strike your father, says a voice from somewhere far away.
I’ve spent years denying it. Wanting to protect her. But despite not wanting to go there, I can see Mom trying desperately hard not to make a sound as Dad holds her by the hair and knees her in the stomach. She falls to the floor, wheezing for breath, as he kicks her with his steel-toe boots.
“Get away from her!” I scream, launching myself onto his back.
But my strength is no match for his and he throws me off, sending me crashing like a ragdoll into the Formica worktop.
“I hate you,” I scream, as he comes at me with a raised hand.
“No!” yells my mother, rushing at us, with a fear in her eyes unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. “If you ever touch my children, I’ll kill you.”
My father momentarily doubles over, instinctively holding a hand to his hip. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he sees that his fingers are covered in blood.
“I’m sorry,” says Mom, dropping the knife and backing herself up against the kitchen wall. She looks at me with tears in her eyes. “Go!” she says.
I shake my head, refusing to leave her side. “Go, Naomi!” she implores. “Now.”
The next thing I remember, I’m sitting at the bottom of the stairs while the paramedics fight to save Mom’s life as she lies motionless on the kitchen floor.
I can hear the snip of the scissors as they cut her clothes away from her wound, feel the sense of urgency as they frantically try to resuscitate her. But all I can see are the red-starred sneakers that she’d promised me just minutes before, hoping and praying that they’ll move.
“She came at me,” cries Dad from the next room as the tiny wound in his side is being looked at. “I had no choice. She was going to kill me.”
Without even thinking about it, I numbly pick up the bloodied knife from where it still lies on the hall floor and wrap my fingers around it. I can’t allow him to paint her as a monster and say he’d acted in self-defense. He has to pay for what he’s put Mom through, and if it means I have to chance my own liberty to make sure he gets what he deserves, then I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to get justice for her.
“Naomi!” calls out Leon from somewhere far away. “Naomi!”
As my eyes begin to focus and I see him looking down at me, I’m suddenly fearful that he’s seen the movie that’s been playing in my head. I’ve never told him what really happened that day and how my lie ensured my father went to prison for a very long time. But I vow that once this is over, I’ll be honest with him from now on, about everything.
“Are you OK?” he says, gently lifting me up to a sitting position.
I nod slowly.
“Once you’re feeling better, Mrs. Chandler, I’m going to need you to come down to the station,” says a woman who I thought had only existed in my catatonic state.
I look at her face and it suddenly all comes back to me. Michael … Vanessa … the emails, the CCTV, the pool …
He can’t be dead; he just can’t be. They’ve got this wrong.
“But I saw him do it,” I say. “She was dead.”
Robson narrows her eyes as she looks at me. “Mrs. Talbot doesn’t have any injuries apart from a small cut to the back of her head when she fell. Mr. Talbot, however, has a knife wound in his back, and another in his chest.”
“I don’t understand,” I cry, as Leon wraps an arm around me. “I was so sure she was dead.”
“Was that what you were hoping?” asks Robson.
I will myself to stay calm and not rise to her line of questioning.
“Tell me about the beach hut,” she presses, her gaze unwavering.
“Beach hut?” I repeat, unsure of what she means.