When Ursula hurried over with the casserole, had she hoped you were dead, so she and her daughter could be in the clear? All the times she asked how you were, had she really cared – or only asked for fear you had woken and spilled her and her daughter’s ugly secret? That bloody teddy they had left at the sycamore shrine beside the mere they had thrown you into, with the note saying they missed you. Missed you?! They were the reason you were in hospital.
Flo talked to your dad and I for over an hour, explaining the police investigation. I had thought they were useless, sitting back and doing nothing, when all the time they had been working tirelessly to catch your attacker.
As Flo talked, there were times when either Jacob or I jumped up in a sudden fury, or paced like a caged animal around our living room, but on the whole we listened calmly. We questioned surprisingly little. Shock seemed to have robbed us of our voices. I thought the truth would have made me rant and scream, but everything seemed to have shut down and I felt as if I was in a bubble, removed from this awful scene and watching it play out rather than being a part of it.
After speaking with me, Davy had apparently gone straight to the police, figuring that he had waited long enough for Ursula to persuade Chloe to come forward. He had thought he was protecting them – mum and daughter – from a potential future attack from whoever had hurt you. He’d had no idea that Chloe was the one who had struck the blow, and that her parents were feverishly trying to cover her tracks.
Poor bloke; he must have loved Ursula, but she would never have risked leaving Steve and the comfortable lifestyle he provided for her. Once Ursula had told her husband what Chloe had done, they had been tied together forever by their dreadful family secret. She’d probably only kept stringing Davy along for fear that if she broke up with him, he might manage to figure out the truth about Chloe.
‘I saw the Clarkes earlier, suggested they went to the police,’ I told Flo and Jacob at one point. ‘They must have thought I was trying to blackmail them or something. Chloe must have gone crazy because she was scared of being arrested for what she’d done. I thought it was because she was traumatised by what James had done to her.’
I sounded almost matter-of-fact as I spoke, Beth. Please don’t think I was. It was more that there were too many emotions to compute, so my body and brain had shut down, a bit like when a computer overloads and gets that spinning wheel. That was me; I was frozen, haunted by the memory of Chloe lashing out at herself.
‘Apparently, according to what has come out in our interview with Chloe’s parents, Chloe has had a problem with her temper since hitting puberty. She can’t even remember the details of her argument with Beth, just that Beth had annoyed her,’ said Flo, her eyes full of sympathy.
When the red mist of rage descended, your best friend had snatched up a branch that had fallen from the sycamore nearby, and she had lashed out. I could just imagine it…
The thud of wood connecting with your skull. Your head snapping back. Falling to the frozen ground. Perhaps you tried to stand, tried to cry out for help. Fingers twitching in the dirt.
You didn’t see it coming, Beth, you didn’t stand a chance. She was your best friend! My stomach contracted painfully, but there was nothing left to bring up.
Afterwards, Chloe had called her mum in a panic. That’s what had alerted the police – they had got hold of Chloe’s mobile records and been able to pinpoint her to the location at the time of your attack. Davy coming forward was the extra piece of proof they needed to make the arrest.
After receiving the call from Chloe, Ursula had come running, of course. Unable to find a pulse, she and your best friend had carried your fragile body to the mere and thrown you in, hoping it was deep enough that you would sink and never be found.
They had tossed you aside like a piece of rubbish. My beautiful little girl; intelligent, funny, caring.
Ursula would have done anything to protect her daughter. Just like I’d have done anything to protect you. Apparently she hadn’t told Steve what had happened, not at first, but when he got back from his golfing weekend he’d quickly picked up on the atmosphere at home and guessed Chloe was somehow involved in Beth’s attack. When Ursula had confessed to him, he had been so shocked that he’d left them. But when I had started sniffing around, he had returned so that he could protect his family from the truth coming out.
But now he and Ursula had been charged with assisting an offender and perverting the course of justice. Whatever, it wouldn’t be enough. That cow Ursula had cooked me a casserole in exchange for almost killing my little girl. She had looked at me with her wet spaniel eyes, all full of fake sympathy.
I wanted to kill her.
Jill Young would face charges of her own for staging the illegal gathering on her property, and knowingly allowing alcohol to be sold to underage people on those premises.
Alison Daughtrey-Drew was in even more trouble. She had been selling drugs. The police had been on to her quickly, finding out about the rave when they had looked more closely at Alison and James because of the allegations against him. By looking at her bank details, they had discovered that Alison had hired a couple of hundred silent disco headphones from a company and had them delivered to her home. Once the police started digging around, they had soon uncovered rumours of the event – someone can’t stage something that large and keep it totally quiet, no matter what precautions are taken. In addition, Aleksy Jachowski had come forward to tell the authorities about it, and that he had seen you there, after being scared he would get the blame for what had happened to you. So at least the mob had been useful for something.
After that, the police’s case against Alison had quickly started to take shape, but they had been biding their time to find out if she had been your attacker. She hadn’t – but Beth, she had seen your seemingly lifeless body in the water while walking to her car after the rave. Assuming you had taken drugs and had a reaction to them, she hadn’t called the police or an ambulance for fear of getting herself into trouble.
The cowardly bitch. But the fury inside me didn’t explode into ranting and raving. It burned white hot, turning my pain into something hard, implacable and dangerously calm.
‘By the time Alison discovered Beth had been hit, she’d had time to come up with an idea of how to cover her tracks. She’d set up a fake alibi by roping in James Harvey’s help,’ explained Flo.
‘But why did he go along with it?’ I asked.
‘According to Alison, Beth had kissed James that night at the rave – and he had pushed her away. Alison blackmailed him, saying that if he didn’t give them both an alibi, she would go to the police and give a statement saying that she’d seen him later that night, hurting Beth.’
‘And he was telling the truth when he said he was gay?’ I breathed.
Flo nodded, ginger bob swinging. ‘He hasn’t come out yet to his parents, and is anxious to keep that quiet for now.’
So many people with petty worries about themselves. Not giving a thought to my daughter, left fighting for her life.
Seventy-Six