Alex took a seat opposite Susan Griffiths in one of the interview rooms. Chloe’s mother glanced at the tape recorder on the desk to the side of them, but she looked calm and composed, as though she had accepted what was to come. ‘I wasn’t entirely honest with you when you asked why we’d been excommunicated. I suppose you already know that.’
Alex nodded. The elder she had spoken to – an obnoxious, arrogant man who held the Griffiths couple in contempt even after all these years – had filled her in on the details that Susan would later choose to omit.
‘You maintained contact with Chloe after she’d been disfellowshipped; that’s what it’s known as, isn’t it?’
‘They had no choice but to let Chloe go – she’d already been given so many chances. We begged for them to give her another chance, but she refused to acknowledge any of our teachings. She was so headstrong, so defiant.’
‘She had a mind of her own, you mean?’
Susan’s jaw tensed. ‘She was still my daughter, despite everything. I wanted to know she was OK.’
Alex sat back in her chair and eyed Susan with an anger she was struggling to keep hidden. Susan might have thought that keeping contact demonstrated loyalty to her daughter, but when it had come to a choice between her family and her religion, her commitments to her children had been pushed to one side.
‘You weren’t supposed to maintain any contact with Chloe?’
Susan shook her head. ‘It’s for the best, I know. Isolation is meant to teach people where they’ve gone wrong. I thought that given time to think about the choices she’d made, she would realise her sins and come back to us.’
‘“Her sins”?’ Alex repeated, incredulous. Susan Griffiths was indoctrinated. She knew she was supposed to be without bias, but this concerned Chloe and that made everything different. ‘What were “her sins”?’
‘She disobeyed us; she told lies; she drank; she got tattoos – she did everything she could possibly do to defy us.’
‘She was a teenager, you mean.’ Alex couldn’t bite her tongue. Somewhere amidst the indoctrination her religion had been responsible for, Alex was certain Susan realised it wasn’t Chloe who was the real sinner. She wouldn’t have been there otherwise. ‘How did the elders come to find out about the emails you’d sent Chloe?’
‘Luke.’
Alex’s eyes widened, surprised by the answer. It hadn’t been what she was expecting. The elder she had spoken with told her Chloe had sent copies of emails that had shown Susan Griffiths was continuing communication with her wayward and excommunicated daughter.
‘The emails were forwarded from Chloe’s address, but it was Luke who sent them. He took great delight in telling me what he’d done.’
She cast her eyes to the hands she held clasped on the desktop. ‘I lied to the police on the day Luke’s body was found. I told them the last time I’d seen Luke was the previous afternoon. I told them he’d been upset and had confessed to me that he had killed Emily.’
Susan stopped and glanced up at Alex. The bruising on her face seemed to have deepened in colour since they had left reception and gone to the interview room. Her husband’s doing, Alex assumed. Chloe had told her what a bully her father had been. Luke and Chloe hadn’t been spared his violence. Why would it be any different for his wife?
‘I did see him that afternoon,’ she continued. ‘We argued at the house, about the emails. He told me he’d sent them. He said now I’d know how it felt to have everybody turn against me. He was still refusing to admit to us that he’d killed Emily.’
‘Us?’
‘Malcolm and me.’
Alex nodded. She thought she knew what was coming next. ‘You thought Luke had killed Emily? Why?’
‘The same reason the police thought he had. She’d tried to end the relationship and Luke hadn’t been able to accept it. He’d been obsessed with her, wanting to see her all the time and spend all his time with her. It wasn’t healthy. She wasn’t a good influence on him. We tried to keep them away from one another, but he was pretty deceitful.’
One interpretation of his character, Alex thought. Either he had been deceitful, or desperate to escape the suffocating clutches of his controlling parents. Desperate to be loved. Alex decided to opt with Chloe’s version of events.
‘So you argued about it?’
Susan nodded. ‘I told him to tell the truth. I told him that if it was an accident, if he hadn’t meant to do it, he should tell the police.’ She stopped. Her face was fixed, emotionless. It was as though she was reciting a rehearsed script. She’d had plenty of time to learn the words, Alex thought. Tell the truth. Surely the woman could hear the irony in her own words?
‘Tell me about the argument.’
‘Luke lost his temper. He said he couldn’t believe his own mother didn’t believe him. Then he told me he’d found a way to make me pay for what we’d done.’
‘The emails?’
Susan nodded. She looked angry – resentful at her son’s betrayal – yet Alex believed that something else must have once existed where that anger lay. At some point, there must have been love. Maintaining contact with her daughter had once, if even for the briefest moment, been more important to Susan than their church. If only she had acknowledged this moment and clung to that notion a little longer, all their lives might have been so different.
‘Where in the house were you?’
‘In the kitchen. I’d been making dinner. He told me what he’d done and I just saw red. I wasn’t myself for a moment. Everything we’d already been put through – Chloe’s behaviour, Emily’s death, and now this. We were shunned by everyone important, everyone that mattered to us. The church had already given us so many chances. They didn’t want to be associated with our family, not in the state it was. Chloe’s behaviour had already condemned us all. Sending those emails was the worst thing Luke could have done. I was branded a traitor. I had a tart for a daughter and a murderer for a son, and the emails made them decide I couldn’t be trusted either.’
Alex’s hands had tightened into fists in her lap. She knew what was coming next, though she wished she was able to somehow change it.
There was silence.
‘And then what happened?’
Susan’s gaze remained on Alex, her expression still devoid of all emotion. ‘I hit him.’
‘Was your husband there when this happened?’
Susan shook her head.
Alex felt a shiver pass through her. Luke had died because his parents had always expected the worst of him. He had died because the police had assumed him guilty and had failed to look elsewhere. His mother had chosen her church over her children and her decision had proven fatal.
‘Tell me what happened.’