Susan’s hands slid from the table and rested in her lap. ‘I hit him just once, with a glass vase. It was standing upside down on the draining board, drying. I just lashed out. Everything happened so quickly.’
Alex closed her eyes. She was going to have to tell Chloe all of this, and then what? The poor girl had already been through so much. She had wanted the truth, but surely not this.
‘He fell to the floor. I thought he was trying to scare me at first, trying to punish me again for not believing him, but when I said his name he didn’t move. There wasn’t even much blood, just a trickle on the tiles. It was so quiet. I called my husband on the phone. He said not to touch anything until he came home, so I waited in the kitchen with Luke.
‘Malcolm was very calm when he got there. He made me see sense. I told him I wanted to tell the police, but he said we couldn’t. We’d lose everything.’
Alex’s jaw tensed.
‘Did your husband move Luke’s body, Mrs Griffiths?’
Susan nodded. ‘He told me that when the police asked, we should tell them that we thought Luke had killed Emily. We agreed to say he’d been acting strangely all week, that he hadn’t seemed himself, and that he’d taken my husband’s car and we hadn’t seen him after that.
‘Malcolm moved Luke’s body to the car in the garage. I stayed at home and cleaned the kitchen. We arranged where and when I would go in my own car to collect him. I didn’t intend to kill my son, but I did believe he had killed that girl. It seemed justice had been served in a way, through God’s hands. Malcolm helped convince me of that.’
Alex eyed the woman with disbelief. It seemed impossible that she was so indoctrinated by her religion – by her husband – she could allow herself to believe this. She wondered how long it had taken for Susan Griffiths to become convinced by the lie. Eventually, the guilt must have subsided and acceptance taken its place. An eye for an eye: so simple when she thought of it like that.
Yet now it wasn’t. She now knew her son hadn’t killed Emily, and that changed everything. Enough for her to be there now, finally confessing to her crime. Enough for her to have confronted her husband, prepared for the repercussions she would face.
Driven by her loyalty to her colleague, Alex felt contempt for the couple. How Chloe had managed to become the woman she was now showed that miracles existed in some form.
God’s hands, she thought. The only hands that had been responsible for Luke’s death had been Susan’s own. Was this really how she’d managed to convince herself for all these years that she had done no wrong?
‘“That girl”,’ Alex repeated slowly. ‘“That girl” was someone’s daughter. Someone’s child. In the same way Luke was your child. Innocent. But of course you know that now, don’t you? Your son wasn’t a murderer. He was a victim. Why have you waited until now to tell the truth?’
‘You won’t understand. You have independence; our lives are very different. I made a promise to my husband and I had to stand by it, even though he’s hated me since the day Luke died. He misses the church. He hates the stigma that comes with having been disfellowshipped, and he’s been punishing me for my disloyalty for the past eight years. I’ve lived in fear of my husband, Inspector King, but I feared prison even more. Now I don’t. Now I think prison will be an escape.’
Alex paused the interview and left the room, leaving Susan Griffiths alone with whatever thoughts filled her head. She couldn’t escape the thought that Luke’s revenge had cost him his life. But was it really that simple? Chloe had spoken in such detail about her brother. None of what she’d said reflected a malicious boy who’d have sent those emails purely based on spite.
Alex turned back to the door and looked through the glass at Susan Griffiths. Only a certain type of person could carry a secret of that enormity for all those years; one Alex knew she would never understand. She would never want to.
Even now, the woman wasn’t sorry for what she’d done to her son and to her family. She was sorry she’d been banished from the church. She was sorry she was being punished for it and she was confessing to free herself.
In the corridor, Alex leaned against the wall and took a deep breath.
Just as Chloe was beginning to mend, this was going to break her.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Scott carried the last of Chloe’s things upstairs to the bedroom Alex had made ready for her. She had given her the back room, the one with the view of the garden, and had made up the bed with new sheets she had bought the previous evening. She put fresh flowers in a ceramic jug on the window sill. Alex knew enough to realise the flat Chloe was leaving behind had never been a home. In so many ways, a home was something Chloe had never known.
She might have tried to convince herself she was doing this purely for Chloe’s sake, but Alex realised that was only partly true. Chloe wasn’t the only one who had lost a sense of home. Roaming around that house listening to the conversations that took place amongst the ghosts she allowed to remain there had become a habit Alex needed to break free from. It had kept her in limbo, stuck between a past to which she could never return and a future that wasn’t hers to claim.
Chloe would give her something other than herself to focus on.
Chloe hadn’t said too much about what was going on between her and Scott. Alex imagined she didn’t want to think too far into the future. There had already been too much thinking about the past. For now, Chloe seemed happy to exist in the moment. Alex was pleased to see glimpses of Chloe’s former self, though she was sorry she and Scott hadn’t been able to get to know one another under different circumstances, ones that hadn’t involved Chloe’s shame and secrets laid out bare between them.
Scott had visited Chloe several times in the hospital. He had given her lifts. He had helped her pack her limited possessions into boxes and then transported them from the flat to Alex’s house. He hadn’t judged her, despite everything he now knew.
Small things. Kind things. The things Chloe’s life had been missing for so long.
Scott came back down the stairs and thanked Alex for the tea she had made him, handing her the empty mug. She took it from him and headed into the kitchen, closing the door behind her to give Scott and Chloe some privacy.
‘Thanks for all your help.’
He smiled. ‘You’re welcome.’ He gestured to the kitchen. ‘This is good of her.’
Chloe nodded. She didn’t know how she was ever going to repay Alex. By being better, perhaps. By making sure she learned from her mistakes.
‘There’s something I want to ask you.’
‘Sounds ominous.’
Scott took her hand in his. ‘I was wondering if you would do me the honour of going for dinner with me one evening. I think you’ve made me wait long enough now.’
Chloe laughed. She squeezed his hand. His skin felt good against hers. Safe.
‘I’ll have to check my diary.’
He leaned in and kissed her. It was brief but perfect. ‘I checked it for you. You’re free on Thursday.’