Where the Memories Lie

 

 

‘No, he’s . . . um . . . he’s not ill.’ I stared at the exterior kitchen wall that was nearest to the detached double garage, as if I could see through the layers of brick and concrete with X-ray eyes.

 

‘Then what’s up? You look a bit ill, actually. Have you been overdoing it?’ He sat next to me and pushed a tendril of hair behind my ear.

 

Was Katie really buried under our garage? ‘Bloody hell. I don’t know how to say this.’

 

‘You’re scaring me now. What’s wrong?’ His voice turned hard and deep. He cupped my chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned my face away from the wall back to him.

 

‘It’s Tom.’

 

‘You said he was OK.’

 

‘No, not like that.’ I stared into his worried face. ‘It started with Georgia, but it wasn’t really about her. He was just getting two different stories mixed up together.’

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

‘It wasn’t Georgia he killed. I think it was Katie.’

 

‘What?’ His eyebrows shot up to his forehead.

 

I swallowed hard and talked slowly, telling him about how Tom had confessed to me that he’d killed Katie. That I checked her medical records to see which doctor’s surgery she’d used in the years since she went missing but there was no trace of her. It was like she’d vanished. That I’d spoken to Chris, who’d reminded me he was the last one to see her, and that she was walking towards our house. And that Tom had told me exactly where he’d buried her body.

 

124

 

Where the Memories Lie

 

‘Not this again! You’ve got to be joking!’ He shot off the stool so quickly the movement sent it clattering to the floor. He ran a hand through his hair, his mouth gaping open.

 

‘I wish I was.’ Despite the summer warmth in the air I felt chilly and wrapped my arms around myself, rubbing up and down.

 

‘You can’t seriously think he knows what he’s saying.’ He paced the floor. ‘He said he’d killed Georgia and that was just a waste of everyone’s time. This is the same. He’s just fixated on some strange, messed-up story. Katie is alive and well somewhere.’

 

‘I don’t think so. He was getting the story about Georgia mixed up with what he’d done to Katie.’

 

‘No.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘No.’

 

‘Then where is Katie?’

 

‘She ran away! The whole point of running away is so no one can find you!’ He threw his hands in the air.

 

‘I don’t think that’s what happened. If she did, why didn’t anyone ever request her medical records?’

 

He blinked for a moment, taking that in. ‘I don’t know. Maybe she’s never been ill.’

 

‘What, in twenty-five years?’

 

‘When was the last time I went to the doctor?’

 

I shrugged. ‘At the very least she’d need a smear test every five years from the age of about twenty. And she was on the pill, she’d need a prescription to carry on with that, but there was nothing, Ethan. No record in all these years.’

 

‘That doesn’t prove anything.’ He paced the floor.

 

‘Tom told me! He told me she was buried under the garage. The garage we’ve been walking over all this time. Right next to where we’ve been living. Where Anna’s been living!’ I shouted and pointed in the direction of the garage. ‘We have to find out if she’s under there. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.’

 

125

 

Sibel Hodge

 

He stopped pacing, leaned against the oven, his face red with anger. ‘No bloody way.’

 

‘This is my house, too. We have to tell the police. We have to.

 

How can we not?’ I shrieked. ‘Katie’s buried under the concrete floor and Tom killed her. I know it.’

 

‘You don’t know anything. Why would he kill her? Answer me that. What reason could Dad possibly have for killing her?’

 

My neck shook in a nervous twitch. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking that they might’ve been having an affair.’

 

‘What? Are you mad? She was eighteen and he would’ve been . . .’