All Your Fault: a gripping psychological thriller that will keep you guessing

by NJ Moss

  “Dad started talking to himself, sort of muttering,” he went on, tucking yet another cigarette behind his ear. The room was thick and musty with the stench of smoke. “He talked about how the car wasn’t taxed or insured and how nobody knew we had it, except a few people around the estate, and they’d rather die than talk to the police. He had a friend who worked on a scrapheap. Dad wouldn’t look at me, but he’d help me get away with murder.

  “‘Take those clothes off,’ he told me. ‘Go upstairs and have a shower. Go into work tomorrow with a smile on your face like you’re one of the fucking gang. Act normal.’

  “I tried to tell him I didn’t know if I could act normal, and he jumped at me. Martin was a big man and, if it weren’t for his supermarket uniform, you’d think he worked as a labourer or in a warehouse or something. Plus, I knew he’d boxed when he was young.

  “He told me I didn’t have a choice. What was I going to say? He was my dad and he knew best. I didn’t want to go to prison, Grace.”

  He stared as though he thought I could speak, forgetting he’d cut off my words. His eyes brimmed with a desire for forgiveness; I recognised the look from the mirror.

  “I took off my hoodie and my T-shirt and my trackie bottoms. And then my boxers and my socks. I’d already taken my trainers off when I came in, because habits are funny like that, I guess, so I nodded to where they were. I stood there naked, covering my privates.

  “Dad told me to go upstairs. He was already lifting his mobile to his ear, one of those big chunky Nokias, you remember them. I called out to him. I started to tell him I was sorry, but he walked out and shut the door.”

  He laughed bitterly, without humour. “My own fucking dad didn’t look at me. I don’t think he could.”

  44

  The man walked over to the washing machine and leaned against it, crossing his arms. “I guess none of this really matters, does it? There’s nothing we can do to change the past.”

  He turned, his eyes flitting over me. He wouldn’t look directly, as though he couldn’t bear to face the fact he’d tied a woman to a chair. Guilt dripped from him. He had the look of a man on the verge of asking me how he could help, if only he could forget he was the one who’d put me here.

  “But I’ve never talked about this before. I want to.”

  He kicked away from the washing machine, resuming his relentless pacing.

  “Dad said I had to go on as normal, so that morning, I went to work. I wasn’t in any state to. I couldn’t stop thinking about that poor little girl. But I made myself be friendly with my manager and flirty with this girl I liked. I had the usual banter with the swimming instructor. I was working as a lifeguard.

  “The whole time, I was wondering if I was a killer. Maybe she wasn’t dead, I was telling myself. Maybe she was… And see, Grace, there’s the fucking problem. Maybe she’s what? The chances of her being fine were pretty much zero. I knew that.”

  She wasn’t fine. She was shattered and I’d pawed at her, trying to put her back together like Humpty Dumpty.

  “Time kept passing. A month, two. I read the newspapers and found out what I already knew. The girl was dead. The story was prominent for a while, but it didn’t get national attention.

  “That seemed weird. It had all the ingredients for a story the big newspapers would love. A pretty little girl hit while riding a bike she’d got for her birthday… How could the press not eat that shit up?

  “I think it was how your parents came across in the police appeals. They were sort of nothingy, if that makes sense. Some parents, they get the public going because people can speculate if they were involved. Or they tug at their heartstrings. Something, you know. But your parents didn’t cry. They spoke like they weren’t even there. They gave the public nothing to get worked up about.”

  He hadn’t seen how Mother and Father had privately devastated each other, with their coldness and their detachment, with their retreating into the past; he hadn’t seen Father secluded in his workshop, captivated by Hope’s bracelet, wishing he was back there, in the day she made it. He hadn’t seen Mother sunken into her armchair, submerged in a novel she’d read dozens of times, determined to live anywhere but reality.

  “I thought about you a lot, as time went on. I hated you.”

  The feeling’s mutual, dickhead, I snapped silently. I’d have given five years of my life to have the duct tape removed. To scream would’ve been such a relief.

  “I don’t have any siblings, but it didn’t make sense to me that you’d do that. I don’t mean to make you feel bad. I know you’ve tortured yourself about this over the years. But it really disgusted me, how irresponsible you’d been. How cruel to your own flesh and blood.”

  The question was too huge for me to contemplate. Some form of sickness had led me to bully sweet Hope, a resentment I couldn’t comprehend.

  “I learnt your names. Grace and Hope Addington. They seemed like really fancy names. I read you hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t seen anybody. Apparently, your sister had decided to ride down the rainy hill herself. It was a horrible accident and nothing more. I read all of this over the weeks and months. And then your story went away.

  “But I remembered your names. I remembered the photos that appeared in the newspaper. They even printed the name of your street, not directly, but they quoted one of your neighbours. It was one of those bigger pieces, hit-and-run, what did this mean for the local neighbourhood? That sort of thing.”

  That was probably around the time I’d haunted Hope’s grave most afternoons, telling myself I’d hear her voice on the wind one day, calling to me: when my mind began to bend around my perception of myself, editing out anything that didn’t fit, rewriting whole sisterhoods.

  “I hated myself. Hope was so cute. So beautiful. She had such a nice smile, didn’t she? At least from what I saw in the photos. She reminded me of a puppy, an innocent puppy, and I’d killed her. I’d ended everything she might’ve done or been.”

  I hated him – I wanted to hate him – but it was like he was picking phrases from my mind.

  I’d killed her. I’d ended everything she might’ve done or been: a scientist or a champion skier or a fashion designer or anything she wanted to be.

  “One evening,” he went on, “my dad walked up to my bed in the middle of the night. He stood there stinking of booze, and he had a newspaper crumpled in his hands. He was crying. It was like the day my mum ran out and left us. She took my dog, Rocket. I’ll always miss Rocket.

  “‘Benny,’ my old man sobbed, and then he kept asking me why. Why, why, why.

  “‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and I sat up.

  “‘That poor family,’ he moaned, sounding like an animal, all strangled and choking.”

  He’d given me his name, perhaps by accident. Benny. I wondered if it was his real name, or another fake one, another lie. He smiled in the awkward way men sometimes do, as though his emotions were so powerful he had to smile or else he’d burst into fitful tears.

  “I told him I was sorry again. Then his eyes got glassy and he jumped on me. He punched me in the face. He kept punching.”

  45

  I stilled my hands when Benny strode across the room. He moved with purpose, with violent intent in his posture. I cringed back and prayed he wouldn’t be able to see how I’d worried at the duct tape. It was a pathetic effort, perhaps, but it was the only thing keeping me sane.

  A voice giggled inside of me, Hope’s voice, gnarled with her murder. Sane, sane, go away. Come again another day.

  “Are you going to scream if I take that off?” He gestured at my face.

  I shook my head, ashamed by my trembling. It was like there was a busted fuse inside of me and it wouldn’t stop sparking.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Grace.” He tore off the duct tape. I gasped as it stung my skin. “Sorry. It’s better to get it over with.”

  “Water, please.” I purposefully made my voice polite. I was a survivor. Fuck this self-pitying shit.
I’d have to make him think I liked him… or, at least, I didn’t hate him. Which I did, didn’t I? I had to hate him.

  “Sure.” He got a bottle from behind the washing machine, tossing it from hand to hand as he carried it over. “Do you want me to help?”

  I laughed bitterly, my voice raspy. “I can’t exactly take it, can I?”

  He was behaving as though we were having brunch or something, overly casual, overly friendly. He was forgetting he’d told me a fake name; he’d lied to me every moment we were together.

  “Well, Benny? What are you waiting for?”

  I glared at him. For a mad moment – every moment for you then, he-he-he – I thought I’d tear my hands loose and brutalise him right there.

  He unscrewed the lid and brought it to my mouth. “Fair enough.”

  I drank greedily, lapping it up.

  He took the bottle away, stepping back as he replaced the lid. “I guess you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this.”

  “No. I understand.”

  “Do you?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

  I made myself breathe slowly, thinking past my pulsing rage. He wanted us to be best bloody pals. It was like he’d separated reality into two lanes: the real one, and the one he wished it was.

  I didn’t pity him. I didn’t like him. I didn’t want to make his pain go away.

  It was your fault, a mad voice sung: the voice I’d battered down every moment of my life. It was all your fault.

  “You need to make the memories real.” My voice was somehow steady. “I studied memory in university. We make memories real by repeating them.”

  “How does that work?”

  “I don’t know. It was a long time ago. I didn’t finish university.”

  “I know.”

  I sighed. “I guess you know most things about me, Benny, don’t you?”

  He shook his head, his eyes growing flinty. “Keep it civil, Grace. What were you saying about memories?”

  “You create a memory, call it up into your mind,” I said, old fragments from textbooks returning to me, but incomplete and hard to make coherent. “So every time you repeat the memory, you make it realer.”

  “But you can do that by remembering it,” Benny said. “You don’t have to tell anyone.”

  “But we don’t care about what we think of ourselves.” I stared at him right in the eyes, thinking of Mia’s blurring paintbrush, Russ’s half-built sandcastle and Troy sat at his desk, typing away. “All we really care about is how other people think about us.”

  He chuckled and pulled out his cigarette packet, crunching it into his fist when he saw it was empty. “You think I’m telling you this to make you, what, feel sorry for me?”

  “No,” I said, unable to mask the feeling in my voice. Did I care, on some instinctive level, about what I’d put this man through? “I think you want somebody to finally know who you really are. I’d like to get to know you.”

  He swallowed, his throat shifting. “All right, Grace. I’ll give you the highlights of the life of Benny bloody Evans. But first you need to tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Did you believe it, that story you told, about how she’d decided to cycle down the hill on her own?”

  I blinked away a tear, nodding.

  “How is that possible?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I built walls in my mind, I suppose. False memories aren’t unheard of. People confess to murders they didn’t commit. I was young. I was scared. I was broken.”

  “How does it feel, remembering?” The corner of his lip was twitching, like he could smirk or grimace any second.

  “Horrible,” I told him, forcing dignity into my voice as I sat up straighter.

  “Yeah,” Benny grunted. “I bet it does. All right, let’s go on with this.”

  46

  “My old man kicked the shit out of me. And I mean he really kicked the shit out of me.”

  “That’s awful,” I whispered.

  Meanness crept into his eyes. “Let me get this over with. Then we’ll get to the juicy bits, the bits that’ll make you pay.”

  Make me pay? I almost screamed, but I stopped the words at the final moment.

  “He got me a dog to say sorry. I told you Mum took our other dog, Rocket, right? Anyway, Dad had never let me have dogs after that. They reminded him of her, I guess. But he brought me this Jack Russell, Boxer. He had a big brown spot over his eye, like an eyepatch, but the rest of him was as white as snow.”

  There was charisma in his smile. It made me want to smile with him.

  “He sounds beautiful.”

  “He was a rascal. But in the best way. He was so fun. He’d come running with me on the beach, and I’d talk to him about what happened, about how scared I was. I talked to him about how much I hated you, Grace. About how much I blamed you.”

  I turned my gaze; I didn’t trust myself not to snap at him.

  “I’m telling you how I felt,” he said. “Not how I feel now, necessarily.”

  I wasn’t sure if that made this any better, but I said nothing, obstinately staring elsewhere.

  “Anyway, Boxer was my life. The years went on. It’s funny how that happens. I remember thinking, holy shit, it’s been ten years since I killed that girl. And then another five would go by.”

  “You followed me,” I said. “At university.”

  “And before that.”

  “Were you the man at Cabot Circus, the one who ran from me? The man in the black hat?”

  “Let me tell it my way.”

  That was no answer, but I could tell he wasn’t going to give me anything. He must’ve been the man in the black hat. What had he spiked my coffees with? Speed, cocaine? Whatever it was, it was turning my mind into a pinball machine. My thoughts sped and crashed into each other.

  “I’d driven by your house lots of times over the years,” he went on. “I’d sit and watch your old man in there, all fucking hollowed-out, the same way my old man got at the end. I’m getting ahead of myself, dammit. My dad died of lung cancer, Grace. He wouldn’t stop smoking. We had an argument about it once, he was coughing up phlegm and still lighting fags, and he lit another right in the middle of the fight. Lit and smoked, and smiled. It was like he wanted to die.”

  Benny groaned and ran a hand through his hair, pacing quicker, fingers twitching. I wondered if this man could turn violent. But that was the wrong question. He had turned violent. I had to make sure he didn’t do it again.

  “You were watching us,” I prompted.

  He nodded. “I’d watch your dad mope around. I’d watch you climb out the front window after dark, skipping down the guttering pipe. You moved like a little monkey, Grace. I’d follow you sometimes, and I’d see you in the park, with all those boys passing you around…”

  “Fuck off,” I hissed. “It wasn’t like that. They were my friends.”

  He held his hands up. “No need to get feisty. The point is, I’d think to myself, I wish I could save her. I wish I could make her feel better. Or I’d think the opposite. I’d think about killing you, about how it would feel to punish you for what you’d inflicted on me.

  “I checked up on you over the years. I was glad when you found Troy and started a family. I’d seen how much you suffered. I was proud when you went to university. I suppose that’s why I waved at you.”

  So he was the man in the black hat. But had he been at Cabot Circus, leading me through town, to those kids who told me nobody had jogged by? Perhaps I’d imagined that part.

  I wanted to ask, but I sensed he wouldn’t like it.

  “I met a woman, Lacy. She’s amazing. She’s funny and smart and beautiful. She’s sassy. I know women hate these words. Lacy does, at least. But what else am I supposed to say? She’s the woman of my dreams. We have a kid together, a daughter. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “What’s her name?”

  He scratched at his jaws, covering a smile. “You know,
I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember your daughter’s name.”

  I knew what her damn name was.

  “I guess not.” He shrugged. “Anyway, Lacy took what we had, this beautiful thing we’d built, and she decided to throw it down the fucking toilet. She had an affair. I found out she was banging this bloke most evenings, telling me she was working on her mobile salon business. She didn’t even have a business. She made it up so she’d have an alibi for this piece of shit. They were going behind my back for a year, Grace.

  “And do you know what she said? I was cold. I was distant. Of course I bloody was! I’d killed a little girl before I was a man. I couldn’t let out one emotion, because then I’d let everything out.”

  I understood. Sometimes it was better to plug them all.

  “It happened so fast. A week after she dropped that bombshell, I had to put Boxer down.” He paused, clearing his throat. I couldn’t tell if it was from cigarettes or sadness. “He was so brave at the end. His legs were trembling, like he wanted me to take him running on the beach. I think he was running, Grace, in those last moments… in his head. Do you believe in that sort of stuff?”

  “In heaven?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No,” he said, “neither do I. So Boxer was dead. Lacy was gone. Our daughter was staying with her. But I made damn sure I had all the visitation a man could wish for. I walked her to and from school every day. I had her every other weekend. And sometimes in the week, she’d stay over at mine. Lacy agreed to this because she knew – she knows – we’re better off as a family.”

  “I can’t imagine the pain of being apart from her.”

  I could imagine it; I was living it.

  “It hurts, that’s for damn sure. Then Dad died. The cancer finally got him. This was maybe a month after Boxer. I’d been close to my old man when I was a kid. He taught me to box. That was why I called my dog Boxer. He was such a good, good dog. I know there’s something wrong with me, but I miss his happy face and his big smile more than I miss my old man.” Benny’s voice cracked. He swallowed and went on with a visible effort. “Anyway, my dad doted on me before I became a killer. He let me get away with murder, no pun intended.”