‘You look terrible,’ Louise said when she saw the damage to Dee’s face and neck. ‘Will they be able to fix your nose, or are you going to need surgery?’
Dee’s nose had been bandaged and held in place with surgical tape. She had two black eyes and a trail of purple bruises around her neck. Her throat was raw and aching, although the consultant said there was no lasting injury.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’
‘I should hope not,’ Louise said.
‘You should see the other guy,’ Dee joked, before remembering that was the one thing Louise couldn’t do. Because the other guy had disappeared.
The police had searched the beach and the entire area around Dee’s house and there was no one out there. On the one hand, this was a good thing, because it meant she hadn’t killed him. But it also meant that whoever had attacked her was still out there.
‘I went to the supermarket,’ Louise said once they were in the car. ‘Got you some supplies. I wasn’t sure if you’d be well enough to go to the shops. What about painkillers? I didn’t think to get any. Sorry. It was only when I saw you that I realised you might need them.’
‘I got some at the hospital,’ Dee said.
Every part of her body ached. All she wanted to do was curl up on the sofa, switch on the TV and block out everything else.
‘Your voice sounds funny,’ Louise said.
‘I’ve got a broken nose. What do you expect?’
Home had always been her sanctuary. Now, as Louise turned right after the harbour and Dee’s house appeared, the memories from the previous night rushed back.
She didn’t want to be here.
‘You could always stay at mine for a few days,’ Louise said. She pulled up outside the house and switched the engine off. ‘Dee?’
‘I’m okay.’ Dee released her seat belt and opened the door, climbing out of the car before she weakened and changed her mind.
Louise insisted on carrying the shopping inside, telling Dee to get the kettle on. ‘I’ll have a coffee before I go,’ she said. ‘It’ll give you a chance to tell me what happened last night.’
‘You know what happened. Someone broke into my house, stole my laptop and decided to knock fifty shades of shite out of me.’ Her head was aching, and her throat was so raw it felt as if it would close up unless she drank something right away.
‘Coffee’s ready,’ Louise said. ‘Let’s sit down and you can tell me what’s really going on here. I want to know who broke in and why they stole your laptop. It’s all connected, isn’t it? The dead girl and…’ she gestured at Dee’s face, ‘that.’
They took their coffee outside. Dee was working out how much she should tell Louise when the doorbell rang.
‘Stay there,’ Louise said, standing up. ‘If it’s that creep Alex Mackey, I’m not letting him inside the house.’
Dee listened as Louise answered the door, the low murmur of voices as she spoke to whoever was there. Then footsteps, and she appeared on the deck with Ed Mitchell trailing behind her.
‘I’ll get you a cup,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of coffee left and I’m sure you could do with some after the night you’ve had.’
‘Not for me,’ Ed said, speaking to Louise but looking at Dee. There was something in his face Dee didn’t like.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘Mind if I sit down?’ He’d never asked before. Always sat down uninvited, like he belonged here. Dee hadn’t liked it, but she preferred it to this sudden politeness, which felt so wrong.
‘Ed?’
He pulled out one of the wicker chairs and sat down. Crossed his legs and cleared his throat. Doing it all slowly and carefully. Stalling. Putting off whatever he’d come here to tell her.
It was Jake. Had to be. Dee’s chest hurt from holding in the grief already building inside her.
‘I’ve got some bad news,’ he said.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to hear it. But Ed kept going regardless.
‘It’s your ex-husband,’ he said. ‘William.’
‘Billy,’ Dee said. ‘He hates being called William.’
‘Billy then,’ Ed said. ‘I’m sorry, Dee. Billy’s dead.’
Dee knew she’d misheard him, because Billy couldn’t be dead. Billy, with his smile that made you feel good no matter what sort of a day you were having. Smart, clever, funny wild boy Billy raging through life like a fire that would never burn out. Her first love.
‘No.’ It wasn’t true. She felt a surge of hatred for Ed Mitchell.
‘There’s something else,’ Ed said.
Dee’s stomach contracted, and she tasted vomit. But she didn’t move from her seat, because she needed to hear the rest of it. The words left his lips and travelled across to her in slow motion. As if the sound had to fight its way through a wall of cotton wool.
Her head was full of Billy. Memory after memory. Their wedding day. A pissed-up party in Las Vegas. Twenty of their close friends. Billy in a white tux; an Elvis impersonator crooning love songs in the chapel. Everyone singing along to ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’. Dee had cried, like she was crying now, except on that day they were tears of pure joy. Before that. The first time she’d ever seen him. Standing at the bar of the Lamb and Flag surveying the entire pub before his eyes found her and he gave her that big smile. Knowing she was lost right then, and not caring, because he was still smiling as she walked over to him and introduced herself.
‘Dee?’
Ed’s voice dragged her away from it all, reminding her she could never get that back. That Billy – her beautiful, wild Billy – was dead.
‘He had your laptop.’
She heard him, but the words made no sense and she had to repeat them, out loud, twice, before their meaning kicked in. And even then, she didn’t understand.
‘We’re working on the assumption that Billy stole your laptop,’ Ed said.
‘He wouldn’t,’ she whispered.
Images of the night before flashed through her head. The rain and the weight of the man’s body on top of her, the strength in his hands as they wrapped around her neck, choking the life from her. A bigger, stronger man than Billy.
‘We think he had an accomplice,’ Ed said.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘His body was found by Maidstone police. At the bottom of the stairs in the block of flats where Shane Gilbert lives.’
He said something else. Dee watched his mouth moving. Heard the words swimming in the air around her. But she couldn’t make sense of them. Couldn’t make sense of anything. Her head was too full of Billy to speak and her heart was too broken to imagine a world where he no longer existed.
Forty-Eight
Ella
Three weeks earlier
‘Tell me again,’ Roxanne said. ‘From the beginning.’
Ella didn’t want to go through it a second time. Telling Roxanne the first time had been a harrowing experience. She’d sat opposite her old friend, watching the confusion on her face turn to disbelief, then grief, as she described what had happened to Katie.
‘Shane killed her,’ she said. ‘He drove straight into her, then reversed and drove over her while she was still on the ground. She didn’t stand a chance.’
They were sitting in Roxanne’s kitchen. Leonard had picked Ella and Jake up from Victoria and taken them to Roxanne’s home in Chislehurst on the southern edges of Greater London. When he heard what had happened to Katie, he wanted to stay to comfort Roxanne, but she wouldn’t let him.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she told him, kissing his cheek before showing him out. ‘I promise.’
Ella had put Jake to bed half an hour ago. He’d fallen asleep quickly, and she’d spent the time since then talking with Roxanne.
‘Katie turned up two days ago,’ she said. ‘It was completely out of the blue. I didn’t even know she was back in the country. Jake and I had spent the morning on the beach. He was tired, so I’d switched on the TV for him whi
le I did some ironing. When the doorbell rang, I thought it was Alex. Remember the guy I told you about? We’d had a row. I thought he was my friend, but he was just some sleazy married guy looking for a bit on the side. I didn’t want to see him, so I didn’t answer the door. But it rang again and I thought, he’s not going to go away, so I went to answer it. Only it wasn’t Alex.’
She paused, remembering the shock, like a punch in the stomach, when she’d opened the front door and seen Katie standing there.
‘She seemed to think it was okay, dropping in on me like that, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.’ She paused. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not true. I was angry with her.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she shouldn’t have been there.’
How to explain it to someone who couldn’t know what it felt like to live almost three years of your life pretending to be someone else?
‘When I asked her why she’d come, she said, why not? Like it was the most normal thing in the world. And I thought maybe she was right and it was normal, and I was the one with the problem. So I let her stay. Told her it was great to see her.’
Consumed with self-loathing, Ella wondered what was wrong with her. All Katie had wanted was a bit of company, and she had begrudged her even that.
‘I should have stayed,’ she said. ‘But when I saw what he’d done, I panicked. I thought he was going to come for me and Jake next. I grabbed Jake and got the hell out of there. I was in shock, but that’s no excuse, is it?’
‘No excuse for what?’
‘For leaving her. She didn’t deserve that.’
Roxanne pushed her chair back and stood up. She went to the sink and refilled the kettle. Her back was to the table, so Ella couldn’t see her face. But she could imagine it. Roxanne would never have left Katie like that. No one in their right mind would have done that.
‘I’m going to check on Jake,’ she said.
Roxanne didn’t answer. Ella wished there was something she could say that would make this better, but she knew there were no words for that. So she left Roxanne standing at the worktop and went into the spare bedroom where Jake was sleeping.
He was lying on his back, sprawled across the double bed he was sharing with Ella for as long as they stayed here. Which wouldn’t be long, judging by how things were going so far. The steady rhythm of his breathing soothed her. She touched his face, feeling the smooth, warm skin. Marvelling as she so often did at his very existence.
He didn’t deserve to be drawn into this mess. His life so far had been free of stress and fear and anxiety. She had to do everything she could to keep it that way. Yet even as she thought this, she knew time was already running out.
Earlier this evening, she’d switched on the TV and seen her own face staring out at her. She’d had to put her hand across her mouth to stop herself crying out with shock. Jake had started laughing, pointing at the TV and shouting, ‘Mamma, Mamma!’
It was a photo of the two of them on the beach. Alex had taken it and presented the framed print to her one evening. At the time, she’d thought it was a sweet gesture. Later, when she knew the sort of person he really was, she thought it was creepy.
On the TV, they were still calling her Katie. But it was only a matter of time before someone from her old life saw the photo and recognised her.
Back in the kitchen, Roxanne had made more tea. She put the teapot on the table, then sat down and gestured for Ella to do the same.
‘I need to ask you something,’ she said. ‘You said it was Shane driving the car that killed her. Are you absolutely certain about that?’
‘Positive,’ Ella said.
‘What if you’re mistaken? It wouldn’t be the first time, love, would it?’
Three years ago, Ella had gone to the police and accused Shane of stalking her and breaking into her house in Bristol. They’d told her this wasn’t possible. Shane was living and working in Maidstone in Kent. He was wearing a security tag that monitored his location. He hadn’t left Maidstone any time over the previous two months. Whatever Ella thought Shane had been doing to her, she was wrong.
‘That was different,’ she said. ‘That time, I never actually saw him. But I did today, Roxanne. I know what I saw.’
‘So you’re telling me that two days ago, Katie turned up at your place in Eastbourne. You weren’t too happy about it, but you went along with it. Because you didn’t think you had any choice. Because you felt you owed her. Is that right?’
Ella nodded.
‘And then this morning, even though you haven’t seen or heard from him in all the time you’ve been living in Eastbourne, Shane Gilbert turns up as well. And he drives into Katie and kills her.’
‘I know how it sounds,’ Ella said. ‘But that’s what happened.’
‘How did he find you? And why now – exactly at the same time as Katie was visiting you? That’s not a coincidence, Ella. That’s impossible.’
‘Unless she told him how to find me.’
‘She wouldn’t do that,’ Roxanne said. ‘She hated him more than you did. She thought he killed her father, remember?’
‘Maybe he convinced her he was innocent,’ Ella said. ‘I know she’d been to see him in prison. What if she carried on seeing him after he came out?’
More memories from that night. She’d tried so hard to put it behind her, to never think about it again. But now she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
‘Oh God.’ She put a hand over her mouth as she realised. ‘Katie didn’t work it out. She didn’t have to. She was there. We were about to have a drink together. I thought it was good that we were finally speaking. I took it as a sign she was getting over Shane.
‘When he came into the bar, I forgot about Katie. Afterwards, everything was so messed up, it never occurred to me to wonder where she’d gone. If I thought about her at all, I assumed she’d heard his voice and couldn’t face seeing him so she went up to the flat. But I don’t think that’s what happened. I think she stayed downstairs and saw everything.’
‘No way,’ Roxanne said. ‘Gus was her dad. If she’d known who killed him, she would never have kept quiet about it. She’d have wanted justice.’
‘Shane treated her badly. He really hurt her. Maybe it suited her to see him punished like that.’
‘Poor Katie.’ Roxanne buried her face in her hands. ‘She must have hated us so much. No wonder she wanted nothing to do with me after I bought the pub. I really let her down, didn’t I?’
‘We both did. We thought getting rid of Shane was the answer to everything. Instead, all we did was make things worse.’
‘You need to tell the police,’ Roxanne said. ‘He killed her. We owe it to Katie to make sure he pays for what he did.’
‘I know it’s what I should do. But I can’t tell the police what Shane did without telling them why. And if I do that, they’ll arrest me and I’ll end up in prison. We both will, Roxanne.’
‘It’s what we deserve,’ Roxanne said.
‘It’s what I deserve. And I wouldn’t care if it was just me. But I can’t do that to Jake. I’m all he has. I won’t leave him. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen.’
‘So we just hide out here and say nothing? We can’t do that. Can’t you simply tell the police what you saw today? Gus’s death doesn’t have to come into it.’
‘I’ve spent the last three years pretending to be someone else,’ Ella said. ‘Do you really think the police won’t want to know why I did that?’
‘Tell them he’s a psycho and you’re scared of him,’ Roxanne said.
‘And he’ll tell them I lied in court. He’ll tell them we both lied.’
‘They won’t believe him.’
‘But that means more lies. Is that what you want? For us to carry on heaping lies upon lies upon lies? That’s not the person I want to be. It’s not the sort of mother I want my child to have.’
Ella’s eyes were gritty with exhaustion. When she lifted her mug to
drink some tea, she was shaking so badly she needed to use both hands.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of a way out of this that doesn’t involve Jake getting hurt.’
‘The thing I’m still not getting is why he did it. I can understand if he wanted to hurt you or me. But why Katie?’
The images were back. Jake standing at the window in the sitting room, pointing at something outside and saying, ‘Mamma, Mamma.’
But it wasn’t Ella. It was Katie. Pushing the buggy along the lane, a shopping bag on either handle and another bag on the seat where Jake normally sat. She was wearing Ella’s blue Vivienne Westwood T-shirt. The one Dee had given her. She had taken it from Ella’s wardrobe without asking, saying she hadn’t brought many clothes with her and she didn’t think Ella would mind.
‘That’s not Mamma,’ Ella said. She pointed at her chest. ‘This is Mamma. Here.’
‘Mamma,’ Jake repeated. He ran off to get his train, and that was when it happened. The screech of tyres. The shock on Katie’s face as she heard the noise and looked over her shoulder to see the car roaring towards her. Right before it hit her, Ella caught sight of the driver’s face through the windscreen. It was over nine years since she’d seen him, but she recognised him instantly.
Shane Gilbert.
‘He made a mistake,’ she said. ‘Our plan worked too well. Shane saw Katie and he thought she was me.’
Forty-Nine
Dee
Dee stood across the road from the building she’d once called home – a characterless town house in a row of identical properties on the eastern edge of Greenwich. She’d loved living here. It wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but inside, the house was bright and spacious. The river and Greenwich Park were within walking distance, and there were enough bars and restaurants to keep her and Billy happy when they’d first moved here.
She hadn’t been back since the day their marriage ended. This house represented everything that had been both good and bad about their life together. They’d had so much fun when they first moved in. But over the years, as Billy’s drinking grew progressively worse, the fun times gave way to long, anxious nights sitting home alone waiting for him to come back from whatever bender he’d been on.
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