‘I told you I wouldn’t see him again, and I haven’t. Have you sent your little spies out looking for evidence?’
I ignored the comment, but my lack of concentration on the road meant I almost ran a red light. From somewhere behind me came the blast of a horn. Lily reached dramatically for the door handle, as though she had narrowly missed a near-death collision.
‘Who were you on the phone to for so long last night?’
The sigh became more infuriating each time it was expelled from between her pouting lips.
‘Maisie.’
I glanced at her, checking for telltale signs of duplicity, but the problem was, I didn’t know when she was lying and when she was telling the truth. She was a good liar, and the implications of that were frightening.
‘So if I call Maisie later and ask if she spoke to you last night, she’ll confirm that, will she?’
‘Yes, Detective Morgan, she will.’
Her reply sent irritation pulsing through me. I loved my daughter, but there were times when I caught myself thinking that I didn’t like her very much, immediately followed by guilt that the notion had even flitted through my brain. It was a phase, I realised that – she wouldn’t be this sarcastic and disrespectful forever. At least, I hoped not.
I made a mental note to call Maisie’s mother later. Lily liked to think herself smart, but she’d got her brains from me, so I could play her at her own game.
‘Swear to it,’ I said. ‘On Amelia’s life, swear that you’re not seeing him any more.’
I don’t know why I said that. I hate using people’s lives to swear by, though I’m not superstitious in the slightest. It was something Damien did that I always chided him for, and yet there I was asking Lily to use her sister to prove to me she wasn’t telling yet more lies.
She pouted. ‘I swear on Amelia’s life that I’m not seeing him any more. There. You happy now?’
But of course I wasn’t happy. I didn’t believe her.
‘Where did you meet him?’
Another exaggerated exhalation. ‘For God’s sake, I’ve just told you I’m not seeing him, okay? What is wrong with you?’
‘I don’t want him preying on anyone else. How old is he?’
I’d never got this information from her; it remained a mystery, along with all the other details she was keeping hidden from me. I had hoped Amy had been wrong when she had estimated his age; that he looked older than he was, or that the lighting had been too poor for her to get a fair impression.
Lily didn’t answer, instead turning her head from me and focusing her attention on the window as though something fascinating had just passed us by.
‘You know it’s not normal for men of his age to bother with teenage girls, don’t you?’
Her silence was more frustrating than having her shout at me, but before I could tell her so, she decided to offer me a response.
‘It’s not like that.’
‘So you are still seeing him?’
‘For God’s sake, no, I’m not, I’m just saying it wasn’t like that. Not everything has to be about sex, does it? Just because you got knocked up young doesn’t mean we’re all headed the same way.’
I stopped the car. It was stupid and childish, I realised that – too late, of course, in the way that regret always floods upon us. Beneath my sweater I could feel my heart pumping painfully, too fast, and when Lily turned to look at me, her face was enough to tell me that she knew she’d pushed me too far this time.
‘Get out.’
We were only a few streets from the offices where she was booked in for an interview – a call-centre job, weekends and one evening during the week. She had taken on multiple part-time jobs since she’d turned sixteen almost two years earlier, but her lack of staying power meant she’d already had more employers than I’d had in my entire adult life. She knew her way to the building from where we’d stopped, but still, I shouldn’t have done it. A red mist descended, and at that moment I couldn’t see through it. I thought of Charlotte, her blood seeping from her neck – the life draining from her – and it made my foolish, selfish daughter all the more infuriating.
‘What?’
‘Get out of the car.’
Realising I meant it, she grabbed her bag from the floor and opened the door, giving it a good slam behind her, then sauntered off down the pavement, refusing to look back. I waited there a while, watching her disappear around the corner at the end of the street.
It wasn’t her I was cross with, not really. Yes, she was lippy and rude and all the obnoxious things teenagers seem best capable of being, but in truth it was me I was angriest with, for the lack of control I seemed to have over what my daughter was doing. I hated that she was lying to me, though I had no right to be angry about it – no right to be angry with her for anything – not when it was me who was carrying the biggest lie of all.
Four
After leaving Lily – and sending her a grovelling text to apologise for our argument and for making her get out of the car – I stopped at Sainsbury’s to buy flowers. Before going in, I replied to the text Laura had sent me the night before, asking whether I was home safely and gently mocking me for being forgetful.
Sorry. What am I like! Lovely to see you both last night – we’ll have to do it again soon. I’m not feeling too great, so going to have to give circuits later a miss. Sorry x
I quickly dismissed the idea of calling her, not wanting to get into a conversation about what had happened. I had already been over the previous night’s events too many times, having to relive the scene again and again, each time haunted by the sight of the blood that had seeped from the other woman’s skin onto mine.
In the supermarket, I spent a disproportionate amount of time deliberating over what colour flowers to buy – reds too romantic, yellows too cheery – though my procrastination was nothing more than a means of delaying my visit to the hospital, of having to face whatever awaited me there. The long hours between the previous night and that afternoon had been riddled with varying degrees of guilt, each relating to a different aspect of what had happened in the park. I should have acted quicker. I should have been better prepared. I could have been kinder, couldn’t I, more compassionate with my words? Instead, I’d panicked. Talked nonsense.
After paying for a bouquet of pale pinks and creams – perhaps too feminine, but they were the only choice after a carefully considered process of elimination – I returned to the car. I’d had a text back from Laura: Okay, no worries. Hope you’re feeling better soon x
I had heard one of the paramedics say that Charlotte would be taken to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport; I had called that morning and been told which ward she had been moved to following emergency surgery during the night. It occurred to me as I carried the bouquet through the front doors of the hospital’s main building that perhaps she wouldn’t be allowed flowers on the ward. I had explained to the nurse I’d spoken to that morning that I was the person who had called the ambulance and stayed with Charlotte until it had arrived. I’d asked how she was – stable, I was told, and lucky – but the thought of enquiring whether she might be able to accept gifts hadn’t come to mind; why would it when there were so many other things to think about?
I got lost in the labyrinthine mass of the hospital’s corridors and had to stop to ask a passing caretaker to point me in the right direction. Once I reached the ward, there was no need to find a member of staff; there was a board near the nurses’ station with the patients’ names printed in marker pen. Charlotte Copeland. Room 6. It occurred to me that they didn’t seem particularly concerned about patients’ safety, nor their privacy, but the thought was fleeting, quickly replaced by the swell of a headache that had been growing in severity since that morning. My palm was sweating around the stems of the bouquet. I was wearing only a thin cardigan over my T-shirt, having left my bulky winter coat in the car, and yet it felt as though I was overdressed, a thin trickle of sweat running down from the top of my spine
.
Charlotte’s room was at the end of the corridor. She was lying beneath a thin hospital sheet. Her head was turned from the door to face the window, which framed a panoramic view of the city, with the transporter bridge visible in the distance, a smudge of grey cloud hanging above it. She might have been sleeping, but the tilt of her head – too far back for her to be comfortable – suggested that she wasn’t.
I paused on the threshold, unsure of what to say. The longer the moment drew on, the more inappropriate it began to feel, so I cleared my throat and spoke her name. She pushed a hand to the mattress, using it to propel herself upright. When she turned, my eyes were drawn to the dressing that covered the left side of her throat, then to her face, which was the pallid grey of exhaustion and trauma.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked stupidly.
The scream was ear-splitting, bursting through the door and echoing down the corridor. I looked at her with horror, realising that her expression was a mirror of mine. My mouth fell open as though I too might scream; instead, she repeated her own cry, this time somehow louder and even more insistent.
Within moments, a nurse came running down the corridor, her hurried footsteps frantically click-clicking on the tiled floor. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, her face red and flustered. She was overweight, and her uniform pulled around her waist, her stomach straining to be freed from its incarceration. I felt ashamed at the thought, uncharitable, but it helped in that moment to keep me distracted from the echoes of Charlotte’s screams and her unexpected reaction to seeing me.
‘It’s her,’ Charlotte said, her voice much stronger than it had been the previous evening. ‘It’s her!’
The nurse looked at me, her eyes narrowed. ‘You can’t bring those in here,’ she said, gesturing impatiently to the flowers I carried.
I shook my head and mumbled an apology. The flowers were the least of my concerns, particularly when the screaming recommenced.
‘Charlotte,’ the nurse said, hurrying to her side. ‘Stop this. Calm yourself down.’ She turned in a panic, as though hoping another member of staff might be free to come to her rescue. ‘Charlotte,’ she said again, repeating her name over and over as the hysterical woman continued to scream. ‘You need to take it easy – you’ll burst your stitches.’
All the time she had been screaming, Charlotte had managed not to take her eyes from me, and though the nurse’s panicked attempts to calm her should at times have blocked her view, she had found a way of keeping me in sight. I felt the weight of her stare rest upon my skin, settling there like something I would never be able to wash clean.
‘You’re not listening to me,’ she shouted, trying to push the nurse aside. ‘It’s her!’
A second nurse brushed past me as she entered the room. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m not sure,’ the first said, as though neither Charlotte nor I was present. ‘Could you show this woman to the relatives’ room, please?’ She looked at me, waiting for me to object. I could have left – I could easily have outrun them both and fled from the hospital – but I stayed because I had no reason not to.
I nodded. ‘Fine,’ I said, not really knowing what else to say. ‘I’ll…’ I looked down at the flowers still dangling from my hand, the blooms that had appeared so beautiful just an hour earlier now seeming drained of life, defeated. ‘I’ll wait there.’
I followed the second nurse from the room, hearing the voice of the first as she continued to try to calm a hysterical Charlotte.
‘There’s water there, if you’d like some,’ the second nurse told me as she pushed open the door of the relatives’ waiting room. She gestured to a dispenser in the corner, though there were no cups in the plastic funnel designed to store them. There was a bookcase against the right-hand wall, stocked with an array of dog-eared paperbacks and children’s books. I wondered how long people were expected to stay there, and just what they were waiting for. It seemed to me that no stories could detract from the misery that must so often have played out within those four walls.
I knew then, from the mock politeness in the nurse’s words, that something was very wrong and that I had been sent here to wait for someone else, someone who would ask for some explanation. I hadn’t got one. There wasn’t one. What had happened in Room 6 played over and over in my head, and with each repeat I hoped I might spot something different, something previously unnoticed, yet there was nothing. No matter how many times I viewed the scene, it remained the same. Charlotte’s reaction was inexplicable, and so I waited for the police to arrive so that I could tell them there had been some sort of mistake.
Five
For the second time in twenty-four hours, it felt as though I was living someone else’s life. The wrong things were happening to me, things I had no control over and felt certain were meant for somebody else. I was sitting in a cell at the local police station, all personal items – car keys, purse, mobile phone – having been taken from me and bagged at the custody desk. I had been photographed and had my fingerprints taken, a DNA sample scraped from the inside of my cheek, but other than to ask for my name and other details, no one had really yet spoken to me. Apparently I would be allowed a phone call, though I hadn’t had a chance to make it yet. The thought of calling Damien and telling him what had happened filled me with dread, though I knew that had everything been right between us, it wouldn’t have.
I was surrounded by brick walls, with nothing but the bare toilet in the corner for company. I was determined not to be reduced to having to use it, even though my bladder was near fit to burst. The thought of how many people – what type of people – had sat here in this box over the years, their minds plagued with the same waking nightmares that filled my head, helped keep everything else at bay for a while. I wondered how many of those other people had been innocent.
No matter how I tried to distract myself, I was unable to shut off the sound of Charlotte Copeland’s voice. It might as well have been in that cell with me, so loud were the echoes it had left. How had she managed to get things so wrong? I had only tried to help her, though I could never for a moment have anticipated where that decision would lead me.
A tiny window in the top of one wall was the only source of light in the cell, and though I scanned the room for the camera I was sure must be installed somewhere, I couldn’t see it. Eventually, after what felt like an age, someone came to unlock the door. I was taken back to the custody sergeant, who passed me a phone and told me I could call my husband.
With shaking hands, I keyed in Damien’s mobile number. It was one of few I had memorised.
Pick up, I thought, when it started to ring. Please, Damien… pick up.
It rang through to answerphone. ‘Damien, it’s me. I…’ Even now, I’m not sure why I said what I did. ‘I’m going to be back late… I’m sorry. Tell the girls I’ll make it up to them tomorrow. We’ll get a pizza in or something. I’ll explain when I see you, but there’s nothing to worry about. Love you.’
The custody sergeant, having listened for the duration of the message, pulled an expression that I decided to ignore. Once I’d returned the phone to him, the officer who had escorted me from my cell took me back there.
It was several more hours before I saw another human being. A middle-aged female officer, stern-faced and grey-haired, unlocked the door and passed me a tray of food that looked so unappealing it made aeroplane meals seem appetising. I took it from her and placed it on the bench beside me, with no intention of touching the contents.
‘When will I be interviewed?’ I asked.
‘We’re waiting for the duty solicitor.’
I could have cried, but I didn’t want to show any signs of weakness. The thought of having to stay in that room any longer, my family once again not knowing where I was or what had happened to me, made me feel sick. I already regretted not telling Damien the truth, but I hadn’t dreamed I would be there so long. I had lied to him, despite my recent fears that he had been lying to me for some ti
me.
‘How long can you keep me here?’ I asked, but my question was met with only the closing of the cell door as the officer left.
I dropped back onto the bench, pulling my knees up to my chest and covering myself with the thin blanket. I tried not to think about where Damien was – what he was doing and who he might be with – but I couldn’t distract myself enough. If the reason for his recent distance was another woman, my absence would do nothing but push him closer to her. I waited, my mind plagued with the darkest of thoughts, my back and shoulders stiff with tension. I refused an offer of food while I waited for the arrival of the duty solicitor, who was apparently in no hurry to come to my aid. Having based my expectations on television dramas and crime novels, I was expecting a middle-aged man in an ill-fitting suit, someone with cigarette breath and an air of disillusionment, so when, at nearly eight o’clock that evening, I was finally introduced to a smartly dressed woman younger than I was, it threw me into a further state of ill-prepared panic. I had no idea what would happen to me, or what I should do to help myself. All I knew was that the woman I had visited in hospital – the woman whose life I might have saved – was accusing me of being her attacker.
‘Follow me,’ was all the solicitor said. She led me through a set of double doors to a room marked as Interview Room 2, where she opened the door and gestured to the nearest seat at the table to the left of the room.
I sat on the metal chair and listened to the door close behind us. There was a tape recorder on the table, a clock on the far wall; a camera installed in one of the corners of the ceiling. Other than that, the room was empty. I had no idea what happened next. I had never been arrested before – I had never been within the walls of a police station before – and though I’d watched plenty of police dramas on television, I doubted they were sufficient to prepare me for whatever the next couple of hours might hold.
The Accusation: An addictive psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist Page 3