The Accusation: An addictive psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist

by Victoria Jenkins

  Twenty-Two

  The week after we slept together for the first time, Damien didn’t turn up at the flat as arranged. I had swapped a shift with someone at the pub so that we could spend an afternoon and evening together, and in his absence, I played with Lily, trying to avoid the temptation of checking my phone every thirty seconds. I gave her a bath, read her a story and sat beside her bed long after she had fallen asleep, by which time I had finally resigned myself to the fact that he wasn’t going to show up. I checked my phone yet again, but he hadn’t called or texted. I contemplated texting him but quickly dismissed the idea, worried that it would only make me look desperate. I had chased a man before. I had promised myself that I would never do it again.

  I continued to sit with Lily as she slept, watching the rise and fall of her chest beneath her Peppa Pig pyjamas. They were a present from our landlady, and she had refused to be parted from them, throwing an uncharacteristic tantrum when I’d had to peel them from her to get her dressed to go into town. As I listened to the tiny purr of her breathing, I felt reassured by the notion that I had all I needed, and that as long as Lily and I were together, we didn’t need anyone else. Nonetheless, the memory of Damien’s warm body in my bed filled me with a sense of yearning. I had allowed my mind to run away from me, picturing days that had never been spoken of and a life that had never been promised. My foolish naivety had made me hope there could be more to it than there had been.

  I fell asleep on the carpet, and the following morning woke late. I hastily pulled my clothes on before dressing a half-asleep Lily, then hurried over to the B and B, where Elaine was awaiting our arrival with toast for Lily and a cup of tea for me. My phone went off in my pocket as I made a start on the first bedroom, but when I glanced at it, I didn’t recognise the number. Ignoring it, I carried on with my work. Lily had joined me by the time I got to the third bedroom, watching cartoons on the TV and entertaining herself with a couple of dolls she’d brought up with her from the box in the kitchen. At eleven o’clock, the same phone number tried me again, this time leaving a voice message.

  ‘Hi, Jenna, my name’s Jim, I’m Damien’s flatmate. Look, he asked me to contact you, to let you know why he wasn’t there yesterday. The thing is, there was an accident. He’s okay… well, he’ll be okay, but he wanted you to know. Give me a call when you can. Thanks.’

  I abandoned the duvet I’d been changing and called the number back.

  ‘Is that Jim?’ I said when a male voice answered. ‘It’s Jenna. You left me a message. I’m sorry I kept missing you – I’m at work.’

  ‘It’s okay. Look, Damien––’

  ‘Is he okay?’

  I already knew what the answer was; I could tell from the tone of the message that everything wasn’t okay. Whatever had happened, Damien was hurt. Able to speak, at least, but injured in some way.

  ‘He was knocked off his bike yesterday morning. He had emergency surgery for a leg injury and is still in hospital. They reckon he could be there a while.’

  ‘Which hospital?’ My mouth had gone dry. There I’d been, thinking the worst of him – that he was just another user – and all the time he’d been in recovery. I couldn’t bring myself to start thinking about what might have happened to him or in what way he might have been injured. His job, his running, his cycling… everything he loved depended on his body’s ability to function.

  ‘The University Hospital in Cardiff,’ Jim told me.

  ‘Can I visit him?’

  ‘Of course, but I thought you were down west? It’s quite a long way.’

  ‘I’m coming. I don’t know when I’ll get there, but tell him I’ll come as soon as I can.’

  We ended the call and I finished the room as quickly as I could. Then, scooping Lily and her dolls up into my arms, I headed downstairs to the kitchen, where Elaine was pulling a load of wet bed linen from the washing machine.

  ‘Elaine,’ I said, stooping to put the dolls back into the toy basket, ‘I need to ask you a favour.’

  ‘What is it, love?’

  ‘Can I…’ I felt embarrassed to ask – I had never relied on charity and I didn’t want to start now. I told myself that it wasn’t really charity: I would earn back what I asked for, so it was little more than an advance. ‘Is there any chance I could have next week’s wages up front? I know it’s cheeky to ask, but you know I’ll do my hours, and I’ll work my day off for free. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  I explained to her that a friend had been in an accident and that I needed to get to Cardiff to see him.

  ‘You’ll be wanting tomorrow off then. You won’t get there and back in a day, not unless you drag Lily home late tonight, and that won’t be fair on her.’

  ‘Would you mind? I know it’s asking a lot.’

  Elaine smiled. ‘You never ask for anything, love. I’ll have a chat with Brian – he’ll have to go into town to the bank.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  She picked the washing basket up. ‘A friend, you say?’ she said, a knowing smile creeping across her lips.

  I felt the colour rise in my cheeks. ‘Thank you, Elaine,’ I said again. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

  At the end of my shift, Brian handed me that week’s money and the following week’s pay in advance. I called one of the other part-time staff members from the pub and asked them to cover my evening shift, promising to cover one of their weekends in return, then I took Lily back to the flat and packed an overnight bag for the two of us.

  With my heart filled with uneasy anticipation, we caught a bus to the nearest train station, twenty miles away. Whatever I might find waiting for me when I got to Cardiff, I felt certain that Damien and I would face it together. I would help heal him, just as he’d been healing me.

  Twenty-Three

  Sean came to the police station on Tuesday morning to let me know that the crown court had accepted his application, though as he had predicted, there were conditions surrounding my release. I was to go back to the station once a week to sign myself in, had to hand in my passport to the police, and I was under instruction not to attempt to make any contact with Charlotte, though by this point I had no intention of doing so. My time spent in custody had drained what little energy I had, giving me just a taste of what life in prison would be like. I was afraid I hadn’t the reserves to survive it.

  He drove me back to the house and I thanked him for everything he had done for me so far. He remained quiet, and I was unsure what his silence indicated – whether he was withholding any developments until he had something substantial to work from, or whether in fact there were none, and he didn’t want to have to admit it.

  The first thing I did when I got into the house was to call Lily. Her phone rang through to voicemail and I hung up, then rang back again and left a message.

  ‘Love, it’s Mum. I’m home. Where are you? I was hoping we could meet up – I’ve missed you all so much. I am so sorry, darling. Call me when you get this.’

  I phoned Damien next, but there was no answer from him either. I left a message telling him I was going to shower then go over to his mother’s house. I was desperate to see Amelia and wanted to be there when she got back from school. I dreaded the reaction my presence might provoke from Nancy, but thoughts of drawing my family back together were stronger than any concerns about her animosity.

  I stayed in the shower far longer than was necessary, allowing the too-hot water to scald away the dirt and shame of the past five days. I washed my hair twice, still feeling even after it was rinsed through that I was carrying the grime of the police station, as though the place’s every association had ingrained itself in my scalp and my skin. I was putting on clean clothes, my hair still wet, when I heard the doorbell.

  It was Amy. Her car was parked on the drive, in the space where my own had sat the previous week, and she was holding a bunch of flowers and a two-pint bottle of milk. ‘I did consider wine,�
� she said, ‘but I thought this might be more practical.’

  I ushered her into the house, mindful that the neighbours might be watching. People would surely have noticed that no one had been home since before the weekend, and gossip rarely took long to spread. I had tried not to linger on thoughts of what might have been said about me, but my mind kept returning to the possibilities.

  Amy sat at the kitchen table as I made tea. I was grateful for the milk – there was nothing in the fridge other than a lump of cheese that had turned blue at the edges, three cloves of garlic and half a tub of butter, and I wondered whether Lily had been back to the house at all since I’d been gone. She still hadn’t returned my call; I had been checking my phone every couple of minutes; had even taken it into the bathroom with me in case she called while I was in the shower.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Never been better.’

  ‘We’re going to get this sorted, Jenna, I promise you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t make promises you might not be able to keep.’

  I placed a cup of tea in front of her. I’d made one for myself, though I doubted I would drink it; the thought of food and drink made me feel sick.

  ‘Damien said he’d seen you.’

  She nodded and sipped her tea. ‘He’s really worried about you. Look…’ She paused and set her mug down on the table, her eyes meeting mine. ‘Remember what you said before, about thinking Damien was having an affair? You don’t still think it, do you? I know it’s not the biggest thing going on right now… I mean, well of course it’s big, but… you know what I mean.’

  It wasn’t like Amy to get tongue-tied. She was usually so assertive with her opinions, so sure of everything that left her mouth. It was something I admired, this ability to always seem so self-assured, even when there must have been occasions when, inside, the opposite was true.

  I thought about telling her what I’d seen on the CCTV footage. The laptop was there on the table beside us, right where I had left it after being arrested. I could have played it to her, but what would I be showing? Laura and Damien leaving a building together. Even in my current state of mind, I could see how ridiculous it would appear. Plus, she was Laura’s friend too. I trusted Amy as much as I trusted anyone, but that was the problem: there was no one – not even myself – that I trusted fully.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t think about it at the moment.’

  ‘I understand that. Please don’t think I’m interfering, and it’s probably best you don’t tell him I told you this, but Damien was a mess when we saw him on Friday. He’s so worried about all this, about you. If he’s having an affair, he’s putting on one hell of a performance, that’s all I’m saying.’

  I heard what she was saying, but it couldn’t change what was eating me away inside. I knew how Damien had been behaving towards me, long before that night at the park. The distance between us, the silences, the knowing there was something he wanted to say but didn’t seem able to put into words; there was something wrong, whether I was mistaken or not about its origins.

  Those notes, I thought. I had told him what they referred to, but what if he didn’t believe me?

  ‘You haven’t come here to talk about my marriage, though, have you?’ I said, realising as the question left my lips how abrupt and confrontational it sounded. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that how it came out. It’s just… I need to focus on clearing my name. Everything else I can deal with later.’

  Amy glanced at her mobile phone on the table.

  ‘What is it?’ I pressed.

  She sighed and closed her eyes, caught in an invisible dilemma she appeared to be battling within her own head. ‘Sean will kill me if he knows I’ve told you.’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘I promised him I wouldn’t say anything.’

  ‘And if you’d intended to keep that promise, you wouldn’t have mentioned anything, so come on, Amy, please – I haven’t got time to mess about with this.’

  ‘You can’t say anything, okay?’

  She was making me feel like a teenager again, as though we were two schoolgirls swapping secrets over a stolen bottle of vodka rather than two adults discussing something that might change the entire course of my future. I widened my eyes, tired of the charade.

  ‘Sean has found out a few things about Charlotte Copeland. I won’t go into details, but all you need to know is that they change everything.’

  I bit my lip, trying not to lose my patience with her. She was on my side, yet she was doing the same as everyone else, withholding information that I felt I had a right to know.

  ‘This is my life, Amy. My future. My family’s future. I think you can go into details.’

  ‘Promise me––’

  ‘Amy, for God’s sake, I won’t say anything!’

  We sat quietly for a moment, both silenced by my outburst. I was capable of much more, but the previous five days had taught me the benefit of adopting the appearance of calm, if nothing else.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry for. I think I’d be screaming from the bloody rooftops if I was in your shoes.’

  She sat back and drained the last of her tea.

  ‘Charlotte Copeland has previous involvement with the police.’

  ‘Go on,’ I encouraged her, sensing her reluctance to tell me everything she knew.

  ‘She made a false rape claim.’

  I put a hand to my forehead and pressed my thumb against my left temple, waiting for what was to come next.

  ‘She eventually withdrew the statement she’d made to the police,’ Amy continued. ‘That’s not all, either. She has a history of mental illness – depression, an eating disorder, a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She spent quite a bit of time in rehab.’

  I shoved my chair back and the sound of the legs scraping on the tiles pierced the air. ‘So she’s a fucking liar, basically? Just as I’ve been trying to tell everyone. Why are the police listening to a word this woman says?’

  My resolution to maintain my composure had been quickly shattered by Amy’s revelations. I could feel myself shaking, my body trembling as though some unknown force had taken hold of it. The police knew all this – they must have known for some time – yet I had still been charged and kept in that cell for five days. I was still facing a trial and a future someone else would decide upon.

  ‘Why wasn’t she sent to prison? I thought making a false rape claim was considered serious enough for a custodial sentence?’

  ‘It is usually. But apparently, after she withdrew her statement, the man she’d accused said he didn’t want charges brought against her. Her history of mental illness was taken into consideration and she was admitted to a psychiatric unit instead.’

  ‘But her history will come out during the trial, won’t it? I don’t just mean the mental illness – I mean the false rape claim as well.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  I sat back down, collapsing into the chair beside Amy. The weight I had been carrying with me seemed to slide from my shoulders and land in a heap at my feet. Though I knew my problems were far from over, I was crying with the relief of knowing that finally something had come my way that would help to prove my innocence. Amy put a comforting hand on my arm.

  ‘Where’s she from, this woman?’ I asked, wiping away the humiliating rush of tears that had flooded my face. ‘She’s not from around here, I know that much. She didn’t have a Welsh accent.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Where was she in rehab? Please, Amy,’ I begged, certain that she knew the answer. ‘I just want to know where she’s from. If I know that, maybe I can work out why she’s doing this to me.’

  ‘Let the defence work that out. Your job now is to look after your kids and get your life back to normal.’

  I laughed bitterly. ‘There is no normal, though, is there? There won’t be until the trial is over, and that could be ages. And there’ll be no chance of normal
ever again if I’m found guilty.’

  I met her eyes, pleading with her to see things from my perspective, though I knew that was impossible. Nobody could understand what the past couple of weeks had done to me, or what the thought of an uncertain future continued to do.

  ‘You know, don’t you? You know where she was in rehab, but you won’t tell me.’

  ‘What will it achieve, Jenna?’

  ‘What I just told you,’ I said, trying not to lose my patience. ‘If I know where she’s from, I might be able to work out who she is. I might stand a chance of figuring out what the hell is going on. Please,’ I said again. ‘What do you think I’m going to do – turn up at the place? What would that achieve, given that she’s not there any more?’

  ‘You’d be stupid to do that anyway. It could jeopardise your entire defence when the case goes to court.’

  ‘Exactly. So please… trust me.’

  Amy deliberated, watching the desperation in my eyes as she weighed up her loyalty to her brother against her friendship with me.

  ‘Oakfield Manor Clinic. It’s in Peterborough.’

  ‘Peterborough?’

  ‘Exactly. I doubt that makes things any clearer. Have you ever even been to Peterborough?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘But at least now I haven’t got to wonder.’

  I glanced at my phone. Amelia would be finishing school soon.

  ‘Could you do me a favour?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends what it is.’

  ‘I need to get a hire car.’

  Amy raised an eyebrow and looked at me warningly.

  ‘I’ve got no way of getting around, remember?’ I pointed out. ‘I want to be able to take Amelia out, give Lily lifts. I just want to try to find some sort of normality.’

  She hesitated, clearly torn about what she should do. Seeing her indecision, I took pity on her.

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘you’re right. I don’t need one, do I? Most things are within walking distance, and there are always buses if not. The exercise will do me good.’