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

by Victoria Jenkins

  I wished there was one; that all this was just one big, inappropriately timed and ill-judged joke. Yet it was the truth. I had been running from it for most of my adult life, managing to convince even myself at times. Wasn’t I the one who had cared for her, who was there for her no matter what? Wasn’t I the one she came to first for everything she needed?

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I said, as though that offered me a get-out clause.

  The look on Damien’s face still hadn’t changed, and it scared me. Since the incident with Jacob, I had been aware of my husband’s potential for violence, something I had never seen from him before and had never imagined. Yet I knew that everyone had a breaking point, and he had met his.

  What would happen after this?

  When he still said nothing, I took my cue to continue. I drew a deep breath, trying to clear my head of all the debris.

  ‘Everything I told you about Nikolas is true,’ I said, hating the sound and the taste of his name on my tongue. ‘He did die in a car accident. I was there with him, you know that. I hadn’t known him long. Lily – Maria – was thirteen months old when I met him. Her mother, Rebecca, had killed herself.’ I paused, cleared my throat. There were things I couldn’t tell him; things I could never admit to anyone. ‘It was a whirlwind relationship, but after we got married, I realised he wasn’t who he’d said he was. There were a few other things I realised too. I loved Lily, but I didn’t love Nikolas. He didn’t love me either, I knew that. I think he’d been looking for someone to take Lily off his hands, and marrying me got him what he wanted – his pass into the UK. He started drinking, neglecting Lily while I was at work. That night… well, you know what happened. He’d been drinking, but he insisted on going to pick her up, and I knew I couldn’t leave her alone with him. We never made it to the babysitter’s house.’

  Damien’s eyes had darkened as he stared down at the table, not once looking at me as I spoke. I wished he would do something – scream at me, throw something; anything that would break the awful silence and show me he cared enough to react. I wanted to reach out to touch him. Like me, he was holding everything back to stop himself from breaking.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said eventually. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me? It wouldn’t have changed anything.’

  ‘I did what I thought was best for Lily. I’ve been the only mother she’s ever known. What was I supposed to do – tell her both her parents were dead? What would have happened then?’

  ‘So you just lied? It seems to be a habit, Jenna.’

  I sighed, realising too late that the sound was petulant, like something Lily would offer up mid argument. Damien was never going to understand this, any of it. Though his life had been afflicted by its own set of tragedies, our backgrounds and experiences differed entirely. He was a literal thinker, believing things should be one way or another, this or that. He had never been able to see the shadows that appeared to me in every corner.

  ‘You were her stepmother, then?’ he asked, his eyes restless as his brain tried to make sense of my admission. ‘I’m sorry… I still don’t get it. You didn’t need to lie, did you?’

  ‘It wasn’t that straightforward,’ I said, but when I offered nothing more in the way of an explanation, my silence was incriminating.

  ‘How did you think you could keep it a secret?’ he challenged. ‘What if she’d got ill? What if she’d needed her birth certificate for something?’

  This was one of the things I’d had to keep pushing to the back of my mind, knowing that at some point the issue would arise. I’d just hoped it would be way into the future, when Lily was an adult, and perhaps old enough to understand why I’d done what I had. But deep down, I’d known that when the secret came out, its consequences could be disastrous. Lily wouldn’t see my commitment to her; she would only see the lie. I knew I was lucky to have made it this far, though it felt wrong to have the truth forced from me by the vindictive actions of a stranger.

  ‘Oh,’ Damien said flatly, his face changing in an instant, and I could only imagine what had occurred to him. He shook his head, and a smile crossed his face, weak and fleeting; there was no kindness or humour in the expression, and it was quickly replaced by a coldness that made him look nothing like his usual self. ‘This is why you went to so many of Amelia’s antenatal appointments alone, isn’t it?’

  He stared at me, waiting for a response, an admission, yet I couldn’t even bring myself to look him in the eye. I knew how much my behaviour back then had frustrated him. He had wanted to be there with me at every step of the pregnancy, displaying a commitment that would have been welcomed by most women, but at the forefront of my mind was the thought that at any scan, any appointment, the truth might make itself known: that I hadn’t already given birth, that I hadn’t been there and done all that before. I made excuses. It was such a long time ago, I would tell him, when questions about my previous pregnancy arose. I couldn’t remember.

  ‘All that time,’ he said, when I failed to offer even an attempt at a justification. ‘You were lying all that time. You’ve been lying to me for all these years. Is Amelia even mine?’

  The question stung more than any other. ‘How can you ask me that? Of course she’s yours. Lily’s past doesn’t change anything between us.’

  ‘Ask her about your daughter,’ he said, repeating the words of the third note. ‘I didn’t want to think it, but now I don’t know what to believe.’

  ‘You know she’s yours. And we’re still a family, all of us.’

  But I was wrong. In his face, in the way he looked at me, everything was changed.

  ‘Something’s not adding up,’ he said, eyeing me with a suspicion that was entirely deserved. ‘You haven’t kept this a secret all these years just so that Lily doesn’t find out.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Plenty of adopted children don’t discover until they’re adults that their parents aren’t their birth parents.’

  ‘So is that what Lily is? Adopted?’

  I hesitated. ‘No, I never legally adopted her. I could never have known what would happen to Nikolas, could I?’ I could see that Damien was rapidly forming the pieces in his brain into some sort of shape. ‘I didn’t lie to hurt you,’ I tried desperately to explain. ‘I had no choice.’

  He shook his head. ‘You had a choice. You always have a choice.’ He sat back and tilted his head to the ceiling. ‘Those notes.’ He laughed, but the sound was without humour. ‘You know, I could have said something weeks ago, but I didn’t. I thought it was a prank, just someone messing around. I know my wife better than anyone, don’t I? You’d tell me the truth.’ He stood, his chair scraping across the tiled floor, and moved to the back door, looking out at the garden. ‘This photograph,’ he said with his back to me. ‘It’s linked to everything else, isn’t it? The arrests… the car. Who’s responsible?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Another lie,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘Where do they all end, Jenna?’

  ‘I didn’t hurt that woman,’ I told him, desperate to convince him that that at least was the truth. ‘You have to believe me.’

  ‘I want to, but how can I?’ he said, turning to me. ‘How can I believe anything you say any more?’

  I rose hurriedly and moved around the table, putting a hand out to him but quickly pulling it away when I gauged his reaction. ‘We need to talk about this properly. I can explain everything if you’ll let me; just don’t walk out on me, not now.’

  ‘It’s all a lie.’

  ‘I love you. That’s not a lie.’

  ‘You sure? Or was I just a means to an end?’

  I felt my jaw tightening at the question. It was true I’d had nothing when we met – no money, no home, no job prospects – but the suggestion that I had pursued our relationship for anything other than to be with him was unfair.

  ‘If you want to believe that.’

  ‘You would have been nothing without me, Jenna, just remember that. If I hadn’t come along, you’d s
till be a single mother scraping together a living.’

  Bitterness radiated from him, and I could taste a million angry words on my own tongue. I held them back, knowing retaliation would only make things worse. ‘I appreciate how much you helped me, but I paid you back, every penny plus more. What about everything I did for you?’

  After the accident, I had moved to Cardiff and nursed Damien back to health. Though it hadn’t been much of a life I’d been living, I had given up everything to be with him when he’d needed me, and had asked for nothing in return. The risk was great – there was far more chance of me being exposed in Cardiff than there had been in Llangovney – but it was one I was prepared to face. I loved Damien. I wanted us to be a family. I managed to convince myself that if Lily and I were discovered, the law would be on my side. Legally, I was her stepmother. I was the only mother she had ever known, and who was going to deprive her of the one relationship she had left?

  ‘And what exactly did you do for me?’ he said defiantly.

  ‘I looked after you,’ I reminded him. ‘I took on two jobs while you couldn’t work. I never asked you for anything.’

  Damien had faced his injuries with stoicism, though I could see how much he had been changed by the accident. Everything in his life – his job, his hobbies, his social circle – involved his athleticism and his physical ability, and when the doctors told him that the damage to his leg was irreversible and irreparable, it was as though a part of him died. For a while, the colour was drained from him, his eyes a blank grey and his smile forced. In truth, there was only one person who managed to raise a genuine smile, and that was Lily.

  He was advised to seek compensation for his loss of earnings and for the impact his injuries would have on his future lifestyle. He was reluctant at first, critical of what he referred to as ‘claim culture’, but in the end, unable to return to his job as a firefighter, he sought legal representation and a case was put together. Nobody was expecting the hefty five-figure sum he was eventually awarded, though no number would have been big enough to replace what he had lost.

  ‘I’m grateful for what you’ve given me, you know that,’ I continued when he offered no response. ‘But everything I’ve done has been for this family. I know I should have told you, but I couldn’t. I never wanted Lily to find out.’

  ‘For fear that she’d hate you?’

  His words were like a punch to the gut. I had always imagined that if Lily was to ever discover the truth, she would be confused, shocked; devastated. I had never considered the possibility that she might come to hate me for it.

  ‘You know, people warned me that I was jumping in too quickly when I met you; that I didn’t know enough about you.’

  I rolled my eyes; a juvenile gesture, but it escaped me involuntarily. ‘People? Your mother, you mean.’

  For whatever reason, Nancy had never liked me. Yes, she was there for us when we needed her, and she had always helped out with Amelia, but the affection she showed her granddaughter often appeared in stark contrast to the aloof restraint that was reserved for any exchange with me. Of course, Damien never saw it, or at the very least refused to acknowledge it, accusing me of being paranoid or overly sensitive, each criticism of my character punctuated with a reminder of all the school pickups Nancy had done and the dinners she’d put in front of us when my time had been consumed by setting up the business.

  I’d seen her watching me with caution from the day I arrived, resentful that her son had chosen me to care for him; jealous of the fact that there was a woman in his life threatening to take him away from her, though that was never my intention. A close family unit was all I had ever wanted, and had Nancy welcomed me more warmly, our relationship might have been very different. As it was, she regarded me with a contempt that was almost tangible, making me feel like an outsider at every opportunity.

  ‘You can’t resist, can you? This isn’t about my mother, Jenna. Take some responsibility.’

  His words grated inside my brain, sending tiny tremors of fury racing through me. Taking responsibility was all I had ever tried to do, and was the very reason I had kept the secret for all those years. I had been taking responsibility for Lily’s happiness, trying my best to ensure that her childhood wasn’t blighted by the sad truth of her past. Was a lie always so bad? I asked myself. Was it always wrong if the reason for it was to protect someone you loved?

  ‘I love Lily,’ I told him, as though this would explain away everything. ‘Whatever I’ve done has been about protecting her.’

  Damien stared at me then, hard, for longer than was comfortable. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, the words cold; his voice not like his at all. ‘Or have you been protecting yourself?’

  He brushed past me and went out into the hallway, taking his jacket from where he had left it at the bottom of the stairs, searching the pockets for his keys.

  ‘I don’t know who you are any more,’ he said without looking at me, and a moment later he was gone, leaving me with the silence of the house and the deafening screams of my thoughts.

  Thirty-Six

  That evening, Lily didn’t come home. I tried her mobile repeatedly, but it rang through to voicemail. I called Maisie and her mother, but she was with neither. Damien had taken the car when he’d left, so I had no way of driving around to see if I could find her. Thoughts of where she might be plagued me, and I wondered if she would be foolish enough to meet up with Jacob again. Where was Charlotte? I wondered. The darkest thoughts filled my brain, taunting me with possibilities.

  I thought about calling the police, but I knew it would be regarded as an overreaction.

  I had reason to believe my daughter might be in danger, but how could I admit that without incriminating myself? I had abducted Lily. Not in the traditional sense of the word – not in a way that would be considered abduction by any rational mind – but in the eyes of the law, I had taken a child who wasn’t mine, and I would be regarded no differently than an abductor.

  I sat on the bottom step of the staircase and stared at the front door as if the power of thought alone could make Lily appear. I only had a few of Lily’s friends’ numbers stored in my phone. I tried the ones I had, but no one had seen her.

  Had I always known that this day would arrive, the truth finding its way into the open through one means or another? I supposed I must have, though I had managed to push the fear to the back of my mind, maintaining a pretence of normality. There had been so many times I had wanted to confide in Damien, to tell him the truth, but I had known how he would react, and the fear of losing him had kept me silent.

  We had been safe in Llangovney. Our lives might never have come to much, and we would have found our existence shaped by our daily routine, our isolation making us dependent on one another, but we would have been free to be together without the past hanging over me, an unseen threat. I wondered whether the events of the last two weeks would have occurred if I had never met Damien, though without him there would have been no Amelia, and it was impossible for me to regret any circumstance that had led to her existence.

  I found my coat and my house keys and walked briskly to Nancy’s house. Neither the car nor Damien was there. I knocked at the back door, and a moment later Nancy opened it. On the way over, I had braced myself for the welcome I might receive, wondering whether Damien had already spoken to his mother and told her what he had found out about Lily. When she ushered me in and told me Amelia was at the dining table doing her homework, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. So far, she knew nothing more than she had that morning.

  ‘Have you seen Lily?’ I asked her.

  She shook her head. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ I lied. ‘She’s probably at rehearsals. This show seems to be taking up her life.’

  I moved to the living room door and watched Amelia. Her sketchbook was open on the table in front of her, an array of coloured pencils neatly lined up beside it. As soon as she turned and saw me there, she got down from her chair and r
an to me, and when she threw her arms around me, I could have cried. I held her tight and said nothing, squeezing her until she wriggled free.

  ‘Want to see my project?’ she asked, before leading me by the hand to the table.

  Nancy made me a cup of tea, and I sat with Amelia for the next hour, until it was time for her to have a bath and get ready for bed.

  ‘I love you,’ I told her before I left. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  She nodded. ‘Love you too.’

  ‘I’ll come back to see you tomorrow, after school.’

  When I left, I tried Lily’s mobile for the umpteenth time, but it went straight to voicemail again. I had been checking my phone every five minutes while at Nancy’s house, willing the sound of the ringtone or a message notification to put my increasingly anxious heart at ease. Not knowing what else to do, I went back to the house, with the intention of waiting a few more hours before making a call to the police.

  In the living room, I searched the sofa for the television remote control. The screen lit with life and I went straight to the planner, scrolling the list of recordings. I knew that what I was looking for was there somewhere, though it took a while to find it.

  I pressed play.

  ‘Teenagers across Wales are celebrating today as a record number of students achieve A*–C grades in their GCSE exams,’ the flame-haired reporter said, grinning a toothy smile at the camera before turning to a man standing next to her. ‘I’m joined this morning by head teacher Daniel Pearson, and two of his Year 11 students, Josh and Lily.’

  The camera panned to Lily, and I pressed pause. She had changed so much in the fourteen months since the clip had been recorded, and yet I had barely noticed. As I stared at her image on the screen, one thing couldn’t be avoided. She looked so much like her mother: the same dark hair, the same eyes, the same lines around her mouth that framed her smile. If it was obvious to me – to someone who had never met Rebecca Lanza – then it must have been instantly apparent to anyone who had known her.