‘Ready, Hannah?’ asks Susan.
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s go in.’
I step into the police station. I don’t expect to step out again for a very long time.
Kath is joined by another police officer. He introduces himself but I forget his name immediately. I have more important things to remember today. Altogether there are five of us in this cramped room. Surprisingly dad wanted to come too but I told him there wouldn’t be room for him. Kath clears her throat, nods to the other inspector and then looks at me.
‘Hannah, we have reason to believe that you were present at Katie Sewell’s death and therefore we are going to record your statement.’
Both mum and I gasp. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go! They haven’t given me a chance to confess everything yet, to get a more lenient sentence! The room starts spinning and I feel like I’m going to faint. I lean towards mum, ‘I need a drink.’
Kath reluctantly gets me some water. When she comes back mum launches an attack on her.
‘What do you think you’re doing? You’re going to give her a heart attack at this rate! Why on earth do you think she was there?’
Susan jumps in, ‘Okay people, we need to take a step back. Inspector Foster, we’re here to give you Hannah’s statement so let’s stop with the scare tactics, unless you want my client to accuse you of intimidation? I’m sure I don’t need to remind you what damage that could do to any potential court case.’
‘The way we’re being treated is disgusting. She’s just a child for God’s sake.’
‘Mum, please be quiet. Let’s get this over with.’
Kath opens three sealed cassettes and puts them in the tape recorder. She tells us that one copy is for them, one copy is for the Crown Prosecution Service and the last copy is for the court. I can feel my nerves starting to go at the mention of court. This is my last chance to deny it all. But for the first time in over two weeks, I feel in control. I need to tell them everything.
The cassettes are turning in this ancient machine. Words are being recorded. I find myself wondering why they don’t use more up-to-date technology. Then Kath begins again.
‘Hannah. Where were you on the morning of Saturday the twenty-third of July two thousand and eleven?’
Here goes.
‘I was at home. I spent the morning in my bedroom and then went downstairs for lunch with mum. She comes home from work at lunchtime on Saturdays, so that we can eat together.’
Both Inspectors write everything down, so there is a pause between my answer and the next question. This seems pointless to me seeing as they’re already getting it all on tape as-well. Mum reaches for my hand but I have to push her away. My hands are clammy and restless and hers are unreliably reassuring.
‘And what did you do after lunch?’
I look at Susan who briefly looks up at me but doesn’t say anything. She’s making notes too. ‘After lunch, I waved mum off and then set off to meet Katie at the local shop. It’s half way between my house and hers you see.’
My stomach is flipping all over the place. I’m so nervous about the next questions. I haven’t allowed myself to think about the build up to Katie’s death. I’m revisiting it for the first time. This windowless room lacks air and hope.
‘What time was that?’
‘I left home at about ten to one. I was meeting Katie at one.’
More silence, while they write. It was a lovely day, weather-wise. Perfect for the first day of the summer holidays. I was over dressed in jeans and I regretted choosing them as soon as I left the house. I knew I’d be sweaty within minutes, but they were new. There were skate-boards, bikes and scooters all over the place and the local shop was full of excitable kids enjoying their first day of freedom.
I sip my water but my mouth stays dry and my lips are cracked. I’d give anything for some cherry blossom lip salve. Mum’s looking down at the floor, her hands are twisting in her lap. Kath and the male inspector are looking at what they’re writing. Only Susan seems conscious of me. It’s like we’re in a parallel universe where we’re both ghosts and no-one can see us. I think it’s because she’s guessed what I’m going to do. Mum’s oblivious. The police probably assume I’m going to lie. But Susan knows. I wonder if she’ll try to stop me. I wonder if I’ll let her. Kath finally looks up.
‘And did you meet Katie?’
I answer before she’s even finished asking. I have to or I’ll back out. I’m not one hundred percent sure I’m making the right decision, but I need that feeling of relief again like a junkie needs more drugs. ‘Yes.’
Susan leans forward, ‘Hannah. I would advise you to think about your answers before you give them and to wait until the question has been asked in full. You might get confused otherwise.’
So far, I haven’t told the police anything they didn’t know from their first visit to me. They know I met Katie that day. But I had told them and mum that I only stayed out for an hour before coming home with a migraine. And that I’d left Katie at the local park, alone. As far as I knew, I’d said, she was going to go home.
‘What happened next?’ asks Kath.
‘Katie was thirsty, so we went into the Spa shop to buy drinks. I bought some fruit pastilles too.’
I stop. I remember. I can’t believe I had forgotten about them. The police would have seen what I bought on the shop’s CCTV. And they would have found the fruit pastilles next to Katie’s body. I had put them in the back pocket of my jeans, to save them for later. But they weren’t there when I got home. Kath looks at the other inspector and shares a weird look with him. They found them. Is this their evidence? It’s not very good evidence if that’s all they have. I could have given the fruit pastilles to Katie before I went home sick, and they could have fallen out of her pocket. It doesn’t matter now anyway. I continue.
‘Then we went for a walk. Katie had something she wanted to show me.’
Susan sits up and stares hard at me. She’s nervous. ‘Hannah. I’d advise you to continue with caution and really think about your answers. If you need a break to talk to me, you can take it whenever you want.’
Kath waits until she’s finished and then asks, ‘Where did you walk to?’
I’m suddenly very aware of mum being sat next to me. I look at her and burst into tears. She’s going to hate me. I don’t know if I can do it.
‘What’s the matter, love? It’s okay.’ She tries to hug me but the room is so small and we’re all squeezed in. There’s no air left. She still doesn’t suspect anything. I try to compose myself but I’m trembling again and my nose is running. Kath brings out some tissues and hands me one. I’m starting to hate her.
‘Hannah. Where did you and Katie walk to?’
I think of Josh. I take a deep breath. Here goes.
‘The quarry.’
Mum looks away and makes a strange noise. Susan gives me a reassuring look, almost as if she thinks I’m doing the right thing.
‘And what did Katie want to show you at the quarry?’ Kath’s relentless.
I look at her properly for the first time. She has dark circles under her eyes and not much make-up on. It’s hard to guess her age. She looks at me with a blank face, trying to hide her greed. She’s so hungry to know what happened that day that it’s almost perverse. I’m tempted to rebel and keep the truth from her, to make her job so much harder. But I’ve got to remember I’m here to help Katie. I think what I tell them will help her rest in peace.
‘Katie wanted to show me the steep drop from the cliff to the rocks at the bottom.’
Scribble, scribble.
‘And why did she want to show you that?’
As Katie liked to say, the shit was about to hit the fan, go flying and spray everyone here present.
‘Because that was where we were planning to murder her dad.’
Chapter 8
Susan has made us take a break. More for mum than for me. We’ve left the police station from a side entrance, to get
some air. Mum looks like she’s going to pass out, but she won’t look at me so I can’t tell what she’s thinking. Susan’s on the phone to her office. Kath is watching us from a stairway window, making sure I don’t leg it I expect. I fight the urge to give her a nice wave. The air feels good out here. It’s nice to feel the sun on my skin and hear the cars driving passed. Until mum grabs me by the arm.
‘Hannah, what the hell is going on? Why did you say that?’
‘Because Katie wanted to kill her dad and she asked me to help.’
‘You do realise that by saying something that stupid you’re probably going to be locked up?’
‘Mum, I have to be honest, we’re in a police station and they have evidence that I was there.’
She turns away from me and wipes away tears. Susan hangs up and ushers us back into the building without saying anything. I thought she was supposed to advise me. We get back into the interview room and the police re-enter.
‘Ready to continue?’ asks the male inspector.
‘Yes.’
Mum’s chosen the chair furthest away from me this time. Susan’s next to me now instead. It’s like a hard slap around the face to know mum doesn’t want to sit next to me. And she doesn’t even know the rest of it yet. If I don’t get put in prison, I can’t imagine she’ll let me go home. I think I’ve seen my bedroom for the last time. I should have packed some things and brought them with me.
‘Okay, so we’ve established you were at the quarry with Katie Sewell. And you were about to explain why you were there. You said that you and Katie wanted to kill her father, Martin Sewell. Can you explain what you mean by that?’
I take a deep breath and look down at my hands. I feel like I’ll be betraying Katie to tell them what she confided in me. But according to her it’s the truth, and he’s the reason we were at the quarry. He’s the reason Katie’s dead. ‘About five months ago, in March, Katie told me something. But she told me in confidence and made me promise I would never tell anyone. She thought that if anyone found out it would ruin the lives of everyone in her family.’
I look at Susan and then at mum. Susan looks like she’s already guessed what Katie’s secret it. But mum looks like she doesn’t want to know. Kath leans forward and still tries to show no emotion in her face. Maybe she hears this kind of thing so often that she’s numb to it now.
‘What did she tell you Hannah?’
I start crying. I’ve gone too far now. Katie’s here, I can feel her. The hairs on my arms are standing up and I can feel something enveloping me. I just wish I could talk to her.
‘She said that her dad had been abusing her ever since she was little.’
‘Oh God!’ Mum covers her mouth with her hand. Then she jumps to conclusions, ‘So she committed suicide.’
I don’t say anything and just reach for more tissues to wipe my face. Kath is looking at her colleague. I think I can see surprise on her face. I expect her job just got a lot harder.
‘What did she mean by the word ‘abuse’?’
What a stupid question. ‘Well, she told me that he made her touch him and she had to let him touch her and that sometimes he filmed it, or took photos of her. She never went into too much detail because she was ashamed and embarrassed. She changed the subject almost straight after she told me. She tried to make a joke of it by pretending that it was all okay because she was going to be famous and rich one day and that’s when she would hire the best solicitor she could find, to expose him.’
That was before she came up with her other plan. Kath writes all this down.
‘I’ll need to come back to that day in March a bit later, to go over it in more detail. But for now, let’s move on to the events at the quarry. Once you arrived there, what happened next?’
I try to think. ‘We climbed the gates and walked for about six or seven minutes, until we reached the bit Katie wanted to show me – the cliff edge.’
I can hear her lovely voice again.
‘So what do you think? Look over the edge; do you think its high enough to kill someone?’
I look, whilst holding on to her. It doesn’t look that high to me but I still wouldn’t want to fall off, not onto that rubble below.
‘I suppose so. But how’re you going to get him up here?’
She smiled like she was enjoying my challenge of her master plan. She had obviously thought about it a lot. ‘Well, that’s where my amazing acting skills come in. Me and you, and probably Patrick, will already be here. I’ll ring my dad and tell him that I’m up here and thinking about telling my teacher about what he does to me. That should get him here pretty quick and, most importantly, on his own. In the meantime, you and Patrick will hide behind those trees until my dad finds me. I’ll be stood here, pretending to cry. He’ll probably try to bargain with me. And that’s when you and Patrick can come running out from there and all three of us can push the fucker off the cliff. I want to make sure he dies first time and doesn’t just stumble, hence the need for your assistance. I wouldn’t be able to push him on my own.’
As I listened to her I realised that she wasn’t joking and that she actually wanted him to die. There was no way I was going to push her dad off this cliff, so I felt my only option was to try to talk her out of it. But her face was so serious and she looked at me so expectantly, as if I should want the same as her. I did want her dad punished, but not like this. Just standing on this cliff was panicking me. I didn’t want to look down in case I pictured her dad at the bottom.
‘Katie, you can’t actually murder your dad, you do realise that?’
She looks at me like I’ve betrayed her. ‘But you said you’d help? You don’t understand! There’s only so much more I can take. You don’t know what it’s like lying on the bed waiting for him to set the camera up. Why don’t you want to help me?’
She’s crying now. I step forward to hug her, but she doesn’t like what she sees in my face. She must see my pity. My chest actually hurts for her and my lungs feel heavy, as if I’ve been smoking. She turns away from me, too close to the edge of the cliff. She’s trying to wipe her tears away but they just keep coming.
‘If I can’t rely on you, what am I supposed to do?’
‘Tell your mum, or tell my mum!’
‘No! I’ve already told you a million times why I can’t do that! Mum will hate me! She’ll think I came onto him or something sick like that. Or even worse, she won’t believe me at all and she’ll choose him. I couldn’t bear than, Han! Even if the police got involved they wouldn’t find any evidence, he’s not that stupid to keep the videos and photos at the house. I’ve looked for them. I wanted to take them back and burn them so that he couldn’t look at me again.’ She’s sobbing now, we both are. ‘But I couldn’t find them. What if he’s showing his mates down the pub? What if they’re all laughing at me? What if they end up on the internet? You don’t understand! That’s me, completely bare for all the world to see and I can’t do anything about it!’
I pull her to me and hug her as tight as I can. She smells of the perfume I bought her for Christmas. Her earrings tickle my neck. Her chest is heaving in and out and she’s defiant in my arms. I never want to let her go. I want to swap places with her, to take some of the pain for her, just to give her some relief from it. It takes me ages to be able to speak without crying.
‘Let’s run away. Let’s go to America?’
She pulls away from me and shakes her head. ‘That wouldn’t solve anything.’
‘Of course it would, he’d never be able to find you! We could write to your mum regularly so she wasn’t worried. My mum would probably send us money, she might even come with us.’
Then she turns to look at me with such a hopeless, defeated expression on her face. It’s like she knows that she has absolutely no other options.
‘Mum told me recently that she’s pregnant. She’s convinced it’s another girl.’
Finally, I realise what has led her to this awful plan and to her way of thinking. She
’s trying to protect her unborn baby sister. I am completely lost for words. I actually can’t help her after all. My mouth opens and closes. There’s absolutely nothing I can say that will help her. I feel useless.
‘I suppose there is one other way out of this mess,’ she says.
I look up at her. She’s starting to lean over the edge whilst looking at me and crying. My instinct makes me grab her towards me. We struggle for a while. I can tell she’s momentarily desperate to go over the edge and to get it over with. But I’m stronger than her and I pull her away. Then, as I’m pulling her I stumble on a rock and my ankle twists painfully beneath me. My whole-body changes direction and starts falling forwards at the same time that Katie’s pulling away from me, towards the edge. My hands reach out to her legs but because of the speed of my fall they push her instead of grab her. She continues falling backwards with an awful expression on her face. She makes one attempt to reach out to me but then lets her hands drop to her sides, like she’s given up. Then, she’s gone. I can’t see her anymore. I lay where I am and stay still, trying to hear her. I feel like if I don’t hear her I’ll just close my eyes and die. That look on her face as she went over was devastating. Her expression changed from determined to scared. But then she looked relieved.
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