by Helen Cooper
“I’m so sorry,” he said out loud, feeling as if he were breaking into tiny pieces, disintegrating all over the desk. He was no longer sure whether he was apologizing to Freya or the Harlows or Vicky or himself. All the lives he’d destroyed.
The only crumb of hope was that Vicky would recover. That her life could still be good. Chris would set her free, and Di and Jane would look after her, and eventually, hopefully, she would forget she had ever known him.
67.
STEPH
Steph stared at her husband as they knelt next to her semiconscious cousin. His face was covered with bruises. And it looked like it was in collapse, like his muscles had forgotten what to do. Was he in shock? Was she? The popping in her ears, the sense that the air she was breathing was getting thicker.
She dared to glance at Becca and saw her eyelids starting to twitch, her chest rising: signs of recovery that Steph had often watched for in the past.
“Where is Freya?” she whispered to her, leaning in close. “You still haven’t told me.” The idea struck her, with an inward scream of pain, that what was left to find might be her body.
“No,” she cried softly, to herself now, pulling back from Becca and lurching to her feet.
“Steph?” Paul stood up too.
Steph reeled on the spot for a second, then turned and ran toward the back of the maisonette. The small kitchen was bare, the tiny table and all the surfaces wiped clean. She continued along the corridor to Becca’s bedroom, shouting Freya’s name, her fingertips trailing the cold walls. The bed was unmade, the curtains drawn. A week-old newspaper, which Steph had brought on her last visit, lay unopened next to the bed.
Steph raced on to the spare room, freezing as she tried the handle.
The door was locked.
Her whole chest became a drumbeat. She rattled the handle and pressed her ear to the wood, willing her heart to quieten so she could hear.
“Steph?” Paul appeared beside her but she shushed him, listening hard.
Then she reared back with a hand over her mouth.
“Someone’s in there,” she said, through ragged breaths.
She’d heard a moan. Hadn’t she? Could she have imagined it? Steph threw herself against the door, pounding with both fists. “Freya! Freya? Is that you?”
There was no response, but she thought she heard another noise, barely perceptible. Steph ran back to the living room. There had to be a key somewhere. She yanked out drawers, spilling their contents onto the floor, shouting to Paul to search the bedroom at the same time. Finding nothing, Steph returned to her stirring cousin and frantically patted her pockets.
As she did so, she found herself fixating on Becca’s left arm, still stretched out across the worn carpet. She remembered it flailing to intercept the knife, flailing again at the start of her seizure. Now the hand was in a loose fist. The first finger sticking slightly out.
Becca wasn’t just thrashing.
She was pointing.
Trying to tell me Freya is here?
Had Steph been blind once again? Wasted yet more time?
“Paul!” she screamed. “We have to get into that room!”
She heard the sound of his rapid footsteps, then a thud. The noise was repeated as Steph rushed back down the corridor, to find Paul slamming his shoulder into the spare-room door. He gasped in pain but braced himself and tried again. In different circumstances, Freya would have been tickled to watch him enacting this police cliché. You’ve obviously done this before, Dad. You were a bit younger, though, right?
On his third attempt the door gave way. They both flew into the room. Steph’s vision smudged, unable to take in the scene. For a moment she was so overwhelmed that everything fragmented and slowed.
Then she saw the figure on the bed. The tangle of greasy blonde hair on the pillow. Freya was curled up, eyes closed, her skin pale and sweaty with a weeping red wound on her head.
“Oh, my God.” Steph and Paul almost tripped over each other in their desperation to get to her. Steph grasped her hand, touched her cheek, said her name over and over. Becca, or somebody else, had evidently tried to treat Freya’s injury—there was antiseptic by the bed—but it was obvious that she was very ill.
But she was breathing. Beautiful. Her cloudy eyes were opening now, almost focusing on Steph’s face. Her dry lips moving.
“Oh, my darling.” Steph kissed her daughter’s clammy fingers, then her forehead, wetting her skin further with her tears. “Oh Freya oh Freya oh Freya. Thank God.”
“Mum?” Freya croaked.
“It’s me. It’s us.” Steph reached for Paul and he leaned in close. He gathered Steph’s and Freya’s hands inside his own and brought them up to his lips, his eyes streaming.
“We’re here now, Frey,” Paul said. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”
“We’re so, so happy to see you.” Steph broke down completely, and the release was like something leaving her body, something she’d held in for years and years and years.
68.
CHRIS
He was now sharing his custody cell with a brutal gang of memories. They wouldn’t allow him any peace. Knew all his weaknesses and wanted to see how fast they could break him. Was this what prison would be like? Peopled not just by angry criminals, but by all the thoughts he could no longer distract himself from?
Vicky was in here, the younger Vicky who’d first admitted to him, I have a bit of a habit . . . of taking things that aren’t mine. The fear and challenge in her face: Does this change your feelings for me?
And Freya, on her first ever driving lesson, asking if they could have Radio 5 Live on because Arsenal was playing Spurs.
Steph, when they’d returned, hovering outside her house and laughing at herself as she admitted she’d been fretting the whole hour. But she looks happy. And your car’s in one piece! And I clearly can’t do this every time—
“Watson.”
The appearance of the custody officer made the memories scatter, like prison bullies caught out. Chris knew they’d return the second he was alone again. And they’d be crueler next time.
“Follow me,” the officer said.
“Where to?”
He was answered only by a glare. They were all treating him with distaste since his confession. Chris felt as if everything about himself had been removed, just like his belongings relinquished into that small box at the police station Reception, and all that remained was the label murderer. He would be treated accordingly—deservedly—from now on, by everybody who already knew him and everyone he had yet to meet.
The officer led him back toward the interview rooms. As he walked along the corridor, something caught Chris’s eye and made his heart stop. He stopped walking too. The custody officer urged him on with an impatient bark.
Chris shuffled onward but looked back over his shoulder, wondering if it had really been her, disappearing into one of the other interview suites. He’d never seen her whole face but he felt he’d know her anywhere: the unbrushed waist-length hair; the thin arms that had managed to lift Freya’s upper body while he had gripped her legs.
The Woman.
His mind wheeled as he sat down again opposite Ford and Johnson. He could hardly take in what they were saying to him. All he could think was They found her? Does that mean they found Freya’s body too? Flashes of her rolled-back eyes and the fountain of blood from her head.
“You’ve confessed to the murder of Freya Harlow,” Ford was saying.
Chris nodded. There it was again. Murderer.
He’d been a son, a schoolboy, a smoker, a dropout, a boyfriend, a driving instructor, a husband, an ex-smoker, a homeowner, a business owner. Now a murderer.
“Freya Harlow has been found alive at the home of Rebecca Fielding.”
Chris’s head ricocheted back. “What did you say?”
/> “Freya is in hospital being treated for a serious head wound and a resulting infection.”
“She . . . what?”
“She’s alive.”
But she was so still. Heavy and cold. The Woman took her away. She was dead.
“Is this a . . . trick?” he asked.
“No.”
“She was dead.” He felt his mouth contort, his eyes get wet.
“Well, she isn’t,” Johnson said bluntly. “Rebecca Fielding took her back to her house after you parted ways and she regained consciousness. Fielding locked her in a room and, according to her, tried to care for her as best she could until she’d decided what to do. Did you have any contact with her during this time?”
Chris was kneading his cheeks. The Woman had a name. Rebecca Fielding. It didn’t matter. It did. The room was revolving. “I called her a couple of times but she didn’t answer. I thought . . .”
“We know what you thought. But Freya Harlow is not dead.”
The words seemed to penetrate at last.
“You’ve still committed multiple crimes,” Johnson reminded him unnecessarily.
But he hadn’t killed a teenage girl. Hadn’t cut her life short and turned the light out on her parents.
Maybe he didn’t deserve this redemption, but he strained breathlessly toward it.
He should have known that Freya Harlow, with all her talents, her tricks, all her energy and anger, would bring herself back to life.
69.
PAUL
Paul couldn’t stop gazing at Freya’s sleeping face, the halo of her hair on the hospital pillows. He was afraid to look away, or close his exhausted eyes, in case she was gone when he looked back. There were cuts and bruises on her skin and an antibiotic drip attached to her arm, but the steady beep of her heart monitor was the most comforting sound he’d heard in a long time.
Stop staring at me while I’m asleep, Dad, she might say if she woke now. It’s weird.
This is how it’s going to be from now on, Frey. Mum and I are never letting you out of our sight again.
Oh, God. That’s worse than nearly dying.
Maybe they would get through this by making light of it, but it was hard to imagine a time when the tension would melt from his muscles. Paul felt like he’d been catapulted through a week-long war. And he was somehow on the other side, sitting dazed amid the debris, trying to get his breath back and understand what had happened.
“I’m so sorry, Paul,” Steph said, beside him. “More than I can ever say.”
Paul turned to his wife, who looked every bit as shell-shocked as he felt.
His wife, who was not really Stephanie. Who had killed a man when she was just a teenager and indirectly caused all of this. These facts staggered inside him each time he tried to make them seem real.
“I let you assume this was your fault,” Steph said through tears. “I even assumed that too. I didn’t want to believe it could be anything to do with me. I never thought Becca would . . . I didn’t think she had the resources, let alone that she would want to hurt me this badly . . .”
Paul twisted his hands in his lap, his emotions seesawing. “It could’ve been either of us, Steph.”
She stalled and dabbed at her eyes. Freya’s green scarf was still wrapped around her neck, filthy now, but Steph wouldn’t be parted from it.
“In the church,” she said. “When I asked if you’d killed someone. It was because I recognize something in you. Always have, I suppose. I think that, like me, you know what it’s like to carry the darkest kind of guilt.”
Paul looked steadily back at her and, for just a moment, her face was Nathalie’s. He could still hardly process the fact that she wasn’t dead. But one day he would, and then maybe he’d allow himself a glimmer of relief.
He hadn’t asked Yvette anything about her whereabouts. She wouldn’t tell him where she’d fled to, he was sure, but that wasn’t why he’d resisted asking. Somewhere out there was more than enough now. He just prayed she’d found some happiness, some peace. Perhaps Billie was somewhere out there too. Poor Billie, who would probably remain a tragic unanswered question forever. Had Paul been wrong about Daniel’s role in her disappearance? It was possible, he now saw. They’d hated each other from a distance for too long, wasting energy, wasting their lives.
Paul slipped his hand into his wife’s and her fingers curled around his. All these years they’d been carrying similar burdens. Guarding their secrets, burying their pasts. It had almost lost them everything.
“You’re right,” he said. “I caused a death too . . . or thought I had. Someone I loved, and lied to. Someone I didn’t want you to know about.”
Steph closed her eyes. He wasn’t sure if it was with distress or relief at finally hearing this.
“I know what it does to you,” Paul continued. “How you want forgiveness but you don’t feel like you deserve it, only punishment . . . except you can’t ask for that either. And you want to tell the people you’ve been lucky enough to find a new life with”—he gripped her fingers—“but you’re terrified they won’t love you anymore.”
Steph’s eyes were still leaking. “Even when my punishment came, I didn’t recognize it straightaway. Now we’ve all been punished, Freya worst of all.”
“But we’re all still here.” Paul shuffled nearer to her, and they both looked at Freya again. “We can forgive each other. We have to, don’t we?”
Steph laid her face against his shoulder. Her hair, though unwashed in five days, still smelled faintly of vanilla. She was still the same person, despite the name change, despite the part of her life he hadn’t known—just as she’d been oblivious to a part of his. Paul felt a blast of sympathy as he pictured her as a frightened young girl, making a mistake that would haunt her entire life.
Of course, he knew what that felt like. They could have forgiven each other, maybe even themselves, a long time ago.
Freya’s eyelids fluttered and Paul was overcome with love. The memory of finding her at last, in that tiny locked room, kept bowling into him. Somehow he’d been given a third chance. And this time he wouldn’t squander it with half his head still in the past. He would be present. Grateful. Real.
He wrapped his arms around Steph. Their breathing evened out as they sat there, eyes closed, lulled by the musical beeps of their daughter’s heart.
70.
KATE
Twenty-three years earlier
Heathrow is a bubble of suspended reality. People drink fizzy wine and eat burgers at six a.m., brush their teeth in public toilets, and snooze on plastic chairs surrounded by strangers. Some are moving between different time zones—they’ve flown in from tomorrow or will land yesterday. There’s a feeling of anonymity, even though everyone’s had their identity rigorously checked.
I weave among it all, cleaning toilets, glad to be pretty much invisible. I hear spurts of conversation, snatches of lives, the constant drone of flight announcements in multiple languages. My skin smells of bleach and my fingertips are cracked.
Often I think about the day—two years ago, almost exactly—when I stood on the boundary of a different airport, watching planes rising into the dusk, holding my breath as one swept overhead. I remember how, in the months that followed, I clung to the image of that fluid starry sky whenever I couldn’t stand to be in the new reality I’d created for myself. The one in which I was a killer and a coward.
And I’m still both of those things. I hide here among the daily swarm of travelers, then go home or to the hospital, my head ducked to the outside world. Sometimes I think I’m as much a prisoner as Becca, but then I feel even more guilty: How would I know what she’s going through? Just once have I had the guts to visit her in prison, and her flinty gaze cut right through me.
By now I know the length and rhythm of the journey from Heathrow to the hospital. When we first moved he
re, it took me a while to get used to the rush and crush of the Underground. I’m not sure why Mum thought London would be a good place to start over. She talked about the specialist hospitals, but maybe she thought it would be somewhere to blend in; maybe she realized I wanted to hide. I still wonder how much she suspects about what really happened to Nick. She accepted the idea of Becca as a killer so wholeheartedly. But if some pushed-down part of her does know I was involved, what does that mean? Does motherly love trump what she had with Nick—enough to forgive me, even protect me?
Auntie Rach and Uncle Jack never turned their backs on Becca. But Becca pushed them away, refused to see them. Mum reckons Becca blames them for her shoddy defense lawyer, but I think there’s more to it. I don’t know if I’d want Mum visiting me in prison either. Sitting across a table from each other, like we used to in our flat after school, except surrounded by other prisoners, watched by guards. I’m not sure I could stand it. To this day I’m still anxious for her to be proud of me.
I arrive at the hospital and my nose detects the alteration from one chemical smell to another. Lemon bleach to alcohol hand sanitizer, cleaning fluids to something more potent being pumped into my mum’s blood. Our landlady, Dominique, is sitting with Mum, her long gray hair giving her the look of a kindly witch. We wouldn’t have coped without Dom, especially since Mum’s MDS has developed into leukemia. The first day we moved into a tiny flat in Wembley, it was like Dom sensed we were a desperate little unit of two, in need of a crutch. She checks on Mum when I’m at work, takes her to chemo when I can’t, holds her hand till I arrive. There are good days sometimes, when we joke about the doctors or flip through magazines. But there are dark days too.
I have to keep going, have to put one foot in front of the other as I walk through this brightly lit ward. Mum is counting on me.