by Katie Lowe
‘This is all your fault.’ Her tone is different now: colder. More menacing. I feel her breath close to my face.
She rests the screwdriver on my calf. The point pinches at my skin. ‘Hannah. Look at me. Wakey wakey, now.’
I blink. My vision fades in and out.
‘This …’ She gestures back to the bath, to Evie. ‘This was you. You killed your little girl.’
I feel Graham’s cold hand on mine. I feel his grip tightening.
It was an accident, he says.
‘No,’ I hear myself say. ‘I didn’t.’
The pain that follows is blinding. The cold slice of the screwdriver, tearing skin, invading muscle and gristly flesh. I hear the crush of it, pressing through.
‘Look at me, Hannah. You killed your husband, and you killed your little girl.’ I open my eyes. The blade is only halfway in. She smiles. ‘Come on, Hannah. Try again. What did you do?’
It was an accident, Graham says again.
I hear his footsteps, solid, coming back for me.
He has heard me fall in the bath. He will hold me underwater, and wait for me to drown.
He squeezes my hand. The bones crack.
She rocks the screwdriver back. ‘Who killed your daughter, Hannah?’
My scream fills the space; it fills everything. But still, I feel his footsteps coming closer. I see his shadow moving, in the doorway behind.
What was it? my husband says.
It was an accident, I say to him, and mean it.
‘I …’ I begin. But I falter. I close my eyes.
‘Look at me,’ she says. There’s a pause. She presses her body weight into the screwdriver, and this time, I don’t scream. There’s only a low, buzzing sound in my ears, an eerie, unnatural silence.
I open my eyes, and I see him, in the shadows. He’s there. Everything I’ve believed about Hawkwood – every instance of madness, every delusion – turns solid before my eyes.
He is here. He’s always been here.
And I can’t run. Not now. His is a ruthless love I will never escape.
‘Say it, Hannah. Admit what you did.’
I close my eyes, tight. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to see him, again: can’t face the look of satisfaction on his face when I give in, again. ‘I did it. It’s my fault. I—’
She gasps. She gives a choke of a laugh.
I feel the warm spread of blood, and force open my eyes. It’s too much. It doesn’t make sense. I look at her; at the deep, crimson bloom spreading through her shirt, turning black.
She stares at me, helpless, confused. She looks down at my hands, searching for the blade.
But it wasn’t me.
He disappears, swallowed by the shadows again. Beyond, I see Evie’s fingers twitch. She forms a fist, and lets go.
She’s alive. Barely, but—
Darcy gasps, desperately, again. She shudders as her eyes roll back into her skull, and she falls.
62
London, 2008
I choke. I taste copper on my tongue. My skull pounds, a relentless throb. The water is ice cold around me, pinkish with my blood.
He must have heard me fall. He must’ve heard the thud, the crack, and held still, for a moment, listening. I imagine him hearing the silence, again, and settling back to his work.
Or maybe – maybe – he looked. Maybe he saw the blood, the angular bend of me, the crack in my skull, and realized this was better still. A wreck of a woman. Someone he couldn’t have saved.
I grip the sides of the tub, and I lift myself, haltingly, up. I catch my foot in the chain, and the drain gurgles, water and blood rushing away.
I am frozen and naked, and electric with rage.
This man wants to take my daughter from me.
But he’ll have to kill me first. Really kill me, this time. In a way he’s forced to live with: a memory that’ll haunt him for the rest of his life.
My hand longs for the knife in it; it’s an itch. I drag a robe around me, and step into the hall. There’s bleach in the air, an ammoniac hum. I see him in my mind, wiping down surfaces, smearing every trace of me away. My husband’s been cleaning up a crime scene, though I doubt he sees it like that. After all, we both belong here. His hands belong on my skin.
I listen for his footsteps: for the sound of his inevitable return.
But there’s nothing.
Only the faintest of taps, the faintest of whispers, a thing that seems hallucinatory until I make sense of it. My little girl counts when she’s nervous. She lies in her bed, and ticks off books, plastic figurines, imaginary sheep.
My still-damp feet slip on the floorboards. My handprints mark the walls, disappearing as I pass.
‘Sweetheart,’ I whisper as she stares up at the doorway, saucer-eyed. ‘Do you know where Daddy is?’ She shakes her head, fist clenched, pressed hard against her lips. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘OK. I need you to be very quiet now. Can you do that?’
She glances at my bloodshot eyes, my trembling hands. ‘Stay here, OK, baby?’ I pull her into me. ‘I love you. I love you so, so much.’
I tuck the blanket around her, tight, and step back into the hall.
I retrace my steps into the kitchen. I lose my balance and stumble; steady myself, back pressed against the wall. The same dizzying sense washes over me as before, everything faintly liquid. As though I’m walking through a dream.
I search the kitchen for the knife. But it’s gone.
He has it, I realize. He has the knife. And he’s waiting for me.
I retch, silently. I taste the hot tang of vomit in the back of my throat.
I’m in no state to run. I’m still not sure I can open the door, even if I thought I could make it down the stairs. I grip the walls, again, to hold myself up.
Fine, I say, to myself, with a cool resolve. Fine.
I walk back, stand outside our bedroom door, and wait, listening to him tapping his fingers on wood. Tap. Tap. Tap. I wonder if he’s nervous. I wonder if, now, he’s afraid of me. Afraid of what I’m going to make him do.
Because I’ll ruin him. I don’t care who thinks I’m crazy – I don’t care if I’m believed. If he doesn’t kill me, now, I’ll tell the whole fucking world who he is, and what he’s done.
The walls curve in around my vision, and retract. I take a breath, and push the door.
And there he is, sleeping.
I hate him, then: curled under the sheets, the shape of peaceful slumber. Wrath spreads through my veins as I watch him. Perfectly restful; perfectly still.
The taste of blood hits my tongue as a car sweeps past.
The silver handle of the knife flashes: there, for a moment, and gone.
The tapping sound is only blood upon the floorboards, a steady beat.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
And then, there’s nothing. Only the silence. The fall.
63
Derbyshire, 2018
I reach for the screwdriver. I close my eyes, and I wrench it from my calf. I gasp at the pain, the heady release of blood but I won’t – can’t – scream any more.
I only need to get to her. To Evie. I need to take my daughter home.
I stagger up, over Darcy’s – Sophie’s – writhing form. She seizes my ankle, but her grip is weak. I see the wound now: under her shoulder, between her ribs, a mark that’s lurid and pulsing. I pull away, with a strength that seems to come from beyond me: a blind determination to get to my little girl. To feel for a pulse: to see if the movement I saw wasn’t only a final wish, a delirious dream.
Something moves in the shadows beside me. I lose my balance and pitch back, unsteadied by the pain in my calf, the drip of warm blood in my shoes.
‘I’m sorry – I—’ A voice speaks – a male voice. I can’t place it. It isn’t him – Graham. It can’t be. It’s real. It has an echo.
He steps into the light, and recognition shivers through me.
It’s impossible. It doesn’t make sense.
Since we last sto
od face to face – a teenager in an ill-fitting suit, a ripple of acne curved around his jaw – he’s completely changed. He’s taller now, though still wiry – but he seems whittled away, made only of sinew and bone, veins snaking around hungry flesh. There’s something childlike in his expression: in the terror that crosses his face.
‘Mike?’ I say, feeling sick. Feeling horribly afraid. Sophie’s body twitches, her eyes still fixed on me. He leans forward, and begins to heave. ‘Mike,’ I say again, the shiver in my voice giving me away. ‘Mike. Look at me. Focus on me.’ I realize, even as I say it, that this might well make things worse.
It might be me he’s here for, after all.
But no – that doesn’t make sense, either. I’m all panic, all frenzied adrenaline: he’s not like that. He can’t be. He wouldn’t. Not after all he’s gone through to clear his name.
Then again … I glance again at Sophie, eyes rolling back into her skull, as Graham’s had, before. Revenge makes people do unspeakable things.
‘Mike. Please. Look at me.’
He blinks, and shakes his head, as though he doesn’t quite believe I’m really there. We’re looking through and past each other, like strangers caught in a dream. ‘I didn’t – oh my God, I—’
‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’
I look over at Evie. I catch the smell of her shampoo again.
‘I didn’t mean to.’ By the tone of his voice – the flat, listless affect – I know he’s feeling the same strange numbness I do: the sense of a curtain falling, a kind of protection. The mind refusing to admit something so terrible could ever be real.
‘I just wanted to scare her. To show her …’ He points at the doorway behind. I see the word RUN, still dripping red from the walls. I think of the other words I passed on my way through the house.
YOU CAN’T HIDE.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
‘I found the paint here, and … I just wanted to … I didn’t mean to …’
His shoulders slump. He heaves, again. I stare at him, frozen. He said he found the paint at Hawkwood House – which means the words graffitied in my kitchen were Sophie’s too: MURDERER. WHORE.
I look from Mike to Evie, and back. For the first time, I see the knife in his gloved hand, the bloody trail that runs from him to me. I wonder where he found it; whether he’s lying, now. Whether he’d planned to use it, all along. I just wanted to scare her, he said. I didn’t mean to …
‘Mike … Look at me.’ I hear Sophie gasping, her eyes closing, skin a deathly white. ‘Look at me, Mike. Please. Whatever she did to you – she can’t hurt you now. Just try to breathe.’ He takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I need to check on my daughter. Is that OK?’
His brow crinkles in confusion. Then he seems, too, to realize he’s holding the knife. He drops it, the clatter on the stone floor deafening.
I can’t wait any longer. I go to Evie. I grab her wrist, and squeeze it. It’s ice cold, her fingers a dull, grey-blue. I feel Mike’s eyes on me, on Evie, willing her to move. Her fingers twitch, just a little – just enough. Beneath her eyelids, there’s the faintest of flutters.
‘Is she OK?’ Mike watches me, warily. I’m not sure which of us is more afraid of the other.
When I speak, my voice is barely more than a croak. ‘I … I think she will be. But I need to get her out of here. We need to call for help.’ He shakes his head, and my heart falls; my hope evaporates. ‘Mike, please. I get it. I promise you, I understand.’
‘You don’t.’ Something flashes behind his eyes, a rage that passes through him like a wave, and breaks. He’s in shock. He’s traumatized. ‘You can’t.’
‘Mike.’ I try not to look at the knife, Sophie’s body, the blood. I think back to my training; try to do what I ought to do, in a moment like this. ‘Mike, you can talk to me. Tell me what—’
‘I can’t.’
My heart cracks open. He’s terrified; the look in his eyes is that of a little boy, lost. I remember his mother’s words, during Conviction: ‘My son isn’t a murderer. He’s a victim.’
She’s right. But I’m failing him. All my years of training, and I don’t know what to say.
In the end, though, it’s Darcy’s – Sophie’s – trick that works. I say nothing. He speaks to fill the silence; to be heard.
‘She set me up.’ His voice ripples, a sob – I think – catching in his throat. ‘Because of her sister. Because of Lucie. I …’ He stares at me, helplessly, as something shifts in my memory, and drops into place. I see Lucie, picking fibres from the arm of her chair, twelve hours before her death. I loved him, she’d said. But Sophie thinks Mike’s turning me against her, so … I told him it was over, last night.
‘I missed her call, the night she died. I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t pick up. I wasn’t thinking, because I … I was drunk. And the next day she was …’ He takes a shuddering breath. It’s not your fault, I want to say, but can’t. We took away her phone. ‘We’d talked about it once before, and I’d said she could stay at my friend’s house, get away from her family, and … and then we’d go off on our own.’ My skin turns cold. I think of Evie’s diary entries; the boy she’d said had promised her the same thing. Sophie had taken everything that Mike had said to Lucie; had made the Callum profile, and drawn my daughter in.
‘I only found out she was dead the day after the funeral. I thought she just didn’t want to talk to me, because … Because that’s what she’d said, the last time we spoke. But then Sophie called and told me, and …’
Evie moans, softly, a sound I’ve heard her make in her sleep. I squeeze her hand, tighter, and will her to hold on. ‘Mike … what happened to Lucie wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have—’
‘It was.’ I flinch at the break in his voice. The look in his eyes is the same as the one he’d worn in the dock, at the trial. I’d read it – correctly – as guilt. But it wasn’t Graham’s death he blamed himself for. It was Lucie’s. ‘I should have been there for her, but I wasn’t.’
‘You couldn’t have known. I only signed off on her going out that afternoon, and … She wasn’t supposed to leave the grounds. I swear, Mike. It was a last-minute decision, on her part. You missing that call was an accident – but that’s all it was. I promise. It wasn’t your fault.’
He says nothing. Only looks down at Sophie, now still, curled fetal on the tile.
‘Mike, please—’
‘She’s just …’ He gestures at the body between us. ‘I couldn’t keep up with her. She’s too fucking smart.’ His tone has hardened; he looks surprised by it, himself. ‘After I got my possession charge, she called me. She’d seen the photos of me – of my …’ He traces his jaw; a smudge of Sophie’s blood marks the spot where the bruises must’ve been, after his assault. ‘I guess that’s what gave her the idea. She told me she felt bad about what happened, and she had some of Lucie’s stuff to give me, so … I met her for a drink. But she left after, like … five minutes. With my gloves. And I was so stupid, I didn’t put the pieces together until way, way too late.’
I see him losing control, the words spilling out. I’ve seen it before, with patients, pulling loose. ‘They were a present from Lucie. Sophie knew that. And she knew I’d recognise them when the police put them in front of me. She knew I’d say they were mine.’
I feel a fissure crack; a realization breaking, in the moment before he speaks. Still, when he says the words, the room seems to revolve; the whole world rocks and resettles itself. ‘When she killed your husband, like, eight months later, she was wearing them – while I was sitting in a bar down the road waiting to meet with the first girl online who came close to reminding me of Luce. Except obviously, she never existed. Sophie made her up, too.’
My own story unravels, the past spinning out in a different way. I think of what Stevens had said, about Graham’s statement at my tribunal: about my obsession with Margot, my grandmother, who murdered her husband and child. Sophie had heard it all. She’d been there, watc
hing, waiting for them to affirm my guilt. But they didn’t.
Maybe she’d expected that; made arrangements with Mike at the bar by our house, just in case. So when the verdict went our way, she was ready.
She’d followed Graham home; had slipped through our house, to our bedroom, to watch and wait. It was her footsteps I’d heard passing while I lay in the bath, sick with fear. Not his.
Then, when Graham crawled into our bed, she’d killed him – wearing Mike’s gloves, with my kitchen knife. It was both plan and contingency; check and checkmate.
She knew the police would most likely charge me – the unstable spouse – without looking much further. But if they had any doubt whatsoever – an anonymous tip with Mike’s name would sway the investigation in his direction. His calls to the girl who never arrived would place him close to the scene – and they’d find Graham’s blood on gloves he’d willingly tell them were his.
With two such strong suspects, they’d have no need to look for anyone else – for Sophie. It would be either/or. Him, or me. And all the while, both of us grieving the ones that we loved: an eye for an eye.
Or so she thought. But she couldn’t have known what Graham was like – what our marriage really was. And she couldn’t have planned for Conviction, ten years later, picking over the bones of a decade-old crime. And so, she’d come to Hawkwood – to lead them back here. Back to me.
Three false identities, three shifting masks: she’d played Callum with Evie; Darcy with me – both of us entranced by the people who told us the things we wanted to hear.
And her swan song: the madwoman, Hannah Catton. Rebuilding Hawkwood House – or some of it, at least – in my name, signing contracts, loan agreements, and the rest, all in my hand. That I couldn’t remember doing these things would only prove my psychosis; that I wouldn’t admit it would only prove my guilt.
‘I’ve been looking for her since I got out,’ Mike says, faintly. His voice breaks the silence; brings me back. ‘No one believed me at the time, but … I needed her to know that I knew. I …’ His eyes drift to the body again. It’s as though a spell has been broken. The calm between us cracks. ‘Oh fuck.’ There’s panic in his voice, a hand pressed to his throat and clenching. ‘Oh my God. I’ve killed her. I only meant to scare her. I didn’t mean to – oh, God, oh fuck—’