by Katie Lowe
‘Mike, Mike – wait – whoa.’ I stand and reach out a hand for his trembling arm. I feel the warmth of it, the only warmth anywhere in this house. ‘Hey, hey – calm down. It’s OK. It’s OK. We just need to get out of here – we can talk to the police, both of us, and explain what happened, and—’
He pushes me away, and for the first time, I’m afraid of him. Not him, exactly – that isn’t right. I’m afraid of the person that Darcy – Sophie – has made us both. I’m afraid of the way we’re destabilized. The way that neither of us feels quite in control of the things she’s made us do.
I look over at Evie, lying in the tub.
‘Mike, please.’ My heart thuds, my pulse racing. ‘I promise I won’t go anywhere. I swear. It’s you and me, now. I’ll tell the police you only did what you did to help me. It was self-defence. OK?’
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t respond.
‘Mike – do you understand? I won’t let what happened before happen again. I promise you.’
He has no reason to trust me. And even if he does, the police think I’m a killer. Nobody believes a word I say.
But he nods. He helps me lift Evie to standing, her weight pressed into my shoulders. Her eyes flit open, once, unseeing: she’s coming round. She’s going to be OK.
My feet slip on the bloody tiles: my blood, and Sophie’s, cooling underfoot. As we edge forwards, Mike stops, and lingers behind. I hear the scrape of the knife on stone. The wet tap of blood on the floor.
He’s changed his mind. He doesn’t trust me. He can’t. ‘Mike,’ I say, desperately. ‘Please. Please—’
‘I’m sorry.’ He steps towards me. ‘I’m really sorry. But I can’t. I can’t do it again.’
‘Mike, I’m begging you – please—’
He shakes his head. The knife trembles in his hand.
And then, he turns.
His shadow eclipses the open door, and he’s gone, the word RUN still dripping, a threat, behind.
64
Somehow, I get Evie out to the car. It feels as though it takes hours, her body a chilling weight.
When I settle her into her seat, and wrap the belt around her, her eyes are open. She sees me, now. She’s there. She murmurs something I can’t catch. I tell her everything’s going to be all right, and I almost believe it myself.
I’ll take her home, to Dan, and we’ll take her to hospital, and then I’ll explain everything. It’ll all make sense, at last. We’ll all be OK. It’ll all be fine.
It’s a lie, and I know it. After everything that’s happened, we’ll never be the people we were, before; nothing will ever be the same.
But I have to believe it’s possible – to force myself to believe it. Just for now. Just long enough to get us home.
As I drive, I flick on the radio and turn it up. I need it to keep her awake. To stop her from drifting into that long, dark sleep. A pop song plays, incongruously cheerful. I am driving my drugged, barely conscious daughter. I am bleeding, dripping with another woman’s blood.
I reach to turn it off, but the news breaks in. ‘The body of missing teenager Amy Barker has been recovered from woodlands in Derbyshire, close to the village of Hawkwood—’
I flick it off, quickly. I grip the wheel tighter, and try to breathe. I feel a sharp stab of grief, mixed with anger. Amy’s death is on Sophie’s hands, too – and on Sarah’s, and on Anna Byers’s, and, frankly, on her mother’s. Amy deserved so much better than this.
‘Mum,’ Evie says softly. ‘Mum, I …’
‘Evie, you’re OK. You’re safe. I’m taking you home.’ She blinks, forming unspoken words on her lips. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
65
I push the door with bloodied hands and call his name.
I count my blessings – all the things I’ve ever taken for granted. The upturned shoes spilled on the rug, the mess of newspapers, flyers, and junk we’ve never taken out. The faded prints upon the wall, photos of the three of us, now out of date, our last few years all posted in albums online, and swiftly forgotten.
‘Dan?’ I call, my voice hoarse, still sore from screaming. ‘Hello?’
But there’s no answer. He isn’t here. I feel a drop of horror; I wonder if he’s been called to identify Amy’s body; if he stood outside the mortuary, heartsick with grief, having been told it might be Evie inside.
I go back out to the car. ‘I’m going to call Dan. Are you OK here for a minute? I just want to find out where he is, and then we’ll take you to the hospital.’
Evie nods, heavily. She leans back, closing her eyes.
I open a drawer full of bills, searching for something with his mobile number on it. I can’t find anything. I can’t believe I’ve never committed it to memory; never written it down. Finally, I find an ancient business card of his, a coffee stain across the centre. I don’t know if this is still his number. I don’t remember him ever changing it, but my mind is all worst outcomes, stumbling blocks.
I look out of the open door as I dial the number. Evie’s still there. This idea I have of her disappearing again is irrational, but I can’t help it. Sophie is dead – I watched her die. But some gnawing fear remains. She’s filled the space left by Graham’s absent ghost.
I hear a rhythmic buzz from the bathroom above. The ringing continues in my ear. Dan’s voicemail picks up, and the vibration stops. Dread falls through me like a stone. I dial the number again, and the phone overhead buzzes, persistently, in response.
No, I say. It’s impossible.
I look back out at Evie. She hasn’t moved. I grab the bannister and climb the stairs. My calf throbs, but I barely feel the pain. I can’t feel anything beyond fear.
I stand in the hallway for a moment. I can hear it.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I take a breath, and push the bathroom door with half-closed eyes. A cloud of steam clings to the mirror. The shower drips. And Dan’s phone rests, forgotten, by the sink.
I crumple, the relief overwhelming. Thank God, I think. I don’t think I’d be able to cope if I lost you, too.
Evie’s strawberry shampoo surrounds me on the steam, and I freeze. I look up; see a bloody smudge in the towel on the door.
I slip back to a memory of Hawkwood House, Sophie grinning as I scream. Her hair is wet, dripping down her neck. I smell Evie’s shampoo on the air.
I stagger up. I hear the car door slam, outside. ‘Evie?’
‘I’m OK,’ she croaks from below.
‘Stay there. Go and sit down, and stay there.’ She says nothing. I know she hears the terror in my voice.
I lean against the wall, and breathe. I have lived this day before. It can’t be happening again.
I remember the voicemail Dan left for me, the call I didn’t pick up. The sadness, horror, fear in his voice.
I remember Sophie telling me she’d met him. That he’d been – what were her words? ‘Shell-shocked, but we had a quick chat.’
I hear Evie on the stairs below. ‘Evie – please. Stay there.’ I step towards the bedroom door and nudge it open. I smell that so-familiar scent that always soothes me: bergamot and woodsmoke and something else. But this time, I catch it: that thing I can’t identify. It’s blood.
It feels like only a moment that I look at him, the solid ghost of my husband, before: the same stillness, the same knife handle pointed upwards, gleaming in the dark.
This isn’t real, I tell myself. This can’t be happening.
But my daughter’s scream tears through me. Sophie smiles. Check and checkmate.
AFTER
66
HMP Foston Hall, 2021
The locked door cranks and groans. The nerve in my neck lights up as I turn to see who’s there. If there’s anyone there. I could be hearing things, again.
In this dark, windowless room, I dig my thumbs into my skin, and wait.
I have a visitor, they tell me.
I haven’t had a visitor since my trial. Now – at last – I’m left alone.
&n
bsp; I haven’t said a word since they led me away from the cottage; since they took my child from me. They made it perfectly clear, then, that they’d reached their conclusion. They had no interest in my version of events. They had a counter for everything.
So I decided not to speak at all. To keep my story to myself.
My poor Evie – she couldn’t remember a thing. Only the same scattered fragments I’d had after Graham’s murder: the sound of me, screaming; the gurgling sound of a death. And Dan’s body in our bed, his blood tap-tapping on the floor.
Except what Evie heard at Hawkwood House wasn’t a death. When they searched there, afterwards, Sophie was gone. Mike, too, had disappeared; he hasn’t been heard from since.
So, she’s still out there – but she’s got what she wanted. Mike and I both punished for our part in taking her sister away: an eye for an eye, and the whole world blind.
‘Mum?’
I hear her voice, but it’s impossible. She can’t be here.
‘Mum. Look at me.’
She walks around the table. She’s nervous. Skittish, as though she’s trapped with a caged animal.
But I couldn’t move if I tried. I’m locked in place; the metal cuffs vice-like around my wrists. I say her name. It breaks as barely a sound. ‘Evie,’ I croak. ‘I’m sorry.’
She pulls out the chair opposite. ‘It’s OK, Mum. I’m sorry too.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, again, compulsively. I can’t stop myself. Now that I can speak, these are the only words I can say. ‘I’m—’
‘Mum – Mum. Stop. I need to talk to you.’
She looks me over, fear and pity in her eyes. I know how I look now: prison clothes, unwashed hair, bones jutting through my skin. THE MOST HATED WOMAN IN BRITAIN, the papers called me, at trial. THE FACE OF EVIL.
‘I’ve brought someone with me.’ She’s authoritative, handling me as I might once have handled an unruly patient. ‘I want you to listen to her. To what she has to say.’
When the door opens – the roar of other screaming women in other cells filling the space – I see a woman I know only from photos, from well-lit, fawning profiles. In real life, she’s shorter, less polished; a ripple of spots pock her skin, ordinarily airbrushed out. But her voice – her voice I know intimately. ‘Hannah … it’s good to meet you. I’m Anna Byers.’
A blue flame of anger rises inside me. I’d forgotten this was something I could feel. ‘No,’ I say. ‘No.’
‘Mum—’
‘No. No, no, no.’
‘Please, Mum. Just listen to her. For two minutes. Please.’ It’s the sob in her voice that stills me. She’s desperate. She needs this. She needs answers: an explanation. Just as I did, with Margot. With Hawkwood House.
I say nothing.
But I stop saying no.
Byers sits. Evie lingers behind. I want to pull her closer to me; to be able to breathe in her smell. But I can’t. I’m chained to the spot.
‘Hannah,’ Byers says. ‘I know you don’t want to talk to me. In your shoes, I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either. I …’ She fidgets, fingers and thumbs twitching. Another thing I wouldn’t have imagined. ‘I know it isn’t going to come close to covering it, but … I owe you an apology. Unreservedly. I am so, so, sorry.’
I don’t look up. I don’t move. How dare you? I think. Now? After everything – now, you’re going to apologize?
‘Evie contacted me a year ago,’ she goes on. ‘And I’ll admit, I didn’t want to even consider the fact I might’ve been wrong about this, because …’
Because you ruined my life. Because you tortured me for attention. For clicks.
‘Because that would mean I did something terrible. To you.’ I look at her. I meet her eye. I don’t need to say a word. She looks away. She bends, and reaches into her bag. ‘Let me just … Let me show you some of what I’ve found.’ Her hands flutter as she spreads her papers across the desk. I don’t take my eyes off her. She’s afraid, and I want her to be. I want her to know how it feels.
I feel Evie approaching, and my resolve flickers. ‘Mum. Please. Look at what she has.’
I hold Byers’s gaze for a moment longer. And then, I look down at the pages between us. I see names that are all too familiar: Sophie and Lucie Wexworth. Mike Philips. Dan. Graham. Darren. Sarah. Amy.
And then, names that are less so: Louise Gaitskill. The memory rises, like a wisp of smoke. Our nanny, when Evie was a child. Who’d been there, in our home. Who hadn’t seen what happened between Graham and me, but had sensed it. Had seen it in Evie’s eyes, and mine.
Another name I don’t recognize, at all. The words beneath it: engaged to defend HC in Lucie Wexworth case. He’d seen it, that day: Graham’s hand at my throat. Now, he wants to speak on my behalf.
There are maps, charts, lists I can’t understand. Cell-tower data, one reads. There are circles in vivid red ink: around the hospital, and Hawkwood House. Around Evie’s school, Dan’s office, and our home.
I scan a clutch of emails between Dan and Sophie, arranging a meeting – Sophie Wexworth, 4 p.m. scrawled on his receipt. Their meeting hadn’t been about me at all. She’d promised him some story about Hawkwood’s old church – for his book, the one I’d refused to believe was real – and he’d met her for coffee. She’d spiked his drink, and slipped into our house while I was out at Evie’s match.
And so, he thought he knew her. That’s probably why he let her in on that final day. When she cut his throat, while dressed in the clothes I’d been wearing when Evie disappeared. The police had found them in a bin bag outside, still covered in my sweat and blood; my DNA.
‘Hannah,’ Byers says. ‘I’ve never been more sure of a wrongful conviction than this. It’s overwhelming. Sophie was terrifyingly clever, but … she still left a trail. She and I … We spoke at length, when I was researching the series. Darren Andrews gave me her name, and we spoke, but … I couldn’t include any of her material, because she wouldn’t sign the release. But—’
My head snaps up. The nerve in my neck sparks, viciously. ‘What did you tell her?’
She blanches. ‘Hannah …’ She’s terrified, and rightly so. If Evie wasn’t here, I’d tear her apart.
‘You led her to me. To my family. You told her everything you’d heard about me from that bastard Darren and God knows who else. Didn’t you?’ I picture her, there in her studio, telling Sophie about me: happy, free, and thriving, in spite of everything I’d done.
None of it was true. But it was enough to light the spark of Sophie’s obsession again. ‘If you hadn’t come along, with your stupid podcast, none of this would’ve happened. Dan would be – I would be—’
‘Mum.’ Evie looks at me, shame and disappointment mingling in her eyes. ‘Please. She’s trying to make things right.’ She’s the adult now, I realize. She’s grown up so much without me, while I’ve stayed the same: nursing my memories, my grief and regret.
Anna glances at Evie, and goes on. ‘Hannah … I believe she was at Hawkwood with you, that day. I believe she was the one who killed Dan.’ I feel an unwelcome swell of tears rising, and I swallow it. It’s just been so long since I’ve been believed. That’s all. ‘But that means she’s still out there – and I think we can prove it. We can track her down, and get you justice at last.’
My stomach drops. This is more than an apology, or an explanation.
She wants to make this her next case.
I think of her followers: the ones who’d hounded me, who’d cheerfully wished for my death. Normal people, strangers I’d pass in the street, on the school run, at work, and outside my home. Who’d tortured me, casually, firing off messages as they went about their day.
she should rot in prison for what she did
once a murderous cunt, always a murderous cunt
I’m safe from that, here, the everyday cruelty, the terror of their unleashed, anonymous id: here, I’m locked away, and those people can’t get in. Now, in fact, I doubt they think of me at all: their wor
ld is a fast-moving one. Someone else has their attention; some other poor stranger is the object of the hunt.
But then, Sophie is out there. While I remain safe inside, she’s moving through the same world as my daughter. She got what she wanted, and ran – but how sure can I be, really, that her sense of closure will last? ‘Have you spoken to Mike?’
‘No. He’s … He’s gone off the grid, apparently.’
My alibi. The only person who could back me up, still missing.
I look at Evie. ‘It won’t work. I’m sorry, but no.’
A silence falls between us. ‘Look, Hannah,’ Byers says. ‘You don’t need to decide right now. I can—’
‘There’s no point. You know no one’s going to believe me. Not after everything you said before. And I’m not risking her coming back to hurt my family because you’ve provoked—’ Evie stares at me, crestfallen. ‘I’m sorry, Evie. I am. But I can’t do it.’ A shiver in my voice betrays me. ‘I can’t.’
Byers begins to gather up her papers, slipping them back into the file. I feel a sharp ache, a sudden realization: this is it. If I let her go it’s over. Evie will leave, too. She might never come back.
And then, I see her face – my face – on one of the papers still on the desk. Margot. The photo I’d stolen from Hawkwood House.
‘Wait.’ I reach for it. Slide it over the desk. I look at Anna, at Evie. At Margot’s face, her eyes burning into mine. ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s … It was found in your car. But – it’s your grandmother. Margot.’
My mouth turns dry. ‘This is real?’
‘It’s a copy, but … Yes. It’s her.’
I think of the papers Sophie had given me: r e mem be r m e. Every one of them a forgery, designed to make me think she was insane. That I was, too. But somehow, Sophie had this photo of Margot: the grain of truth around which the rest became real. ‘How did she get this?’