‘Don’t compare our stories.’
‘There are similarities.’
‘Did someone kill your mother?’
He narrowed his eyes at the question and stared into a fixed spot on the floor. ‘Me.’ I let the admission hang; it hadn’t been entirely surprising. Since Mum, I’d read enough true crime to know where these things start. ‘No one ever knew.’ He smiled, then, and looked at me. ‘You’re the only person in the whole world to know that, Sarah. I was older, she was drinking more by then. It was a nudge, more than a push. But I watched her tumble, saw her neck land at a fantasy angle, and I just – in those few seconds looking down at her, I just knew.’ His eyes had glazed over in the memory; it didn’t feel like he was speaking to me anymore. ‘I didn’t even call anyone, Sarah, I just left. Someone called me, maybe a day or two later, to say a friend had found her. Tessa, she’s the woman – the woman my mother should have been. She called to ask when I’d last seen Mum. I never knew whether she knew or not. Some women know, don’t they, Sarah?’ He looked like he was back in the room with me, then. ‘Some women have a gut for it.’
It felt like a pointed comment. I tried to keep my face neutral. ‘People letting you get away with it isn’t the same as it being an acceptable thing to do. We’re not talking about the odd bit of gaslighting, or forgetting the turkey at Christmas, Patrick.’ I leaned hard on his name. ‘Your mother was your first?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘When?’
‘2008. It was a difficult time for me, after she died.’
‘After you killed her,’ I corrected him.
‘I lost my way for a while. I was… I don’t know, distracted. It always felt like there was something missing in me, after Mum.’ He was staring at the spot on the floor again and I didn’t like it. I wanted him to look me in the eye while he did this; I wanted it to be harder for him. Instead, it felt like a purge. He’d made me an emotional accessory and it made me hate him even more. ‘Jada, I met her while I was on a work thing. We were out together as a team and I sort of – I don’t know, I drifted towards her.’
‘Tell me about Mum.’
‘Sarah–’
I clutched the gun tighter. ‘It wasn’t a question.’
‘I was rushing– rushing everything. I was new to it all and panicking because– I don’t know.’ There seemed to be a lot he didn’t know. ‘I felt like I needed to do something, I just hadn’t worked out what it was.’
‘So, killing women was a filler activity?’
He frowned. ‘No. No, it always meant more than that, Sarah. Your mother – whenever I saw her, she seemed so kind and open with people. She was everything I’d never had, when I was younger, and something about that – Christ, it made me angry and sad and – it just happened, from there.’
‘Why weren’t you killing cruel women, women who reminded you of her?’
He smiled. ‘I was killing women who reminded me of her. Every time, I was…’ he petered out, and I hated the thought that he might be remembering them.
‘After Mum, you kept in touch with me.’
‘I had to.’
‘You chose to. I know that’s something you’re struggling with. But everything you’ve done, everything that led you here,’ I tapped the coffee table with the metal, ‘all of that was your choice. Why did you choose to keep in touch with me?’
He shrugged. ‘You’d seen me. You were the only person ever to see me like this, as I am. I thought I’d be able to let that go, Sarah, I truly did. But then I saw how well you were doing, and then I saw what you were telling people, how you– I suppose how you were shaping your whole life around– well, me.’ My face changed and he noticed. ‘I was so flattered, Sarah. And then, when I saw you were reaching out to me, too, with the podcast and the obituary and – all these other tiny things you thought maybe I wouldn’t notice.’ He smiled; wide enough for me to see his teeth. ‘I noticed, Sarah. I saw you back.’
‘You know nothing about me, Patrick.’
‘I know enough. We’ve got a bond, you and I, Sarah. I don’t know what it means or what we can do with it, but there’s something, isn’t there? Something you feel–’
‘Don’t make this into something it isn’t.’
‘Okay.’ He sat back. ‘What is it, Sarah?’
I drew a line along the table with the tip of the barrel; the metal grated against the wood grain and the sound filled the room. ‘An ending.’
‘I see,’ he spoke slowly. ‘What kind of ending though?’ Without warning he stood up and spread his arms in a way that looked sacrificial. ‘Murder or mercy, Sarah?’
My mobile was still flat on the table in front of me. I kept the gun in one hand, and reached for the handset with the other. My thumbprint unlocked the screen and there were the three digits, still, waiting for an emergency. I looked up at him. ‘Can I have one on sport?’
‘You haven’t decided yet, have you?’ He moved closer, then, and although he was still a safe distance the change in proximity was stifling. I let my breathing spiral into something that sounded ragged. ‘What if I decide for you?’ He crouched, which brought him into my eyeline, and I felt my chest rise and fall at an unnatural rate.
I hit the bright green telephone and pressed my iPhone to my ear.
‘Operator…’
‘Should I sit with you and wait for them to come, Sarah? Would you like that?’
I swallowed hard and thought of Mum. ‘Help me.’ My voice cracked with the memories of her – of Madison, too. There were times when the three of us would have been in this room, talking about what life might be like when I was this age. ‘Help me, please, someone’s broken into my home…’ They always joked that I’d be a man-eater; human-eater, Mum once said, because she didn’t want to shoebox me. ‘…I can hear him downstairs.’
Patrick’s eyes spread.
‘Okay, I need you to breathe deeply for me, Miss…’
‘Please, send someone. I’m – I’m Sarah Wainwright, I’m worried it’s him…’
He sat back down on the sofa, then, and watched.
‘DS Brooks, in the Major Incident Team,’ I name-dropped, ‘she knows…’
‘Okay, Sarah. I need your address…’
‘23 Hurston Street. Please, he’s downstairs, please hurry…’
He smiled and slowly nodded. And I thought: He must have realised, now.
Part VI
57
2019
I’d been staying at Madison’s home for a few nights. I was – I write with a bitter twist of irony – there to get some of Mum’s things, so I could write what I originally planned to be the final chapter(s) of this very book. Little did I know that my time at Madison’s would change so drastically – as would the closing of this story.
Patrick Haber arrived on my third night in the house. In his letters prior to this he’d implied that he was following me. But my time – both alone, and under police protection – had been uneventful. As a result of that I, like others close to me, had assumed his comments were empty ones. There was nothing specific written in any of the letters to suggest he actually knew where I’d been, or where I might be going. Although – with further irony, perhaps – I now know he’d been following me for some time, whenever an opportunity presented itself to. It was in following me that he knew where I’d be on the night of his final attack. He knew I’d be alone. He knew he might add me to his growing list of victims.
What he didn’t know, was the sheer strength and determination instilled in me by the two women who raised me…
58
Tina had copies of the letters, and the maps. But she was the only other person to have seen them in full. We agreed it was best – for me, for the book – if it stayed that way. ‘No sense incriminating yourself for no good reason,’ she said, feeding sheets of paper through a shredder in the corner of her office. ‘The digital files are locked, and they’ll stay that way. But rest assured it’s just in case you lose your copies,’ she told me, and I believed her. W
e’d written most of the final chapter of the book together; not to fabricate details, but to tread the line between what had been made public by the police and what was being brought by me, as a Sarah Wainwright exclusive. After I’d finished talking detectives through how Patrick had broken into the house – with a handgun, no less – I could talk Tina through it, too, as well as several other head figures from the publishing house. Who knew self-defence would open so many doors, I thought, each time Tina introduced me to a new face.
Nearly a full year of elbow-brushing and official statements had passed when the book was signed off as finished. Tina sent it to me as a courtesy, and for one final proofread. This was my last chance to change any details, too, but given that I’d recited my statement to the police like it was a gospel passage, it seemed an unwise move to start changing things. Instead, I read the book chapter at a time. The earlier parts were about Mum, and I read them slowly, with my legs tucked beneath me and hot tea to hand. The later parts were about him and, although I knew I needed to pay closer attention, I found myself rushing through them.
‘Maybe you’re just done with it,’ Landon said, when I told him about my hurry.
I smiled. ‘Maybe I am.’
‘Does this mean we get another book launch?’ Jessie asked from behind her pint.
Tyler laughed. ‘One of us gets a book launch,’ he looked at Jessie, ‘one of us gets to stay home and babysit.’
‘Aren’t they old enough to look after themselves, though, really?’ Landon asked.
‘Yes,’ Tyler replied, ‘Dot is nearly one, after all.’
We were doing this, spending more time together. After what happened with Patrick, we made a quiet vow to be more involved in each other’s lives – on the off-chance any of us were targeted by a serial killer again. But it had been a communal kindness to have these evenings out; or, more often, evenings in. Jessie and Tyler found it difficult to track down a babysitter brave enough to take on three children, so our nights together typically saw us crowded around their dining table with open pizza boxes and board games. That’s how we’d evolved from teenagers getting drunk in the local woodlands before stumbling home to Mum’s. But on this rare evening when Tyler’s Mum had been bold enough to tackle her own grandchildren, we’d flocked to a nearby pub.
‘I should make a move,’ I said, pushing my empty glass away.
‘Nonsense.’ Landon drummed the table. ‘Isn’t it your round?’
‘Ah, it’s your round,’ Jessie corrected him, ‘but we should make a move, too.’ Tyler took the signal and reached around to slip his coat off the back of his chair. ‘I’m too worried to get hammered on a school night these days.’
‘Worried for the kids?’ Tyler asked and Jessie laughed.
‘Worried for your mum.’
In the bustle of the smoking area, we said our goodbyes. It had been three months since I’d had a cigarette. But when I pulled Landon in for his farewell hug, I still took a deeper than usual inhale on his clothing. He knew, too, which is why he held me for a beat longer than the others. He waited it out for a taxi – a long enough wait for him to enjoy his smoke in peace – while Jessie, Tyler and I went our separate ways. It took me twenty minutes to walk home, and I hoped that in that time my head would be clear enough to read through the final chapter one last time…
Before she said anything, I knew she was there. Wren had taken to watching me while I worked. I didn’t know whether she enjoyed the view, or whether she was waiting for a breakdown. Since Patrick, though, we’d been able to break the golden rule on not discussing work. I’d confided in her several times over about the experience of reading the book back through; although I hadn’t managed to confide in her much of the truth about having written it. Still, all relationships had their secrets, I reasoned.
She kept a safe distance until I pulled up my emails; then she knew it was time. She crossed the room and stood behind me, kneading my shoulders while I typed to Tina: ‘All present and accounted for. No typos. No regrets. Sx.’ And when I hit send Wren leaned over to plant a kiss on the crown of my head.
‘Another best-selling piece of true crime from Sarah Wainwright.’ She spun my office chair around and crouched level with me. ‘What’s next?’
‘For life or…?’
In the dead of night, after a shared bottle of wine, Wren and I had made fantastical plans about what life might be like, when the book was written and the case was closed, and our relationship – as it was called now – was out in the open. I wondered whether she was about to initiate the conversation that we’d spent months tactfully avoiding. But instead she only laughed, stood and rested her hands on my shoulders again.
‘Let’s start small. How about for writing?’
I thought of the lies I’d told to get here. She pressed her thumbs into the balls of my shoulders, and I shrugged under her hands. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t think I believe that.’
My email alert chimed, and I turned back to my monitor. It was confirmation from Tina – ‘Safe and sound. T.’ – and Wren let out a laugh as I skimmed it.
‘A workaholic like you, and you want me to believe you’ve got nothing planned?’
I read and reread Tina’s email before I turned back to Wren. ‘Okay,’ I admitted, ‘maybe I’ll try my hand at fiction…’
* * *
THE END
Acknowledgements
Sincerely, Yours is the first book I’ve ever personally offered ARCs for. The response to my social media call-out was kind and encouraging, and I’ve loved being able to share snippets of Sarah’s story in a sneak preview fashion with this new group of readers. So thank you to those kind enough to give this book time in advance – and for putting up with my occasional pictures of Benji (which I realise may not really be too much of a chore).
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Thank you, too, to my fellow hounds: for the retweets, the support and for swapping war stories from the writing world.
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Finally, Beth, I owe you thanks in every single book I’ve written and this one is no exception. You’re a truly excellent human bean and friend, and as much a part of the process as French Vanilla candles. I will forever be grateful for the time – and the emojis. If I could, I would send you a whole ocean of boats and a safety pin.
A note from the publisher
Thank you for reading this book. If you enjoyed it please do consider leaving a review on Amazon to help others find it too.
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We hate typos. All of our books have been rigorously edited and proofread, but sometimes mistakes do slip through. If you have spotted a typo, please do let us know and we can get it amended within hours.
[email protected]
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Sincerely, Yours Page 23