I frown. It’s the one Harry gave me, the one that was on my sideboard. I’d put it in the wardrobe, under a pile of clothes. How come the police have it? ‘Yes. It does. Where did they get that?’
She blinks, her eyes look huge behind her glasses. ‘I’m not at liberty to say at the moment.’
‘Why? What’s going on?’
‘The shape of the ornament matches the wound to the head and your fingerprints are all over it.’
So Beth used my Buddha to kill Sean. And then what had she done? Wiped her prints from it and left it on my sideboard for me to find? If I’d never picked it up, if I’d just left it there, then this wouldn’t be happening.
I sip water from a plastic cup. My hands are trembling. ‘Well yes, they would be. It’s my ornament. But I didn’t kill him. You have to believe me, Melanie. It wasn’t me. I was at the hospital in Cornwall with Jamie the day Sean died, remember?’
She sits back in her chair and assesses me. It’s so hot in the room, so airless. My blouse is sticking to my skin and I can feel a wet patch forming on my back. She takes her glasses off and runs her fingers over her eye socket. She looks tired. ‘Do you know more about this than you’re letting on?’ she asks, replacing her glasses.
I’m sorry, Beth. I take a deep breath and tell her everything.
When I’ve finished she regards me in disbelief. ‘So you’re saying that the real Elizabeth Elliot didn’t die in the fire but came back here because she was angry with you for stealing her identity and then she killed her husband?’
I nod. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘I need to ask you, Libby. Did you do it? Did you kill Sean Elliot?’
‘No. I’m telling you. It was the real Elizabeth Elliot. Not me. I’m Karen Fisher.’
She consults her notes, her face darkening. ‘Well it says here that the real Karen Fisher died in a fire. In Thailand. Back in two thousand and eight. Her documents were found in the clean-up operation. The fire is thought to have been started deliberately, Libby.’
‘They were my documents. I took the real Elizabeth Elliot’s bag when I ran away from the hostel. The real Elizabeth Elliot was here. A few months ago. She was staying in my neighbour’s flat. I saw her. I had a conversation with her.’ I can see it’s falling on deaf ears and I realise with horror that she doesn’t believe me. That she thinks I’m making the whole thing up.
‘Leave it with me,’ she says, standing up.
I sit and wait. Eventually Melanie returns with DI Hartley and DS Trott. She sits next to me while the two detectives take the seats opposite.
‘We have enough evidence here to charge you,’ says DI Hartley, his steely eyes flashing dangerously. ‘And then it will go to Crown Court. It would make life a lot easier though, Mrs Elliot, if you confessed.’
‘I’m not going to confess because I’ve done nothing wrong,’ I cry.
‘We’ve already established the ornament belongs to you,’ he says.
‘Yes … yes it does.’
‘And it has your fingerprints all over it. Nobody else’s. Just yours.’
I shuffle, sweat prickling my top lip. How can this be happening? ‘Beth told me herself that she’d killed him. In self-defence. He was a total psycho. He was going to kill her. I found the ornament on my sideboard. I usually kept it in the wardrobe. I picked it up and put it back there. I just assumed Jamie had found it and put it there …’
‘Who else can vouch for you? Who else saw this Beth? Did your husband see her? Did anyone?’ asks DS Trott, her blonde bob falling around her young face. I decide to direct my answers to her. She’s about my age, maybe she’ll understand, be more sympathetic than Hartley.
I shake my head. ‘No. Nobody. But you can check banks, can’t you? Passports? I think she’d come from abroad. She’d recently lost a baby. She’s a bit unstable …’
DI Hartley looks sceptical. ‘I don’t believe you. I think you killed your ex-husband and then concocted this whole cock-and-bull story of swapping identities in Thailand to get out of it. I believe you killed your ex-husband because he was threatening to expose you. That’s the truth of the matter, isn’t it, Elizabeth?’
‘No … no it’s not.’ I feel like I’m in a nightmare. ‘How could I have done it? We were in Cornwall. Jamie was in hospital.’
DI Hartley smirks. He looks like a fox with his sharp nose and beady eyes. ‘Yes, we checked that out. You actually left the hospital at six thirty p.m. on the fifth of April. Sean Elliot was killed between three p.m. on the fifth and six p.m. the following day. So you had plenty of time to drive back to Bath, kill him, and then get back to Cornwall before meeting Jamie the next morning.’
I run my hand over my face, exasperated. ‘But why? Why would I do that?’
‘We have a record here that you rang Mr Elliot at approximately –’ DS Trott consults her notes ‘– eleven a.m. that morning.’ She slides a piece of paper under my nose containing a list of telephone numbers. I recognise mine straight away. ‘For the benefit of the tape I am showing Mrs Elliot telephone records,’ she adds without taking her eyes off me.
‘Yes. But I thought it was Philip Heywood that I was speaking to. Not Sean Elliot.’
DS Trott remains impassive. ‘I think you realised when you spoke to him what he was up to. I think that you then arranged to meet him in your flat in Bath and killed him,’ she says. I was wrong to think she’d be the more sympathetic of the two.
‘No. I had a broken arm. My right arm. I couldn’t drive. I can’t drive,’ I wail.
‘You have a driving licence and an automatic car, Mrs Elliot. I’m sure you would have been able to drive with a broken arm if you took off your sling and if the need was great, which in your case it was.’
‘I … no … I can’t drive. Karen Fisher can’t drive.’
DS Trott surveys me quietly, unnerving me. Then, ‘Are you prone to violent outbursts, Elizabeth?’
‘No, of course not.’
She glances down at something in front of her, her hair swinging forwards. She tucks it behind her ear. ‘We have a statement here from a James Penton. He says you assaulted him.’
James Penton? And then it clicks who they mean. Jim. ‘Assaulted him?’ I gasp. ‘I didn’t assault him. I prodded him because he was trespassing, lurking around the Hideaway. I just wanted him to leave us alone. I suppose you could say I pushed him, but not hard …’ I look about wildly at Melanie Finch. At the detectives. But they just stare back at me, their faces grave.
I’ve been formally charged with Sean’s murder.
And now I await trial. I’ve not been allowed bail, despite being pregnant, because of the seriousness of the crime. Apparently I’m a flight risk, which is ironic since I haven’t been out of the country since Thailand.
Melanie Finch has tried to remain upbeat, telling me that we have a good defence. But I know she’s lying. We have no proof that Beth was ever in this country. Melanie has tried to find her but there is no record of the real Beth Elliot living in England. If she’s abroad she could be anywhere.
Jamie visits me often. He’s the only one who believes me, but even I can see that his devotion is waning and it will probably disappear when he hears all the facts in court. Because if I was on the jury, I wouldn’t believe me. I’m in so deep now, I’ve become Elizabeth Elliot to such an extent, that nobody accepts I’m really Karen Fisher. I’ve asked Melanie to speak to old friends of mine from school – or the colleagues I worked with at the local supermarket – to ask them to make an identification. Surely somebody from my past will remember me? I wasn’t that invisible. She’s chasing it up for me but she did tell me gently that, really, it doesn’t matter what I call myself because the fingerprints on the weapon are mine, whoever I say I am.
‘But if we can prove you are Karen Fisher then your motive for killing Sean becomes weaker,’ she explained. ‘And your story will be more believable to a jury. So there is hope.’
Hope. It’s all I have while I
wait in prison. This is retribution. For Thailand. For the hostel fire. I might not have killed Sean Elliot but I’m responsible for the deaths of seven other people. I’m not innocent in all of this. That one night of madness has cost me so much. If I’m found guilty I will miss years of my son’s life. I’ll miss his first steps, his first laugh, his first words. And that would be the worst punishment of all.
I have too much time to think, to obsess, alone in my cell. How did the police get that one piece of incriminating evidence? Beth admitted being in my flat. Had she gone there to find the Buddha and then posted it to the police knowing my fingerprints were all over it? It’s the only thing that makes sense. She’d spent a lifetime looking over her shoulder and selling me out was the only way to ensure her own freedom.
Beth and Libby. Libby and Beth. We are more alike than we ever wanted to admit. I know if it had been the other way around I would have done the same to her to save my own skin. Because we are survivors. We’ve had to be. And I’ll survive this. I’ll prove my innocence. I refuse to let Beth win.
Last Seen Alive Reading Group Questions
‘He needs this holiday just as much as I do. Our first nine months of married life haven’t been easy.’ How do Jamie and Libby’s marital problems affect their experience at The Hideaway? Would the events that followed have taken a different turn if they were a stronger unit?
Are Libby’s insecurities over Hannah and Jamie rational or do they just distance her from Jamie and his family unnecessarily? Is Jamie’s relationship with Hannah normal?
Karen and Elizabeth both suffer miscarriages. How does the trauma of this affect them both? Do their different stories leading up to this life event change the way they react?
Karen and Elizabeth’s stories begin in Thailand. How does location affect the drives of the characters? Are we prone to act differently when taken out of our usual environment?
‘Lies. There will always be lies. The little white lies we can’t bring ourselves to tell our spouses, our friends. Sometimes it’s to protect them and sometimes it’s to protect ourselves.’ Is it sometimes best to lie in order protect ourselves and others? When should Karen have told Jamie the truth? How have her and Beth’s lies affected their lives?
How important is trust in a marriage? Is Jamie wrong to trust Libby again after he learns the truth? How long should Libby atone for her actions?
‘How can we tell how much, or for how long someone will hold a grudge?’ Is Elizabeth’s bitterness about Karen ‘stealing’ Harry along with her own later miscarriage enough reason to try and destroy Karen’s life? Do you feel pity for Elizabeth?
In the novel a person’s identity appears to sometimes be fluid and at others inescapable. How important is a name and legal identity?
How do Karen and Elizabeth’s shifting circumstances and relationships change their personalities? How do they differ from one another? How are they similar?
While at The Hideaway, rhetorical questions run constantly through Libby’s mind. What effect does this have on the reader? Does it give an impression of paranoia or of insight?
Karen and Elizabeth both lack a mother figure. How has that affected them, if at all? In what ways does Evelyn fulfil a maternal role for them both?
Where you happy with the way the novel ended? Do you feel that anyone was punished unfairly or not enough?
Acknowledgements
A huge thank you to my fabulous editors Maxine Hitchcock and Eve Hall who have made this book so much better than it would have been, and to Eugenie Todd for her eagle-eyed copy-editing. Thank you to the whole team at Penguin, who do such an incredible job, from the cover design to the sales department. I’m so grateful.
Thank you to the wonderful Juliet Mushens – the best agent in the world (with the cutest cats in the world!) and to Nathalie Hallam. You are both amazing and I feel so lucky to be part of Team Mushens.
Thank you to The Prime Writers for being such a lovely, supportive group and in particular to Sarah Vaughan for all the word races which kept me motivated and away from browsing Facebook!
To my writing buddies, Fiona Mitchell, Joanna Barnard, Liz Tipping, Gilly Macmillan and Nikki Owen for the chats, support, meet-ups and laughs.
To all the bloggers – I’m constantly in awe of how much reading and reviewing you all do and how much support you give to us writers.
To the readers who have bought, shared, borrowed and recommended my books and to those who have contacted me on Twitter or Facebook – your messages mean so much to me.
To all my lovely friends who have been so kind, reading and recommending my books and even choosing them for our school book club. You are all the best! Nicky Jones – the pink fluffy unicorn is for you!
Last but not least to my family. To my mum, Linda, and sister, Samantha, for being my very first readers and for all their support and advice. To my dad, Ken, for his faith in me which has never wavered, who always believed that I would one day be published. To my step-dad, John, and step-mum, Laura, (the best step-parents ever) and to my husband, Ty, for helping me brainstorm plot ideas, for telling me honestly if something isn’t working and for always believing in me. I’m so lucky to call you my family and I love you all.
And finally, to my children, Claudia and Isaac, who I love more than anything in the world. Every day I thank my lucky stars that I have you both in my life. This book is for you (you just won’t be able to read it until you’re older!).
Read on for an extract
from Claire Douglas’
new novel …
Publishing Summer 2018
@DougieClaire
ClaireDouglasAuthor
Her long limbs are spreadeagled on our restored Victorian tiles, but with one leg bent, her neck at an unnatural angle. Blood is tangled in the strands of her pale hair, and looks too red, unreal somehow, as though my daughters have been busy with a paint brush. She’s wearing a black jumpsuit in a silky fabric; elegant, even in death. One of her heels has slipped off, revealing her bare foot and the purple polish on her toe nails. It makes my eyes well up, that foot. So vulnerable, so familiar, with the soft fleshy sole and the elongated middle toe. I used to tease her about her middle toe being longer than all the others. She said it meant she was descended from a Roman princess. She was always coming out with stuff like that as a kid.
How long has she been lying here? How long?
Selena.
Her eyes are closed and her cheek is pressed against the cold tiles, her lips blue. I fall to my knees, leaning over her, the tips of my fingers pressing against her slender neck. There is no pulse.
A scream bubbles in my throat, but I can’t let it out, I can’t call for help. I look around, desperately. I don’t know where the others are. Scattered, like the beads of one of Evie’s broken plastic necklaces, around the house. The children. Oh, God. Ruby mustn’t see her mother like this.
What am I going to do? I can’t leave her alone here, in this draughty hallway, with the muddy wellies and the smelly trainers and the unseen footprints of strangers.
Selena.
And all I can think about is that I’ve failed her. I’ve let her down. Again.
PART ONE
1
Ten days before
It’s my mother’s idea. The bad ideas always are.
‘We should invite Selena to come and stay,’ she says, her piercing blue eyes lighting up behind her thick glasses as if she’s just thought of it. Yet I know it has probably been brewing in her mind for days, like the sloe gin she still insists on making despite nobody in the family liking it. ‘She’s your cousin and she’s had a hard time of it lately, what with her husband leaving her and –’ she lowers her voice even though we are alone in the room ‘– all the problems she’s had with the daughter.’ She pulls that face. The face she always pulls when she speaks of The Daughter. Ruby. Apparently that’s her name, although I’ve never met her. I haven’t spoken to Selena for over fifteen years.
‘I don�
��t think it’s a good idea,’ I say, trying to keep my voice neutral while sweeping a cloth across the surface of the rustic sideboard in the front room. I’ve never told my mother – I’ve never told anyone – the real reason we fell out. It would have destroyed so many lives.
I stand back and glance around with a critical eye at the high ceilings and the open fireplace and the arched picture window with the mountains in the distance. I can see Crug Hywel from here, the top disappearing into diaphanous clouds. We’ve managed to make the place look cosy, not too formal. Comfortable, even, with squashy sofas and high-backed chairs placed strategically by a log fire. I spent hours sanding and waxing the floorboards and painting the walls in soft Farrow and Ball hues. Adrian’s mood was lifted, his problems temporarily forgotten as he got stuck in to restoring the Victorian tiles in the hallway and getting the weeds in the garden under control.
My stomach contracts at the thought that we will be opening for business in just three days. In time for October half term. All the months of hard work, stress, renovations and upheaval will be finally worth it.
I can sense my mother watching me for a reaction. Then, ‘You’ve got bedrooms to fill, my girl.’ She still talks to me like I’m a teenager and not a woman in her mid-thirties. ‘And Selena’s got money by all accounts.’
I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation. There is no way Selena will want to see me again.
I know too much.
‘She won’t come,’ I say as I straighten a cushion and then tweak the vase of tulips on the windowsill, the memory of the last time I’d seen Selena coming to the forefront of my mind; her eighteenth birthday party, her lies, those angry words that I threw in her face like a pint of the lager and black she was always drinking. I haven’t seen her since.
‘Of course she’ll want to come.’ There’s an edge to her voice and I experience a cold, sharp lurch of dread.
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