by Sarah Lawton
‘You want the truth, Liam? Really? I hated your sister! She was as worthless as you are!’ I kick him as hard as I can in the stomach – there’s a satisfying grunt – then I stamp at his face with my foot, trying to push him over the edge. I’m vaguely aware of my mother getting to her feet behind us. I swear, if she touches me, she’ll be the next one to go over.
The sky breaks, thunder cracking so loud – only it doesn’t just come from the air, but the earth beneath us too, as the cliff begins to give way, to shake and shudder, and fall. He somehow scrambles away, but I’m too slow: I start to slide and I only just cling on to the dead grass, crumbling soil and stones slithering away, dragging at me.
‘Mum! Mummy, help me!’ I scream as my fingers dig into the earth, feel the dagger pain of my nails splitting, and she’s there, oh, thank god, she’s there, she believes me, she always believes me! She throws herself towards me, arms and hands reaching out for mine. Her fingers gripping, she has me, she’ll save me. It’s not too late.
‘Did you hurt Molly?’ she shouts, but I can barely hear her over the wind. ‘Did you? Did you hurt my mother?’
I can’t help it. I laugh.
Rachel
I let her fall.
Rachel
Six Months Later
Her face, her bloody mouth, red teeth, screaming with laughter. I see it every night in my dreams. How could she laugh? She looked just like her father in that frozen moment. Conception and end. I let her fall. I watched her go. I hoped the cliff would take me too, but it didn’t. It left me there, hollow and numb, staring, Liam beside me, weeping.
I watched my daughter die.
They uncovered her, down on the beach in the soil and the stones, her body as broken and twisted as her heart had been. I was afraid they wouldn’t find her, that she would haunt me always, but she is dead and buried, nothing now but a drawing in a book, her face immortalised in print with her dark prince beside her.
Those endless hours in the police station: interviews, interrogations. Did you know? Did you know? Vivian. Tristan’s car. Molly, skull crushed by a rock, found in a stream in the woods, a bloated horror. Those long showers she took. It was all her. Liam made a call to the police, when he found Molly among the watching trees, told them what he knew, who he suspected, then decided to take matters into his own hands. He wanted to save me, but I saved myself.
After finding Molly’s body the police got a search warrant for our house. They broke the door down not an hour after we left, searched Vivian’s room. They found a small pink laptop underneath a drawer, underneath the whole unit. I’d never have thought to look there. Molly’s laptop, to send emails from Molly’s account. An unutterable cruelty, making the people who loved her believe that she was still alive while she rotted, alone in the woods. Alone. We don’t know how Vivian lured her there, in the dark. Maybe Molly thought it was an adventure, an excitement. The forest at night. Friends. A rock from a stream. Those long, long showers, washing away what she’d done. They found the search history on her phone too: mechanics, brake lines. You can find anything on the internet these days. It’s how Alex – Liam – found me, through my work website. I should have changed my name when we left London, but it was my father’s name, my mother’s. I hadn’t wanted to lose that link with them. I never thought something like this could happen – I refused to. I was blind.
He was at the inquest. Liam Coleman. He wanted to speak to me, to tell me he was sorry, but what does he have to be sorry for? If it hadn’t been him, it would have been something or someone else, some other time. Vivian was unstable. She wasn’t safe, and Molly paid the price. I only hope he can come back from this, make something of his life. I told him I’d look for his art, in the future. I made him promise to not stop drawing. I made him promise to forget about me.
All this pain. Maybe I should have listened to my mum at the very beginning when she’d told me to end the pregnancy. Vivian was a poison that Ciaran left in me, in my blood, in my womb. I’m so ashamed. I should have realised, I should have known. Maybe I did know. I didn’t do enough to protect other people – I was only protecting myself with my lies. Now Tristan is dead, my sweet Molly is dead, and it’s my fault.
I’ve put the cottage on the market, selling it cheaply in the hope someone will be able to put aside the fact that a teenage murderer and a murderer’s mother used to live there. I’ve found a new town, far away, bigger, more anonymous. Somewhere I can remake myself, because I don’t want to hide any more. I want to be free. I need to be free, for her.
I stroke the mound of my swelling belly. I won’t make the same mistakes again, I promise.
I hope she has Lexie’s pretty eyes.
Acknowledgements
I’ll admit that I never used to read the acknowledgements in books until I began to write myself, and I found it astounding just how many people it takes to produce a novel. I just hope I have managed to remember all mine.
Many thanks to my editor Louise Cullen for her vision and enthusiasm for my work, and to all the team at Canelo for their promotion and support and especially for the fantastic cover art by Lisa Brewster. Orange is the new everything.
Thanks to my agent Felicity Blunt and the team at Curtis Brown – especially ever-helpful Rosie Pierce, and Anna Davis, editing masterclass supremo.
To the great people at the Bath Novel Award, thank you for that incredible feeling of seeing my book on the longlist – I won’t forget it.
I could not have written this book without the support of some incredible friends I made along the way. Marija Maher-Diffenthal, thank you for your cleverness, kindness, generosity and colourfulness. Liz Webb, thank you for always making me laugh and helping me nail the ending. Katherine Tansley, thank you for that final beta read that made me brave enough to click send. Jo McGrath, thank you for letting me read Hazel’s burgeoning adventures, they are a joy. Each of you, our weekly lockdown Zooms kept me sane, and I can’t wait to get back to the library with you all. All the rest of the Faber gang, thank you for making that six months so much fun – and especial thanks to Ips and Abbey for some early beta reads.
Thanks to the lovely Sophia-Marie Spiers, coffee friend, cheerleader and other-class-spy, co-conspirator and sweary WhatsApper. I can’t wait to see your novel hit the shelves.
My various online course classmates too – Jennie Godfrey, Gautam Das, Jo Surridge, Jennifer Weller especially – much love and thanks for the support.
Frances Taylor, blogging buddy, thank you for your beta read. I hope you get out of Twitter jail soon #FreeFran.
Lottie Houghton, Kelly Houghton, Cliodhna Gillespie, Helen Etherington – you’re the best friends a girl could ask for, thank you, I love you all.
The One Son Club, thank you for general enthusiasm and excitement and lovely cricket afternoons.
Josie, my favourite (only, but still favourite) sister – thank you for reading those endless first drafts. I hope you can bring yourself to read the polished version. Dad, same. Mum, thanks for being you. I wouldn’t be me without you. Thanks as always and for ever to my long-suffering husband Mark and his exemplary question mark counting skills, and to my brilliant son Rian for giving the best hugs ever. Evie, you’re a good girl too. Yes you are. Thanks for keeping my feet warm while I typed.
Finally, but definitely most importantly of all, thank you Ed Archer. One conversation with you sparked this entire journey and I can never thank you enough. Mate, you know it.
About the Author
Sarah Lawton grew up on the Isle of Wight, and following university she embarked on a career in the charity sector. After a few years of full time parenting, she picked up her pen, and can now be found writing in various locations in East London.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
31 Helen Road
Oxford OX2 0DF
United Kingdom
Copyright © Sarah Lawton, 2021
The
moral right of Sarah Lawton to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 9781800321687
Print ISBN 9781800322998
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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