Only Daughter: An gripping and emotional psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist

by Sarah A. Denzil

‘I think I understand why she did what she did.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I know why she killed herself. It wasn’t because she was pregnant or because she fell out with Alicia or anything like that. Grace was dark. She could be a bully. She lied all the time. And it was super-obvious shit, like she said her grandmother killed her grandfather, and that her dad’s family helped Nazi officers in World War Two, that one of her cousins in America was in the Spider-Man movie. Stupid stuff. You could maybe believe one or two of them, but she lied constantly.’

  The blood drains from my face as Lily keeps talking. I hate to imagine Grace making up these things, but from the messages I saw on WhatsApp, it does make sense. Her dad is weird. Remember what she said about him? Yeh. Fucked up. What if Grace had started some sort of rumour about Charles for attention? I don’t want to think about her like this, lying and bullying. I steady my spiralling thoughts, remembering that she had requested to go to therapy – probably as a way of becoming a better person. She made that choice.

  ‘She wasn’t like that at home at all,’ I say. ‘She never seemed to have the kind of confidence it takes to lie.’ My mind is flooded with memories of her smiling, and I desperately attempt to marry the idea of Grace as a compulsive liar with the Grace I knew at home. Why is it that everyone knew a different version of her to the version I knew?

  ‘I wasn’t going to show you this, because I didn’t think it would be fair. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Before Grace killed herself, she wasn’t… I dunno. She wasn’t herself, I guess. She turned on me again and started being nasty.’ Lily pulls open her rucksack and reaches deep into the bottom to retrieve her phone. While the bag is open, I can’t help but notice the notebook again. The one that Lily said she and Grace bought together. ‘I need to show you these messages.’

  While I wait for her to retrieve the messages, my mind runs through several awful possibilities. What has Grace done now? What did she say to this girl? The last time I met Lily, she’d painted Grace to be regretful of her past behaviour, but now she’s telling a new story. Why doesn’t anything about my daughter make sense?

  When Lily finds what she’s searching for, her eyes fill with tears. ‘I… I’ve been having a tough time with my mum. She drinks too much and she’s never around. I’m on my own all the time and everyone at school hates me. Grace was good for me for a while and then she just… changed. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the stress of being pregnant. The hormones or… I dunno.’ A shudder works through her body as she cries. ‘I don’t want to think of her like that because I know it’s not who she was.’ Finally, she holds out the phone and I view what’s on the screen.

  Lily: I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s too much. I want to end it all.

  Grace: If you feel like that then embrace it. What’s the point in living if you’re miserable? Sometimes the only thing you can do is die.

  Carefully, I lean back in my chair and try not to scream. Lily puts the phone away.

  ‘Mrs Cavanaugh? Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, Lily. But I think perhaps that I should go.’

  ‘Oh no. I didn’t mean to upset you!’

  I can’t cope with her tear-filled eyes anymore.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she begs. ‘Please stay and finish your drink. I’m sorry I showed you that message. It wasn’t her. She wasn’t well.’

  Before I can put on my coat, I find myself sinking back down into my chair. ‘Do you honestly believe that Grace killed herself?’

  She nods. ‘I do. I don’t have any doubts. When she sent me that message, I think she was talking about herself. Projecting. Is that the word?’

  I nod.

  Lily wipes her eyes on her sleeve and clears her throat. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That message was one of the last things she said to me. I hate that she sent it, but after talking to you, I understand it better. She wanted to die because she didn’t see a way out. She was stuck, like I was saying in my email. She felt trapped.’

  * * *

  I offer to give Lily a lift home but she refuses. And, strangely, she’s cagey about telling me where she lives, rushing out of the café as soon as our conversation is over. But the impression I get from her is that she isn’t from a family as affluent as others in the area and could be embarrassed by her humble background. Especially if her mother is an alcoholic.

  But the real reason I offered Lily a lift home was to avoid being alone for a while, because I knew where my thoughts would go as soon as I stepped into the car. Since Grace died, everyone has been telling me that I’m wrong, that she did commit suicide. All this time I’ve been searching for answers, and they keep pointing me towards her death being at her own hands. Daniel Hawthorne was threatening me, but he was trying to keep his affair secret, which explains the nasty messages. Grace had issues with bullying at school, but everything points to this being related to a darker side of her personality. She had difficulty fitting in at school, regularly fell out with her friends, made up lies for attention and posted dozens of videos online for whatever validation she didn’t get at school or from me and Charles. She felt disconnected enough to want therapy. And then she fell pregnant and she didn’t have anyone to turn to.

  According to everyone else, I was a distant mother, and despite how much I try to tell myself that I hid who I am from her, I can’t argue that they’re wrong. She couldn’t tell me she was pregnant, and when she went to the father of the baby, he rejected her.

  We all failed her, but I failed her the most because I didn’t raise her with the tools she needed to be able to cope with this world. For that I’ll never forgive myself.

  As soon as I get home, I pull off my shoes, swat away the two dogs, ignore Michelle asking me if I’m okay and pour myself a large glass of red wine. I walk up the grand staircase, lined with oil paintings of Charles’s ancestors, and make my way into Grace’s room. Here it is. Untouched, uncleaned, gathering dust. There’s a lingering smell of dirty laundry. Soon I will be forced to wash those clothes. They don’t smell like her anyway; they smell like old underwear.

  This is where she came to get away from me and Charles. This is the place we allowed her to be alone. Is this where we failed her? I gulp down half my glass, then I open her laptop and go back to her YouTube channel. Grace was happy here – or at least she pretended to be. I skip through some of her tutorial videos and her voice fills the room: This is a B-flat chord… This part is tricky, but concentrate and you’ll be fine… God, my body aches from missing her.

  But I still can’t cry for her.

  I move on to her outdoor videos. There’s Grace hiking a trail through the fields, clutching a selfie stick in one hand and Georgie’s lead in the other. She stops and says hello to other hikers on the way, making everyone smile with her easy nature.

  No. Stop!

  How can this be the same Grace who sent Lily the message telling her to die? I slam down the laptop, almost shattering the screen, and glug the rest of my wine.

  Throughout all of this, Grace’s phone has never appeared, which means I might never know the context for all these messages that I’ve seen on other people’s phones. Where is it? What did Grace do with it before she… Can I even think it?

  Before she committed suicide.

  The word sickens me, but even I can’t deny that all the evidence points to Grace killing herself. Maybe I rejected the idea because I couldn’t accept that my daughter would do that. Now it’s time to face facts.

  But as I pick up my glass and decide to go and check in on Charles, I change my mind again. Grace and Lily bought matching notebooks while they were friends. I remember the way Grace carried around that notebook, and I especially remember her slamming it shut if I entered the room. I might not be able to find Grace’s phone, but there’s a chance that I can learn more about Grace’s state of mind if I can find that book. And if the book is here somewhere, it must be in her room.

  Imbued with a new
sense of purpose, I put Grace’s laptop back on her bed and begin with her desk drawers. There’s no rhyme or reason to the way Grace stored her belongings. The notebook could be mixed up with sheet music, or kept under a pile of clothes, or thrown in the back of a drawer. I searched through Grace’s things soon after she died, but now I’m questioning whether I did a good job of it the first time around.

  One by one, I pull out each drawer and rummage through. I open the ottoman, filled with sheet music, and remove every single piece of paper. I upend her bedside-table drawer and spread the contents out on the carpet. When I don’t find anything, I move to her walk-in wardrobe, emptying every box, tipping out photographs and old pens. The notebook isn’t to be found.

  The notebook, along with Grace’s phone, is missing. There must be a reason why they are both gone.

  Thirty-Four

  Angela plunges the end of her pen into her ear and wiggles it around. I have no patience for it today; the sight of her constant scratching and fidgeting grates on me, and it takes nearly all my willpower to prevent myself from blurting out the rude thoughts in my mind. If I did that, I might have to find a new therapist, and that would mean starting afresh after twelve years. Learning to feed my starved conscience is hard enough without having to find a new therapist too.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ I ask, speaking gently to avoid sounding rude.

  There’s a split second where Angela’s eyes narrow, as though she’s trying to suss me out. She rarely does this, usually maintaining such a neutral expression that I find myself aggravated by it.

  ‘I did,’ she replies. ‘I thought there was going to be more, which is why I decided to give you time to say what’s on your mind.’

  ‘What is there to say? According to this girl, Grace believed that death is the best option if you can’t find happiness in life. She told another girl to kill herself. I even saw the message.’

  ‘What are your thoughts about what Grace said in those messages?’

  ‘All this time I assumed that Grace was murdered, because I could never imagine her wanting to die. But now I don’t know what to think. Throughout this whole process, this vengeful need to learn the truth, I’ve done things that could be described as morally wrong. I got Alicia and Ethan kicked out of school because I disliked the way they treated my daughter. I accused my husband of terrible things without enough evidence to believe those things were true. I almost hit a man because of what he did to my daughter. I’ve manipulated people to get answers out of them. I threatened my friend Jenny and called her names. If Grace was still here, I wouldn’t have done any of those things.’ As I finish speaking, I glance down at my hands, now realising that I’ve been clutching them tightly onto my knees.

  ‘You sound remorseful,’ Angela says. ‘When we first met, I don’t think you would have had any remorse for those actions.’

  ‘I don’t think I am. I did all those things to help me find out what happened to Grace. I believed that someone took her away from me. But if she did kill herself, then everything I’ve done was for nothing. There was no point to me behaving that way. And that makes me… Well, I don’t know what it makes me feel.’

  Angela simply says, ‘Hmm,’ as though she doesn’t know either.

  ‘Fake it until you make it,’ I say quietly. ‘I’ve been pretending for so long that I don’t know what’s real and what’s fake anymore. All these years I’ve been doing good deeds, but inside I’m rotten. I’m bad. At least that’s what I used to think. Now I just feel empty.’

  ‘Why do you think that is?’

  I shake my head. ‘Because Grace is gone. Because she wasn’t the person I thought she was. Because nothing makes sense anymore.’

  Angela scribbles into her notebook. She shuffles again and I have to stare out of the window to distract myself from her. There’s no rain today; instead, a muted sun casts a gentle glow on the world. And yet I’m always in the shade.

  ‘To answer your question from earlier,’ I say. ‘I think that Grace was right. Maybe death is the best option for people who find no happiness in life. Maybe sometimes you can’t keep trying anymore.’

  * * *

  The sun peeks out between the gathering clouds as I sit in the Land Rover with my phone in my hand. It’s on speakerphone. I keep hitting the redial button.

  Hey, this is Grace. Leave a message!

  I close my eyes and pull myself back to that memory of us on the sofa, bundled up together, watching reality shows, me trying to suppress the mounting boredom building up from my easy, upper-class life. All those lies. Walking around like a declawed cat, pretending to be a mother, pretending to be a wife. Giving to charity. Brushing my daughter’s hair. Doing the school run. I’ll be the woman who puts out an extra plate each mealtime because for a split second she forgot that the tiny baby she gave birth to all those years ago is gone.

  And what do I want to do about any of this? Continue to walk through life with my canines filed? Claws retracted? Learn how to be remorseful for the things I’ve done?

  Hey, this is Grace. Leave a message!

  ‘How could you? After I fought to be a better person for you. You lied to me and you lied to your dad. You lied to the world. You pretended to be someone you weren’t, and now I’m angry and I don’t want to be. But I can’t stop it growing inside me. How could you, Grace? How could you say those things?’

  But saying the words out loud brings me no satisfaction. I hang up, hit my head against the steering wheel. Nothing takes away my sense of pointlessness. Nothing.

  From somewhere, I find the strength to start the ignition, let off the handbrake and drive away. I take one turning and then another, and then I drive up the hill towards Farleigh Hall. All the while, I hear my mother’s voice in my mind: What did you say to her? My mother is right: I’m the bad parent who screwed up my daughter.

  This is all my fault. All of it. From the moment she was born she rejected me. I should’ve walked away then and done everyone a favour, but my hubris told me I could become someone else – a loving mother, a good wife, a good friend. Who was I trying to kid? While it pains me to think about Grace taking her own life – and I keep fighting the possibility that she did commit suicide – I can’t help but consider that it was my illness that caused it all. If I had a deeper capacity for love, would she have gone down those dark routes?

  Charles is still at home, having taken some time off from work. When I enter the house, I find him on the sofa with the dogs all over him, his wrinkles and greys more prominent than ever.

  ‘How was therapy?’ he asks.

  ‘I feel worse.’

  ‘Ah, that’s exactly the reason why I don’t go.’ He pats the sofa next to him and I sit down, allowing Porgie to collapse on my lap. ‘I’m watching a TV show about people who find antiques in their attic and sell them. Imagine what’s in this old house.’

  ‘You can start with that portrait of Emily if you want,’ I say.

  Charles takes this as a joke and laughs heartily. As I watch him, I can’t decide if I did mean it as a joke or whether it was spite. My motivations aren’t clear to me anymore and I’m exhausted from trying to figure everything out.

  The programme waffles on, I’m absent-mindedly stroking Porgie behind the ears, then my phone beeps. Another text message from another anonymous number.

  You’re right. She is a liar. If I was her mother, I’d be angry with her too. How dare she pretend to be someone she isn’t? Then again, you know all about that, don’t you, Katie?

  I read the message twice in order to allow my brain to process what it says. This person listened to my voicemail to Grace. This person has Grace’s phone. I sit up straight, causing Porgie to almost fall off my knee.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Charles asks.

  ‘Yeah, fine. Just had a bit of cramp.’

  ‘Do you want me to move?’

  I shake my head, and glance back at my phone. They called me Katie again. I’d thought that was a tactic to
throw me off, but what if this is someone from my past after all?

  You have my daughter’s phone? I text back.

  I’ve very much enjoyed listening to your messages.

  There’s a pause, but three dots on the screen tell me this person is typing another message.

  You loved her, didn’t you?

  Who is this? I text. Watching the messages come through has my heart pounding so hard that I’m afraid it might burst. The dots appear again, wiggling up and down like a Mexican wave. Then they stop, and my pounding pulse stops with it. A moment later, they start up again and my body grows hot all over. I’m surprised Charles hasn’t noticed me breathing faster, but he’s absorbed in the show, oblivious to everything else.

  The message finally comes through: Want to meet?

  I text back: Where?

  Stonecliffe Quarry. The Suicide Spot.

  When?

  Tonight.

  Thirty-Five

  The anonymous texter suggests a time to meet at the quarry and I agree. They want to wait until after dark. Midnight. This person has Grace’s phone. If they have her phone, they must be her killer. And now I believe they want to kill me. They tell me to come alone. They’ll be watching to make sure I am alone. If they see the police, they’ll leave, and they assure me that the police will not find them.

  None of that matters to me. I don’t want to involve the police, because I have no interest in the way the police deliver justice. I have no interest in watching this person go to prison for a few years. That isn’t going to happen to the person who killed my daughter.

  I’m still on the sofa, my body hot all over, nerves on edge. Porgie is whimpering. Perhaps he smells the adrenaline pumping through my veins. Maybe, like Jenny said, he knows that I’m agitated. I pat his head and then slip the phone back into the pocket of my jeans.

  ‘I may have to go out later,’ I say to Charles, still patting Porgie. ‘And I’ll probably be home late.’