‘One day, Daniel asked me to stay behind after orchestra practice to work on a tricky piece. Nothing happened that day, but I still remember the way he made me, Grace, the girl who can’t stop lying, the person no one notices unless I make them – feel like I mattered. He saw me. He told me that I was a “bright spark”. He made me feel like I was a firework, pretty and colourful, not just a spoilt rich girl with no personality of her own. He decided that I needed a solo piece, and we worked on it alone, in the music room. His hand on mine as I played the notes. Moving the bow together. I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘Keep going,’ Lily says.
My bottom lip trembles as I try to continue. It isn’t my cut that prevents me from speaking; it’s the all-encompassing sadness that has wrapped around my body, squeezing tight.
Finally, my voice comes back. ‘Everyone at school is pretty and I don’t think that I am. At least I didn’t until Daniel started to make me feel that way. Then that all went wrong and now I feel like pond scum.
‘Then Lily came up to me one day and told me that she forgave me for the bullying. Can you imagine that? She forgave me, like it was nothing. Like I hadn’t humiliated her in front of everyone at school. No one liked Lily. She was this weird freak girl who dyed her hair black and came to school wearing dark eyeliner, never speaking to anyone, always with headphones in, listening to loud music. We were nasty to her because we were ignorant. Once I got to know Lily, she made me understand that Alicia and her gang are nothing but entitled little rich girls who tear each other down instead of building each other up. They’re the worst kind of girls. They fight and spread insecurity, splitting us down the middle with their nastiness. I grew to hate it all, and as I began to hate them, I realised that I hate myself, too.
‘Lily had to fight against the things that happened to her as a child. I saw the scars on her arms and she told me about how she does it to make the pain stop. I’m full of pain, too. I’m drowning in it and I can’t figure out how to float back up to the surface. She told me all about her adopted mum’s alcoholism and I felt horrible because I have you guys and you’re nothing like her mum. I should be grateful for everything I have, but I’m not. I’m suffocating inside, like my lungs are full of water.
‘Lily reminds me of you, Mum. We all know how horrible Grandma is, though we don’t talk about it. And you grew up to be a good person, like Lily. I’m sorry you two didn’t get to meet.’
‘But we did get to meet,’ Lily says brightly. ‘And look how close we’ve become. You’re my hero, Katie. My mother figure in shining armour. You dropped everything when I sent you that email and you came to meet me, to offer me a shoulder to cry on.’ She places a hand on my knee. ‘Do you think we’re alike? Do you think Grace is right?’
‘I don’t know,’ I mumble. ‘I don’t know you.’
She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘Keep reading.’
‘After making friends with Lily, I began to believe that things could get better for me. I had Daniel and I had Lily – two real relationships for me to cling onto, not frenemies like Alicia. And then I found out I was pregnant, and everything changed.
‘I still love him. You can’t blame Daniel for what happened because it’s all my fault. I should’ve gone on the pill like he told me to, but I was too scared to go to the doctor’s alone, so I lied to Daniel, thinking that everything would work out ok. It didn’t.
‘Lily helped me through it all. She hugged me when I cried, she gave me advice when I needed it. But there is a person growing inside me and I can’t nurture him or her. I can’t give this baby anything, because I’m empty inside. I’m lost. What can I do when I’m sinking to the bottom of the ocean? Babies deserve love and I have none to give. I could force myself to carry on, to give away this child to someone else, but sometimes I think it’s the baby pulling me down. I can’t tell if I’m being pushed or pulled, and I can’t tell who is doing the pushing and who is pulling me. Everyone and no one, I think.
‘When I first found out, I thought Daniel would leave his wife and we could be together. I figured that at least if he was by my side, the little one would have love from him, and then he or she could have a happy life. Mum, I’m not right. I lie to people and I bully people. I’m not a good person and I have to accept that. I’m sorry. I need to make it all stop once and for all, because I can’t do this anymore.
‘If I come to you, I have to own up to all the things I’ve done, and I can’t do that. Lily’s right – death is the way out. If I die, then all of this ends.’
I pause, clear my throat, try to compose myself. I’m not sure I can keep going, but I force myself to. ‘Lily can’t see any other way out either and we know that we’re stronger together. After I’ve finished writing this, we’re going to go to the quarry together, and we’re going to hold hands and jump.
‘Please don’t be angry or upset. With me gone, you can carry on without me as a burden, without me and my failures dragging you into the water with me. But most of all, I’ll never let you down again. I love you both, I truly do. You’re everything to me. I’m sorry. Grace.’
As I close the notebook, invisible fingers work their way between my ribs, tugging my heart down to my abdomen, down to my hips. Down. Down. Every part of my body is a lead weight and I can barely breathe. Pain dripped from her every word. Loneliness came through every line. I can’t stand the thought of her suffering. I close my eyes and picture her smile. She kept up that smile throughout the worst of her anguish, hiding her true feelings from us. How can I ever accept this?
More than anything, I’m surprised and saddened to see that Grace thought I was such a moral person, that I’d hold her to a higher standard. Grace, how could you get everything twisted up like that? It was you who made me hold myself to a higher standard. It was you who made me want to be better, to fight against the person I was born to be. It was all for you, but it led to you doubting yourself.
I wish I could hold her and tell her that none of the things she talked about made her horrible or terrible or bad. No one is complete at seventeen. You lied – so what? Work on yourself and learn not to lie. You fell pregnant – so what? It’s an accident, and humans resolve accidents every day of the week.
Grace, I did a terrible thing when I was a teenager, and I carried on. I kept on living.
‘What about the suicide note found by the police?’ I ask, pulling myself back to Lily and her watchful eyes.
‘That was Grace’s first draft,’ Lily says. ‘It took a bit of warming up to get her feelings out. But I didn’t want you to find everything out right away, so I slipped her first draft into her pocket on the night. Of course, I had to scribble out the part about me in it.’
‘You’re obviously here,’ I say. ‘Did you ever plan to kill yourself? Or was it all some sick game to enable you to commit murder?’
‘I keep telling you – I didn’t murder anyone.’
‘Did you make friends with her to get revenge? I don’t understand why you did any of this.’
Lily smiles, like she possesses a secret I want to know.
‘Tell me, or I’ll rip you limb from limb.’
‘You’re all bark, Katie,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell you what we arranged. Grace came to my house after school and we had some dinner while my mum was out. No one saw us, because no one ever sees me. No one cares about me and no one cares who I’m with. Then we went upstairs to my bedroom and we wrote our suicide notes. We waited until dark, then I drove us here to the quarry. It was agreed that I’d leave our things on the cliff for the police to find.’ She pats the ground to indicate where that was. ‘We were going to jump together at the Suicide Spot.’ She points to the area in front of us, where the police tape flaps in the wind.
‘But you didn’t jump?’
‘No,’ she says slowly. ‘I didn’t jump.’
Lily is choosing her words carefully, avoiding important details. Since reading Grace’s suicide note, a lot of the fight has seeped from me, like I’m
a balloon pricked by a needle, but I still want answers.
‘Did Grace jump?’
A smile. No answer.
‘Fine. Then tell me why you did this. Tell me what all of this was for.’
‘It’s all been about you, Katie. I’m surprised you didn’t guess. There were plenty of clues in the messages. We used your real name so many times.’
‘I’ve never hidden who I am. Plenty of people know that I used the name Katie before. I thought it was a taunt.’ As I’m speaking, the blood drains from my face. I finally focus on the one important word from her statement: we.
‘Katie, I need to tell you something,’ Lily says. ‘You’re a bit of an inspiration to me. You were the original bad girl at school, weren’t you? I mean, there’s one killer here and it isn’t me, is it? You’re the one who bashed in a skull. What was it like to see the life leave someone’s eyes? Did it make you feel powerful?’
‘Someone put you up to this.’ The headlights of the car only highlight a small portion of the quarry. There are plenty of other places for someone to hide in the shadows. Is this why Lily wanted to meet at night? A dark place where she could hide her accomplice? Who is out there, concealed in the shadows? Who would want to hurt me like this?
And then I know. Of course I know. Why didn’t I see it sooner?
She is the one person I hurt more than anyone else in this world. She witnessed my worst act, was the victim of my most heinous crime. It’s her. It must be her.
‘I guess it’s time you met my mum,’ Lily says. She places her fingers between her lips and whistles. The high-pitched sound echoes around the quarry.
My skin prickles with anticipation, as though the thin twigs of a tree are scraping up and down my arms and legs. The breeze seems to still and the world goes deathly quiet, until I hear footsteps coming towards us. There is a shadow in the distance. All I can see is her frame, wider than the average person, perhaps slightly shorter than other women. She walks agonisingly slowly, dragging out the reveal. I climb to my feet, not wanting to meet her while on the ground, and Lily stands with me.
All the time I’m thinking that Grace died because of what I did when I was a teenager. Her suicide note is full of remorse for her own behaviour as a young person, but it’s me, my consequence, my burden to carry. I’m the one to blame, not her.
The woman finally moves close enough for the light of my car headlights to brush her light brown hair, and I hold my breath.
‘Hi, Katie.’
That voice. I recognise that voice.
She walks a few more steps, standing at the edge of the light, her hair frizzy and wild. But this isn’t Annie Robertson – not as I remember her.
When we were thirteen years old, she always wore her hair in a bun tied with a purple scrunchy. But now that I concentrate hard, I remember that her hair came loose that day, and it was curly and wild.
‘Let me see you.’ My voice is low. My fingertips tingle. I can’t pinpoint the emotions building up inside me. Anger. Regret. Fear. ‘I want to see your face.’
‘You already know my face,’ she replies.
And then she steps into the light and I nod my head. There is the doughy face with the bad nose job that I remember. I recognised her voice because I hear it every single week. She’s the person who tells me what I should be thinking, who helps me be a better person. She’s the person I have trusted with my most private thoughts. She’s the person who confirmed my diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, and she is the person who has told me, week after week, that I’m a sociopath. She has been my therapist for twelve years. But only now do I realise Angela is also the girl from my past.
‘How are you today, Kat?’ Angela says, without a trace of a smile on her lips. ‘How does that make you feel?’
‘How could it possibly be you? I’ve known you for years… I don’t understand. What happened to you after… after school?’
‘God,’ she says, venom in her voice. ‘You can’t even say it, can you? You can’t admit that it happened.’ Angela glares down at the ground and back up, as though trying to reel in her temper. ‘I moved away with my parents after leaving the hospital. At that point, my face was wrecked. I looked like a bag of oranges. After two years of reconstructive surgery, I started to resemble a human being again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I reply. ‘I wanted to talk to you – after – but you left.’
Angela laughs. ‘Look at you and your guilt. Anyone would doubt that you’re a sociopath at all.’
The words, so casually thrown at me, hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water. I stand there staring at her in complete and utter disbelief.
‘Are you even a therapist? How did you end up as my therapist? Twelve years, Angela. Why?’ The questions tumble from my lips.
‘Some luck here and there,’ she answers, ‘along with plenty of hard work. Yes, I am a therapist, trained and qualified. When I read about your marriage to Charles Cavanaugh, I happened to move closer to you. At that point, I was curious to see if what happened to us had affected you too. You see, I desperately wanted you to be suffering, but you were thriving. So I joined the same gym as some of your friends and started talking to them. Eventually, one of them mentioned that her friend Kat Cavanaugh had asked her for a recommendation for a good therapist. It was too good an opportunity to miss. I told her that I’m a therapist and asked her to recommend me to you. The rest you know.’
When the realisation hits that this woman has been after me my entire life, hot rage comes flooding in to heat the icy shock of her revelation. ‘So you stalked me and ruined my life? Then you went after my kid. You used your own daughter to kill my child? You’re a fucking psychopath, and you made me believe that I’m the sociopath?’
Annie or Angela, or whoever she is, lifts one finger. ‘Are you completely sure that you aren’t a sociopath, Kat? I gave you my professional opinion over and over again.’
‘Liar.’
She shrugs.
‘And what about Lily? You’ve not only destroyed my life and my husband’s, my daughter’s and my potential grandchild’s lives, you’ve tormented your own child.’
‘Oh, Lily isn’t my daughter. I can’t have children of my own. Lily is adopted.’
I glance across at Lily, who isn’t smiling anymore. Her expression seems hurt, as though she was hoping that Angela loved her deep down.
‘And to answer your previous question, I went after your kid because she deserved it. Did you see what she did to Lily? All these years later and you raised a spoilt brat who bullied other kids. A clone of yourself. Don’t you remember how you bullied everyone at school?’
‘You sent me the messages,’ I say. Then, to Lily, ‘You worked with her. You’re both murderers. You took advantage of my vulnerable child and encouraged her to take her own life.’
‘Maybe,’ Angela says. ‘But we weren’t the only ones to fail her. You didn’t see that she was hurting. Your husband failed to tell you she was in therapy. And pretty much all of her friends made her feel like total shit. Both the guys she was in relationships with abandoned her. And do you know why?’
I don’t give her the satisfaction of asking.
‘Because everyone knew she wasn’t worth it.’
There’s a snapping sound in my head. I heard it once before, a long time ago, when I saw a cavernous mouth and heard a scream so loud it imprinted on my mind forever. In that moment I lunge for Angela, almost taking her by surprise, but not quite. As she steps to the left, another set of hands shove me forwards. With my body tilted over at the waist and my weight completely unbalanced, it takes one more push from whoever is behind me to ensure that I tip over the edge of the quarry and plunge down into the depths below.
Thirty-Eight
Chesterfield, 1993
It’s not easy to step quietly through my place. I need to make sure I don’t trip over the pile of magazines or stumble face first into the glass cabinet, full of half-empty bottles of booze. I definitely need t
o not upend the stack of boot-sale trinkets still piled up on the living room carpet. Miniature porcelain clown faces watch me from below.
I’m pretty sure I’m a master at finding my way through this obstacle course. Blindfold me, let me loose – I could do it all without waking up the booze-soaked monster unconscious on the sofa. Because tiptoeing through the mess is far easier than waking her up. She’ll be angry and mean, honing in on whatever I’ve done wrong this week. She’ll wind me up and make me so full of fury that I’ll end up smacking someone again. There are days when some other kid will look at me funny and I can’t stop myself. I don’t like them staring at me like that, because that’s when they see who I am, and I can’t stand it. Then I have to hit them, to stop them seeing the real me, but afterwards it’s worse.
Here comes Katie Flack, deliverer of pain, the girl with bruises on her knuckles because she can’t stop pounding you in the face. The teachers say that one day someone will teach me a real lesson and then I’ll stop being such a little shit. They keep suspending me, but they don’t expel me. I think that’s because they’re scared of Mum.
After sneaking through the mess, thankfully without waking the monster, I can’t resist slamming the front door and legging it down the alley behind our house. I’ll be halfway to school before those glued-shut eyelids begin to flutter open. And it’ll serve her right if she has ‘one of her headaches’ for the rest of the day.
Some of the kids at school call me and Mum dole scroungers. Not that they’re any better. Fuck you, Stacey, your mum works at Wynsors World of Shoes. Get lost, Heather, your dad drinks away his wages in the Nag’s Head. They all think they’re better than me, but they’re not. I hate all of them. Well, except for Annie. She’s all right. We’re hanging out after school today.
By the time I’m down the street, I have a sweat on and I’m running late for registration. Still, what does it matter? The teachers think I’m scum anyway. I slow to a saunter and allow the morning breeze to cool me down. All the other kids are at school by now, leaving the streets nice and quiet.
Only Daughter: An gripping and emotional psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist Page 24