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

by Sarah A. Denzil

  I roll over and vomit, which hurts my aching back. After I’m done, I gasp in pain, trying desperately to stand. My eyes slowly adjust to the dark, allowing me to see that I’m on a ridge, low down in the quarry. I didn’t fall all the way to the bottom. Not like Grace.

  That day in Littlemoor with Annie, I’d limped to the road and flagged down a car. Together, the driver and I had gone back to the shelter, picked up her crumpled body and taken her to the hospital. It was the early nineties, so no one had a mobile phone, and we decided it was quicker to drive rather than find a payphone and wait for an ambulance. All that time I was thinking about my lost underwear. There was vomit on my school shirt, too. I had buttons missing and I couldn’t cover my training bra.

  Later, after the police interrogation and my recounting of the moment where Jamie’s skull smashed under the weight of the rock, I found myself relieved that Annie was visibly hurt. The monster in me was glad that Jamie had smashed Annie’s face, because then the police were forced to believe us. Otherwise how would it look? We’d been drinking. We went voluntarily with the boys. Without the violence towards Annie, they might not have believed that it was self-defence.

  But my mother had no such illusions.

  ‘You were asking for it, Katie. And you dragged that girl into it. You’re disgusting. You’re a murderer.’

  A murderer.

  A killer.

  I saw a psychologist and they took into account all of my past violence as well as the self-defence killing, and they suggested to my mum that I might have a disorder. She could have antisocial personality disorder. It’s difficult to diagnose… And that was it. I’ve been a sociopath my entire life. I am. That’s who I am. Isn’t it?

  Angela, Annie, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, told me that sociopaths can’t love. Have her words denied me love all this time?

  It’s easier to accept a label, to have a term slapped onto your skin to explain all the strange thoughts and behaviours that crop up over a lifetime. You’re a sociopath, that’s why you took a life. That’s why you fell pregnant on purpose. That’s why you stole that parking spot from the nice lady. That’s why you’re different to everyone else.

  The quarry is a silent, black hole, and I’m in the centre. Pushing my body against the stony wall, I gaze up the cliff, trying to find the spot where I was pushed. Are they still there? The place is silent.

  This is where Grace lost her fingernail, where she bled to death as she tried to pull herself out of the quarry depths. She should’ve been the one to land luckily, to have a chance, but instead it’s me.

  I grope for my phone, but it’s gone. That’s right, Lily took it. At this moment, I’d call Grace rather than an ambulance, desperate to hear her voice one last time.

  Hey, this is Grace. Leave a message!

  There, I don’t need the phone. It’s in my head.

  ‘Grace. I thought I wanted to die, but I don’t. I read your real suicide note today, and I’m sorry. I missed everything, didn’t I? Another parent failing their kid. I always said I wouldn’t.’ I manoeuvre myself onto my hands and knees and slowly, very slowly, begin to crawl.

  ‘Remember when I had to pick you up early from that birthday party? It was rock climbing. You hated the heights and kept crying. The supervisor had to help you down because you froze up near the top of the wall. Well, you were brave when you fell down here. You tried to pull yourself back up. If you hadn’t been so hurt, I know you would have made it to the top.’

  I’m inching forwards, with my hands groping for every ridge. The steps were built in 1982. The council were going to transform the place into a park with a trail leading to the bottom. There was going to be a pond and all kinds of flowers. Then they lost funding and gave up.

  ‘You were searching for the steps when you were down here, weren’t you? That means you changed your mind. I don’t care if you jumped, fell or were pushed. You didn’t want to die. You changed your mind and you wanted to live. You fought to live.’ My palm reaches a flat surface of stone perpendicular to another flat surface. I let out a laugh that echoes around the quarry. ‘I think I found them. Grace, I found the steps.’

  When I attempt to stand, my ankle buckles beneath me and I fall back down. It’s too risky to try and climb the steps with a twisted ankle. I can’t risk toppling all the way to the bottom. But I can crawl by propping myself up on my elbows and taking my weight with my arms. Every tiny movement is an effort and every part of my body aches. I don’t want to think about the damage. There must be bruises all over me. My head is throbbing. My ribs are sore. Pain radiates up and down my spine. Sweating profusely, I somehow manage to pull myself up one step. And now I need to move on to the next.

  The steps plunge me into a shadowed part of the quarry with no light to guide my way. I find no comfort in keeping my eyes open. Instead I close them, like I did that day with Annie. But this time I think about Grace stuck down here with her broken leg and her torn fingernails. My elbow scrapes over the sharp edge of stone and some of my skin rubs away. It doesn’t matter; all that matters is that I keep going. The muscles in my forearms burn with the effort of heaving the weight of my body and my knees press painfully against rough stone, propping up the weight of my legs.

  On the third step, the pain in my ribs intensifies and a wave of dizziness almost knocks me out. That would be it for me. If I fell from this ledge, I doubt I’d make it back up. The thought of shivering down there in the darkness with my hurt ankle and bloody head injury spurs me to get over the third step and onto the fourth. But then I take a break, and I place my cheek on the stone, trying to find a rhythmic breath. I’m exhausted.

  When my consciousness starts drifting away, I force my eyes open again. I could have concussion. I can’t trust my body right now, not with a head injury. Keep going.

  Up the fifth step, with sweat running down my back. My jeans are wet around the knees and my top is ripped. I can’t tell if my hands are wet from the damp ground or whether it’s my own blood. All I know is that I need to concentrate, and I need to hold on to this stone. Any slip or trip or mistimed effort could see me plunging back down to the ground below. How close am I to the top? I don’t know. The headlights from my car are too high up to highlight what’s down here with me, but I can see a hint of them now, which means that my car is still there. I won’t be able to drive it with this ankle, though.

  After a few more steps, my hands start to numb. I take a break and slap some life into them. Pins and needles spread up and down my legs. Is it from the injury? Or is it because they’re at a strange angle? I’m not sure, but it’s not a good sign. Every now and then my vision becomes blurry and I have to take a moment to recover. The problem is, when I stop, I want to sleep.

  Up above, I notice that the glow from the headlights is brighter than before. But on the tenth – or maybe twelfth – step, I slip and fall backwards. The jolt to my ankle makes me scream in pain. Then nausea rises, and I’m forced to use my own willpower to stop myself from throwing up. That would be wasted energy. Keep going. These steps won’t beat me. Fuck therapy, and labels, and bad psychology. I’m Kat Cavanaugh. I’m relentless, ruthless, robust. A steel plate around my heart. Conscience starved in a cage. A knock to the head and a few broken ribs aren’t going to kill me.

  I’m sorry, Annie Robertson, that you’ve continued to feed your hatred through all these years. There was no thank you after I killed your rapist, was there? You blamed me because it was easier. You made the choice to come, but it was my idea, so it was all my fault. Wasn’t it? I was forcibly held back, and I couldn’t help you, but I wouldn’t help you, would I? Gav, Steve and Mark all went to prison because I testified for you, but it was all my fault in the first place. I’m the guilty one.

  You stalked me, got in my head, made me think I was someone else. You found an acolyte for your cause and trained her to hate me and to hate my daughter.

  You made Grace think she wanted to die. You isolated her from me. You stopped me from
helping my own daughter.

  You broke me down into pieces, tortured my mind and killed the one person I loved, and then you threw me down a quarry. But I got up, and I always will get up.

  Here I am, at the point where the headlights are touching the cliff edge.

  Annie, if you think you can hurt my child and not suffer the consequences, you messed with the wrong mother.

  I drag myself out of the quarry, sweat running into my eyes, the taste of dirt in my mouth. Relief floods over me as I turn onto my back and pant, allowing myself to slowly recover. The exhaustion descends like a dark cloud, flattening all my adrenaline, but I refuse to allow myself to sleep. I need to get out of here, in case Angela and Lily come back to finish me off. Surely they must think I’m dead, but I can’t risk it.

  Using the light from my car, I search the area for my phone, but of course they’ve taken it with them. There’s nothing to indicate they were ever here, except perhaps for the knife at the bottom of the quarry. My ribs and ankle ache, but I begin the slow task of pulling my woozy, damaged body towards the Land Rover. It’s tough going. There’s no strength left in my arms or legs and all I want to do is sleep.

  Halfway between the quarry and the car, I scream in frustration and anger, about ready to give up, when I hear the sound of tyres on the gravel road. Matthew’s truck pulls up next to mine and he hurries out, sprinting over to me.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what happened?’

  I could almost laugh, but I don’t. ‘I pulled myself out of the quarry. Can you take me to a hospital, please?’

  ‘I’m not sure I should move you, Kat. Let me phone for an ambulance.’ He bends down to wrap his leather jacket around my cold shoulders.

  ‘You can’t be here when the ambulance gets here,’ I say.

  Finally, I rest back on the cold ground, and find myself drifting into sleep. Before I lose consciousness completely, Angela’s twisted expression forces itself into my mind. Then, in a heartbeat, it’s replaced by Grace. I know what I need to do.

  Forty

  My body feels pleasantly numb, and I could swear that I’m floating. But when I touch starched sheets with my fingertips, I know that I’m not floating at all. I’m in a hospital bed.

  The colour blue pops into my mind, but I swiftly force it away.

  There’s a dry, rasping feeling at the back of my throat, and I long for a glass of water. Maybe if I press one of these buttons, someone will come along.

  But then the door opens and Charles walks through. ‘Kat.’ He smiles, hurries towards me and takes my hand. ‘You’re awake.’

  ‘I don’t remember sleeping,’ I admit.

  ‘You’ve been asleep for almost a day.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘That’s right. I should go and get a doctor. You wait here for a minute.’ He places a takeaway cup of coffee and a Snickers on the table next to my bed and leaves the room.

  His absence gives me a moment to assess where I am and what’s going on. There are other people in this room, which means I’m in a bay on a hospital ward. The curtain that extends around my bed isn’t closed. I’m on view. The old lady on the opposite side snores softly and her left foot twitches.

  The door opens again and Charles strides in with a short doctor behind him. And behind the doctor I recognise the faces of DS Slater and PC Mullen. It hits me all over again that Grace is dead; I’d forgotten for those few seconds.

  I’d forgotten.

  Now I look at DS Slater’s sharp chin and remember the chipped blue nail polish, the colour of her lips, the stillness in the room as we identified her body. I remember DS Slater talking to us, telling us that Grace had committed suicide, showing us her suicide note. I remember the pain and the disbelief. The anger. The injustice of it all.

  ‘Why are the police here?’ I ask Charles.

  It’s DS Slater who answers. ‘We just want to ask you a few questions, if you think you’re up to it, Mrs Cavanaugh?’

  ‘I’m not up to it,’ I snap.

  ‘Perhaps we should let the doctor be the judge,’ he replies.

  ‘Yes, I’ll give my opinion after spending a bit of time with Mrs Cavanaugh.’ He offers the police a thin smile.

  ‘Of course,’ DS Slater says. ‘We’ll be right outside.’

  I roll my eyes after they’re gone. ‘Do I have to speak to them? I can’t stand that detective.’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Charles replies. ‘Kat, what were you doing at that quarry?’

  ‘It’s… complicated.’

  The doctor shines lights in my eyes, asks questions, checks vitals and pokes and prods me for a few minutes. He explains that I have a badly sprained ankle, a bad knock on the head with some concussion, a bruised, but thankfully not broken, spine and a couple of broken ribs.

  ‘You were lucky,’ he says, and I get the impression he’s trying very hard not to judge me.

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  ‘What happened, Kat?’ Charles takes one of my hands in both of his and draws it close to his face. There are new lines around his eyes. His own personal stressors are weighing him down, and pulling his skin with them. Cancer, grief, fear.

  ‘I…’ I sigh. ‘You should bring the detective and his sidekick back in. I suppose I need to give them a statement too.’

  Charles nods towards the doctor, who opens the door to allow the police back in and then disappears from the ward. DS Slater offers me an impassive stare before pulling the curtain around the bed.

  ‘Thought you might prefer some privacy, Mrs Cavanaugh,’ he says by way of explanation. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m fine. Let’s get this done so I can carry on with getting better.’

  ‘That sounds excellent.’ He pulls his notebook out of his coat pocket and skips through a few pages. ‘Can you tell me what happened, Mrs Cavanaugh? And please, take your time.’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t remember much. I went to the quarry because that was where my daughter died. And then…’ Every part of me wants to stop talking, to be silent. Every part of me wants to be alone, or at least away from these police officers. But I can’t. I have to tell them.

  ‘Please continue when you’re ready.’ DS Slater uses his gentle, understanding voice.

  I bite my lip and regard my husband. ‘I think I was there to kill myself. I’d been feeling low and stressed, and everything got on top of me. I’m sorry, darling.’

  He squeezes my hand but stares at a spot above my head rather than meet my eyes.

  ‘I woke up on a ridge after falling some way. I knew my ankle was badly hurt and that I’d hit my head. From my position on the cliff, I managed to pull myself up the steps to climb out.’

  ‘I’m surprised you were physically able to do that, given your injuries,’ DS Slater says.

  ‘That’s how much I wanted to survive,’ I reply. ‘I knew I’d made a mistake.’

  ‘Was anyone else there that night?’ he asks.

  I shake my head. ‘As far as I remember, I was alone.’

  ‘What about the person who made the call to the emergency services? Why did they leave before the ambulance arrived?’

  ‘I don’t know, you’d have to ask them,’ I say.

  ‘Why wouldn’t they leave a name?’ he prods.

  ‘I don’t even know who they are, so how would I know?’

  He moves on. ‘You didn’t leave a suicide note.’

  ‘Is that a question?’

  DS Slater’s lip twitches. ‘More of an observation.’

  ‘I’m feeling quite tired,’ I say. ‘And I need to talk everything through with my husband.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then.’ He backs away from the bed. ‘You should speak to someone about this, though. Your doctor will be able to recommend someone.’

  ‘I have a therapist. But thank you.’

  * * *

  There is much discussion about my care following the suicide attempt. Should I spend time on a psychiatric ward? I obviously refuse this. Charles offer
s to care for me at home, as though I’m a kid with the flu. But with his failing health, the doctors are reluctant. In the end, they decide to keep me under observation for a few days. During that time, I talk to various professionals and take a few questionnaires. Eventually I’m able to leave, after three days, limping around the car park on my bandaged ankle.

  ‘How are the dogs?’ I ask as I climb into the car, trying not to put weight on the bad foot or twinge my ribs.

  ‘Porgie has a dicky tummy.’ He jams the car into reverse, shoulders set tightly. ‘All these changes have stressed him out. You know, I think they can smell the cancer on me.’

  ‘Charles, you’re reversing out of this space rather quickly. Charles!’

  He slams on the brakes as a Mazda swings past us.

  ‘Arsehole! He wasn’t looking where he was going.’

  ‘Charles.’ I place a gentle hand on his arm. The motion gives me a sense of déjà vu. When I withdraw it, I see us very clearly in the hospital, Grace’s body cold and lifeless on the gurney.

  He pulls the car back into the bay and switches off the ignition. ‘I’m dying, Kat—’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ I interrupt. ‘We get the biopsy results in the next few days and then we can discuss treatment…’

  He holds up a hand. ‘I’m dying, and I don’t care what the doctors will say when the results come back. I can feel it. Maybe not this week or month or even year, but sooner than I ever planned, I’m dying.’

  I shut my mouth and nod, allowing him to speak.

  ‘Grace’s death has left a bigger hole in my life than I ever thought possible, and yet I still want to live.’

  ‘I know,’ I say softly.

  ‘You chose…’ He leans his forehead against the steering wheel and I place a palm on his back.