Where the Memories Lie (27 page)

‘Um . . . yes. Um, that was a shock.’

‘That’s what I said. They asked Chris to do a DNA test. And

they’re testing one from Tom, too.’

‘Chris? He can’t have kids.’

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‘I already told them that.’

‘It could be Jack’s baby, I suppose, if something was going on.’

‘The police think she would’ve terminated it if it was Jack’s, and

I think they’re right. But, anyway, I agree with you about Rose. She can be pretty volatile, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned up here drunk and upset. Maybe we should go round to see her and

apologise.’

‘We don’t even know that Dad did anything yet so how can we

apologise?’

‘Even if he didn’t actually . . .’ I lowered my voice again so Anna wouldn’t hear me from downstairs, ‘. . .
kill
her, then he still knew something and covered it up, so, yes, I think we should go and

apologise.’

‘I don’t know . . . What if she gets violent? Look, talk to Ethan

about it.’ There was some rustling on the other end.

‘Who will get violent?’ Ethan asked.

‘I’ll explain when I come over. I’m going to bring Anna. I think

it would be best if we all tell the girls together. And it would probably be better for Anna if we didn’t tell her here.’

‘Tell them what?’ I heard the weariness in his voice. ‘What else

has happened?’

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes, OK?’

Nadia and Lucas liked everything minimalist. They’d hired Ethan

to design their house on a plot of land on the other side of the

village. Some of the locals had protested at the planning meeting,

saying it was too modern and not in keeping with the traditional

stone cottages that made up a lot of the area. This house was more a cube, made of lots of glass and white concrete. It wasn’t my thing − I always thought it felt too sterile, like a show house − but they loved 202

Where the Memories Lie

it. And on the upside, at least there was lots of light. There were no photos on shelves. Actually, there weren’t any shelves anywhere, just display cabinets with closed glass doors and downlighters. Maybe

they had a point about the minimalist thing. No shelves equalled

no dusting, which would save time. I made a note to myself to

remember that. There were photos on the walls, though, instead of

paintings. In the kitchen was a black and white one of Nadia and

Lucas taken years ago by Chris, probably about the time Katie went

missing. Chris always preferred to be behind the camera rather than in front of it. And he took very good pictures. In this one, they were mucking around in the garden of Lucas’s parents’ house, pretending to tango, and Chris had caught them as Lucas dipped Nadia

backwards, her long hair swishing to the floor, one leg bent in a sexy pose. Lucas’s arm supported her around her waist, and they were

both staring into each other’s eyes with a look of pure adoration

and happiness.

Anna disappeared up to Charlotte’s room to play on some

new computer game. Charlotte had been bugging Nadia about it

for months, and Nadia had promised her if she worked hard for

her GCSEs, she could have it, along with one hundred pounds

for every A-star she got, eighty pounds for every A, sixty pounds for a B, etc. Modern parenting meant bribing your kids to do well at

school.

I heard Anna’s laugh filter downstairs and felt a pang of guilt

twist inside. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh since Tom had died and now we were going to give her a reason to silence it again.

I told them everything that happened with DI Spencer and DS

Khan earlier.

Ethan sat on the sofa in the lounge and looked out of the

window, which backed on to a view of a field full of black and white cows. He looked like he’d aged about ten years since this all began.

‘I can’t believe she was pregnant.’

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‘It’s awful.’ Nadia’s face had turned a deathly pale shade. ‘Not

just for Katie, but the baby, too. But I don’t believe it’s Dad’s. It can’t be.’

‘Neither do I,’ Ethan said.

‘It can’t have been an immaculate conception,’ I said.

‘Could Chris really be the father?’ Ethan looked at Nadia,

ignoring my comment.

I sank back into the sofa, kicked off my flip-flops and curled

up my legs to the side. ‘I don’t know. Like DI Spencer said, just

because he has a low sperm count now doesn’t mean it wasn’t

perfectly OK when he was eighteen. Obviously Tom knew some-

thing about Katie’s death, and we don’t know what yet, but if he

knew where her body was, then there are only three reasons why.’

I ticked them off on my fingers. ‘One, he killed her and buried the body. Two, he killed her with someone else and buried the body. Or

three, he knew who killed her, buried her body himself and hid the

secret to protect someone.’ And that’s when Tom’s words echoed in

my head again.

I was just protecting my family. I was just doing what a parent
should.

But what exactly was he protecting the family from, though?

What kind of threat had Katie been?

‘No. Chris did not get her pregnant and kill her, either.’ Ethan

scrubbed a hand over the stubble on his cheeks. His voice had

lost some of the volatile anger of the previous few days and now just sounded exhausted. ‘It’s as ridiculous as Dad doing it.’

‘Well, someone did,’ I said. ‘And Tom obviously knew about it.’

‘We need to wait for the DNA test before we do any more

speculating,’ Nadia said. ‘In the meantime, what are we going to tell Charlotte and Anna? The police are asking questions. I heard from

the office today that they’d been looking through the records to do with the barn conversion, trying to find out who was employed

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Where the Memories Lie

on site at the time. No doubt they’ve been in the village asking

questions, too. And now Katie’s been officially identified, Rose will know, and I’m worried how she’s going to react.’

‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘That’s why I think we should go and apologise

to her. Give our condolences.’

‘That’s not a good idea,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s just asking for trouble with her.’

‘Well, I don’t agree. How would you feel if Jack had confessed

to killing Anna?’

‘I’d want to kill him.’

‘Exactly, Liv.’ Nadia bit her lip. ‘She’ll be really upset and angry with us. I think we should just leave it.’

‘I can’t just leave it,’ I said.

‘You’re asking for trouble. But then you always do exactly what

you want, don’t you?’ Ethan snapped.

‘Hey, that’s not fair! What are you talking about?’ I searched

his face

‘This is all your doing,’ he burst out.

‘What?’ My lips fell open.

It seemed like since Tom had unburdened his awful confes-

sion, we were constantly angry with each other. Even though he

was sitting just on the other side of the sofa from me, it felt as if he was another continent away. I knew he was grieving, of course,

but it felt like more than that. He was distancing himself, shutting me out, blaming me.

‘You can never leave things alone, can you?’ he muttered. ‘It’s

like you have to pick, pick, pick until you get people to do what

you want.’

‘What?’ I hissed. ‘What the hell are you going on about?’ I had

no idea where this was coming from. What was happening to us?

‘Stop it!’ Nadia said. ‘Bickering amongst ourselves isn’t going to

make this go away.’

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I took a few deep breaths to temper down my annoyance with

Ethan and compose myself again. He was upset. He was saying

things he didn’t mean. I could understand that. It was how he dealt with stress – getting angry instead of talking about his feelings. We were all stressed. And really, he was right. I
was
responsible for all the snowballing heartbreak by not keeping my stupid, big mouth shut.

But could you have kept Tom’s confession a secret? Could you really
have said nothing?
I asked myself the same questions I’d asked a million times since. I still didn’t have an answer.

Finally, I said, ‘I think we could be vague to Charlotte and

Anna about the garage. Obviously, we’ll have to tell them Tom

knew something, but we can just say that because of the Alzheimer’s he didn’t know what he was talking about and was confused. We’ll

say the police are investigating but nothing’s clear at the moment, and we don’t know how Katie’s body got there.’

Which is what we did. Not surprisingly, there were more emo-

tional outbursts.

‘I’ll never be able to leave the house again! What are all my

friends going to say when they see me?’ Charlotte screamed.

‘Mum, I don’t want to live there anymore,’ Anna wailed. ‘I can’t

stay in the same place as a skeleton. What about ghosts?’

Anna threw herself down on the sofa in between Ethan and me.

‘Darling, there are no such thing as ghosts.’ Ethan scooched

closer and kissed her forehead.

‘How do you know?’ she challenged.

‘Everyone in the village is going to know that Granddad killed

someone. They’ll hate us.’ Charlotte’s lower lip trembled as she tried hard not to cry.

‘You’ll be starting sixth form college after the holidays; you’ll

meet new people who aren’t from the village or your school so

it won’t be as bad as you think. And we don’t know he did kill

someone at the moment.’ Nadia reached for Charlotte.

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Where the Memories Lie

‘But it’ll be in the papers, won’t it? Everyone will know our

name.’ Charlotte put her hand on her hip, tapping her foot

anxiously. ‘We’ll have to move house!’

‘And even if Granddad was confused, how would he know

where her skeleton was if he didn’t have anything to do with it?’

Anna sobbed, her cheeks wet.

‘That’s what the police are trying to find out, sweetheart.’

I wiped away her tears with my hand.

‘I’m not going back. You can’t make me go back there. I can’t

live in that house!’

‘Nadia will let us stay here for a few days.’ I looked to Nadia

helplessly. ‘But we’ll have to go back at some point.’

‘My life is ruined now!’ Anna jumped up and ran out of the

room. The downstairs bathroom door slammed then locked, and she

shouted out a muffled, ‘I’m staying in here and never coming out!’

Ethan got up and walked out the front door. Charlotte stormed

off up the stairs. Nadia gathered some ingredients together to start baking a batch of scones.

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Chapter Twenty-Three

I needed to get out of the house and clear my head. The walls

were oppressive and claustrophobic, stifling me. I needed to

breathe fresh air. Feel the wind on my face. Uncoil my frayed

nerves and cramping stomach. Try to outrun the guilt for bringing

this upon us all.

I left Anna in the bathroom. I couldn’t deal with her at the

moment. As soon as I had that thought I immediately felt guilty.

Again. The guilt was just piling up by the second. Anna’s concerns

were legitimate. Well, apart from the ghost bit. She was just being a normal twelve-year-old. Even
I
found it hard eating and sleeping and breathing just metres away from where Katie had been buried.

But what choice did we have? We couldn’t stay in someone else’s

house indefinitely. Ethan and I would need to make a decision

about selling the barn now, but who would want it? A body buried

underneath it would completely put off any prospective buyers,

unless they were someone like Fred West.

No, the whole thing was a mess, and at that moment I hated

Tom. How could he do this to us? How could he put us all through

it? Put me in such an impossible position. I was damned if I didn’t tell someone about it and damned if I did. He’d said he wanted to

Where the Memories Lie

protect his family but he was just poisoning us all, breaking up the thing he valued the most. He had us all fighting and crying. Part of me wished Tom had kept his horrific secret until his death. Some

things are better not known.

My first thought was to go to Durdle Door and walk along

the cliff edge, but it would only remind me of Tom and I wanted

to forget about him for a while. Even if Nadia and Ethan didn’t

approve, I still needed to give my condolences to Rose. I tried to

put myself in her place as I’d asked Ethan to do. How would I

feel if Jack confessed to killing Anna and Katie came round to

apologise? How could I hold it against her, his daughter? The sins

of the father are not the sins of the rest of the family. In my scenario, Katie wouldn’t have been any more responsible for Anna’s

death than I was now for hers. So I absolutely had to go. It was the right thing to do.

I almost wished I was invisible as I hurried past the primary

school, which was thankfully now closed for the summer holidays.

The mums dropping off their kids were always the worst for village

gossip. ‘I heard that so and so’s dad was off shagging so and so’s

mum’; ‘Did you see how much weight so and so’s put on? She’s

enormous! What are the parents feeding her?’; ‘Well, I heard so and so forgot her kid’s sports day. Poor little thing had to do the village fun run in her skirt!’ (That had probably been me they were talking about, actually.) It was one of the few things I hated about being a parent. That many women together in one place could never be