I hear something in the distance and it snaps me out of whatever melancholy I had slipped into. I don’t know whether Catherine Kelly is still following me, but I don’t plan to wait around to find out. I need to get myself, and my mother, away from the woods and somewhere safe.
‘Come on, Mum, we need to go. It’s cold and it’s… dangerous out here.’
‘Are you coming home, love?’
She asks the question with such happy optimism.
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Oh, good. We’ll be there in less than ten minutes, I promise. Then I’ll put the kettle on, make us some honey tea, just the way you like it.’
‘We’re only ten minutes from our house?’ I ask.
She points confidently through the trees, and although it all looks the same to me – especially at night – I believe her. My mother might be forgetful, but she knows these woods better than she knows herself. I take her hand, surprised by how small it feels inside my own, and we walk as fast as we can. I hear every rustle of leaves, every snapped twig, and can’t stop myself constantly looking over my shoulder. Even if someone was there, following us, it would be too dark to see them.
‘I think she knows,’ says Mum, clearly confused again.
‘Let’s try and be as quiet as we can, just until we get home,’ I whisper.
‘She has a badge, so I had to let her in.’
‘Who?’
‘The woman, she knows and now I don’t know what to do.’
My mother looks over her shoulder as though she hears something, and it does nothing to calm my nerves. We take a few more steps in silence, and I can’t help replaying her words. She’s mentioned a ponytail and a badge now, and it makes me think of the female detective working with Jack. The same one who just answered his phone.
‘What do you think she knows, Mum?’
‘I think she knows I killed your father.’
I’m so aware that someone is chasing us, but my feet stop working and I can’t move.
‘Do you remember that day when you came home from school, and found me on the floor underneath the Christmas tree?’ she asks. When I don’t answer she carries on. ‘Your dad had come home early from a work trip. He was drunk and he hit me for no reason other than I’d been letting him do it for years. It started after you were born, but I thought I had to stay with him, for you and for money. I didn’t have any of my own, and no qualifications to get myself a decent job. I told myself I could put up with it until you were old enough to leave school. But he beat me so badly that day I thought I might die. Then he threatened to hurt you. Something snapped inside me when he did that, and I hit him back for the first time. It turned out to also be the last time, because he was dead.’
I can’t process her words; there seem to be too many of them. They are getting jumbled inside my head, and I can’t straighten them out into sentences that make any sense. People tend to see what they want in the people they love. They reshape them inside their heads, twisting them into the people they wish they were, instead of the people they are. But this isn’t real, it can’t be. My mother is not a murderer. This is the dementia or the drugs talking. But Cat Jones being Catherine Kelly is real, and I don’t doubt she is out here in the woods right now looking for me.
I take both of Mum’s hands and try to pull her along. But she’s stronger than she looks, and digs her bumblebee slippers into the ground.
‘You didn’t kill Dad, I would have seen his body. You’re confused,’ I tell her, but she just stares at me and refuses to budge.
‘I hit him in the face with a cast iron Christmas tree stand. I kept hitting him until he was dead, so that he couldn’t hurt you the way he hurt me. Then I buried him in the garden. I stuck him beneath the vegetable patch, and planted carrots and potatoes on top the following spring. I thought if I never moved house it would be OK, that he would never be found. But I think she knows, and if you are going to find out the truth, I want you to hear it from me.’
My emotions collide inside my head, getting bigger and taking on a new shape, like liquid mercury. I don’t want to believe her, but I think I do. Whatever she did or didn’t do all those years ago, we still need to get out of here now.
‘Mum, it isn’t safe and we need to get home.’
‘What if she’s there, waiting for us?’
‘Who?’
‘The woman who knows.’
The trees around me start to bend and melt out of focus. I feel dizzy and sick.
‘Mum, you said the woman who came to the house had a badge. Do you remember what it said? Just try to picture it.’
She squeezes her eyes closed like a child, trying to look back at a past that frequently seems to escape her in the present. Then she opens them and whispers the name:
‘Priya.’
Him
Thursday 01:35
‘Priya, how do you know how to pick locks?’ I ask.
She shrugs, still holding her gun, I notice, before closing the solid wooden door behind me.
‘I watched a video online; it isn’t difficult.’
‘You understand, strictly speaking, what you just did isn’t legal, right?’
‘Do you want to find Anna or not, sir?’
I don’t answer. I’m too busy taking in the sight of the house we are in. It looks like the set of a horror movie: gothic furniture, ancient wallpaper, creaking wooden floorboards and a huge elaborate staircase in the middle of the hallway. All of it covered in a theatrical blanket of dust and cobwebs. I don’t think I’m someone who scares easily, but this is creepy.
I follow Priya down the hall, both of us walking as quietly as possible, before stepping into a huge formal lounge. The furnishings look like they might have been borrowed from Windsor Castle, and the ancient-looking light fittings on the wall flicker a little. I glance at the pictures on the mantelpiece, but don’t recognise any of the faces. Then I trip over the fireside tool set, catching it just before the whole thing can clatter onto the stone floor.
‘Perhaps we should split up?’ Priya says. ‘Why don’t you look upstairs while I finish checking the rooms down here?’
‘Good idea. Think I’ll take this with me,’ I reply, picking up the metal poker.
To say that I climb the stairs with caution is an understatement. If whoever killed Zoe and the others is here, I’d rather they didn’t see me coming. The house is completely silent now, except for the sound of my own rushed and laboured breathing. My chest still hurts where I slammed into the steering wheel, and that isn’t the only thing bothering me. I’ve learned to trust my gut over the years, and this all feels wrong.
I scan the elaborate red-carpeted landing, and see that all the doors on the first floor are closed, except for one at the very end. I check each room, my heart thudding inside my chest every time I open a door, unsure what I might find behind it. Most of the rooms are completely empty – except for dust, dirt, and cobwebs – but one of them is spotless and I see something I wasn’t expecting. There are two small beds side by side, covered in pretty pink sheets, and a nightlight casting a constellation of moving stars over the walls and ceiling. I notice the dolls on the pillows, two glasses of water on a small table, and a copy of Little Red Riding Hood. There were children here tonight, but they’re not here now.