‘Scotland,’ Bzowski says. ‘Apparently, there’s a distant relative of her dad’s living up there. He mentioned her – a godmother called Mary Turner – in one of his phone calls with Jess, and she remembered. Turned up on Mrs Turner’s doorstep yesterday, but only admitted to being a runaway this morning. God knows how she got all the way up there on her own steam without being caught; I can’t imagine she had the money to pay for the train ticket.’
I daren’t look at Lucy or Milla – especially in my newly drugged state – but I smile at the ceiling. Sean has been arrested for Amber’s murder. And Jess has just run away after all, just like Matt said, and to a fairy godmother. My husband isn’t a killer.
‘The analgesia should be working now,’ Hema says. ‘We need to transfer you onto a stretcher to move you to the ambulance, but I promise the worst of it is over.’
I smile, steal one more glance at my daughters, then let my eyelids fall closed.
The worst of it is over.
AFTER
Wednesday 24th July
Jess
If the village hadn’t been called Hopeman, she doubts she would have remembered it. But when her dad told her about his godmother, his mum’s best friend from college, Aunty Mary, and how she’d sent him a birthday present out of the blue, he’d said she lived in Hopeman, and they’d joked about how maybe they should move there one day. At least, he’d joked.
Jess had kept the conversation in her head. Daydreamed about it coming true one day. Her dad and her; Aunty Mary; hope, man.
And now she’s here.
‘You warm enough, love?’ Mary says, pulling at the zip on her fleece, even though it’s the middle of summer. Jess has seen photos of Mary when she was younger. She’s shrunk a bit since then, but she still projects the same aura of strength. Security.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she says, nudging her butt cheeks further into the soft sand and looking out to sea. Hopeman is in the Highlands, on the Moray Firth coast. There’s always a cold North Sea wind whipping against the shore, but Jess likes the feel of it on her cheeks. Just as she likes the fresh, salty air and the houses with no stairs (they’re called bungalows apparently). She also likes the slower pace of life, the friendly locals, and how people seem to accept her without question.
Hopeman is in a whole different country, five hundred miles from Oxford, but it’s still where Jess feels most at home.
When she picked the Waitrose bag out of that bin up by the lakes, she didn’t know that she would end up here. At first, she was scared that Mr Rose would ambush her. When that didn’t happen, she expected the police to appear. But the park stayed quiet, and she walked to the fence where the old carriages are kept. Hidden by bushes, she stopped to open the bag.
My dad will kill you.
Reading the note inside the bag made her dizzy. Caused dozens of bad memories to flood in. That terrible year at Lou and Justin’s, barely able to eat, counting down the days to the court case. And further back. Her mum. Glassy eyes, and a carpet changing colour. But she forced herself to think straight, and realised that the Roses’ anger was justified. Jess knew that Lucy didn’t kill Amber, so accusing her, threatening to post that video, was a shitty thing to do. And they had given her the money, a chance for her to start over.
She snuck through the hole in the fence and walked past the dead railway carriages, where the only people she came across were a couple snogging, and they didn’t take any notice of her. Then she made it onto the high street, and the euphoria finally set in. The freedom of having ten grand in her pocket. After being the unluckiest person in the world for fifteen years, something had finally gone her way. She’d not planned to keep on walking, but equally she hadn’t wanted to stop. She threw her phone into the bushes beside Thame Road – she still had the dumb phone that she’d been hiding from the police since finding out Amber had died – and two hours later arrived at Haddenham & Thame Parkway. That’s where she’d thrown away the Decathlon bag, still with a dozen grams of weed inside, that she’d also kept secret. Then when the first train left for London in the morning, she was on it.
It took four trains, two Tubes and a bus to get to Hopeman. And when she arrived on Saturday evening – exhausted, freezing cold in the clothes she’d chosen for temperatures ten degrees warmer – she realised she had no clue where Mary Turner lived. She thought about calling her dad and asking for Mary’s full address, but she guessed that people would be looking for her by then – Bill and Molly, Colleen – and she didn’t want to risk him ratting on her. Plus, he probably didn’t have Mary’s address. Life admin had never been his thing.
So she found a pub and tested out whether she looked old enough to book a room by ordering a whisky (she’d never tried the drink before, but she knew it was Scottish). The girl behind the bar didn’t ask for ID, the advantage of being tall maybe, and a minute later Jess was trying to swallow the disgusting liquid while the girl pointed out a B&B a few doors down.
‘Want some tea?’ Mary asks, pulling a flask out of her Paisley rucksack, because some Scottish clichés really are true. Jess nods, and watches the older woman pour some of the steaming liquid into a small plastic cup, her hand perfectly steady. It’s not age that makes you shake, Jess thinks, it’s secrets, and Mary doesn’t have any. Maybe she never did, or perhaps living somewhere like Hopeman means they get carried away with the wind, out into the North Sea. Gone forever.
Jess hopes so.
The couple who ran the B&B knew where Mary lived. It turns out Hopeman is that kind of place. So Jess walked to her house on Sunday morning and knocked on the door. No one answered, but an hour or so later, Mary came back from church to a real charity case sitting on her doorstep.
Jess sips at her tea. Without really noticing it, she has shuffled closer to Mary – for warmth, or reassurance, or both, who knows – and she drops her head onto the older woman’s shoulder. Why does Mary already feel more like a mum than Lou, or Molly, or maybe even Jacqui ever did? Jess isn’t a psychologist, but she’s not stupid either. It’s because Amber isn’t here. Jess always thought that Amber was the strong one between them. But she’s realised lately that her sister was weak. Because Amber only survived by putting other people down. And Jess was damaged, but loyal, so was always her prime target. There’s no way Amber would risk losing that, so she made sure Jess didn’t get close to anyone else.
God, she was angry with Amber that night. She thought that she couldn’t feel any more heartbroken after finding out that Amber had stolen Caden from her. But then Caden started talking, and she realised she was wrong. There was plenty more damage that Amber could do.
Amber was the only person in the world who knew the truth about what Jess had done that terrible night. That she’d sneaked out of their bedroom, watched their mum bleed to death, then lied about it to the police. Because she was too scared to admit, to them and herself, that maybe her mum was dead because of her. Amber knew that Jess would be petrified about lying to the police again, pretending she’d witnessed Mr Rose punch Sean when she hadn’t. But Amber convinced her to do it anyway. Convinced her that Sean’s injury was so bad, he deserved justice.
But the real story, as Jess found out that night, was very different. Mr Rose was innocent. Sean had a vendetta against him – Jess never found out why – so he got into a street fight on purpose and then blamed it on Rose. And then Amber lied to her face.
Caden was so mad with Amber that he threw the story back at her, detail by devastating detail, at a volume that meant Jess heard every word. And the urge to punish her sister had been painful in its intensity. Jess had listened to them argue until Caden walked away in disgust, and the night had fallen quiet. Her sister all alone.
‘That empty, love?’ Mary asks, nodding to Jess’s cup. Without waiting for a response, Mary reaches for it, flicks the residue onto the sand – three dots and a line, like Morse code – and screws it back onto the flask. ‘Ach, my old bones can’t sit on this sand for long.’ She pushes up to standing, and for all her words, Jess thinks how quickly she does it. Mary might be in her sixties, but she’s fit and healthy. She’s not going anywhere soon.
Jess pushes up too, and the pair of them walk away from the sea, towards the road that will take them back home.
Home.
On that Sunday two months ago, when Mary put a plate of cottage pie in front of her, and Jess was so hungry that she ate it without worrying about the wriggly meat or the mashed potato getting stuck in her throat, things hadn’t been so certain. It wasn’t that Mary wasn’t pleased to see her – her godson’s only daughter – but they were strangers. Jess was a runaway. A troubled teenager with a dead mum and a dead sister. And it didn’t help when Jess offered Mary a load of cash to put her up either. But Mary offered her one night’s stay. And in the morning, Jess returned the favour by giving her Colleen’s number. Her whereabouts became common knowledge, and gradually things moved from there, to where they are now. Official. Settled.
Mary slides the key in and pushes open the front door of her two-bedroom bungalow, five streets and ten minutes back from the coastal path. Jess follows her inside, and they both head into the living room where Milo and George are stretched out in front of the window. Jess rakes her fingers through their thick tortoiseshell fur and listens to their synchronised purring.
‘You going to write that letter now?’ Mary says gently, and when Jess doesn’t answer, she adds, ‘I think it’s time to tell the truth.’
Jess looks out of the window. Is Mary right? It’s easy to feel safe up here, so far away from the first fifteen years of her life, all the mistakes she’s made. But she knows how easily things can come crashing down.
‘It will be okay, you know,’ Mary says, reading her thoughts. ‘And I promise you’ll feel better for it.’
Jess hesitates a moment longer, then walks over to the table and picks up the pen and notepad that’s been waiting for her all morning.
AFTER
Saturday 27th July
Rachel
My heart is racing so fast I think it might space-hop right out of my chest, but I don’t slow down. This isn’t about my fitness. It’s adrenalin, and memories, and regrets, and irrational fear, all bundled together like a home-made bomb and the only way I can defuse it is to run faster, all the way to the Chinnor Hill nature reserve and then through to the other side.
This is my first trail run since I found Amber’s body. I couldn’t run anywhere for a while – as the stab wound in my shoulder healed – but my physio signed me off two weeks ago and I’ve been dithering ever since. It was getting Jess’s letter yesterday that spurred me on. Her raw words of apology and the bravery I knew it would have taken for her to confess.
First, she apologised for accusing Lucy of killing her sister when she knew that Amber had left their argument alive and well – in fact, in a much better state than Lucy did, as I discovered from my hospital bed when Milla forced Lucy to lift her blouse.
But it was Jess’s second apology that meant the most to me. She had lied about seeing Matt punch Sean Russo. And more than that, she found out on the night Amber died that Matt didn’t even do it. Sean had set the whole thing up, with Amber’s help, to punish Matt. Jess didn’t know what he’d done to become Sean’s target, but from Sean’s rambling accusations when I was tied up in his mum’s bedroom, I could guess. That prick treated my mum like scum. Matt isn’t a killer, but he’s got faults. Sean’s mum was a cleaner at the school. With his tidiness obsession, I can imagine Matt giving her a hard time, not realising how his criticism will have sounded. Especially with her so poorly. But none of us are perfect. And at least Matt has agreed to see a therapist now, and be assessed for OCD. Hopefully that will prove to be a catalyst for change.
In Jess’s letter, she explained that she felt betrayed by her sister. And that there were reasons why Amber’s behaviour was especially hurtful. She even said that she wanted to kill Amber when she found out, but only for a split second. Amber looked like her mum apparently. And she could never inflict injuries on that face. So she’d walked away, assuming that Amber wouldn’t be far behind her.
But she never fully thought about what the lies did to Mr Rose, or Lucy, until she got to Scotland, where the fresh air, and Aunty Mary, had made her think more clearly.
There was more than a letter in the package Jess sent too. I counted nine thousand, four hundred and twenty pounds, still wrapped in the same Waitrose bag.
I reach the edge of the nature reserve. This is it. I slow for a moment, then speed up, and pound through the long grass. I don’t look at the place I found Amber’s body, but otherwise I let myself take in the luscious trees – now in full summer bloom – and view of my village below. The run is hard but not impossible. It a sign I’ve survived this.
And Jess’s letter has played a big part, dispelling a fear I’ve been living with since Sean was charged with Amber’s murder. There is a stack of evidence against him – his blood at the scene, her blood on clothes found in his flat, his car picked up on CCTV, and its tyre treads matched with those found in the car park. Plus the circumstantial evidence: the drugs in his flat, phones without SIM cards, Caden’s statement, Amber and Sean’s turbulent history including the time he roughed her up. And having me tied up for hours, sticking a knife in my shoulder.
And yet I couldn’t quite wipe the memory of his words. And how, even though he was high, or stoned, the whole time, he kept accusing other people of killing Amber: Jess, Caden, and Matt. Mostly Matt.
