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.
On top of that, there was the admission that Milla gave, quietly, just to me, before her first A-level exam – the need to clear her mind, I think. That she had seen two sets of fresh footprints heading up to the Ridgeway from the railway crossing where Lucy met Amber. The police didn’t know about either of them because the overnight rain had washed them away, but both Caden and Sean had parked on the top road, and Jess had taken the route from the railway station, so who did the second pair belong to? And the mystery of what happened to Bronwen’s letter has never been solved either.
But none of it matters. Not after reading Jess’s letter – that Matt isn’t violent, and Sean is an accomplished liar.
I make it through the nature reserve, then gradually drop down onto the bridleway and head back towards Chinnor. As I run past the fenced area that stores the derelict railway carriages, my mind wanders to Felix. I was shocked when Milla told us it was Ava he’d been with the night Jess disappeared, but Matt wasn’t. He then admitted that he’d seen them together a couple of weeks before while out on a bike ride, climbing through the hole in the fence, their body language furtive. That’s why he’d guessed correctly in the pub. But he’d chosen not to tell Milla about her best friend and boyfriend. It wasn’t a choice I would have made, but who knows which one of us is right. Or even if there is a right and wrong in these situations.
When I get to the parade of shops, I slow down. As I laced my trainers this morning, Matt suggested that he come and meet me after my run, and that we go to The Crown for breakfast together – Steve and Jade’s new initiative to make the most of their beer garden in the summer. Milla is in Corfu – her A-level exams already a distant memory – and Lucy is otherwise engaged too. Now that the school holidays have started, Bronwen is visiting from Wales, staying with her grandparents for a week.
‘Ah, Rachel!’
I turn around, shield my eyes from the sunshine, laugh silently at the coincidence. Bronwen’s grandfather is walking out of the bakery. ‘Hello, Michael,’ I say, smiling at the older man. Even though the late July heat is already strong, he’s wearing a long-sleeved, button-down shirt and beige slacks.
‘I hear we’ve got Lucy coming over again today?’
‘Yes, thanks for having her. And an advance apology, because I think she might end up basically moving in with you this week. She’s been so excited about seeing Bronwen. She’s missed her a lot this year.’
‘It’s lovely to see them getting on still,’ Bronwen’s grandfather says, nodding. ‘I thought, after her last visit, that Bronwen might have cut her ties with her life here, moved on. But it seems not, which is a good thing, obviously,’ he adds, suddenly worried that he’s offending me. But I’m too intrigued by his words.
‘Her last visit?’ I ask. As far as I knew, this was Bronwen’s first time back since the family moved away last August. I know they didn’t come for Christmas because Michael and Jean went to Wales, and Lucy hasn’t seen her this year.
Michael’s eyes tilt downwards. ‘They came for a weekend in the spring,’ he explains. ‘The traffic was bad – usual bank holiday exodus – so they arrived later than planned on the Friday evening. It was all a bit chaotic to be honest – a couple of Jean’s bridge cronies had dropped by and we couldn’t get rid of them once Thomas and Liv arrived – so I didn’t think much of it when Bronwen snuck off to the garden room early.’
‘Garden room?’
‘Oh, we’ve had one of those glorified sheds installed at the bottom of the garden so that she can have her own space when they visit. I think she slept in there okay, at least she didn’t complain, but she wasn’t herself all weekend. Quiet. Withdrawn. Like she really didn’t want to be here. And every time one of us suggested she get in touch with Lucy, she bit our heads off. Anyway, they left early, on the Sunday, in the end.’
‘You said bank holiday weekend. Which one was it?’
He sighs. ‘Jean said it was probably for the best, Bronwen not turning up on your doorstep asking to see Lucy. It was the weekend that poor girl died, you see. And I know you were the one to find her body. I imagine you were reeling.’
I lift the corners of my mouth into a smile, but it’s like dragging sticks through cement. ‘Yes, I was reeling,’ I repeat, anxious to get away, to have some space to process what he’s telling me. Bronwen was in Chinnor when Amber died. She was sleeping in a room in the garden by herself. She stayed away from Lucy all weekend.
‘Hey, Rachel!’ I tether myself to Matt’s familiar voice, turn towards it. ‘Oh, hi, Michael,’ he continues as he gets closer. I watch Matt reach out his hand; Michael clasp it; the rhythm of their connected limbs moving up and down. ‘Thanks for having Lucy again today.’
‘We should go,’ I say. It’s too abrupt, but I can’t take it back now, so I smile again, the cement getting denser.
‘Someone’s hungry,’ Matt says, plastering over the crack in my social skills. ‘See you around, Michael.’ He lifts his hand in a small wave, then drops it onto the small of my back and ushers me towards the pavement. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asks when we’re out of earshot.
I don’t answer straight away. I think about what Bronwen knew, the weight she carried on her shoulders, a burden that should have been mine. It was Bronwen who read Lucy’s blogposts, her sole follower; not me. It was Bronwen who Lucy confided in too, daily, probably hourly, as I resisted, too caught up with the idea that Lucy should give the troubled sisters a chance. It was Bronwen who never believed that Lucy could be rude to another girl, and cared enough to dig up the real reason Amber and Jess were bullying her best friend.
Did Bronwen know about Lucy’s meet-up with Amber that night? And how Amber had stolen her letter? Of course she would have done. She was Lucy’s first choice of confidante.
Did that second pair of footprints belong to her?
Amber’s death wasn’t planned. It was a dark, messy end to a spontaneous lashing out.
It was tragic, yes. Like her life. But Amber never tried to change, never took responsibility for the suffering she caused – to Lucy, or to her sister. How many other lives would she have damaged if she was still here?
No one deserves to die, but who deserves to be punished more? Bronwen for protecting her innocent friend? Or Sean, a drug dealer who stabbed me, and tried to make Matt pay for a crime he didn’t commit?
It’s not a hard question.
I tilt my head and lean in for a kiss. ‘I think we’re all good.’
Epilogue
I look at Amber.
Why isn’t she moving? Why do her eyes look like that? Rolled back, like marbles, the moonlight bouncing off them. The bluebells are wilting around her head, drowning in something dark and globular.
