“You don’t know anything about him,” I dismissed.
“I know he wouldn’t kill himself. And you know that too, don’t you?” Kim hissed.
“No.”
“Yes, you do. Because you killed him, didn’t you?” she asked goadingly.
“No, he killed himself.”
“Just admit it. You killed him, didn’t you?” Kim shouted.
She wasn’t going to stop asking me, and my patience was wearing thin. I didn’t want to confess what I’d done, but she was backing me into a corner either. My confession was the only option I had left to hurt her, and I wanted her to feel exactly how I did. I wanted her to experience the dread of raising a child, knowing the father was dead. I wanted to know that she would never feel happiness again. If I could have physically thrown her from the cliff, I would have. But that option wasn’t available to me anymore. Instead, I decided the only way I could destroy her would be to tell her the truth and watch her crumble.
“Yes,” I whispered, “and I don’t regret it.”
I finally saw the light die in Kim’s eyes, just like I’d wanted. Her face was a mixture of satisfaction and deep, primal anger. She walked away from us and started sobbing a few feet away. Poppy had tears rolling down her cheeks that she wiped away with her free hand whilst still holding the pepper spray pointed at me. Yvonne looked like she deeply regretted saving my life only minutes earlier, but was satisfied she had heard the truth from my lips. Kim stopped pacing and stood entirely still whilst staring at me in complete silence.
“How did you do it?” Yvonne asked heatedly.
“I laced his water with my anti-anxiety pills. He must have drunk it and fell off the Brigg. Whoops, clumsy wife,” I said jokingly with a shrug.
“Why? Why would you do that to him?” Poppy cried.
“Because if I couldn’t have him, no one else could.”
“He was never yours,” Kim said venomously.
“Of course he was! He was my husband!”
The frustration finally got the better of Kim, and she let out a scream, which must have been heard for miles around, and dropped to her hands and knees. She started pounding the rock with her fists, and Yvonne went over to console her. I could see that all three of them were starting to get very aggravated by me and my lack of empathy, but could they expect? For me to break down with them? Harry had been playing me for a fool for months on end with his infidelity and even exposing us to danger and extortion.
He deserved it.
“Now you know how I feel,” I said emotionlessly.
Kim immediately rose to her feet again and thundered over to me, standing tall above me with her finger pointed in my face.
“Harry loved me. And I loved him. We were going to have a family together. In the end, he hated you.”
“No, he didn’t,” I replied matter-of-factly.
“You broke his bones. And his spirit. Yet you have the audacity to think he still loved you. You killed him long before you poisoned him.”
“I may have put the pills in the bottle, but you are the one who poisoned him. If you hadn’t come into his life, he would still be breathing.”
“I saved him. When he was at his lowest moment.”
“You didn’t do a very good job.”
“You are disgusting,” Poppy added.
“Pipe down, Poppy, let the adults speak. You don’t need to get involved,” I dismissed.
“Oh?” Poppy said, while taking out her phone and tapping on the screen. When she was finished, she put her phone away, and my phone beeped. She had a weird smile on her face as I took it out to look at the incoming text, supposedly from James.
I’m already involved, bitch.
It was Poppy. The entire time. She had planted the idea in my head at the very start of this journey and continued to sway me throughout. I knew that my gut feeling, after finding his number in Harry’s deposit box, was the right one. The only reason I dismissed it was because I received a text from James when Poppy was in front of me. I felt ridiculous for believing her for even a second.
“I knew it was you,” I said knowingly.
“James was all of us,” Yvonne added, “we knew you were involved the second we found out Harry had died.”
“Why was the number registered to Harry?”
“It was his secret phone,” Poppy started, waving the phone, “on the night of his death, we went looking for him. He had dropped the phone; it only had one call on it, and it was to you.”
“When I asked you in that bar if you knew who Harry was trying to ring, you said you didn’t. And that’s when I knew it was you. I just needed you to hear you admit it,” Kim added in a quiet rage.
“So, what is this? Hijinks? A widow harassment club? Was Steve involved in all this, too?”
“Steve didn’t want anything to do with this; he just wanted to move on with his life,” Yvonne added, shaking her head, “Kim almost blew the whole thing when she led you to him. He would have exposed us.”
“So you burned down Steve’s house just to get to me? And I’m the psychopath?” I laughed.
“Steve got what was already coming to him. John had just asked the Broadheads to delay it until we’d dealt with you,” Yvonne said.
“And that slag, Becky? The blackmail? Was that just for fun? Or did she know all about this?” I asked.
