Where the Memories Lie (14 page)

Had Jack sexually abused Katie? Had she really written that

goodbye letter or was it all a convenient cover-up? I had only

Jack and Rose’s word that it even said she was running away.

Maybe Jack had killed her and faked the letter. But if that was the case, why was Tom saying he’d killed her? Tom couldn’t stand Jack

and Rose. I was sure he wouldn’t have had anything to do with Jack.

So, what, then?

Tom’s words drilled into my head again. I was sure now that this

wasn’t just a confused old man mixing up fragments of memories.

Somewhere in those words was the truth about what had happened

to Katie. A truth I had to find out.

Move over, Pandora. Katie’s box was about to be prised

wide open.

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Chapter Eleven

Nadia returned the favour the next night and had Anna

over for tea. Nadia was making sweet and sour chicken

balls and jasmine rice. From scratch, not out of a jar.

I don’t know how she found the time. Lucas was on his way to

New York on a two-day stop-over and Nadia said she wanted the

company, although I’d forbidden Anna to talk about death row

prisoners whilst she was there. Not only was it depressing, but I

thought her latest obsession was a bit unhealthy. She’d been signing online petitions the last few days, trying to get the death penalty abolished in America! Luckily, she was distracted enough by the

excitement of being able to go through Charlotte’s and Nadia’s stuff to search for anything they could give her for the car boot sale and hadn’t mentioned it once all day. Anna had always been a bit of a

magpie. As a kid, she’d always loved anything shiny and sparkly,

but she also had this urge to examine other people’s things. If we

went to a new house she’d pick up people’s photos and ornaments

and knick-knacks and study them, asking how they got them and if

there was a story behind them.

So at 7.15 p.m. I was child free and standing on Chris’s doorstep

with a lasagne still warm from the oven. The ragout and béchamel

Sibel Hodge

sauce was out of a jar, unlike Nadia’s, and the cheese came pre-

grated, but, hey, it’s the thought that counts. And the jar stuff tasted much better than I could make on my own. Sometimes I wished

I had Nadia’s talent for, well, for everything, really, but that wasn’t going to happen any time soon unless I was body-snatched and

replaced by a totally different entity. At any rate, I admit that I wasn’t delivering food on a purely altruistic basis: I had an ulterior motive for wanting to talk to Chris because he was the last person to see Katie after she left home, and I wanted him to jog my memory.

‘Olivia?’ Chris came to the door wiping his hands on a towel.

‘You OK?’ He gave me a concerned frown.

I smiled, holding up the dish. ‘Meals on wheels.’

He took a sniff. ‘Mmm, that smells gorgeous. Come in. I wasn’t

expecting you.’

‘I know, but I was making dinner and made an extra one for

you. Then I thought that since both Ethan and Anna weren’t at

home we could eat it together, too. It’s not a bad time, is it?’ I suddenly remembered the woman I’d seen him with at the pub. ‘I mean,

if you’ve got company, I can just leave it with you.’

‘No, course not.’ He stepped back and waved me in. ‘I was just

about to stick a jacket potato in the microwave so this is an unex-

pected pleasure.’

We sat in the kitchen at the sleek black ash table in the

white kitchen that Abby had chosen when they’d first moved in

together twenty years ago. In fact, the whole house had a black

and white theme going on, with just splashes of colour here and

there. I wondered how they’d decided who got what in the divorce.

How did you divide things up into neat little bundles?
You have the
microwave and I’ll have the ornamental frog, you bastard! No, I want
the frog, you bitch – you never loved it like I did!
In that moment, part of me could understand Nadia’s reluctance to confront Lucas

about his affair. It would mean the change of everything. Life as

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you knew it would collapse. And, yes, although you would get

over it eventually, in the meantime you were looking at a whole

heap of pain, heartache and stress. At least Chris and Abby hadn’t

had any kids, although ironically that was the main reason for

the breakdown in their relationship. Love could be a vicious and

destructive thing sometimes. I didn’t realise then just how vicious and destructive.

Chris piled a huge serving onto a square white plate and set it

down in front of me.

‘Whoa, that’s massive!’ I stared at it.

He shrugged. ‘Just eat what you can.’

I tucked my fork into the corner and broke off a piece.

‘That’s apparently what Mum always used to say to us, although

I was too young to remember that.’ Chris sat down. ‘She’d give

us gigantic portions of food all the time. Thought that we were

growing kids so we should eat a lot. That’s probably where my being overweight stemmed from.’ He blushed, embarrassed. ‘I was pretty

chubby as a kid.’

You’d never know it to look at him now, though. The years

of building work and boxing had turned his body into a chiselled

physique that any male fitness model would’ve been jealous of.

‘I went to see Dad again today.’ Chris took a bite of food and

set his fork down, chewing.

‘I’m going to go tomorrow. How was he?’

‘Better than yesterday. He had more colour in his cheeks and he

was sitting in the chair. He said he wanted to go for a walk and the staff were keeping him prisoner.’

‘A bit of exercise is good for him, actually.’

‘He may not have much time left. He should be able to do

whatever he wants.’ Chris leaned his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. ‘I hope he does have another heart attack.’ He

caught my eyes warily, as if expecting me to get angry at that.

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I reached out and laid my hand over his. ‘I think it would be

kinder for him to go suddenly.’

‘But then I feel guilty for thinking like that. I shouldn’t want my dad to die.’ He pulled his hand away and picked up his fork again.

‘Don’t feel guilty, Chris. You don’t want him to suffer any more

than he has to. That’s natural.’

‘I need a drink.’ He stood up and grabbed a couple of bottles of

beer from the fridge. ‘Want one?’

‘Yes, please.’

He flipped off the caps and brought them back to the table.

‘I don’t know how Dad did it, you know. Looking after three young

kids and running a company at the same time. I never once felt

neglected or unloved. If I had a problem he was always there for me.

The same with Nadia and Ethan. He was always running us around

to various clubs. Me to boxing, Nadia to dance, Ethan to football.

We always came first, you know.’ He tipped his head back and took

a long sip of beer. ‘I mean, Nadia was great, too. More like a mum

sometimes than a big sister.’

I took a drink and pushed my food away, my appetite vanish-

ing suddenly. It was hard to equate the Tom that we all knew and

loved with the Tom who could kill an eighteen-year-old girl. Almost impossible. And if I was finding it hard, how would Nadia, Ethan

and Chris feel if I told them what I’d discovered so far?

‘You remember Katie?’ I picked at the label on the beer bottle.

‘Yeah.’ He sighed. ‘I feel guilty about her, too.’

My head snapped up and I locked my gaze on his face. ‘Why?

Why would you feel guilty?’

‘She left the village because of me, didn’t she? Because I fin-

ished with her. I broke her heart.’ He stared down at the bottle in his hands. ‘She wanted us to move in together and get married and

have kids and all that stuff, and I just wasn’t ready for it. I . . .’ He sighed. ‘We were too young.’

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‘But you did you love her, didn’t you?’ I thought how different

Katie and he were. She was the brash, mouthy, hard girl and he was

the quiet loner. Still, didn’t they say opposites attracted?

‘Yes. I was gutted when she left. Even though I was the one

who broke it off, it didn’t stop me loving her still. You can’t just turn your feelings for someone off. I thought maybe if she’d stayed we

might’ve got back together later when she wasn’t trying to pressure me so much − when we were both a bit older and more ready for

such a commitment.’

I thought about what Katie had said that last time I saw her,

about fucking him again. ‘But you did meet up with each other after you split up, didn’t you? I mean, you were sort of seeing each other.’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t . . . you know?’ I raised an eyebrow.

‘What, meet up for sex?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, sometimes it’s hard to let go, isn’t it? You go

back and forth a bit, confused, until you make your final decision.’

‘No. We never did. In the seven months after the split, I only

saw her round the village a few times.’

‘But you were the last person to see her that day she ran away,

weren’t you? Tell me what happened again.’

‘I told that policeman at the time. What was his name?’ He

shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s not important.’

Except maybe it was. ‘PC Cook?’

‘Yeah. It was really early and I was waiting for the bus to take

me to the boxing gym. We’d been to the pub the night before to see

some band. What were they called?’

‘The Jazz Iguanas or something.’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, that was it. Crap name. But I left early

because I didn’t want to be too tired to spar the next day. Anyway, the Sunday morning Dad was supposed to be giving me a lift to the

gym but he said he had something urgent to do so he couldn’t take

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me, and I remember seeing her walking past, coming from the

direction of her house. It was awkward. Like I said, I’d only seen her a few times since the split, and even then not to say hello to because she was too far away. I didn’t know whether to stop her and talk to her, or whether it was better to just pretend I hadn’t seen her. In the end, I decided to say hi.’

‘Did she speak to you?’

‘She just stopped and stared at me for a moment. She looked

really different. Her hair was short and she didn’t have all that heavy makeup on and her clothes were a bit . . . I don’t know, grannyfied.

It was weird. I thought she was going to say something. Swear at me at the very least. Tell me to fuck off or something. But she didn’t say a thing. Then she just carried on walking.’

‘I vaguely remember you telling me all this at the time, but I

can’t remember what happened next. Did you see where she went

after you saw her?’

‘Yeah, she was walking towards your house.’

‘In Back Street?’ I asked, thinking about my parents’ three-bed

cottage I grew up in, long sold now after they’d retired to sunny

Spain twelve years ago.

‘No, Tate Barn. Well, it was our house then. Dad was renovat-

ing it at the time for us to live in.’

‘Yes, I remember when he was working on it.’

Since our house is the last in the village, she could only have

been heading towards Abbotsbury, the next village along the main

road, or cutting through the woods alongside the barn and hiking

up over the hills. ‘So she was going to Abbotsbury?’

‘She must’ve been. That’s what that policeman thought, too.

She was carrying a big rucksack. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but then later, after I heard she’d left a letter and run away, it all made sense.’

‘You’re absolutely sure?’

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‘Positive. When I found out she’d left home I kept replaying

the scene in my head over and over, wishing I’d done something

differently. Said something to make her stay. I can even remember

what she was wearing because she still looked beautiful to me, and, like I said, I kept thinking about it afterwards. Don’t you remember I used to bend your ear about it all the time?’

‘Yes, that’s right. You did.’

He stared off into the distance, lost in an old memory. ‘She had

on some shiny black leggings and a big yellow button-down shirt.

It looked strange, to tell you the truth. Nothing like she usually

used to wear. And she was wearing these massive yellow hooped

earrings and a silver necklace with a sun and a star on it.’ He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Then the bus pulled up and I got on. If

I’d known it was the last time I’d ever see her, I never would’ve

let her go.’

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Chapter Twelve

I stood outside the old police house in the village the following

day, mentally rehearsing what to say to PC Cook, or Mr Cook

as he was now. He’d retired years ago and bought the house

he’d lived in as a serving officer.

If Chris had seen Katie walking towards Abbotsbury with a

large rucksack, then the letter she wrote couldn’t have been a fake and she must’ve really been running away. Which meant Tom

couldn’t have killed her and he was just completely muddled.

But would Mr Cook remember what was in that letter?

I knocked on his door and looked around at the immaculate

front garden. There were no prizes for guessing what Mr Cook had

been doing in his retirement.