Where the Memories Lie (24 page)

our lives. No words would make sense of it. I could feel Nadia’s

anger towards me coming off her in waves. She blamed me for all of

this, just like Ethan did.

When the school bus arrived Anna and Charlotte were the last off,

chatting excitedly about some boy at school called Howie whom

Charlotte fancied.

‘Mum!’ Anna grinned, full of energy. ‘What are you doing here?’

Charlotte said goodbye to one of her friends before turning to

Nadia and frowning in annoyance. ‘We don’t need a chaperone.’

Then she turned to me and grinned brightly. ‘Hi, Aunty Olivia.’

Teenagers. They can blow hot and cold in the blink of an eye.

Charlotte started walking off in the direction of her house.

‘Wait! We all need to go to the barn,’ I called out after her.

‘What? But it’s the last day of term. I said I’d meet some friends

later since we don’t have any school now. We’ve arranged to go

bowling.’

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‘No. We’re going to Olivia and Ethan’s,’ Nadia said, her voice

croaky.

‘Are you all right?’ Anna said to me. ‘Have you been crying?’

‘But
Mum
!’ Charlotte whined. ‘I promised them.’

‘We’ve got some news we need to talk about, I’m afraid.’ I took

Anna’s hand in mine and held the other out to Charlotte. ‘Come on.

You’ve got the whole summer holiday to see your friends. This is

important.’

Charlotte sighed and walked back towards us. Or rather, stalked.

‘It’s Granddad, isn’t it?’ Anna gave me a worried sideways glance

as we made our way up the road. ‘He’s had another heart attack,

hasn’t he?’ Her eyes welled up with tears.

I slid my arm around her shoulder. ‘Let’s wait till we get home.’

‘But it is, isn’t it?’ she wailed.

‘Is it, Mum?’ Charlotte asked Nadia behind us.

As I opened the gates Anna started crying.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he? Just tell me, Mum.’

I gripped her hand as I opened the front door. ‘Come on, let’s

go in the kitchen.’

Charlotte immediately went to Lucas, standing next to him and

putting her arm round his shoulder. He slid an arm round her waist.

‘Hi, sweetie.’

Anna gripped my hand hard. ‘Tell us.’

I looked at Nadia’s face, etched with pain.

She looked at me. Took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, girls, but

Granddad had an accident earlier today. He was . . .’ She trailed off and looked back at me for help.

‘Ethan took him out for a trip to Durdle Door and there was an

accident,’ I stepped in. ‘Granddad fell off the cliff.’

Anna’s forehead scrunched up in a frown that looked like a

scowl. I knew that look well. It was a prerequisite to a full-blown hysterical crying fit.

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‘No!’ Anna cried, tears streaming down her cheeks, which were

rapidly turning red, her shoulders shaking up and down with the

weight of her sobs as she gulped for air.

‘Mum, he’s still alive, right?’ Charlotte said disbelievingly to

Nadia. ‘Right?’

I pulled Anna to me so her head rested on my shoulder and

smoothed a hand over her forehead repeatedly, a gesture that had

always relaxed her when she was younger and couldn’t sleep. ‘I’m

sorry, darling. I know how much you loved him. But no one could

survive that fall. He’s gone, sweetheart. And he’s not suffering

anymore.’

Nadia reached for Charlotte but she buried her head in

Lucas’s chest.

‘Well,’ Chris slurred, his eyes glassy. ‘At least things can’t get

any worse.’

But he was wrong about that. Things were about to get a whole

lot worse.

179

Chapter Twenty

It felt like a lifetime later when I slipped under the cotton

sheet in bed. Ethan lay on his back, hands laced together

behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t cried yet but

it looked like the tears weren’t far off. The room felt oppressive, and not just because the heat from the summer day was trapped

inside. The weight of Ethan’s grief, of mine, too, lay heavy and

stifling in the air.

‘Is Anna asleep now?’ he said as I turned and nestled into his

chest. He brought one arm around me. His heart beat in a steady

rhythm against my cheek.

‘Finally. She kept asking me all sorts of questions about what

happened. I was trying to explain that maybe this was kinder to

Tom in the long run. And that he’s not in pain anymore and will

always be in our hearts and memories, even though he’s no longer

physically here anymore.’

‘And how did that go?’ He blinked rapidly.

‘Not too well.’

‘This is the first time someone close to her has died. It’s bound

to be confusing for her.’

Where the Memories Lie

‘I know. But now she’s angry and upset with me because she

didn’t get to say goodbye to him. She wanted to see him after the

heart attack but I didn’t think it was a good idea just yet. And − oh, God, we haven’t even told her the whole story still. Imagine how

she’s going to react then.’ He didn’t reply, so I said, ‘Chris is still asleep on the sofa.’

‘Passed out, more like. He was so drunk.’

‘I took his shoes off and left him there.’ I stroked my fingers

lightly along Ethan’s flat stomach muscles, tracing a line over his hip bone.

He twisted a lock of my long hair round and round his finger.

‘I can’t stop thinking about everything. I’m so confused. If

Katie dying
was
an accident, like Tom said, then why didn’t he just call the police when it happened? Why not confess to it at

the time instead of covering it up? And then the next minute he

said he
had
to do it, which makes it seem like it wasn’t an accident at all. I mean, there must’ve been other people working on

site when he was renovating the barn. Chris was working here as

one of the builders at the time, wasn’t he? And there would’ve been electricians, plumbers. Maybe Tom knew something about the

murder but he didn’t actually do it. Well, he must’ve known
something,
otherwise he wouldn’t know where she was buried, would he? But I keep hoping that he wasn’t directly involved. Although,

I suppose—’

He pressed a fingertip to my lips and rolled sideways so he was

angled over me, forearms taking his weight. ‘Don’t. Just stop. For

just a few moments I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to

hear about it.’ His brown eyes looked almost black in the darkness

of the room. They glistened as they roved my face.

Before I could agree to stop talking, he’d crashed his lips

against mine, his tongue desperately delving inside my mouth

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Sibel Hodge

with a fiery need usually reserved for make-up sex. We were lost

in a tangle of legs and arms and lips and groans, and then I was

pressing myself against him and he was inside me. It was short.

Fierce. Electric. Something animal and primal we both needed

to remind ourselves of our own mortality. We were still alive. We

were the lucky ones.

Afterwards I lay in the crook of his arm again, sweat drying

against my skin.

‘I just can’t believe he did it in front of me,’ Ethan said so qui-

etly I had to strain to hear him. ‘Why would he do that? And did he even know what he was doing in the end or was he just confused?

That . . . that moment when he looked at me, it was like there was

an apology in his eyes. In that split second before, he seemed so

clear, so alert, like he’d made the decision and he was saying a silent goodbye. And then he was gone.’

‘I’m so sorry, Ethan. It’s awful.’ I squeezed him close to me.

‘He must’ve blamed me for what was happening. How can I

live with that? How can I live with the thought that if we hadn’t dug up that bloody garage he’d still be with us now?’

But I knew what he was really saying to me.
How can you live

with yourself, Olivia? This is all your fault.

‘I’m sure he didn’t blame you. It’s not your fault, it’s m—’

He cut me off. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘It might help.’

‘I don’t even know what I’m thinking right now so I can’t talk

about it.’

We were both lost in silence, trying to deal with the shock and

sadness. Eventually I listened to his breathing slow as he drifted

under the blanket of sleep. It took me a long time, but when I

finally joined him, I was haunted by images of Katie. A faceless person dressed in black carried her unconscious body through the dark

woods and into our garage. He paused at the wooden door, looking

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Where the Memories Lie

over his shoulder, but I couldn’t make out any features. He carried her towards a hole already dug into the ground and gently placed

her in its depths, shovelling soil over her. When he finished, he

walked over the earth, flattening it down, and I could hear Katie’s voice, muffled and distraught, from beneath.
Help me. Help me!
She was still alive down there, trapped in a dark place, unable to claw her way back out.

I jerked awake the next morning, gasping for breath, covered

in a sheen of sweat with the sheet knotted in my clenched fist.

The bed was empty. I reached out and touched Ethan’s side but

it was cold.

Running a list of things to do over in my head, I got dressed.

I needed to call Elaine and see if she’d cover my shift that after-

noon. I’d always thought work was a great distraction, and it

would stop me sending myself mad with thoughts, but I wanted

to stay home at least for one day so I could be with Anna. Nadia

had said she was going to make arrangements with work to cover

Ethan’s schedule so his meetings for the next couple of days would

be rearranged and he wouldn’t have to go in. She had probably

been up at 4 a.m. sending emails to people. Even though Tom

hadn’t worked at Tate Construction for more than ten years since

his retirement, a lot of people would be in mourning for him.

Would they still be mourning when they heard what he’d con-

fessed to, though?

I avoided the creaking floorboard outside Anna’s room so I

didn’t wake her and went downstairs. Chris was nowhere to be

seen and neither was Ethan. Poppy shot out of her bed in the cor-

ner of the kitchen and greeted me with a lick on the back of my

hand and a funny little noise that would usually make me laugh,

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but not today. I noticed a note from Ethan left on the island as I

stroked her.

Gone for a walk. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Need to get my

head straight.

xx

Poppy butted my hand with her nose, dog-speak for
Stroke

me more
.

‘Good girl. I’ll take you out later.’ I eyed the clock on the

wall and wondered if Elaine would be up yet. It was quarter past

seven and surgery started at eight so she should be.

I dialled her mobile number and avoided looking out of the

window. Yesterday, the pull to look at the garage had been so strong I couldn’t ignore it. Today, I wanted to obliterate it from my vision.

Elaine was very sympathetic and kind and immediately agreed

to cover my shift for as long as I needed it, although I told her I’d be back the following day. And Ethan would be here for Anna.

Next, I brewed a cup of tea and made myself eat a slice of toast

before I passed out. Yesterday I’d hardly eaten a thing, and with all the whisky on top, my stomach felt like it was eating itself.

I tried to block out the scene from Tom’s bedroom yesterday,

but it kept drifting into my head. I also had a vision of his body at the foot of the cliffs, broken and destroyed, his lifeless eyes staring out into nothingness. When Tom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s

I’d read up on it in medical journals, websites, blogs and chat

rooms. A lot of Alzheimer’s patients were clinically depressed and

considered taking their own lives while they were still well enough to do so, but suicide rates were actually quite low, because although people may want to do it before the disease got too debilitating,

very few went through with it while their lives still retained meaning and happiness. It’s hard to kill yourself because of the
prospect
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Where the Memories Lie

of future suffering, when things in the here and now aren’t that bad yet. So time stretches on with a desire to hold on to life, and before they know it they’ve lost the cognitive ability to actually end things.

One woman had written herself a letter with instructions on how

to take a bottle of tranquilisers she’d been keeping for the occasion.

She’d kept the letter pinned to her fridge to remind her what to do when the time came. But in the end, she’d left it too late for her to understand, and she thought it was written by someone who was

trying to kill her.

Tom had never mentioned suicide, though I didn’t think that

was unusual. If he had thought about it, he’d want to spare his

family the knowledge that he intended to take his own life, even

though I still thought it would be the kindest option to Tom. A

final respite from years of degradation, destruction, frustration and pain. But he had always maintained he didn’t want to be a burden on anyone, and he hadn’t wanted to prolong his life when the