Where the Memories Lie (28 page)

a good thing, I always thought.

I passed a grungy teenager sporting a black Mohican with

bleached tips, dressed in black jeans, a long-sleeved black T-shirt and black Doc Martens (in the height of a sweltering July day,

seriously? Hadn’t anyone told him black absorbed the sun the

most?). He chewed on some gum and blew a huge bubble with it

as I walked by.

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As I headed past the surgery, I saw Emily Carver, a widow

whose husband had died of bowel cancer last year.

Don’t let her see me. Please don’t let her see me.

I increased my pace, head down, hoping she’d be turning off

before she got to me, but no such luck.

Oh, God! Please don’t let her have heard the news.

I beamed at her brightly and asked how she was, the words com-

ing out automatically. Even my professional nursing smile was fixed firmly in place. Hopefully she didn’t notice me holding my breath,

bracing myself for her to ask what was all this she’d heard about

Tom and Katie and our garage. Luckily for me, she’d been stuck in

the house for weeks because she’d had that horrible virus that was

going round, so she hadn’t heard what was going on. I shuffled from one foot to the other, trying to listen politely as she raved on about how it was the hottest July day for twenty-eight years, and wasn’t

that amazing, just in time for the kids breaking up, too.
Blah, blah,
blah, who gives a shit?
I thought.

After I managed to get away, I carried on past the duck pond,

pausing in front of it. There was a mother duck swimming with

four ducklings riding the fanned ripple of water close behind her.

A memory of Katie flashed into my head. We were probably about

ten and we’d brought some bread to feed the ducks, which I’ve

since discovered is the worst thing for them. Actually, I’d brought the bread and was
trying
to feed them. Katie kept nicking it and stuffing it in her mouth like she hadn’t eaten for a week, which,

on reflection, she probably hadn’t. I should’ve guessed something,

I supposed, even then. The bread was stale and mouldy in parts, but she just picked those bits off and carried on. I was having a go at her for stealing their food, but instead of telling me she was starving, that Rose and Jack didn’t bother to feed her because they spent their unemployment benefit on booze, she just stared out at the pond,

chewing quickly and swallowing so loud it frightened a mother

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duck on our side, causing it to jump into the water and quickly

swim across the pond in the other direction to get away from us.

‘Look, she’s forgotten one.’ Katie pointed to a tiny lone duck-

ling tottering around the surrounding grass on wobbly webbed feet.

A ginger tom cat was right behind it, crouched low in the grass, all muscles taut and ready to launch itself in an attack on the poor little thing. Katie had dropped the bag of food, shooed the cat away and

picked up the duckling in her hand. Taking it round to the other

side of the pond, she’d placed it gently in the water next to its mum, saving the day and reuniting them.

Katie could be cruel and a bitch. She could be selfish and lie

and steal and betray me. But she could also be kind and warm and

funny and caring. And no matter what, she didn’t deserve to die.

I swallowed back the tears and carried on to Rose’s house. The

curtain at the front window was closed again. I knocked on the door as the moisture evaporated in my mouth and the sweat chilled

against my skin.

No answer. I knocked again.

I glanced around, looking up and down the street. When I

looked back I thought I saw the edge of the curtain drop back into

place. I knocked again but there was still no response so I walked

home, head down, palms sweating.

I collected Poppy from our house and walked along the path at

the side and into the woods, trying to rid my mind of everything

that had happened. But every time I forced the thoughts away, they

hurtled straight back. Katie’s baby would be twenty-five years old

now if it had lived. What was Katie thinking when she had the idea

to run away? She couldn’t support herself financially on her meagre earnings from the shop, and it would be even worse with a baby on

the way, but she’d still had the intention to leave the village. She must’ve had a plan, and that plan would involve getting money

from somewhere to support herself.

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Sibel Hodge

I’ve got something he wants and I’m going to make him pay.

She was going to blackmail the father, I was sure of it. Her words

made total sense now. She must’ve pre-arranged to meet her killer

at the barn. But was that person Chris or Tom? We wouldn’t know

until the results of the DNA test.

It was a Sunday when she wrote the letter to Rose and Jack and

then disappeared, which meant none of the contractors would’ve

been working on site so there would’ve been no witnesses.

Tom always insisted on having Sundays off so he could spend

time with his family, and he’d made sure his employees didn’t

work then, either. I tried to picture what stage the renovation was at then, but only vague images came into my head. Because of its

historic importance, the barn was a listed building, so the original walls made of local stone had to remain in place and couldn’t be

knocked down, only repaired. I remembered them all being
in situ
throughout the renovation work. Since Katie was buried under the

garage floor, the foundations for it would have surely already been dug out at that stage. When we bought the property from Tom

he’d told us he’d made the foundations in the garage suitable to

take a two-storey extension in case he ever wanted to build a studio or office over it. And all that time her body had been rotting away underneath it.

As I opened our front gates, I saw Chris sitting on our door-

step, his head in his hands. He glanced up, looking dishevelled and ravaged. His hair, usually kept closely clippered, was sprouting out in all uneven directions, like patchy grass. His sallow cheeks were covered in several days’ worth of stubble. There were dark hollows

beneath his eyes.

‘Hi,’ I said as Poppy struggled on the lead, trying to run off and

greet him.

‘Hi.’

I walked towards him. ‘Are you OK?’

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He shook his head, ignoring Poppy nuzzling her snout into his

hand. ‘I . . . I just wanted to sit here for a while.’

I frowned. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted to say goodbye to her.’ He clasped his hands behind

his head, elbows sticking out in the air. His T-shirt lifted, revealing a tanned, toned stomach. He stared at the ground. ‘I can’t believe

she was pregnant.’

I didn’t know what to do. What if Chris was the father? What

if he had something to do with Katie’s death? But then a tiny inner voice told me to stop being crazy. Of course he hadn’t. I knew him.

He was kind and funny and sweet. The shy, quiet one.

Yes, but isn’t it just as crazy to think that Tom did it? You knew
him, too. Or thought you did. And what is it they always say about the
quiet ones?

Had Katie made fun of Chris, taunted him, and he lost his temper
and snapped? Is that what got her killed in the end?

Don’t be ridiculous!

I settled for, ‘Do you want to come inside?’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember what was happening here with the renova-

tion when Katie went missing?’ I asked. ‘Do you remember work-

ing on the garage floor with Tom? Or was there another builder

working on them?’

He shook his head in response, his gaze drifting to the garage.

An expression passed over his face for a brief second and then it was gone, too fleeting for me to work out what it was. ‘When you’re that age, you think you know everything, don’t you? Think you’re capable of anything. If she wasn’t running away it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘What are you saying, Chris? How can you know that?’ A

feeling of dread crept up my spine, as if in anticipation of a confession. ‘Do you know what happened to her? Why Tom confessed?

You can talk to me, Chris, you know that.’

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He looked at me, but I don’t think he was really seeing me.

Before he stood up and walked away, he said, ‘The others, they

didn’t like her. You’re the only one who understands.’

Except I didn’t understand anything. Not then.

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Chapter Twenty-Four

The logistics of staying at Nadia’s were fairly easy since she

had two spare rooms. It was the atmosphere that was

hard to take. It wasn’t just Ethan and I that were show-

ing signs of cracks in our relationship. When Lucas returned, he

and Nadia bickered like crazy. Nadia was also angry with me about

going to the police and heartbroken about Tom’s suicide, but she

was trying to hide it. Anna didn’t want to talk much, which was

completely unlike her usual chatterbox self. Most of the time she

stayed in the spare bedroom on her laptop or was in Charlotte’s

room watching DVDs. When I went upstairs, I could hear their

hushed tones as they whispered secretly to each other behind closed doors. Charlotte had complained about being a ‘prisoner in her

own home’ at breakfast that morning and Anna had replied, ‘Did

you know prisoners on death row only get about an hour out of

their cells every day?’ to which Charlotte had countered, ‘Yes, but they’re guilty. We haven’t done anything wrong.’ Anna shook her

head and added, ‘They might not be guilty, though. Do you know

how many innocent prisoners get convicted each year?’

I’d slammed my hand on the dining room table. ‘Stop talking

about death row prisoners! This is not the same thing at all. And

Sibel Hodge

until we find out what
really
happened at our house, we just need to get on with things as best we can. This is difficult for all of us, and Granddad may very well be innocent, too.’ Although I didn’t

believe that last part.

‘He can’t be!’ Charlotte pushed away her untouched American-

style pancakes that Nadia had made. ‘He confessed. Why would he

confess if he didn’t do it? I’d never confess to murdering someone if I didn’t do it. It’s mental.’

‘He confessed to a crime he didn’t commit because he’s con-

fused. Eat something, please. You’re not eating anything lately.’

Nadia pushed Charlotte’s plate back.

‘I’m not hungry. How can I eat at a time like this?’

‘Yeah,’ Anna again to me. ‘Why
would
he confess if he didn’t do it?’

How could I say that I now believed the only possible reason

for Tom’s confession was because he was trying to protect someone?

Because then I’d have to voice the horrible thought that was welling up inside, throbbing away like a nervy toothache. If Tom really
was
protecting his family like he’d told me, it meant one of us was the person who had really killed Katie. And the only thing I could be

completely certain of was that it wasn’t me.

‘How can you be so stupid, Mum?’ Anna glared at me. ‘Of

course he must’ve done it. And my friends will never speak to me

again. Neither will my teachers. I don’t want to be here! I want

to move!’

‘Now, just a minute! There’s no need to be rude,’ I snapped.

‘Oh, shut up!’ Anna yelled before she ran out of the room and

stormed upstairs.

And so it started all over again. Lucas, back from a long-haul

flight, hovered at the worktop, drinking coffee, staring out of

the window and not offering anything remotely helpful to the

conversation. Ethan had disappeared somewhere before I’d even

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Where the Memories Lie

woken up, probably on another one of his solitary walks. I left for work feeling like I’d done a day’s hard slog in a boot camp before I even got out the door.

It was a relief to be away from the house and the family as I took

patients’ blood pressure, checked dressings and did blood glucose

checks for the diabetic clinic. While I was working I could forget for a time and the morning passed quickly. After Elaine arrived to carry on the afternoon shift, I walked home to Tate Barn to put some

washing on and get some new clothes for all of us.

This had to stop. We couldn’t carry on living at Nadia’s. Late

last night Ethan had said he was going to move back into the barn

at the weekend and go back to work on Monday. I didn’t want to

split the family up, but I was dreading Anna’s reaction. She’d have nightmares, I knew it. Even I was having horrible, haunting dreams.

What if she refused to come back here? What should I do then?

Should I force her?

I noticed DI Spencer’s Mondeo parked on the road in front

of our house but neither he nor DS Khan was sitting inside it. As

I opened the gate I expected them to be checking something in the

garage, but the door was closed and bolted from the outside, like

always. Odd.

I opened the front door and heard their voices, along with

Ethan’s.

I walked into the kitchen and they were sitting at the oak table,

empty mugs in front of them and a plate of digestives that were