Where the Memories Lie (32 page)

blinking rapidly to clear my blurring vision. I hugged her towards

me, feeling an overwhelming rush of pride. ‘You’re a good girl,

darling. I’m very proud of you.’

‘But can I sleep with you tonight? I don’t want to be alone in

my own bedroom. I might have a bad dream thinking about Katie

and Charlotte and everything.’ She looked at me, lost and forlorn.

‘Of course you can.’ I gripped her hand as tight as I could

without hurting her.

‘And can Poppy sleep with us, too? She’ll help chase the

ghosts away.’

‘Yes.’

Poppy sat down and barked at us, knowing we were talking

about her.

‘She wants her dinner,’ I said.

My stomach rumbled and I realised it was way past our dinner

time, too. I thought about the meal Nadia would’ve been cook-

ing when she got the call from Doctor Palmer, which would sit

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Where the Memories Lie

there untouched now. You always take life for granted, don’t you?

You think you’ve got years and years ahead of you so you plan all

this stuff you’re going to do in the future. I wonder how much

time we waste being unhappy, doing things we don’t want to, never

fulfilling ourselves, because we think there’s all this time left when we’ll finally get round to doing what we want. Except there isn’t.

Life can change in a split second. It can all go wrong in one shat-

tered moment. And then it’s too late to do the things we put off.

Too late to live the dreams we’ve been dreaming of all this time.

It was too late for Katie and it could be too late for Charlotte. We had to do everything in our power to make things as wonderful

for Charlotte as possible while we still could. While she still could appreciate life.

‘I’m hungry, too,’ Anna said. ‘Nadia was making Thai green

curry and apple sesame fritters for pudding.’

I squeezed her hand, wondering what the hell I still had left in

the kitchen cupboards that I could feed her. ‘Well, I could probably rustle up a Chinese or something.’

‘You’re going to cook a Chinese? What, from scratch?’ she said

disbelievingly.

‘No. But the Peking Kitchen will, and as a bonus they’ll even

deliver it. Are you ready to go home?’

She looked at me. ‘Will you make me waffles for breakfast with

ice cream and chocolate sauce?’

Oh, to be twelve again, where the lowest lows are followed by

an overdose of ice cream and chocolate. Anything sugary, in fact.

Roll on a few years and the ice cream is replaced by wine. Which

reminded me, did we have any in the house? It was going to take a

hell of a lot to make me sleep tonight.

I forced a smile. ‘Absolutely.’

‘You promise?’

I held up my little finger. ‘I pinky swear my promise.’

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She entwined her little finger with mine and gave me a brave

smile.

When we got home the sky was turning to dusk. Ethan’s car still

wasn’t there. Anna stuck close by me, walking stiffly up the front

steps, pointedly avoiding looking at the garage.

I took her hand and led her into the house, flipping on the lights

as we went. She followed me into the kitchen and bumped into the

back of me when I stopped walking. My Klingon had returned.

‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, wine.’

I actually laughed at her joke. I don’t know where it came from.

I was probably hysterical. Or having a breakdown. No, I actually

think it was a way to get rid of all the nervous tension and worry and stress that had built up like a pressure cooker, waiting to explode. It had to go somewhere, I guess. I laughed and laughed and couldn’t

stop. Then Anna was laughing, too, until tears streamed down her

cheeks. I clutched my stomach, bent over double and howled. We

were making so much noise that I didn’t hear Ethan coming in. It

wasn’t until I saw him hovering in the kitchen doorway that my

laughter faded to a dull tinkle.

He looked at us both with a confused, pinched frown. ‘What’s

so funny?’

‘Charlotte’s got leukaemia,’ Anna and I said in unison.

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Chapter Twenty-Seven

I needed to stay busy. I wanted something to take my mind

off Charlotte, and going to work would’ve been the best solu-

tion, but leaving Anna at home on her own in a house she was

scared of while dealing with Charlotte’s leukaemia was out of the

question. Luckily, the practice arranged for a locum nurse to come

in and take over my shift for the next week.

I slipped out of bed, unable to sleep, just as it was getting light the following morning. Ethan was in Anna’s bed because she was

in with me, but I didn’t want to wake him. He’d taken the news

about Charlotte really badly on top of everything else. He’d cried.

A lot. Head in his hands, shoulder-shaking sobs, I’m talking about.

He was trying to be strong for us, I knew that. But inside he wasn’t dealing with things well. It felt like all of us were falling apart.

How did you get through something like this? Tom’s confession.

His suicide. Katie’s murder. Her pregnancy. Charlotte’s illness. The secrets and lies and unanswered questions.

One step at a time. That’s how we’d get through it. One tiny

step at a time. We’d be all right. We had to be. Had to.

I walked into the kitchen, dug the waffle maker out of the cup-

board and switched it on to heat up. Nothing happened. I flipped the
Sibel Hodge

switch a few times, waiting for the light to come on but it didn’t make any difference. There wasn’t a power cut because the fridge was still on. The fuse had blown, then. Well, I wasn’t about to ask Ethan to

replace it like he normally did, not at the moment with all he had on his mind, but I couldn’t go back on my promise to Anna. Not now I’d managed to get her back here. Although I didn’t really want to ven-ture into the garage, either, where I knew Ethan’s toolbox was kept.

My gaze flicked out of the window to the garage. I’d have to

go in there sometime. I was being pathetic. Katie wasn’t there. Her ghost wasn’t there. I had to get this over with and face my fears.

Plus, I hate to admit it, but a little morbid part of me was

curious.

I unlocked the back door and squeezed my feet into a pair of

Anna’s ballet-style flats that were two sizes too small. It was only about six metres to the garage door but it felt like two miles, as if I was walking down some kind of Alice-through-the-looking-glass

tunnel and the closer I got the further away it seemed.

I stood outside it, my pulse hammering hard against the base

of my throat. I undid the bolt and slowly pulled opened the door.

The wood creaked, sounding like a painful, high-pitched cry, which

made my hand drop abruptly to my side with a slap.

I pressed my other hand to my chest and took some deep

breaths. The morning sun streamed through the double window

on the opposite side of the garage, illuminating the scene. Along

the wall to my left were shelves full of Ethan’s tools and odds and sods. Sanders, drills, half-used tins of paint, boxes full of old leads and adaptors, dust sheets and rags. The bottom shelf was used as a

workbench with a vice attached. Leaning against the opposite wall

were ladders, fold-up chairs, a couple of sun loungers, Tom’s old

ping pong table, Ethan’s and Anna’s bikes, and probably a load of

old junk we should really take to the rubbish tip. We’d have to sort that out before we moved.

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Where the Memories Lie

In the centre of the concrete floor was a big, gaping hole that

went down into the earth like an open wound. A hollowness opened

up in my chest and I found it hard to breathe. This was my best

friend’s grave.

Was it really an accident or had it been planned? Had she

begged for her life, or was she unconscious when she was killed?

Was she trying to save herself and her baby? Did she fight

back? Scream?

I made an involuntary noise that sounded like a cross between

a sob and a squeak.

My poor, poor friend.

Anxious to get out of there, I rushed towards the bench where

I saw Ethan’s toolbox. It was metal with two upper compartments

that were double hinged on each side and rotated outwards to

expose the main tool storage underneath. The upper compartments

were already open and I could see some tools in the bottom section, so I searched for a screwdriver to poke in the fuse cover on the waffle maker’s plug. Next, I picked out a hammer and pliers and a whole

messy, tangled heap of cable-ties, spanners and screws, looking for the small yellow plastic box with spare fuses inside that I knew

he kept in there. I rummaged around, my fingers poking into the

corners, and that’s when I found it.

The discovery hit me like a knife being plunged between my

shoulder blades. My heart lurched into my throat and the hairs on

the back of my neck prickled. I had a thought then that maybe

it really was all my fault. I’d wanted something to take my mind

off Charlotte, and didn’t they always say to be careful what you

wished for?

245

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I sat at the island in the kitchen, the room silent apart from

the ticking of the clock. On the worktop in front of me was a

silver necklace. The chain was a flat curb-link pattern. Pretty

ordinary and nondescript, really. Nothing strange about it at all.

The strange thing was the charm on the end of it. A sun with

wavy rays fanning out in a circle around it. Underneath the sun

dangled a smaller star with a clear sparkling stone in the centre,

probably cubic zirconium or something like that. On the back

of the sun was inscribed
You’re my sun and stars.
I’d never seen it before in my life but I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Chris

had described it as a necklace with a sun and a star when he’d told me what Katie had worn on the Sunday she was running away

from home.

So, the big question was, what was my husband doing with

it? Or, more accurately, what the HELL was my husband doing

with it?

I stroked the silver chain, which was tarnished with age, wish-

ing it could tell me a story. Was it really the same one, or was it something that just looked similar? How many necklaces were there

in the world with a sun and a star on them? Millions, probably. But
Where the Memories Lie

how many people were wearing one on the day they disappeared

and ended up buried in the very place I’d found it?

Still, it could all be a strange coincidence, couldn’t it? Just a

very odd . . .

Odd what?

Odd coincidence.

Yeah, you said that already. It didn’t sound any more plausible the
first time. Repeating it won’t make it more believable.

Had Ethan killed Katie? Was it his baby? He’d said she’d tried to

sleep with him; what if he had? What if he hadn’t turned her down,

after all? What if she’d threatened to tell me about it and he killed her? Was she trying to blackmail him? Had Tom covered it up?

How do you know it’s even the same necklace?

I didn’t know, of course, but I had to find out for sure.

Before I could think any more about it, I heard a creak at the

top of the stairs. I brushed the necklace into my palm and put it in the kitchen drawer we used for takeaway menus and other crap that

we didn’t know where to put.

When Ethan came into the kitchen I had my back to him, furi-

ously poking the screwdriver into the fuse cover on the back of the plug to pop it open.

‘Morning,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Fuse has gone.’ My hand shook and I tried to keep my voice

light, but it came out sounding sing-songy, as if it was a line from a musical.

‘Want me to do that?’ He put a hand on mine and I dropped

the fuse.

‘Sorry, that was my fault,’ he said.

We both bent down at the same time and our heads banged

together.

‘Ouch!’ My vision wavered with black and white pinpricks and

I rubbed my forehead.

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Sibel Hodge

‘Sorry.’ He put a hand to his own forehead and attempted

a smile.

I picked up the fuse, head throbbing.

He gripped my arm and I froze. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so distant

and angry. I . . . this is all really hard. I just . . .’ He squeezed my arm hard as his gaze drifted out through the window towards the garage.

‘That hurts!’ I jerked my arm away.

‘Sorry.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Jesus, sorry. Look, I’m

just trying to apologise for how I’ve been acting.’ He crushed me in an embrace, squeezing me to him as if I was his oxygen.

I fought the urge to recoil and confront him about the necklace,

but I couldn’t say anything. Not yet. I needed to be sure it was definitely the same one before I did that. I didn’t think it would go down too well, accusing your husband of murder if he hadn’t even done

anything. Would you ever get the trust back again? Things were

dicey enough between us at the moment as it was.

I rested my clammy palms on his broad back, trying to keep my

breathing steady. Is this what he’d done with Katie? Hugged her?

Kissed her? Fucked her? Killed her?

‘This has just knocked me for six,’ he said.