Where the Memories Lie (34 page)

‘Maybe tomorrow. She’s a bit sore after the needles, and she

didn’t get much sleep last night worrying.’

‘OK, well, Anna and I have made you dinner. And cupcakes.

So you don’t need to think about that. I’ll drop it off soon. Don’t worry, though, we won’t stay.’

‘Thanks, Liv. That’s really kind.’

‘It’s nothing you wouldn’t do for me. What are families for?’

I waited until Anna was in bed. Our bed again, actually. Except it

wouldn’t be our bed anymore. Not after this. No marriage could

survive . . .
this.

I don’t know how I managed to ignore the rising horror and

choking panic and act normally until Ethan and I were alone, but

somehow I did.

Ethan was on the sofa watching the news, a bottle of beer in

his hand, shirt undone at the collar. He patted the seat next to him and smiled.

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Where the Memories Lie

I stood where I was and held up the necklace by its clasp. It

swung gently in my fingertips. ‘Do you recognise this?’

His eyebrows rose slightly at my tone. He glanced at it briefly

then back to me. ‘Should I?’

‘It was Katie’s.’

‘Katie’s?’

‘Yes. You know, my best friend who everybody thought had run

away but it turns out was murdered.’

‘Yes, I
know
who she is. What are you doing with it? How did you get it?’

‘Actually, that should be my question.’

‘What?’ He put the bottle of beer on the tiled floor and leaned

forward.

‘I found this in
your
toolbox in the garage. Katie was wearing it the day she disappeared. How did you end up with it?’ My voice

sounded surprisingly calm, as if someone else was talking and I was just moving my mouth in time, lip-syncing with them.

He looked at it again. ‘I’ve got no idea. I told you I’ve never

seen it before.’

‘Oh, how convenient. You’ve never seen it before! Well, how

did it get in your toolbox, then? By magic?’

‘How do you know it’s even hers?’ He reached out his hand

to take it.

I snatched it away so he couldn’t. ‘I just know, OK? She was

wearing it when Chris last saw her but she wasn’t wearing it when

she was buried under the garage. Then suddenly, years later, I find it in your toolbox.’

‘What the . . . ?’ He stood up. ‘You think
I
had something to do with her death?’ He pointed a finger at the centre of his chest.

‘Well, how do you explain it, otherwise?’

‘I can’t explain it! How can I explain it when I’ve never even

seen that necklace before in my life?’

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Sibel Hodge

Every part of me seemed to shake with anger, my hand holding

the necklace vibrating so the silver shimmered in the ceiling light as if it was alive. ‘Don’t give me that! You killed her, Ethan. You slept with her behind my back and killed her to shut her up. What, was

she threatening to tell everyone about the baby?
Your
baby? Was she blackmailing you to keep quiet? Did you tell Tom and he helped

you bury her afterwards? Or was he with you when you fractured

her skull? Did you do it together?’

‘You’ve got no idea w—’

‘And then, when Tom was going to expose what you’d done,

what he’d covered up for you all this time, you killed him, too!

How did it feel to push your Dad off the cliff ? Was it as good as

killing a pregnant woman? Anything to keep your secret hidden,

though, eh?’

He stared at me. ‘I can’t believe what you’re coming out with.

I . . . how can you accuse me of something like this?’

‘Um . . . let me see . . . because no one knows where you

were when Katie disappeared. Because you’ve tried to stall any

investigation since it started. Because the one person who could tell the truth died when he was with you. Because you have a necklace

belonging to my DEAD FRIEND. Maybe that’s got something to

do with it.’

‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t have anything to do with her death. I had

no clue. This was all as much of a surprise to me as it was to you

when Dad started coming out with it.’

‘Yeah, right! Everything has just been a lie, hasn’t it? From the

very beginning of our relationship. You betrayed me with Katie.

Got her pregnant and killed her. How did you get Tom to cover

it up and keep your secret? What did you say to him? “Oh, hi,

Dad, I know you’ve had a busy day at work, but I’ve got a bit of a

problem I need burying. Can you give me a hand?”’ I impersonated

Ethan’s voice.

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Where the Memories Lie

He threw his hands in the air. ‘There
was
no secret! I didn’t kill her!’

‘Where were you when she disappeared then, huh?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember what happened that day. It was

years ago.’

‘She was last seen walking towards the barn. Had you already

arranged to meet her here that day? Did she want money before she

left, or something else?’

He flinched as if my words were a physical slap. ‘You’re crazy.

This is insane.’

‘No, you’re insane! What’s insane is what you did! Come on, tell

me. How did Tom find out what happened? Did you panic and

tell him? Then you both decided to bury her where you thought

no one would ever find her? Is that how it went?’ My jaw clenched.

‘I don’t want you here in the house. Not with Anna. How do I know

you won’t do it again?’

‘I didn’t
do
anything!’ He held his palms up to me in a ‘calm down’ gesture. But I didn’t want to calm down. I needed to get it

out there where it belonged.

‘You killed her,’ I said. ‘And you’re too cowardly to admit it.’

‘I can’t believe you’d think that. Can’t believe you think I would

be capable of something like this. I thought you knew me better

than that.’ His words were edged with steel, his once beautiful eyes flashing now with something in their depths that looked dark and

dangerous. ‘You don’t know anything.’

‘I obviously don’t know
you
at all.’

‘After everything we’ve been through . . . How can you not

trust me?’

I held up the necklace. ‘Because this speaks louder than words,

Ethan. Who else would put this in your toolbox?’

‘We never keep that garage door locked. Anyone could’ve put it

there.’ His chest rose and fell, a muscle in his jaw pulsing. ‘Maybe 259

Sibel Hodge

Dad put it there when he was living with us. Did you ever think of

that? He was always leaving things in weird places. This really is all down to him. His confession was the truth. He was the person who

actually killed her and he acted
alone
.’ He emphasised the last word.

‘You’re just looking for something that’s not there. Putting two and two together and coming up with nine!’ He yelled, the tendons in

his neck pulsing angrily against his skin.

‘Oh, that’s good, isn’t it? That’s very convenient again. You’ve

been trying to convince me all this time that Tom couldn’t possibly have killed her, and now suddenly you’re saying he did it just to

get yourself off the hook.’ My heart beat so hard it threatened

to explode out of my chest. My shoulders were taut, rigid bands of

muscle.

He stared at me for a long time in silence. Finally, he said,

‘I don’t know you, either.’ And he stormed out of the room.

I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. I chewed on my

fingernail, wondering what to do, trying to take some deep, calming breaths. Should I go up there and make sure he wasn’t hurting

Anna? But then, why would he? He’d always been the perfect father.

Yeah, but he’s always been the perfect husband and look how that’s
turning out!

No, he wouldn’t hurt her. This wasn’t about Anna. It was about

sex and lies and betrayal and blackmail.

But what if Tom
had
put the necklace there?

A thread of doubt unravelled from the tight ball of anxiety

curled in my chest. Why hadn’t I even considered that? Why did

I always shoot my mouth off prematurely? When Tom was living

with us before he went into Mountain View, he could’ve been con-

fused and easily put it in Ethan’s toolbox by accident, just like he’d done with the remote control. With many things.

Had I made a mistake? Had I jumped to the wrong conclusion?

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Where the Memories Lie

An image of Chris popped into my head. When I’d found him

on the front step had he actually been here planting the necklace?

Was he the one Tom had really been protecting all these years? When I’d shown it to him, he’d seemed genuinely surprised, but was he just a good liar, like Tom? We only had Chris’s word that she was even

wearing the necklace that day, and he’d been very descriptive about it after all this time. Had he really remembered it that well or had he lied about it so he could plant incriminating evidence to frame

Tom or Ethan?

I didn’t know what to think anymore. The only thing I did

know with certainty was that I didn’t want to be in the same house

as Ethan at that moment. I needed some time to get my head

around this.

I paced up and down. Should I call the police and let them deal

with it? But Ethan wasn’t just my husband; he was also the father

of my child. Anna had been through enough already in the last

week; how would she react if her dad was accused of murder in

the midst of everything else? It would shatter her already fragile

emotions to smithereens. Somehow I had to protect her from

the fallout.

I glanced up as Ethan appeared in the lounge doorway carrying

a small suitcase, his eyes cold and dark. There he stood, familiar and yet alien at the same time.

‘I’m going to stay in a hotel. Tell Anna I’m working in York.

I can’t . . . I can’t be anywhere near you right now.’

I opened my mouth to scream something back – probably

‘Good!’, which would just sound childish – but my murdering

husband etiquette was also apparently in need of some work.

But is he really a murderer?

I braced myself for the slam of the front door but it closed with

a soft click and the Range Rover started on the driveway.

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Sibel Hodge

Nausea erupted in my stomach and I ran to the bathroom

where I was violently sick. My eyes stung and my throat burned as

I retched again and again. When I was empty and spent, I sank to

my knees on the floor, buried my head in my hands and sobbed. For

myself, for Anna, for Charlotte, for Nadia and Lucas, and for a girl whose life had been cruelly snatched away from her.

262

Chapter Thirty

I lay in bed on my side, examining Anna’s sleeping face in the

splashes of moonlight that filtered through the window. Her

snub nose, the chicken pox scar on her left temple, the beauty

spot on her right cheek. I remembered the night she was born. In an attempt to take my mind off the labour pains, Ethan was prancing

around in the delivery suite, pretending to be a ballet dancer, doing pliés and pirouettes, singing any songs that were baby related. He

started off with Salt N Pepper’s
Push It.
And I think he gave Queen’s
I Want to Break Free
a go before butchering Curiosity Killed the Cat’s
Hang on in There, Baby.
He had me in stitches in the middle of a contraction, although I couldn’t completely laugh my head off

because I was in so much pain and trying hard to breathe.

How would she cope if Ethan was taken away and put in

prison? How could I be the one to put Anna in that position? She

would hate me forever.

I’d do anything for her. She was my life. My miracle. Anything

I could do to protect her, I would do in a second. And wasn’t that

what Tom had been trying to tell me, too?

The questions chased each other round and round in my head

as I curled into a ball. What had gone through Tom’s head when

Sibel Hodge

he was covering up Katie’s death? Did Ethan kill her? Was Chris

involved or did Tom really do this all by himself ? Were all three

of them in it together? How could I expose myself and Anna to

Ethan if he had been involved? How could I live with someone if

he’d murdered my friend? Or so-called friend. How could I ever be

sure he was really being honest with me again? There would always

be that permanent doubt and mistrust, just like with infidelity.

I almost found myself wishing I’d discovered Ethan was having an

affair, instead of this. But then I nearly laughed. He had probably been having an affair all along. With Katie.

At first I felt numb. So frozen with shock and uncertainty that

I couldn’t even cry anymore. As if my blood had stopped flowing.

I felt disconnected from reality, separate from my body as though I were looking down at myself from a great height. Then a gripping

fear that I’d never experienced before crushed at my chest with such force it was hard to breathe.

But if Ethan wasn’t guilty, had I ruined my marriage in my

quest for the truth? A truth I was still no closer to finding out.

A truth I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know anymore. So far, it was buried deep beneath layers of lies and deceit.

My head buzzed with pressure, as if it was about to cave in, my