Where the Memories Lie (36 page)

it for her.’

She shrugged. ‘Yeah, I asked her. She said anything in the box

could go.’

‘Do you really need to get everything out on the kitchen

worktop?’

She peered into the bottom of the box. ‘But I’m looking for

the necklace that was in here. Did you see it?’ She turned to look

at me. ‘It’s silver but it looks kind of dirty, and it’s got a pendant of a sun and a star on it with some writing on the back. It’s not here anymore.’

Icy fingers of dread clamped over my scalp. ‘Necklace?’

‘Yeah. I think . . .’ She scrunched up her face. ‘I think it must’ve fallen out.’

‘Fallen out,’ I repeated, sounding like a parrot.

‘I was stretching up, trying to put the box on the shelf above

but it was too heavy and it tipped over. Some of the stuff fell onto the floor. I picked up everything I could see, but I must’ve missed it. It’s probably still on the floor in there somewhere.’

I stared at her but I wasn’t really listening.

‘Mum?’ She waved a hand in front of my face.

I snapped to attention, standing up and retrieving the necklace

from the drawer. ‘Do you mean this?’

She reached out for it. ‘Hey, you found it! Thanks, Mum.

I think I could get quite a bit for it if I clean it up. You’ve got some silver cleaner, haven’t you?’

I enclosed it in my clenched hand. ‘Where did you get it from?’

I asked.

So she told me.

273

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chris opened his front door, looking even worse than

before, if that was possible. A waft of alcohol fumes

engulfed him. He smelled like Rose, and it made me want

to throw up all over him.

‘Hi,’ he said to me, then turned to Anna and ruffled her hair.

He stood back. ‘Come in.’

I followed him into the kitchen. Lucas sat there nursing a coffee,

although judging by the half-empty whisky bottle on the table, it

was laced. We’d need shares in a distillery at this rate. His usually tanned skin was pale and shiny, as if he was one of those lifeless wax dummies at Madame Tussaud’s.

‘I’m so sorry about Charlotte,’ I said to him.

He sighed. Ran a hand over the back of his neck. ‘Yeah. We’re

all sorry. Don’t know if that’s going to do her any good, though.’

‘Is she OK?’ Anna asked him.

He laughed. It sounded bitter. ‘She’s up in her room. She’s

looking forward to seeing you.’

Anna galloped out of the room as fast as her legs would carry her.

‘Where’s Nadia?’ I asked.

Where the Memories Lie

Lucas pointed through the open bi-fold glass doors out into the

garden. At the end was a wooden bench overlooking their pond.

Nadia sat with her back to us, smoking.

‘She’s started smoking again?’

‘Me, too.’ Lucas picked up a packet of cigarettes on the table

and dropped them back down.

‘That’s not going to help.’

‘Thank you, Nurse.’ He shrugged.

‘Want a drink?’ Chris tilted his tumbler in my direction.

I looked at it. ‘No. And you should give it a rest, too. How

much are you drinking at the moment?’

He wouldn’t meet my gaze. ‘Who cares?’

‘You just missed Ethan,’ Lucas said.

My heart jolted in my chest. I’d accused my husband of murder.

I hadn’t trusted him. Hadn’t believed his explanation. Automatically, I’d believed the worst of him. How could I ever have thought he was capable of something like that? I was a horrible person. Would we

ever be able to get back from that? Jagged shards of remorse ripped at my heart.

There was no time to think about it now, though. I pushed the

thoughts into a corner of my mind to deal with later and walked

outside towards the pond. There was a swell of dark clouds moving

in. The wind danced on my skin. A summer storm was on its way.

The end of the heat wave.

I sat next to Nadia. She kept her eyes fixed on the water, blow-

ing out a line of blue-grey smoke before throwing the butt on the

grass and squashing it with her sandal.

I pulled the necklace out of my pocket and held it out to her in

my palm. ‘Do you remember this?’

She looked at it. Frowned. It took a while, maybe half a minute,

for the light of something to spark behind her eyes. I thought it

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was recognition, but I couldn’t be certain because her gaze whipped away from me.

She took another cigarette from a packet resting on the bench,

even though she’d just put one out, and lit it with a shaky hand. She inhaled deeply. ‘No, I don’t recognise it. Why?’

‘Don’t lie to me, Nadia. Anna found it when she was going

through your things for the car boot sale. She found it in the magic box Tom gave you for your twenty-first.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She flicked the ash

off her cigarette a few times. ‘Anna must be mistaken. There was

nothing in that box. She must’ve got it from somewhere else.’

I leaned forward and gripped her arm. ‘Chris said Katie was

wearing this the day she ran away. How did you get it?’

I prayed to be wrong again. Wanted with all my heart to be

wrong.

‘I don’t know anything about it.’ She shook my hand off and

laughed, but I knew that laugh. I’d heard it many times over the

years. It was higher than usual, a tinkling sound she took on when

she was nervous.

I gripped her arm again, harder this time. ‘Nadia. Do. Not.

Lie. To. Me.’ I pronounced each word slowly, the tone of my voice

letting her know I wasn’t going to drop this. ‘I want to hear it from you. You owe me the truth. Or do you want me to go inside and tell

everyone else about what I’ve found?’

She looked down at my hand that held the necklace, then closed

her eyes briefly, her blonde lashes fluttering against her cheeks. She inhaled on the cigarette. Exhaled slowly. Opened her eyes.

‘If you don’t tell me, I’m going in there right now to show them

this.’ I jabbed a finger towards the bi-fold doors into the kitchen beyond and stood up.

‘Wait!’ She grabbed hold of my arm. ‘Wait.’ She pulled me

back down again. She took a deep breath and licked her lips. ‘I’d

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forgotten all about it,’ she said softly. ‘All this time and I’d completely forgotten. It was . . .’

‘What? It was what?’

‘It was mine.’

‘Yours? Then why—’ And I suddenly knew. ‘Katie stole it from

your room, didn’t she?’

She stood stiffly and glanced into the house. She smoothed her

sundress down with her hands, threw the cigarette on the ground

next to the last one and ground it into the grass. ‘Let’s go for a walk and I’ll tell you everything. Not here, though. I don’t want to do it here. Not with everyone around.’

We walked down the street, heading towards our usual dog-

walking path along the side of the barn and into the woods. We

didn’t say a word. My heart felt heavy with adrenaline, anger,

resignation and sadness. The sky was black over our heads now. In

the distance I could hear thunder, see the spikes of lightning flashing on the horizon. The air was thick with electricity. When we got through the woods and came out into the sprawling fields that led

over the hills to Abbotsbury, she finally spoke.

‘Yes. Katie stole that necklace from me. Lucas had just bought

it for me, and I couldn’t believe she was wearing it that day.’

I grabbed her shoulder and spun her round to face me. ‘How

did you get it back, Nadia? What happened?’

Her anguished eyes stared into mine, glistening with tears. She

folded her arms across her chest and gripped her elbows.

Thunder rumbled over our heads.

I clutched both her shoulders. ‘Tell me what happened.’

She bit her trembling lip. ‘Katie was sleeping with Lucas.

I caught them at it one day. Over there, in the woods.’ She pointed back to where we’d just emerged. ‘Do you remember Sparky, our

old dog? I was walking him. He was a bugger for running off when

he wasn’t on the lead. He’d caught sight of a squirrel or something 277

Sibel Hodge

in the distance and belted off through the trees, so I was off the

beaten path looking for him. I heard them before I saw them. Lucas

had his back to me, sitting on this fallen log. She was on top, facing my direction. I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe he was cheating on me. I love him, Liv.’ She sank to her knees, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. ‘Love him with all my heart.’

Rain started to pour down in fat pellets. A bolt of lightning lit

up the sky.

‘What, so you killed her to get her out of the way? How cold

and callous can you be?’ I shrieked.

‘No,’ she wailed. ‘No, it wasn’t like that. She . . . um . . . she

looked up when she was fucking him. I don’t know if she saw

me through the trees but she had this weird smile on her face.

Triumphant. Part of me wanted to run over there and punch both

of them, but I didn’t. I covered my mouth to stop myself screaming

and ran home, trying to think of what to do.’ Her head dropped

back and she turned her face up to the sky, her tears mingling with the rain, and she groaned. ‘I was hoping it was just a one-off. That it wasn’t going to happen again. I could deal with that. I could forget about it.’

‘So what did you do?’ I sank down next to her, ignoring the

water lashing down, soaking my hair and clothes, dreading the next

words out of her mouth.

She didn’t speak. Just stared in the distance.

‘What did you do, Nadia?’ I yelled over the thunder.

‘I kept an eye on Lucas. When he wasn’t with me, I followed

him,’ she said, head bowed.

‘
What
?’

‘I’m not proud of it, but I couldn’t lose him. Not Lucas. He’s

the love of my life. My soul mate. He’s everything to me. I couldn’t lose him to
her.
’ Her shoulders stiffened. ‘But as far as I knew he never saw her again, so it was a shock when months later I was at

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his house and she put a letter through his door. Lucas never knew.

He was in the shower and I was in the kitchen cooking dinner for

us. His parents were away for the weekend so we were making the

most of having their house to ourselves. I heard the letterbox go,

and when I looked out the window she was going back down the

path. So I opened the envelope and inside was a letter that said she had to meet him on Sunday at the barn. She knew there would

be no one there on a Sunday, and it would be somewhere private

they could talk. It said she had something of his and she wanted

to make sure he paid for it. I thought she’d stolen something from

him at first. I didn’t think she could be pregnant.’ Nadia let out an almighty sniff. ‘So I went instead of Lucas and . . .’ she trailed off, shaking her head.

‘Go on,’ I said stiffly, guts churning.

‘We were in what would be the kitchen now at the back of the

house. All the doors and windows were fitted so there was no chance we could be heard from the outside, but the place was still unlocked while the other contractors were coming in to do stuff. She was

obviously pretty surprised I was there and not Lucas.’ Nadia took a deep breath. Held it. ‘Everything happened in a hazy blur of anger.

I told her to leave him alone. She laughed at me and said it was too late for that. I noticed she had my necklace on.
My
necklace that Lucas had given me and she’d stolen. I tried to grab it but she darted away from me. She undid the chain and threw it at me, saying

she’d let me have it back, seeing as she had something much more

valuable now. I put the necklace in my pocket and asked her what

the hell she was talking about. That’s when she told me she was

nearly six months pregnant. She’d waited all this time to tell anyone so no one could try and talk her into getting rid of it. She said she wanted money from Lucas to support her and the baby or she was

going to say he’d raped her and get him put in prison.’

I cupped my hands around my mouth and sucked in a breath.

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‘I told you she was a liar. I think she did it on purpose, you

know – got pregnant. She wanted one of the rich boys from the

village so she could use him to get away from Rose and Jack. She

didn’t get anywhere with Chris so she tried it with Lucas. She used him to get herself knocked up, although obviously he didn’t need

much persuading.’ She let out a laugh devoid of any humour.

‘She was fucking pregnant, for God’s sake! She was about to be

a mother!’ I wiped the hair now sticking to my forehead away from

my face and shivered involuntarily.

‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I was screwed up with emotion.

When she told me about the baby and the rape I just snapped. She

was prepared to get Lucas sent to prison if he didn’t go along with her blackmail. And she didn’t give a toss about anyone she hurt in

the process. So—’ She stopped abruptly. Stared at the ground, tears splashing down her cheeks, mingling with the rain.

‘They wouldn’t have found Lucas guilty of rape! Especially

not back then, when rape convictions were rare and there was no

evidence. Was that worth killing her over?’ I cried.

‘I just lashed out and pushed her. It was one split second!

I didn’t realise how hard at first, but I was raging with anger

and jealousy. She fell backwards and hit her head on a pile of