Finding Grace(73)

She’d completely forgotten she’d left the bath running upstairs.



Ironically, the bath flooding saved her. All thoughts of doing away with herself were forgotten and her practical side kicked in.

She locked the back door and bolted it, took a gulp of water straight from the tap and crawled upstairs on all fours, the wrenching ache in her lower abdomen worsening as she advanced.

When she reached the narrow landing at the top, something inside her seemed to take over. She turned off the bath taps, pulled out the plug and stepped across the soaked floor to take a quick shower.

After checking herself over and gingerly dabbing her body dry with the softest towel she could find, she was relieved to see that apart from the odd red carpet burn here and there, she had no other visible marks that would alert Blake that she’d been attacked.

She pulled on some elasticated leggings and a soft T-shirt and went back downstairs.

Before she could call Blake to come and help with the flood, her phone started ringing.

‘Blake?’

‘There’s been a terrible accident at the end of your road, Lucie, and I wanted to check you were safe and sound inside the house.’

Something made her drop the phone and walk ghost-like to the window.

A cluster of flashing blue lights and white emergency vehicles blocked the road to her right. She walked outside in bare feet. Stepping out on to the pavement, she saw other residents watching from their front gardens.

A little further up the road, a police officer stood talking on her radio.

Lucie padded towards her, focused on the vehicles.

‘Can I help you, love?’ the officer said, looking down at Lucie’s feet. ‘You really need to put something on your feet; broken glass flies out miles from collisions.’

‘What happened?’ Lucie said faintly, her heartbeat racing as she gained a better view of the smashed vehicles.

‘A three-way collision,’ the police officer said gravely, stepping in front of Lucie as she started to move again. ‘There are fatalities and life-changing injuries. Please stay where you are, madam. It’s not very pleasant up there.’

Lucie craned her neck around the officer and squinted at the tangled metal. She couldn’t stop staring at the white van with insignia and print on the side.

Its whole body was buckled and bent; it looked to have been virtually sheared in half.

She’d seen the van before. Four days earlier, parked at The Carlton, in fact.

It belonged to Stefan O’Hara.





Fifty-Two





Blake came over to mop up the flood. He took one look at her and put his arms around her.

‘You’re shaking. It’s OK, only a bit of water.’

She nodded, pressing her face into his warm chest.

‘You look terrible, Luce. Give me your house insurance details; I’ll sort it out for you. Go and sit in the lounge and I’ll—’

‘I can’t… I don’t want to sit in there,’ she said, calming her alarmed tone. ‘I’ll go up to bed if that’s OK. It’s probably just a bug.’

He made tea and brought it up to her.

‘It looks a mess but it’s not actually too bad. The ceiling hasn’t come down and it hasn’t affected the electrics.’

She didn’t care about the damage. She just wanted to get out of this house.

She waited for the conversation to come around to the accident. Blake made it his business to find out everything that happened in and around the community. He had good contacts in all the emergency services.

‘It’s terrible. Two dead and one with life-changing injuries, apparently.’

Please God, she prayed inwardly. Please let Stefan be dead.

‘The two dead are both female. A man has survived but is in a pretty bad way.’

‘Do you know what his injuries are?’

‘His legs were crushed, apparently. It’s bad. They’ve taken them all to the Queen’s Medical Centre.’

Damn. Damn. Damn. Her one chance to be rid of him for good, and he’d managed, as always, to escape.





Stefan didn’t die, but Blake said the doctor had told one of the traffic officers that he would be paralysed from the neck down.

Three days after the accident, and posing as a close friend, Lucie telephoned the Queen’s Medical Centre and got Stefan O’Hara’s ward details from the main reception.

At visiting time that evening, while Blake was attending a meeting at the town hall about a nearby power station, she entered the ward with the group of visitors waiting to see patients.

When she explained she was a friend of Stefan’s from university, a young nurse pointed out his bed. ‘He’s not awake very much; he’s been heavily sedated since his operation.’

‘Is it true what I heard… he’s paralysed from the neck down?’

‘I’m so sorry, yes. He can only move his head.’

Lucie walked over and gazed down at him. His eyes were closed, his face terribly pale. His arms, covered in tubes, already looked thinner, wasted.

He didn’t wake up. She’d rehearsed what she would say to him, how she would finally have power over him, but he never even knew she was there.

It didn’t matter. It felt as if she’d just emerged from a tiny locked room and walked into a wildflower meadow.