His & Hers(81)



Denying the truth doesn’t change the facts.

I was here the night Rachel Hopkins died.

In the woods.

I saw her walk along the platform after getting off the train, and I remember the sound that it made, because for some reason, it reminded me of her camera.

Clickety-click. Clickety-click. Clickety-click.

When I lost my presenting job, I went home and started drinking. But then I stopped. I got in the Mini and blew into my breathalyzer. I remember it turned amber, but that meant I was still safe to drive. I made the journey to Blackdown, because it was the anniversary of what happened—as well as my birthday—and I wanted to see her.

My daughter, not Rachel.

It was exactly two years since my baby girl died, and I needed to be close to her. It was Jack’s decision to bury her here in Blackdown, and I still hate him for it, but it’s a lovely cemetery with beautiful views. The church is on a hill, and the nearest parking lot is at the station. The only way to reach her grave is on foot, through the woods. I spent a few hours there, sitting in the dark, telling her all the stories I would have if she were alive. I still feel guilty about not saying something to Rachel when she walked straight past my car to get into her own that night. Maybe if I had, she wouldn’t be dead.

I hear something in the distance and it snaps me out of whatever melancholy I had slipped into. I don’t know whether Catherine Kelly is still following me, but I don’t plan to wait around to find out. I need to get myself, and my mother, away from the woods and somewhere safe.

“Come on, Mum, we need to go. It’s cold and it’s … dangerous out here.”

“Are you coming home, love?”

She asks the question with such happy optimism.

“Yes, Mum.”

“Oh, good. We’ll be there in less than ten minutes, I promise. Then I’ll put the kettle on, make us some honey tea, just the way you like it.”

“We’re only ten minutes from our house?” I ask.

She points confidently through the trees, and although it all looks the same to me—especially at night—I believe her. My mother might be forgetful, but she knows these woods better than she knows herself. I take her hand, surprised by how small it feels inside my own, and we walk as fast as we can. I hear every rustle of leaves, every snapped twig, and can’t stop myself constantly looking over my shoulder. Even if someone was there, following us, it would be too dark to see them.

“I think she knows,” says Mum, clearly confused again.

“Let’s try to be as quiet as we can, just until we get home,” I whisper.

“She has a badge, so I had to let her in.”

“Who?”

“The woman. She knows and now I don’t know what to do.”

My mother looks over her shoulder as though she hears something, and it does nothing to calm my nerves. We take a few more steps in silence, and I can’t help replaying her words. She’s mentioned a ponytail and a badge now, and it makes me think of the female detective working with Jack. The same one who just answered his phone.

“What do you think she knows, Mum?”

“I think she knows I killed your father.”

I’m so aware that someone is chasing us, but my feet stop working and I can’t move.

“Do you remember that day when you came home from school, and found me on the floor underneath the Christmas tree?” she asks. When I don’t answer she carries on. “Your dad had come home early from a work trip. He was drunk and hit me for no reason other than I’d been letting him do it for years. It started after you were born, but I thought I had to stay with him, for you and for money. I didn’t have any of my own, and no qualifications to get myself a decent job. I told myself I could put up with it until you were old enough to leave school. But he beat me so badly that day I thought I might die. Then he threatened to hurt you. Something snapped inside me when he did that, and I hit him back for the first time. It turned out to also be the last time, because he was dead.”

I can’t process her words; there seem to be too many of them. They are getting jumbled inside my head, and I can’t straighten them out into sentences that make any sense. People tend to see what they want in the people they love. They reshape them inside their heads, twisting them into the people they wish they were, instead of the people they are. But this isn’t real, it can’t be. My mother is not a murderer. This is the dementia or the drugs talking. But Cat Jones being Catherine Kelly is real, and I don’t doubt she is out here in the woods right now looking for me.

I take both of Mum’s hands and try to pull her along. But she’s stronger than she looks, and digs her bumblebee slippers into the ground.

“You didn’t kill Dad, I would have seen his body. You’re confused,” I tell her, but she just stares at me and refuses to budge.

“I hit him in the face with a cast-iron Christmas tree stand. I kept hitting him until he was dead, so that he couldn’t hurt you the way he hurt me. Then I buried him in the garden. I stuck him beneath the vegetable patch, and planted carrots and potatoes on top the following spring. I thought if I never moved house it would be okay, that he would never be found. But I think she knows, and if you are going to find out the truth, I want you to hear it from me.”

My emotions collide inside my head, getting bigger and taking on a new shape, like liquid mercury. I don’t want to believe her, but I think I do. Whatever she did or didn’t do all those years ago, we still need to get out of here now.

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