He Said/She Said(119)

The new kitchen island is laid out with formula and sterilising equipment. Beth is preparing a bottle. Fin sits on the floor, more or less in the spot where she fell and bled out. It has never seemed to bother Beth, living and working in the place she nearly died. Perhaps because it no longer looks like the murder room. I had to change it. The house was a crime scene for three days. While the CSIs took photographs and dusted and measured, the blood was seeping into the porous tiles. Even the team of cleaners they sent could not bleach it out. I had the whole space refitted with end-of-range tiles, half-price Ikea units and catering equipment that Mac got on the cheap. It looks like an operating theatre now. Losing the kitchen’s character is a small price to pay for losing the bloodstains too.

I can enter it now without flashbacks, but the dimensions are the same, and it’s impossible for me not to superimpose the old layout on the new. There stood the old fridge where we kept all my fertility drugs. There remains the window where we stood in the sunlight, the sooner to read the positive pregnancy test. There was the worktop where he cooked me dinner every night. There in the window was the radio that soundtracked our kitchen discos.

There is a kitchen table and chairs in place of the old-fashioned banquette and counter where Jamie Balcombe held me and Beth hostage. There is the threshold where Kit stood and watched, paralysed by what he saw and what I knew. And here, just to the right of the dishwasher, is where I turned my husband into a killer.

The ‘mad scramble’ for the knife we both described in court was nothing of the sort, although only I knew this.

I knew that Jamie had to die if we were all to live.

The sketch I had of what Kit had done sent me wild with fury. Let the blood be on your hands, I thought. I will not give birth in prison. I will not give up a second’s liberty for you.

All those years playing pool taught me about trajectory and precision, and I also learned how to bluff. I knew exactly what I was doing as my fingertips bounced the knife Kit’s way, and I watched with satisfaction as his faithless hand closed around the hilt.





Acknowledgements


Thanks to my fabulous new editor Ruth (I have thoroughly enjoyed my first Trossing), Louise Swannell, Leni Lawrence, Cicely Aspinall, Naomi Berwin, Penny Isaac, and all at Hodder and Stoughton.



To the wonderful team at United Agents: Sarah Ballard and Zoe Ross, Margaret Halton, Amy Mitchell, Joey Hornsby, Eli Keren and Georgina Gordon-Smith.



My learned friends: Daniel Murray, Bathsheba Cassell, Harriet Tyce, Gemma Cole and Chris Law. Special thanks are due to the author and lawyer Neil White, who answered a tweet asking for ‘five minutes’ of his time and was still fielding daily emails six months later. Any legal or procedural mistakes are mine, and there will be no further questions.



To the coven: Mel McGrath, Louise Millar, Jane Casey, Laura Wilson, Kate Rhodes, Sarah Hilary, Serena Mackesy, Helen Smith, Denise Meredith, Ali Turner, Alison Joseph, Katie Medina, Helen Giltrow, Louise Voss, Colette McBeth, Paula Hawkins, Tammy Cohen and Nikoline Nordfred Eriksen.



Thank you Helen Treacy and her indefatigable red pen, Sali Hughes for calling BS on hippies, and Julia Crouch and Claire McGowan for always knowing whether I need wine or tea.



Finally, and above all, thank you to my family: Mum and Jude, Dad and Susan, Owen and Shona. And to Michael, Marnie and Sadie. I love you.

I’d like to acknowledge the following resources:

Carnal Knowledge: Rape On Trial by Sue Lees

Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice by Helena Kennedy, QC

Total Addiction: The Life of An Eclipse Chaser by Dr Kate Russo

Totality: Eclipses of the Sun by Fred Espenak, Mark Littman and Ken Wilcox ‘Dancing in the Cosmic Sweet Spot’ blog: Graham St John





Read on for the first chapter of Erin Kelly’s gripping first novel





THE POISON TREE


I have given up so much and done so many terrible things already for the sake of my family that I can only keep going.



I do not know what is going to happen to us.



I am frightened, but I feel strong.



I have the strength of a woman who has everything to lose.



In the sweltering summer of 1997, strait-laced, straight-A student Karen

met Biba - a bohemian and impossibly glamorous aspiring actress.



She was quickly drawn into Biba's world, and for a while life was one long summer of love.



But every summer must end. By the end of theirs, two people were dead - and now Karen's past has come back to haunt her . . .





Chapter 1


September 2009


They had not yet charged him with anything. That was the main thing. As long as they didn’t charge him he could tell himself that he was there as a witness, not an accomplice. Paul looked around the cell. There was no window, just a row of square frosted glass bricks at the top of the wall that let in enough light to show that it was morning again but not enough to warm the cell. Outside it would be warm, hot even, if the days before were anything to go by. He remembered the short staircase he had descended to enter the plain little corridor with its studded doors and calculated that this part of the building was sunk into the ground. Its bare surfaces were all cold to the touch; he could feel the floor, cool and hard through his socks. The brown scratchy blanket hadn’t helped; Paul had spent the night alternating between using it as a pillow to stop himself getting neck ache and as a cover to stop himself shivering. The nightmares that had shaken him awake suggested he had managed some sleep, but he felt as though it had been weeks since he closed his eyes. He needed the toilet so badly that he had a cramp in his belly, but there was no paper next to the little steel bowl and he didn’t want to call out for any in case Daniel was nearby and heard him. He might even be in the next cell; the silence didn’t mean anything.