Page 53

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CALIFORNIA, 2011

My fingers prod at the digits on Zoe’s cell phone in a frantic attempt to call Cassie back.

“I swear, if you do anything to hurt them…” I cry when it goes to voicemail.

“What the hell’s going on?” asks Ben, perplexed.

I turn the phone to show him the photo Cassie has sent and he looks at it blankly, none the wiser.

“She’s in my house,” I say, as a searing heat wraps itself around me, making me feel as if I’m about to pass out. I look at my watch blindly, unable to see the time as my brain tries to work out where Brad and Hannah might be right now. But I don’t even know what day it is anymore, my mind a jumbled mess.

A red mist descends as I dare to contemplate the hundred miles or more that stand between me and my family. How will I ever make it in time? How will I ever forgive myself if I don’t? I head to the door, knowing that I can’t stay here, the reason I came no longer important.

“Wait, what about the letter?” Ben calls out after me. “What did it say?”

“Where are you going?” asks Zoe, seemingly oblivious to the threat Cassie poses.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “This was a mistake.”

The rush of blood in my ears is deafening as I get in the car and slam it into drive. “Please pick up,” I wail as the call to Brad’s phone goes unanswered again and again.

I recall the image on Zoe’s phone, of Cassie sitting on Hannah’s bed, waiting for my sweet girl to get home from school. What will she say when she sees her “auntie” there? Will she call out in innocent surprise? Or will Cassie do something to silence her before she has the chance? I swallow the hot bile that rushes to the back of my throat every time I’m forced to imagine the worst-case scenario, and try Hank instead.

“Hank, she’s at the house,” I cry into the phone as soon as he picks up. “She’s got Brad and Hannah…”

“Who has?” he says in a rush.

“My sister—the woman behind it all… She’s at the house. Brad’s not answering his phone and I’m going as fast as I can but…”

“OK, I’m heading there now,” he says, and I can’t help but feel pathetically grateful that he’s not going to ask any more questions.

“Please hurry,” I sob, pressing the gas pedal down to the floor.

Miles pass, but I have no recollection of them as my macabre thoughts take over my entire being. I imagine Brad being forced to watch as Cassie carries out her threat. How far will she go to protect herself? Does she really believe that holding my family for ransom will keep her secret safe? Does she not realize that I stand to lose them anyway once the truth comes out?

When I finally admit that I killed Michael Delaney.

If it weren’t for the heroin I got from Larry outside Dallinger’s that night. If I’d not stupidly left it in my rucksack. If I’d not told Cassie of my plan for revenge…

Who knows whether I would have been brave enough to plant it on Michael myself, safe in the knowledge that a phone call to the police was all that would have been needed to bring about his downfall. But that’s all that it was ever supposed to be. A wake-up call, to let him know that he couldn’t carry on walking around as if he was untouchable. I wanted him to know what it felt like to have your dignity stripped, your innocence snatched away…

I was going to do it for Cassie—to show her that people don’t get to do what Michael did to her and get away with it. But my bravery had deserted me just as her impatience had seemingly kicked in.

I realized the heroin was missing just before Ben called to say that Cassie had been at the press conference. I daren’t imagine what she might do with it, but in that moment all I could think was that she would use it to do herself harm, such was her desolation.

But it seemed that that was never her intention.

“What the fuck happened?” I’d screamed at her as we were released from police custody after being held until the early hours after Michael’s death. They’d wanted to know who I was, why I was there, my relationship to Cassie and the troubling connection between me and the man who had been found hunched over Michael’s body, covered in his blood.

“They said Dad was trying to resuscitate him,” I’d cried, as panic threatened to block my airways. “What was he doing there? Does he know that you gave Michael the heroin?”

Cassie had looked at me, wide-eyed.

“You need to tell me what happened,” I’d yelled. “If they find out you took the drugs from me and gave them to Michael, we could both go to prison for a very long time.”

Her brow had creased. “I didn’t give the drugs to Michael,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, thank god.” I sagged with relief. “So, it wasn’t my drugs that killed him?”

She’d bitten down on her lip, knowing that even one wrong answer could get her in deep water.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said, after what felt like an eternity. “Because I gave them to Ben.”

“Fuck!” I yelled, my brain about to explode with the myriad of ensuing consequences. “What did you do that for?”

“He wanted to get high, and I thought it might make him love me again,” she said.

I’d held on to the railings outside Charing Cross station to stop my knees from buckling as a tsunami of responsibility washed over me.

“But he went straight to Michael’s room with it,” Cassie went on.

I’d headbutted the unforgiving metal railings, drowning in a sea of guilt and deceit.

“It was Ben who killed him,” she said, making it sound as if he’d done it with his own bare hands.

And I’d believed her. Until now .

I bang my hands on the steering wheel, swerving dangerously close to the central reservation as I dare to imagine how my father must have tortured himself over the past twenty-five years.

It’s not difficult to envisage his heart-stopping panic when he realized his daughter was guilty of so much more than she cared to admit. And when the evidence against Ben began to mount, he must surely have wondered what harm it would do to add a little context to keep the police focus on the undeniable facts: his highly publicized drug habit, the fight in front of the world’s press, the threats to kill, Michael’s blood on his T-shirt, his jacket that lay casually draped behind Michael’s corpse.

Maybe my father had convinced himself that he didn’t see what he knew he saw. Maybe he was so intent on keeping Cassie out of the picture that his guilty conscience was easy to ignore. I can almost sympathize with the cross he’d had to bear, because now that my own family are at risk, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect them.