Page 49

After the fire had ravaged St Nicholas’s, Clark had visited while the firefighters had let us see what little we could salvage.

I still remembered Clive glaring at him, furious, as someone explained that the small trinkets I called toys had been completely burnt to ash.

I couldn’t take it in, I was just wondering where Edith’s body was being carried away to, and how I had so utterly failed to save her.

I have no real memory of when and how we were taken away from my parents by social services, but for as long as I could remember, protecting Edith had always been my responsibility.

Wasn’t that what older sisters did? You don’t want to know how devastating failing at that would feel for a little girl.

But a memory I can recall even more vividly, was looking up at Clark, who stood there like some kind of aristocrat gazing down at a street urchin.

The man who had promised us that everything was going to be all right, that we wouldn’t be going to bed cold or hungry anymore.

He had sworn to us he was going to fix everything for us at St Nicholas’s.

Yet of course, he and his powerful friends had covered it all up as a freak accident so that no one would even remember what happened to Edith.

Even then, I was old enough to know that this man and cronies had let this happen. He had let my little sister die, and I remember thinking how good it would feel to kill him. Right there and then, I made a vow to myself that if I ever got the chance to in the future, I would take it.

Predictably, the St Nicholas’s fire was traced by investigators to an electrical fault caused by outdated wiring, apparently completely unforeseen by everyone. But not to Clark. He’d known full well about it.

My skin throbbed with a deep, anxious energy now as I watched that same man give a warm smile to the judge, shake the bailiff’s hand, and swear vivaciously on the Bible. He and Isla exchanged what seemed like polite greetings as she approached him.

‘Mr Clark, thank you for being able to join us today.’

‘Oh, it’s my pleasure.’ He rethought the word. ‘My honour,’ he amended.

‘You knew Gordon O’Neill well, is that correct?’

‘I knew him very well for fifty or so years, although we did fall out of touch in the past fifteen years or so. He lived some hundred miles or so away and we just…lost touch.’

That was a lie. They all stayed in touch; that was why they wore the rings.

‘As is prone to happen to good friends,’ Isla said warmly as she looked through her notes. ‘Could you describe Gordon O’Neill to me, please?’

‘As nice and as human as they come. A really warm, nice fellow who was nothing but sweet, generous and kind. He was part of our Heart of Hope Foundation, a little group of us middle-aged men in the community who wanted to give back, make a difference to those less fortunate.’

The way he described it made me want to projectile vomit onto the people sitting below me, right then and there.

‘And the late Thomas Macleod?’

‘Thomas, a fine fellow, real salt of the earth kind of chap. Don’t have a bad word to say about him, God rest his soul.’

My fingers wrapped around my thighs to give them something to squeeze, my leg tapping against the carpeted floor of the dock.

In my peripheral vision, I could see one of the officers glance at me, bewildered by my shift from existential boredom to sheer, unadulterated fear.

Clark wouldn’t incriminate himself now, surely?

He couldn’t truly say how we were connected.

In doing that, everything would come spilling out, right?

‘Were there any other connections between the three of you? Anyone else who knew you three at all?’ Isla asked.

‘Not really, other than our family and friends, but it’s not like we all went to work in the office together. We mostly had our other lives to get on with, but we would come together once a week or so to do good work for our community.’

‘Thank you, Mr Clark. Would you now be able to clarify to the jury if you have seen the woman on the stand before?’

A hot shiver pulsed through my body as Clark’s head rotated and his eyes fixed on me. He’d always had a flair for the dramatic, and he trembled now as he leaned forward.

‘I have. She came into my shop a few weeks ago.’

I gulped.

‘And how would you describe her? How did she come across?’ Isla questioned. ‘And please remember that you are under oath, so be as honest and candid as possible.’

‘An abrupt, cold lady, to tell the honest truth. Savage, I thought. I honestly thought she was going to kill me, especially when I saw that she was holding onto a knife.’

I almost heard the full-time whistle. That was it. The jig was up.

The rest of the trial was white noise. There was no coming back from this.

No way could Andrew describe that as a pure coincidence.

Macleod, O’Neill, and how serendipitous it was that I had driven a hundred miles from my home to see the final member of the trinity.

The only thing they didn’t have from me was a motive, but Andrew and I both understood that if Clark further elaborated on the connection between me and the three of them, it would only give Isla more ammunition to prove that I’d killed O’Neill.

It wouldn’t matter how awful we painted O’Neill as being, it would only give the jury more reason to think I killed him.

I couldn’t even bear to look in the direction of Gareth in the gallery. How could I? I had thrown everything away, but the worst part of it all – the rotting feeling gobbling away inside of me – was that I still didn’t regret anything I’d done.

I think I would have done it again.

The trial was done for the day, and after the judge banged her gavel, the crowd slowly began to disperse and filter out, most glancing in my direction to see how low I was hanging my head.

I looked for Gareth, but he wasn’t there any more.

I expected he’d left a while ago, and I couldn’t say I blamed the man; he’d made his exit for good.

I guess I could expect the divorce papers in prison.

I had hated omitting major sections of my life over the course of our marriage, but what else could I have done?

Let him see me for how fucked up I truly was?

How was anyone meant to make a partner out of someone like me?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, Gareth was still a prick for getting me arrested, but he didn’t have to say sorry for me to forgive him. He didn’t know who I was any more.

‘Time to go,’ one of the policemen said as I finally relieved myself of the numbness in my legs. They led me through the various clandestine hallways of the courthouse before leading me outside and down the courtroom steps. They didn’t even ask if I needed a wee.

As they forcefully guided me through yet another set of grand corridors with spotless marble floors and vast, cavernous ceilings, the crowd gushed and surged around us.

Some yanked their phones from their pockets and began filming, while those who I assumed were members of the press hurled questions that I couldn’t make out through the steady refrain of the police officers: ‘Keep moving, don’t stop, keep moving. ’

But then, as if yanked by some invisible force, my eyes fixed on a single face within the horde of people. A scruffy, gaunt, bearded man. It took only a moment, a heartbeat, to realise it was Gareth. My Gareth.

Wait, was he still my Gareth?

Before we even had a moment to lock eyes like a scene from a cheesy rom-com where the female love interest gets arrested for brutally killing her neighbour, I was dragged away by one of the burly officers.

I tried to twist my neck at a precarious angle to get another sight of him, but he was already lost in the throng.

I hadn’t realised how much it would hurt to see him again.

I wondered if he was feeling the same kind of hurt.

When they led me outside, the sun was falling just below the skyline, a few people around us enjoying the last bit of golden hour.

I took a fraction of a second to enjoy the sun beaming on my face one last time without it being obscured by a wire fence.

I opened my eyes again as I watched my feet, careful not to trip on the stone court steps leading down to the van.

But there he was. Not twenty feet away from me. Clark.

He hadn’t seen me. He was shaking, bumbling as he tried to talk to Isla, but she was too busy tapping away on her phone to really take much notice of him, both of them standing next to my ride.

I could do it.

The policeman’s grip around my arm was limp. With enough swift force, I could easily slip out of it. They hadn’t made me wear handcuffs, which was something of a double-edged sword – handcuffs would have probably been the easiest way to snap his neck.

I had seconds to formulate a plan. Isla and Clark had barely noticed me approach them. One of the officers took his hand off me for a second to grab the keys to the back door of the van.

I knew how I was going to do it. I would charge into him as fast as I could, to knock him into the road.

A car might take both of us out, which would be the best scenario, but if it didn’t, I would pummel into him with my fists again and again until his skull was crushed.

I would have about three seconds to do it, so I predicted I had about three strong punches to kill the man stone cold dead, right there and then.

I didn’t have time to scan my surroundings, but I hoped and prayed that Gareth wasn’t here to see this.

I yanked my arm out of the officer’s grip.

‘MADAM,’ he shouted.

I planned my trajectory, launched off with my legs and leapt towards Clark, but someone caught me mid-flight.

‘Let me go!’ I screamed.

The strong hands clasped me tight as the officers quickly snatched my upper arms and dragged me back, people erupting into chaos amongst the flash of phones and cameras.