Page 47 of The Good Girl

Chapter Forty-Six

Shane’s arms were wrapped protectively around Dee who looked like a scrawny sparrow in the nightie she’d not changed in far too long. She was holding on to him tight. He was kissing her head and stroking her cheek, tenderly pushing back a lock of hair from her eyes as she wept.

‘Get away from my sister. Get away from her NOW!’ Molly screamed.

Shane jumped and immediately let go and Dee pulled away, both wore expressions of those caught out, doing wrong, guilty.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ Molly’s voice wasn’t masking her anger and Dee’s wide eyes were reacting to the venom in it.

Shane recovered first. ‘I’m just comforting Dee. She was upset. She heard me and Magda having words so I was just explaining…’

‘Yeah, right… of course you were. Dee, come here, come to me. Keep away from him.’ Molly reached out and hoped her sister would take her hand but instead, she shied away.

‘Molly, stop it… Why are you being so nasty? Please don’t be like this…’ Dee whimpered as her words trailed off.

‘Dee, listen to me, I’m not being nasty I swear. But there are things you don’t know about Shane and other stuff… so you shouldn’t trust him, okay. I’ll explain later but for now, you have to believe me.’

Shane said nothing, just stood and watched like a wily cat, biding its time or maybe trying to work out what ‘things’ Molly knew.

‘Like what? Why can’t I trust him?’ Dee stared, and there was a hardness in her eyes that Molly didn’t expect.

‘Yes, Molly, what do you know? Perhaps it’s time you shared with the group.

Has Aunty Nancy been gossiping? I saw you both went out earlier so, do tell, what’s she been saying about me now?

’ Once the sickly smirk faded it was replaced by a challenge.

It was there, in his eyes saying, Go on, I dare you.

Molly’s face burned at his brazenness, and it caused something to snap.

It was all too much, and the thing that had been building inside all morning boiled over and spewed out in words, that even as she said them, she knew and didn’t care that they could never be taken back.

She looked him straight in the eye as she spoke to Dee, each syllable a weapon.

‘Dee, there’s something you should know about me and Shane, a huge secret and it’s going to really shock you.

’ She watched as his face tensed, a nerve at the corner of his eye twitched and for a beat, it looked like he was going to speak or move towards her, prevent her from saying out loud what he was. She beat him to it.

‘I found out today that Shane is my real dad but he already knew, ever since he married Mum and then, this is the really twisted bit, when she got fed up of him cheating on her, because that’s the kind of guy he is, he started blackmailing her, threatening to tell me the truth and ruin my memories of our lovely dad, Ronnie.

My dad, a decent man who will always be the best father in the world, who I will love forever, no matter what my genes say. ’

The day stopped. The three of them trapped for all eternity in a still-shot entitled – Truth on the Terrace by Molly Lassiter.

Dee’s hands were clutching her throat, her eyes so wide it looked like they’d pop right out and roll across the marble tiles. ‘No, that’s not true. Shane, is it true? Are you Molly’s dad?’

Dragging his eyes from Molly he at least did Dee the honour of looking at her while he replied.

‘Yes, it’s true, but maybe Mother Julia and Saint Nancy might have twisted the real version to suit themselves because I wanted to tell Molly from the start, but I was persuaded, emotionally blackmailed actually, into keeping quiet.

So let’s all remember who the injured party is here. Me. ’

Molly took an angry step forward and jabbed her finger in his direction.

‘BULLSHIT! You stole a sample of my DNA and then used the results as a bargaining tool to keep Mum under control while you made a fool of her at work and here in the village, sleeping with women from ClearGlass and God knows who else, so don’t you dare lie.

You were out for what you could get from the start and probably never even loved Mum, did you?

Go on, admit it, you sick perverted freak. ’

Shane looked like he’d been slapped. ‘I am not sick, or a freak.’

‘Oh yes you are! You deceived me, you lied and lied and lied so you could carry out your warped perversions…’

Molly stole a glance at Dee who was pacing, her hands clutching her head, muttering something intelligible, but she hadn’t finished with Shane.

Striding right up to his face – but not touching, she couldn’t bear that – she said under her breath, ‘Why, why did you do it? Have you done it before, with other sixteen-year-olds who’re too stupid to see what was happening to them? That they’re being groomed.’

A gasp from Shane, real shock, as though the thought had never occurred to him.

‘It wasn’t like that… not with you, what we had was love, a mutual thing that you wanted too, all of it, and there’s nothing wrong with that…

because you belong to me. You’re mine and I hated it, hated hearing you talk about Ronnie like he was a god when I was your dad.

You’re my daughter and it should’ve been me you were idolising not him. ’

Forgetting about Dee, as though there was just her and Shane left in the world, on a stage in a play starring themselves, she delivered her lines, unrehearsed yet from the heart.

‘Oh my God, you’re sick, properly mentally sick, and evil, you know that, don’t you?

You’re a paedophile, a pee-do-phile ,’ she said it slowly for effect, ‘and what we had or did was not love. It was incest, in-cest. Do you not get that? You groomed and manipulated me and played on my emotions when all the time you knew I was your daughter. You disgust me more than I disgust myself.’ Molly’s eyes blurred with angry tears as her core shook with pure hatred, the urge to slap him immense and then, sobbing…

They both turned to see Dee, her hands pressed on the stone balcony wall, her body hunched and shaking with sobs, causing Molly to race over, followed closely by Shane.

When Molly reached out to touch her, Dee turned and shoved her so hard she tumbled back into Shane, his touch making her skin crawl as he saved her from falling to the floor.

Dee’s face was red with rage, her eyes wild, a manic look taking over her pretty features making Molly recoil slightly.

‘Get away from me… get away…’ Dee pointed at Molly, her hand shaking. ‘You and him, you were together. I heard what you just said. That’s dirty, you’re disgusting, you were doing it with him. He was cheating on Mum, all the time, when she was sad and on her own, you were with HIM. ’

Dee screeched the last word and then began pacing, pulling at her hair, thumping her head with the ball of her hand and then she began rambling.

‘I’m sorry, Mum, I’m sorry… I didn’t know.

You were right, you were telling the truth…

I’m sorry I told him. Mummy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mummy… it’s all my fault… I didn’t mean it…’

Molly had to stop her. ‘Dee, Dee what do you mean? What did you say to Mum? DEE!’

Dee froze, blinked, like she was waking up from a dream and said, ‘It was me, who told Shane about the divorce. It was me that saw the email from Aunty Nancy and I told him, the day she died. I thought I was helping and if he knew then he could sort it out, make everything all right because I didn’t want them to split up.

I wanted us to stay a family but now I know…

and I wish I’d not told him. I started it all off and it’s my fault she’s dead, too. ’

Molly spun around to face Shane. ‘YOU! This is all because of you. Do you see what you’ve done to her, using her like you used me…’ But she halted mid-attack because Shane was looking over her shoulder and what he saw made his eyes widen.

Molly turned. Dee was climbing onto the balcony wall, on her knees, then standing, swaying and unsteady. Molly stepped forward slowly, her heart pounding, Shane by her side but slightly in front.

‘Dee, get down, don’t be silly now… please, Dee, get down.’ Molly held out her hand.

‘Go away. I hate you both. I want to be with Mum so I can see her and say I’m sorry. I don’t want to be here anymore with you and him, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’

‘Dee, sweetheart, there’s nothing to apologise for… you’ve not done anything wrong, nothing at all. You were trying to help and I know you hate me but please let me try to put it right.’

‘NO! You don’t understand. I was all my fault, ME!

I’m a bad person and I need to say sorry to Mum cos I didn’t believe her when she was right, about him,’ she pointed to Shane again, ‘and it’s been driving me mad and it’s there all the time, like a monster that won’t leave me alone and it’s eating my head.

’ Again Dee pounded her skull with her fist then started to pull at her hair.

‘Dee, you are not a bad person… I don’t understand why you’d think that. We all love you so much and want to help you get well so please, hold my hand and come down.’

‘I AM A BAD PERSON! Don’t you get it? Are you stupid? It was ME! I pushed Mum down the stairs. I killed Mum. I pushed her and left her at the bottom of the stairs to die on her own.’

Molly’s legs almost gave way and it was only the peril that Dee was in and the slap of shock, that kept her upright. ‘Dee, what do you mean?’ She kept her voice low and calm. ‘Why did you push Mum?’

Molly waited, focused on Dee whose eyes were swimming with tears, her face sweaty and smeared with snot, her unwashed hair matted and tangled, her skinny legs that poked from beneath her grimy nightie were covered in dust from the wall, her bare feet dirty and planted on the concrete just wide enough for her size fours. One wrong move and she’d fall.

‘I lied, to the police and everyone, because I didn’t stay in my room all night.

I fell asleep and then later, when I woke up, I was hungry and I wondered if Mum might be, too.

I wanted to check she was okay even though he told me not to.

When I got up there she was really drunk and weepy…

She told me Shane knew she was going to divorce him and they’d had a row, but it was going to be okay and the two of us would be fine together.

I was upset and told her she had to make it right and not be selfish and split up our family.

‘She got angry with me. Told me I didn’t understand and that he’d been cheating on her.

I didn’t believe her and said she was a piss-head and I wasn’t listening to her rubbish anymore.

I went to the stairs. She grabbed me and told me I had to listen to the truth then I’d understand, but I pulled away.

She went to grab me again and I lost it.

I was so mad and confused, so I pushed her really really hard and… she fell.’

Dee’s eyes had glazed over, lost in the distance, her voice hysterical and rambling.

‘She bounced and rolled and hit her head and I just stood there and watched and ever since that’s all I can see in my head when I’m awake and then when I go to sleep I have dreams…

I can’t do it anymore and don’t want to be here with you or him or anyone, I just want to be with Mum… ’

It happened so fast. Dee’s right leg moved, as though she was about to run somewhere, but it slipped over the edge, her knee gave way and in the split of a second, her body crumpled and toppled backwards.

Shane lunged forward just in time to grab her left ankle, the sickening thud of Dee’s body as she hit the wall below turning Molly’s stomach.

Frozen to the spot, Dee’s confession slowly sinking in, Molly gasped for air and looked on, paralysed. Shane, the top half of his body hanging over the balcony, both hands now gripped around Dee’s ankle, was straining to hold on.

Dee killed Mum. Oh God. It was Dee. She killed my mum.

‘Molly, help me, I can’t hold her much longer… Molly, help… she’s going to fall.’

Shane’s panicked voice made Molly jump. Her brain functioned again, click click click. Leaping forward, two huge strides, and she was there.