Page 49 of The Good Girl

MANCHESTER AIRPORT

Of course I was never going to hand myself in.

Not even when the cab driver asked, ‘Where to, love?’ You see it doesn’t matter where I am, in Styal Prison or Skiathos, I’ll never be able to atone for what I’ve done, not properly, and neither will I ever be able to forget.

They could lock me up for the rest of my life and it won’t bring Dee back, or Mum. I really don’t care about Shane.

I will always have reels and reels of footage in my head that will sneak up behind me when I least expect, or while I sleep, and remind me that I’m bad to the core. In which case I might as well make the best of life when I can, in between the moments of self-loathing and hatred.

During this past year I have counselled myself, and me and myself have concluded that confessing would only cause more damage, to Harley, Magda and most of all to my grandparents and Nancy.

There’s no way I can tell my truth without really telling my truth, and what a twisted individual Shane was.

Not without exposing a young girl who, from what I believe, has just moved into a place with her boyfriend.

With the demise of Shane she became debt free, and the compensation money I paid into her account bought her a nice little runabout when she passed her test. It was the least I could do, I suppose.

And it was nice to make someone happy for a change, seeing as I turned into The Grim Reaper’s little helper.

My grandparents have been through enough, losing a daughter and granddaughter, and Nancy, well, I think it would kill her if she knew what her only remaining niece had done.

She’s been such a huge help this past year, guiding me through what came after, helping me sell the house and finding somewhere new to live, off-loading the company of which I am no longer the owner.

I was adamant that I wanted it all gone.

My past life erased. Then I could start a new one elsewhere.

I couldn’t stay in the village not after it came out about Shane, and what they found in that safe.

Magda’s suspicions were well founded. There were memory sticks loaded with child porn.

A MacBook full of indecent images of young girls.

Yates didn’t go into detail but it’s not like I can’t imagine, is it?

And thankfully, no cheat phone with my number on it.

I had a lot of sleepless nights over that.

Waiting for a knock on the door from Yates.

I can only presume Shane got rid of it, thank fuck.

As for Shane, I had him burnt. And left the ashes at the crematorium.

I don’t care what happens to them and neither did his family who didn’t collect them, either.

Dee is with Mum and Dad in the cemetery and it makes me sad that I won’t be visiting them, but how can I?

What would I say? It’s better that I leave them behind because they’re better off without me. Everyone is.

I’ve tried to do good things though. As well as looking after Harley who is now at uni and her fees taken care of, I paid Magda and Erik’s mortgage off and made sure his job was secure at ClearGlass when it was bought out.

In fact, all of the staff were taken care of that way.

It was Mum and Dad’s pride and joy, mine and Dee’s legacy, but now she’s gone and I certainly don’t deserve to have my name associated with it. Not after everything I did.

The autopsy showed cause of death to be a result of multiple head and internal injuries sustained after the fall.

Yates was convinced it was something far more sinister but couldn’t prove it.

Despite everyone’s concerns about the contents of Shane’s safe and what he may have done to Dee, there was nothing to indicate she’d been assaulted physically or sexually by Shane, or if they’d fallen over during a tussle.

Only I know the truth about it all, and what happened that day on the roof. That’s what I have to live with. The guilt and the images.

Of my sister, her eyes swimming with tears, her face sweaty and smeared with snot, her unwashed hair matted and tangled, her skinny legs poking out from beneath her grimy nightie, bare feet covered in dust. Or of a desperate tormented girl, her body lay amongst twisted metal and glass, her face slashed and smashed, her bones bent and broken lying amongst splatters of blood and brain.

But it’s her eyes, those wide, staring unseeing eyes that still look into my soul, accusing and disappointed. They torment me.

I hate that, because I’ve forgiven her for killing Mum and after all, I was only trying to put things right.

The solution had seemed so simple when it came to me, like dawn on the horizon lifting the load I carried, untangling the mess in my head.

Shane had to be punished and Dee had to be saved from the hell she was living in.

Both of them knew my dirty shameful secrets and I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone finding out.

So instead of reaching for Dee and helping Shane to haul her up, I grabbed both of his ankles.

It was so easy, because the weight of Dee’s body provided momentum, and once his feet were off the ground, after a good heave-ho, aided by gravity, over he went.

I heard him scream. Dee made no noise. Then the sound of them hitting the table directly below, a thud then crunching and smashing, followed by nothing.

I didn’t look over the edge. I went downstairs.

Sat in the lounge for a while. Got my head straight.

Then I opened the bi-folds. I didn’t expect either of them to survive but I had to check and when I saw them, that grim scene, I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Nancy.

I never took my eyes off Dee the whole time.

It was like a self-punishment and it induced a real moment of sorrow and shock, a purging of sorts, emitting the toxins that had infected my life for the past two years and it all came gushing out in one long, garbled, hysterical message.

So what Nancy and Magda and the police saw when they got there was real. Me, the multi-millionaire murderer, the incestuous liar, the coward who is running away from her mistakes and currently sitting in first class, waiting on the tarmac for her flight to take off.

I’m en route to Princeton to take up the place I deferred and invent a brand-new Molly. The good girl version. But first a stopover in Toronto, to see Nancy. The only person who knows my last secret. So far she’s stayed silent. I need to make sure it stays that way.

THE END