Page 73 of The Vow
When you want something enough, you’ll do anything. Lie.Cheat. Cut a vein, letting enough blood leak out to fill a small cellophane bag. It isn’t difficult to make a bouquet. There’s a certain justice about the flowers being dropped, the splashes of blood on skin, over the floor. It will always be there. The tiniest, most invisible microdroplets of me.
The old lady needn’t have died. But Mrs Guthrie thought she saw me delivering the flowers in a van. Remained silent when I told her they were a surprise. But was too much of a risk, too easy to deceive about the smoke pouring from her chimney. It didn’t take much to block it off when she invited me in.
Trust made everything so easy. Amy’s unlocked phone, no password on her laptop. The notebook she left lying about. Stupid, naïve Amy was fair game. My turn for my actions to create ripples. It didn’t matter who I brought down first. I knew eventually, I’d get to both of you. It was that secret you kept. All it would take was for one of you to talk, then I knew the other would be unable to remain silent.
But just to be sure, I sent the anonymous letter. Mentioning you, Fiona, just to make sure you didn’t escape. But I could just as easily have mentioned Amy. As I’ve said before, it didn’t matter. If there’s any justice, the police will convict both of you.
How could either of you think I ever loved you? Ridiculous Amy who let me walk all over her? Let me abuse, control, stonewall her; be vile to her precious daughter. And you, Fiona … However smart you think you are, however good at summing people up, you missed one important detail. People like me can’t love.
The knife in the workshop with Amy’s fingerprints on it, all that blood waiting to be found, even though they’ll never find a body, the burned-out car. All of that was me. But this was never about me. This was always for Kimberley and Charlie.
As I said in the message. Kill one man and you are a murderer. But you were guilty collectively of killing not just one person. Youended the lives of several. Back then, you didn’t know you had the power to change my life forever. Your actions creating waves, losses multiplying; touching more lives than you ever knew.
Justice remaining unserved. Until now.
Jess
I thought with my mother home, we could carry on with our lives. But when the case of Kimberley’s murder goes to court, I’m at her side as she’s forced to relive the day her sister died all over again. Only when Fiona is found guilty, then sentenced, is it possible to think about moving on.
Even though Matt’s threats towards me are added to the charges against him, fear still hangs over me. I can’t shake the unease that one day in the future, when I’m alone somewhere, just as he said, he will find me.
One morning, when I’m tidying the kitchen, under a pile of bills, I find a folded-up piece of paper. Opening it, I start to read.
I promise to hold your hand, to steer you through life’s sorrow and darkness, on a path towards justice and hope. I will endeavour to know what’s best for you, to protect you from your past, help you build the future you deserve. Then when I can no longer be with you, a part of me will always be with you, watching over you. In the shadows of your heart, on the soft curves of your skin, in the longest forgotten corners of your mind.
Feeling myself shiver, I read it again. ‘Mum?’ I wave the piece of paper at her. ‘I just found this.’
Coming over, she starts as she sees what it is. ‘Matt’s vows,’ she says quietly.
‘For your wedding?’ When she nods, I go on. ‘They’re gross. It’s like he’s pledging to control you.’
Her eyes are sad as she turns to me. ‘I suppose for a long time, he was.’
A piece of paper can be burned and that’s what we do with it, but it takes more time to rid the house of Matt’s reeking presence. To repair the garden to how it was before the police desecrated it. For the story to fade from the press. My mother and I can never go back to who we were, before. But we’re stronger.And we’ve survived, I remind her. If we survived this, can’t we survive anything?
After repainting the walls and replacing Matt’s horrible sofas with comfy second-hand ones, my mother thinks about renting out the house, until the alchemist’s curse weaves itself around her again. It’s the garden. The irony that the police destroyed it isn’t lost on me. We repair the flowerbeds, recover the salvageable plants, but we both know it’s never going to be the same.
Then I remember something she said once, about how you’re only ever the custodian of a garden. That in the end, it will be handed down to someone else. All the time she’s preserved her grandmother’s plants, she’s been punishing herself. But now that her innocence has been proved, that has to stop.
Kimberley is still here, remembered in the soft fragrance of the rosemary plants, the purity of the white rose. But alongside what remains of the memorial garden, my mother plants forget me nots and honeysuckle, crocus bulbs and yellow tulips, clumps of yarrow, white jasmine that will grow up the back of the house, cascading down around the sliding doors. In the newbeds, we plant pink and red rose bushes. Then as a finishing touch, in memory of Charlie, we plant a climbing rose at the base of the apple tree.
By the time she’s finished, grief and remembrance are no longer centre stage here. The garden tells a different story now. My mother’s story. Already it’s on her face, in her eyes as she looks around. No longer a place of sadness, haunting her with guilt, it’s a garden that tells a story of love.
Even so, inexplicably, a trace of Matt’s presence remains in the house, until one day, as I’m cleaning the kitchen, I find my mother’s engagement ring. Picking it up, I study its dull gold and heavy green stone. I never liked it, but now, I imagine it tarnished by Matt’s intention, noxious energy radiating from it. Keeping it away from my mother, that night, when she isn’t looking, I pull on my trainers and creep outside.
Clutching the ring tightly, I make my way to the furthest part of the garden. For a moment, I stand in the shadows, breathing in the cool air. It’s a still night, over the hedge, the bleached stubble field lit by an almost full moon. Still clutching the ring, I step back, then hurl it over the hedge, high into the air, watching it arc into the dark sky, glittering one last time in the moonlight, before disappearing from sight, forever gone.