Page 62

Chapter 61

Anna

‘Where have you been?’ snaps Drew the moment I enter the kitchen.

I’ve barely set foot over the threshold and he’s already gunning for me. His tone creates a tension in my body, and the intensity of just those few words is like a weight pressing down on my chest. I hold up four bulging bags of supermarket shopping.

‘Where do you think?’ I reply casually, trying to defuse a situation before it arises.

‘You need to see this.’

He thrusts his iPad in front of my face like a weapon. It’s too close to make out what’s on it.

‘Let me put these away first,’ I say and place the bags on the countertop. ‘The rest are in the car if you want to help?’

‘Joanna!’ he says with a raised voice. I bristle and his last aggressive outburst jumps to mind. I placate him because I don’t want to risk a repeat performance.

‘Okay, what’s so important?’

We take seats at the kitchen table. He is where that detective was when Drew killed him. We never talk about it but I wonder if he replays it in his head as often as I do?

Drew’s face and body are animated. A chapter from our long-shared history reappears, a time when amphetamines were part of his day-to-day routine and long before alcohol became the norm. Is he using again?

‘The evening of Liv’s hit-and-run,’ he begins. ‘You know I was on my way home from work and drove past the spot where they later found her?’

We argued about this previously when I asked if he had any involvement. I remain unconvinced by his angry denials because he is often all too willing to climb behind the wheel of a vehicle while over the drink-drive limit. If he hasn’t hurt Liv, it’ll be someone else.

‘And?’ I ask.

‘This morning, I woke up remembering something. A car parked by the side of the road.’

‘Whose car?’

His irises widen, like unnavigable black holes. ‘Margot’s,’ he says.

‘Margot’s?’ I repeat.

Now he’s like one of those toy nodding dogs.

‘And you suddenly remembered this today. Three weeks after the accident.’

‘You think I’m lying?’ he asks in disbelief, throwing himself back in his seat.

‘No, but sometimes you misremember things, especially if you’ve been drinking.’

My body tenses again as I prepare for him to fly into another rage.

‘I know I’m not always reliable,’ he says, his admission catching me off guard. ‘And the day of the hit-and-run had been shitty, so yeah, I’d had a couple of drinks and I probably shouldn’t have driven. But I didn’t hit Liv, and now I remember passing a car that looked exactly like Margot’s.’

‘Wait, was it Margot’s car or a car that looked like hers?’

‘It was hers,’ says Drew. ‘Did she tell you where she was the afternoon when Liv was hit?’

I remember going to her house the next morning to tell her about Liv’s accident. ‘I think she said she’d caught a bug and hadn’t been out in days,’ I recall. ‘But Nicu had walked out on her earlier that weekend, so I think she’d been drowning her sorrows.’

If I’m not mistaken, there’s a hint of a smile at the mention of Nicu’s departure.

‘Well, she was lying,’ Drew says adamantly.

He opens the Doorbell app on his iPad, and the timestamp in the top right-hand corner of the screen is the day of Liv’s accident.

‘Look,’ he says, and as clear as day, Liv goes past in running gear. Soon after, Margot also exits across the road. She stumbles – either she’s lost her footing or she’s drunk. Seconds later, her car pulls out of the camera’s range.

‘So she goes out,’ I say. ‘Perhaps she went to pick up some groceries.’

‘Now watch this,’ he says and moves to another saved clip.

It’s of the car he and I share pulling on to the drive. He fast-forwards, and ten minutes later, Margot returns in her vehicle and hurries into her house. In a third and final clip taken the same night, the screen is much darker but I watch as a figure leaves her house and spends time at the front end of Margot’s car. It’s too dark to tell, but they’re hunched over the front, slowly moving around it, section by section.

‘I think she’s cleaning the bumpers, trying to get rid of evidence,’ Drew says triumphantly. ‘She ran over Liv, hung around on that road to see if she was dead, then returned home, panicked there might be evidence left, and tried to cover her tracks.’

I watch the clips again in order. Could he be right?

‘But it doesn’t make sense,’ I protest. ‘Margot wouldn’t leave two kids without a mum. She has no reason to hurt Liv.’

But of course she does. The video of her kissing Brandon which she believes Liv filmed and sent to Nicu.

‘You haven’t seen what she’s been like since the accident,’ I add, now arguing with myself. ‘She’s been brilliant with Liv’s kids, better than she is with her own. She even came to the hospital with me to visit her. Why would she do that to someone she tried to kill?’

‘Because she’s a fucking psychopath!’ Drew roars. ‘You already know this! She’s trying to cover her back.’

‘But she cared about me when I ... hurt myself.’

‘And I bet Vladimir Putin bought his mum flowers on Mother’s Day,’ he replies. ‘That doesn’t make him a good person either.’

‘You weren’t there,’ I say. ‘You didn’t see her.’

I close the app and return to the shopping bags. I’m only just coming to terms with seeing a different side to Margot and now Drew is hitting me with this. Have I lowered my guard too far? Has she been pulling the wool over my eyes? I’m aware I’m being watched as I unpack.

‘So that’s it?’ Drew asks.

‘What do you want me to say?’ I reply.

‘That you believe Margot drove into Liv and left her for dead.’

‘I think you’re desperate for it to be her,’ I argue. ‘It’s too much of a stretch.’

‘Stop being so fucking blind!’ he continues. ‘Margot has you hoodwinked. The leopard hasn’t changed its spots, it’s just hiding them under a different coat. And let’s not forget, long before Liv, she tried to kill you first. She tried to kill both of us. You need to stop listening to her and start listening to me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she is a fucking sociopath and I am your brother.’