Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
GEORGIE
In the next second, we’re all standing. DS Sató moves first, her expression tight and unreadable. In two strides, she plucks up the small leather rucksack from beside the sofa.
‘Not your phone,’ Beth snaps at Keira. ‘Yeah, right.’
‘That’s not my bag,’ Keira replies.
She’s right. It’s not. I know that bag. The worn black leather. The fraying straps from where it’s been overloaded too many times with jumpers and teddies and sun cream and water bottles and snacks and nappies.
‘It’s mine,’ Tasha says quietly, just as the realisation slams into me.
Tasha’s bag. Tasha’s phone. I can’t wrap my head around this. All those threats came from a phone in Tasha’s bag. She did this?
‘Tasha?’ I gasp, blink, stare at the woman I thought I knew as well as myself. A woman I thought was my friend. ‘What have you done?’
Sató’s voice slices through the stunned silence. She’s holding the bag out for Tasha to take. ‘Tasha, please open the bag and remove the phone.’
Tasha hesitates for a heartbeat too long. Her eyes are wide, but I can’t tell if it’s shock or resignation in her expression. She fumbles inside and pulls out the phone – the screen flashing with the incoming call from Beth’s number.
A visible shudder runs through Beth. ‘You killed Jonny,’ she says, her voice breaking. ‘You killed him, Tasha, because you wanted your stupid extension, and then you dragged us into this nightmare, faked this whole thing, to cover it up.’
My brain fights the truth, tries to shove it back, make it make sense. But it won’t. Tasha – sweet Tasha, who will do anything for anyone. A people pleaser. A woman completely overwhelmed by her life – playing us all. Pretending to be Keira. Faking the threats.
No.
And yet even as I struggle to believe it, I remember the day at Beth’s when Tasha slipped out of the room just before the messages we thought were from Keira landed. I remember her anger after the planning permission was denied. All that hate and desperation.
She said her father’s prescription sleeping pills were stolen from her bag that night, but now I think about it, Keira was sat opposite Tasha the entire time.
She wouldn’t have had the chance to take them.
And the yellow top she said wasn’t hers…
she must’ve bought a replacement afterwards to trick us into thinking it really wasn’t.
I couldn’t work out how Keira got into Jonny’s place.
How she got a key. The answer seems obvious.
She didn’t. Tasha must’ve had one. I remember a message on the Magnolia Close WhatsApp group from Bill.
He said he gave Jonny his spare key back because Jonny wanted someone else to have it.
Jonny and Marc were good friends. Tasha had access to a key all along.
It feels like everything is falling into place and I’ve been too scared, too wired, too focused on trying to protect my family to see the truth that now seems so obvious. And yet something nags in the back of my mind. Something about the messages.
Tasha is one of my best friends. My neighbour. We speak every day. Message constantly. No one knows me better than she does. I can’t believe she’s done this. My face is hot, but goosebumps are prickling my arms.
‘You killed Jonny,’ Beth whispers again. She’s as shaken as I am. ‘All this time, it was you? Why did you drag us into this?’ The final word comes in a shuddering sob, and I reach out and take Beth’s hand. We’ve both been betrayed.
Tasha’s lips tremble. ‘Please listen to me—’
‘I almost killed a man because of you!’ Beth cries. ‘What if I’d gone through with it.’ Her voice cracks, and she covers her mouth with her hands.
‘You hated Jonny too!’ Tasha blurts out. ‘All of you did! Why is this all on me? I didn’t do anything. That’s not my phone.’
‘It’s in your bag,’ Beth replies, eyes darting from DS Sató to me, like she can’t believe it either.
‘And it was your dad’s sleeping pills, and the top you were wearing that night,’ I add. And suddenly I’m not only hurt and confused – head spinning with WTF is happening – I’m also angry. Furious. Blood roars in my ears. ‘You let us think Keira was the threat when all along it was you.’
‘I’m sorry—’ Tasha starts to say, but Beth cuts her off.
‘It’s too late for sorry,’ she hisses.
‘That’s enough,’ Sató says, and the command in her tone cuts us all dead. ‘I think you should come back to the station with me now, Tasha.’
Tasha wipes her face with the sleeve of her jumper, her shoulders trembling with silent sobs. ‘Please,’ she chokes out. ‘Please… I didn’t do this. I can explain why I’ve been acting differently. Marc was—’
‘You threatened our children,’ Beth cuts in, and Tasha shakes her head.
‘No. I didn’t—’ Tasha’s words are lost in a sob.
‘Let’s talk at the station,’ Sató says, still so calm.
DC McLachlan moves to stand beside Tasha.
Tasha cries out. ‘Let me see my girls first. Please.’
‘Not right now, Tasha. You don’t want them to see you like this,’ Sató replies.
Tasha looks between us, eyes wild like she’s searching for something – mercy, forgiveness, a way to take it all back. ‘I’m sorry, but this isn’t right.’
The words fall flat. Too late to backtrack and deny what she did.
Beth turns towards me, covering her face with her hands.
I stay frozen, not wanting to watch, not able to look away.
Then gently, firmly, Sató and DC McLachlan steer Tasha from the room and out the front door.
I listen to them leave. More tears. Half sentences and spluttered apologies.
And then the front door clicks shut, leaving only silence. Hot and uncomfortable.
I force myself to swallow, to stay standing. I turn towards Keira slowly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I manage, realising how wrong I’ve been about her. ‘We thought—’
‘Save it,’ she sighs. ‘Apology not accepted. I get you were manipulated here, but don’t think I don’t see the way you all look at me. The posh mums with your matching yoga mats and perfect little lives in Magnolia Close, so quick to judge me.’
Her words hit harder than I want to admit. She’s right. We did exactly that. I thought I was so much better than her, and yet my marriage has been a lie, my friend has betrayed me. Everything I fought so hard to protect didn’t even exist.
‘I don’t wear the right clothes. I don’t say the right things,’ Keira continues.
‘I don’t live on the right street. It probably took nothing for you to convince yourselves I was crazy and fall for whatever lies that other friend of yours cooked up.
You need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
Now take your children and get the hell out of my house. ’
There’s a pause. A fraction of time where Beth and I stand there, open-mouthed.
Reeling from everything Tasha did and the sharp honesty of Keira’s words.
Then we do what we always do as mothers.
We rally, and we put on our brave faces and bright smiles as we call the children in from the garden.
They’re all pink-cheeked and breathless, giggling about a made-up game they invented.
‘Where’s my mum?’ Matilda asks as we herd them towards the front door. I watch her feet falter and her bottom lip tremble as she peers around the hall, searching for Tasha. Sofia silently slips her hand into her sister’s.
‘She’s busy right now, sweetheart,’ I say, my voice bright and bubbling and a notch too high. I crouch down, forcing a smile onto my face. ‘But guess what? I bet your daddy’s at home. Shall we go see him?’
Matilda nods, but her eyes are still wary. Beside me, Beth fumbles with Henry’s coat, like she’s trying not to shake. We step outside, and cold air hits my face. Beth and I walk in silence, barely listening as the children tell us the fun they’ve had at Keira’s house.
‘We had ice cream for lunch,’ Oscar tells us.
‘And chocolate,’ Henry adds.
Sofia grins. ‘I had sprinkles on mine.’
I stare at them all. Happy. Safe. Never in danger. Tasha made us think we’d never see them again. She’s a mother too. She loves her girls. How could she do that to us?
Only when we turn into the private road that leads to Magnolia Close do the children scamper ahead and I step closer to Beth.
‘I still can’t believe it was Tasha all this time,’ I whisper. ‘How could she manipulate us like that?’
Beth shakes her head, hands cradling her bump protectively. ‘It makes me feel sick. She wasn’t coping. We both saw it, but that doesn’t excuse what she did. She blamed Jonny for everything. She saw him as the one thing standing in the way of a life she could actually deal with.
‘She used us,’ I reply. The words taste bitter in my mouth as fresh hurt cuts through me.
‘She made us be her alibi without us even knowing, and when it seemed like that wasn’t enough and it looked like the police investigation was closing in, she pretended to be Keira.
She made us confess to a murder she committed. ’
Beth is quiet for a moment before she next speaks. ‘I’m trying to work out how she did it all.’
‘Like what?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. It was just so… premeditated.
Her phone was on the table the night in the pub.
She must have been recording us. She was the one who brought up how much she hates Jonny first. But we heard Keira’s voice on those voice notes.
How did she do that?’ I close my eyes for a moment.
There is so much I can’t wrap my head around.
I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand what Tasha has done.
‘It must have been fake,’ Beth says. ‘You saw what Keira was like just now. I don’t like the woman, but there’s no way she was lying.’
‘So how did Tasha do it?’ I ask.
‘She must have used one of those AI voice copiers. She had a recording of Keira’s voice from the night in the pub. She probably used that. Then made sure the messages disappeared so we couldn’t listen too closely.’
‘She always had a phone in her hands too,’ I say. ‘I thought it was her normal phone, but it must’ve been the one she was sending the messages on pretending to be Keira.’
Beth nods. ‘We thought she was just looking at the messages the same as we were, but she must’ve been deleting them right in front of us.’
‘But the man… the runner?’ I ask.
Beth’s body tenses. Her face pales. I don’t need to ask to know she’s thinking how close she came to killing that man.
‘She must have made it all up,’ Beth says.
‘A way to keep us scared and desperate. She shouted stop, remember? She probably never meant for it to get that far. Maybe she thought we’d never go through with it. The ultimate bluff.’
We’re silent as we step through the gates. The twelve grand, red-brick houses glow with the autumn sunlight streaming into the close. The hedges are neatly trimmed, the hanging baskets filled with bright flowers. It looks beautiful. Perfect even. But it’s not. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.
The children race ahead and begin a game of stuck in the mud in the middle of the close.
‘I’m sorry about you and Nate,’ Beth says, voice tentative. I can feel her watching me, searching my face for answers.
I nod but say nothing. Even now, even after all this, I’m struggling to tell her I’m leaving.
‘I don’t know what to do now,’ I say.
Beth looks tired. ‘I guess we go home. Try to carry on with our lives.’
I don’t know what that looks like. I’ve been pretending for so long. Holding it together, painting on bright smiles and saying my mantras, and suddenly I’m tired of it all. I have Oscar. That’s all that matters. I know we’ll be OK.
I glance at Jonny’s house. A shiver races down my spine. I think about what he knew. About how many times he threatened to expose me to Nate.
He was scum. A predator. You reap what you sow. And he deserved to get what was coming to him.
I hated Jonny.
I wanted him dead. But I didn’t kill him.
I didn’t do it.