Chapter 72 Anna
Chapter 72
Anna
I glare at Margot, trying to read her tells. A twitch here, a break in eye contact there, a quiver of a lip. Anything to suggest she is lying. But there’s nothing. She’s not that great an actress to pull off a lie as big as this. For my own sanity, I have to believe she is being honest. Because the alternative is unthinkable.
Once again, I recall the aftermath of her rescue from inside the bonfire, and when she was stretchered into the back of the awaiting ambulance.
‘I know who you really are,’ she half whispered, half gasped into my ear. ‘Your brother left the window open for us and told us where the key would be. He owed them money.’
I took a step back and she let go of her grip on my coat. No, you’re wrong , I thought, Drew wouldn’t have done that. He loved his family too much to put us at risk.
Before I could ask her anything else, a paramedic forced the oxygen mask back on to her face, then lifted her stretcher into the back of the vehicle. I watched, detached, as it left the village playing fields and disappeared out of view, its blue lights growing ever dimmer.
As I waited inside the community centre to talk to the police, I tried to pick holes in Margot’s story. But she knew facts that remained unreported in the press. We’d been burgled in the past, so Dad had become a stickler for security. Later, the police told us a storeroom window had been left unlocked and the alarm hadn’t been set. But I knew that every night before bed, Dad made sure to double-check the locks on each door and window before turning the alarm on. The police said he must’ve forgotten. They were wrong.
Around the same time, Drew had turned fourteen and was pulling away from the family. He was socialising with boys older than him. At six, I was too young to understand the specifics of his rows with Dad, but they upset me nonetheless. I have one vivid memory of standing outside the bathroom, tearfully watching as Dad emptied plastic bag after plastic bag of white tablets down the toilet while Drew scrambled to stop him from flushing them away. He was no match for Dad’s strength. I screamed when Dad shoved Drew so hard, he fell and banged his nose against the doorframe. There was blood everywhere.
‘You don’t know what you’ve done!’ Drew screamed. ‘They’re going to kill me!’
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ Dad snapped.
Two weeks later and it was our parents who were dead, not their son.
I’ve waited twenty-five years to learn the truth about that night. Or at least Margot’s version of it.