Chapter 10
I find Holly crouched in a corner of the garage, her eyes unfocused. If she hasn’t been traumatised by her father’s treatment of her, she certainly is now.
I glance around the garage. ‘We can’t leave him here like this. It’s too risky.’
‘But you’re going to get rid of his body, aren’t you?’
I blink at her. ‘We are going to get rid of his body, yes.’
She drops her face in her hands and starts to cry.
Crouching beside her, I say, ‘Hurry, come on. We don’t have time. Let’s haul him into the freezer.’ She recoils. I probably shouldn’t have said haul. ‘We’ll put him in the freezer,’ I say more gently.
The large chest freezer came with the house. It’s old and slightly damaged on the edges. Because I’m a terrible cook, and Max isn’t remotely interested in cooking, we’ve never used it. It’s not even plugged in.
‘Come on, Holly. Get up.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to.’
It takes a bit of coaxing, but finally she gets up. I slip my gloves back on, make sure Max’s body is securely wrapped up in the tarpaulin, and we sit him up against the freezer. Then, with much effort and many tears on Holly’s part, we manage to lift him and push him inside.
‘Okay,’ I say, my legs like butter. I close the lid and plug it in. Holly slides to the ground with exhaustion, her back to the freezer. I sit next to her, take my gloves off and Holly does the same.
It feels like a dream. I can’t believe any of it is real.
‘What did you mean before, when you said that you remembered something?’ I ask.
She rests her elbows on her knees and presses the heel of her hands against her forehead. ‘The night my mum died. There was a song on the radio.’
‘Summer After You,’ I say.
She nods. ‘That’s the song that was playing. I remember it.’ She looks up at me, her eyebrows knotted together. ‘I didn’t do anything, Kate. They were arguing.’
‘I thought she was asleep,’ I say.
‘She wasn’t. He lied. They were fighting.’
‘Do you remember what they were fighting about?’
‘She was leaving. She was telling him that she couldn’t bear it anymore.
She hated him. She was leaving and taking me.
She didn’t want to have anything to do with him.
And he was screaming at her, saying that he would kill us all before he’d let that happen.
Then suddenly we went off the road, and she was screaming at him to stop the car…
’ Her gaze goes unfocused again. She shudders.
‘I don’t remember anything else after that. ’
‘He swerved into a tree,’ I say.
She nods. ‘But it wasn’t my fault, Kate, I swear.’
‘Oh, Holly. It was never your fault.’
‘I didn’t touch the drink. I remember so clearly. I didn’t touch anything. I was really frightened. He kept saying he was going to kill us all before he let that happen.’
I look up, jolted as if by an electric shock. ‘He said that?’
‘Yes.’
It makes so much more sense, somehow. This bottomless need to blame Holly for her mother’s death wasn’t because she happened to reach for a drink. It was to deflect the blame from himself.
I squeeze her knee. ‘I think that’s what he tried to do by driving into the tree. Instead, he just killed her. And so he blamed you.’
We sit in silence for a moment.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she whispers. ‘I’m really sorry I killed him.’
I hesitate for a moment, then I ask, ‘Why did you do it?’
She shudders. ‘I don’t know. It just happened. He was pulling my hair, and I was so scared… I hate him so much…’
‘I know. Me too.’
‘I didn’t even realise I’d done it until he fell back.’ She closes her eyes. ‘What are we going to do now?’
‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘How?’
‘You don’t need to know.’ The truth is, I have no idea myself.
I try to think. His Porsche Cayenne is right here, in the garage.
I could put his body in it and dump it somewhere, let the car slide down a cliff with the handbrake off.
I’ll say we had an argument, and he went for a long drive.
I’ll imply that he did it on purpose. But where?
I have to think. And I have to do it by tomorrow because he’s supposed to be going to Zurich on Monday, and somebody is going to notice that he’s never made it.
Oh, God. I should have called the police. I could have convinced them it was self-defence. I would have been a witness. What was I thinking? But then Teri showed up, and it threw me.
And now it’s too late.
Holly shifts and looks at me, straight on.
‘I saw this movie once,’ she says, almost breathless.
‘Mum was still with us. It was a really old movie, and this lady had killed her husband – I think it was her husband – and put him in the freezer, and when she opened the freezer days later…’ She drops her voice to a whisper. ‘He wasn’t there anymore.’
God. If only. ‘I don’t think we’re going to get that lucky,’ I say.
‘Yeah.’ She sits back against the freezer. ‘I know. It just reminded me, that’s all.’
‘Listen. It would be better if you weren’t here tomorrow night.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if anything goes wrong—’ as in, if I get caught with a dead body in the back of Max’s car ‘—it’s better if you’re not here. Then if anything does go wrong, you can say you knew nothing about it.’
She nods, slowly. ‘Okay.’
‘Could you go to Amelia’s?’
She makes a face. ‘I’d rather go to Scarlett’s.’
‘That’s a good idea. You wanted to go there today. Will her parents be okay with that?’
‘Her parents are never there.’
‘All right, well, we’ll give Scarlett a call and see if it’s all right with her. Do you think you could stay over there for dinner?’
‘I can figure it out,’ she says.
‘Good. Then that’s what we’ll do.’ I put my hand on her knee. ‘It will be all right, Holly. I promise. Come on, let’s go inside. I’ll clean up the kitchen—’
She whips her head to look at me.
‘The milk, Holly. I mean, I’ll clean up the milk.’
She lets out a breath. ‘I’ll help.’
‘Only if you want to.’ It is the scene of the crime, after all. ‘And then I’ll take you shopping,’ I say. ‘Get our mind off…things.’
As if.