Chapter 37
Blackmail. Money. That’s what she wants.
She set the girls up. She saw an opportunity and created a fake accident because she wants money.
She wants money from Max, too. She found out where he lived, and she moved in next door.
God, she’s brazen. She wanted to surprise him.
Give me lots of money, Max, otherwise I’ll tell your wife everything.
You want me to leave? Sure. Give me lots of money and I’ll leave.
No wonder she kept asking when Max was coming home.
Where’s my paycheck? Is he coming home soon?
That’s why she wanted to stay with us in the first place.
She wanted to surprise him. Inflict maximum fear.
Watch the shock on his face when he returned from Zurich.
Welcome home, Max. We have a house guest. Surprise!
And what did I do? I befriended her, that’s what.
He was going to be the mark, and now it’s me.
Lucky me. I mean, really, my luck just never ends.
And here I was thinking, I’m so smart. I’m going to take care of everything!
I’m going to take care of Holly! Get rid of Max’s corpse. For Christ’s sake.
Instead, I got taken in by a common criminal. A cheap grifter.
Well. Not anymore. She wants ten thousand pounds? She’s about to get that and more. But she had better leave us alone.
I stop at an ATM on the way home and use Max’s card again to withdraw another five hundred from the bank. Back home, I find Holly in her room doing her homework.
‘I didn’t have time to shop. Order some pizzas. Whatever you like.’
She doesn’t reply.
I go into my bedroom and retrieve the other five hundred pounds I took from Max’s account and the pair of diamond earrings that Max bought me when we got married. I put them in my pocket, along with my engagement ring, which I know for a fact cost twenty thousand pounds.
‘I have to go out for twenty minutes,’ I tell Holly. She grunts in reply, which I take as a positive sign.
I knock on Teri’s door.
‘I was just thinking about you,’ she says, head tilted.
I am so angry, it takes everything I have not to strangle her right now. I look down at her foot. She’s wearing loose camel-coloured yoga pants and a sweater, socks and slippers. No bandage.
‘There never was an accident.’ I push past her into the house.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me. Who the hell do you think you are, Beatrice?’
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t the smile she’s giving me right now. The smug, triumphant smile.
I shake my head in disgust. ‘I know all about you. You had an affair with Max.’
‘How did you find out?’ Then she opens her eyes wide. ‘Did he tell you? Is he back?’
‘No! He’s not back. And never mind how I found out.
’ I shake my head at her. ‘You’re just a common grifter.
You followed Max to Brookford because he broke up with you.
You bought the house next door so you could…
What? Waltz into his life and blackmail him?
Threaten to tell me everything? Refuse to leave until he gave you ten thousand pounds?
’ I’m shaking so much I can barely hold it together.
I cross my arms. ‘But Max wasn’t here, was he?
He was in Zurich. So instead, you set the girls up.
I told you where Holly would be that day, and you followed her.
And then you saw them being stupid with the car, and you knew they weren’t going at speed.
The car was barely moving. And you stepped in front of it knowing full well they’d seen you, that they would stop in time.
But still you pretended that they’d hit you.
You invented this whole accident so you could blackmail me.
Because you want money. It’s all about money with you. Well, guess what? I’ve got money.’
I rummage through my pockets, pull out the cash I got from Max’s account and shove it at her.
‘There! Take it! There’s a thousand pounds.’
She smiles, takes it and turns it over in her hand. She flicks through the bundle, as if counting the money. There’s an old receipt caught between the notes. She crumples it and drops it on the floor.
‘You’re so sweet, you know that?’ she says, head tilted. ‘You actually think you can buy me off for a thousand pounds.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. I know it’s not enough.
’ I dig out my earrings and engagement ring from my pocket.
My hand is shaking. I throw them at her.
‘Is that better?’ I point at the jewellery on the floor.
‘There’s thirty, forty thousand pounds there.
All yours. Take it and get the hell out of our lives.
Get out of this dump of a house. Get out of Brookford. Just leave us alone.’
Slowly, her face cracks into a smile, and then she bends down, hands on her thighs, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
I am shaking. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘You! Kate! You are! You think I want your money?’
I shake my head. I can’t stop shaking my head, in fact. ‘I know you want money. You’ve been blackmailing me. You’ve already taken ten thousand pounds from me. And look at this place. You’re broke. Of course you want money. What, you want me to believe it’s not about money?’
‘I don’t want your money, Kate!’ She lifts her hand, still full of the cash I just gave her.
‘I mean, if you insist, I’ll take it. But I’m just fucking with you!
I want you to be miserable. Don’t you get it?
I want you to suffer.’ She moves closer.
‘I want you to leave. And I mean leave. Go back to London, to the sad little life you had before you met Max. Go and be a good little schoolteacher somewhere else. I couldn’t care less about your money or your stupid jewellery. ’
I blink and look around the room. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re broke.’
‘Oh, that? I got it all from a charity shop. I wasn’t going to move all my nice furniture from London, was I?
I didn’t expect to stay in here very long.
And it served me well, in the end. You let me stay with you because you thought I was sad and poor and lonely.
’ She sighs. ‘What a shame you threw me out before he got back. He would have been happy to see me there – in his house.’
‘I doubt it, somehow,’ I say. ‘Frankly, I think he would have run a mile. I mean, he did leave you. He did break it off with you.’
Her mouth tightens and she crosses her arms. ‘Because you made him. Because you cried. You told me so. Because you’re young and pretty and cute and you turned on all those charms to make him leave me.
But I knew something wasn’t right. He loves me, you know.
Max loves me. He wants me. He adores me.
And when he learns what a sick trick you’re pulling on him, contacting lawyers and kidnapping his child, he’ll realise the mistake he’s made.
’ She tilts her head. ‘When is Max back, by the way?’
‘Soon.’
‘He’s on an awfully long trip.’
‘They’re keeping him busy in Zurich.’
She looks at me sideways, eyes narrowed. ‘You didn’t kill him, did you?’
I swallow a swell of panic. ‘Why—’
She bursts out laughing. ‘You should see your face!’ She chuckles, shaking her head. ‘Still. Something isn’t right. I can feel it. I’ve been calling him, you know. And texting him. He hasn’t replied to me.’ Again, that sideways glance. ‘Has he left you?’
I hesitate, just for a second, wondering if I should say yes. After all, that’s my story. That’s right. He’s left me. I haven’t told anyone yet. I don’t know where he is.
But then she says, ‘Nah. You would have told me. Still—’ she sighs ‘—I wish he’d come home soon.’
‘But I don’t get it,’ I say. ‘I told you I was leaving. You took the money I’d saved. Why wouldn’t you just let me keep it? Let me go ahead with my plans?’
‘Oh, sweetie,’ she says, which reminds me of how she speaks to Holly. ‘I don’t want you to leave with Holly. I don’t want you to get a lawyer and spread all these lies about Max just because your sister died. Boohoo, by the way.’
I recoil. ‘Oh, my God. You’re horrible. Did you even have a sister who died?’ I ask. ‘Or even a sister at all?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Of course not. But Max told me about your sister, so I thought I’d throw in a dead sister, too.’ She taps her finger on her lips. ‘What was her name again…? Sunny?’
I stare at her, speechless. ‘You’re just evil,’ I say finally. ‘And your fake sister’s name was Melody.’
‘Ah yes. Good memory.’
‘And to send that email to Diana Ashford-Wells? Why would you even do that?’
‘Well, I thought to myself, who does Kate love most in the world? Before I knew you, I thought it was Max, obviously. You’d made such a song and dance about—’ she makes air quotes ‘—giving your marriage another chance, when I was so close to having him. So close. But then I came here and realised I’d got that wrong.
Who does Kate love most in the world? Little Holly.
Dead sister stand-in. And the only way to get rid of you, for good, was to show you that I’m quite prepared to hurt her, if you don’t leave us alone. ’
I recoil. ‘Hurt her?’
‘Well, not hurt her, hurt her. I’ve actually grown rather fond of Holly. But you know, I could make her life a little harder, let’s say, if you don’t get out of my way.’
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Does she actually think that’s the way to get rid of me?
To tell me that if I don’t leave, she would hurt Holly?
Oh, wait. Not hurt her, hurt her, but make her life a little harder?
She actually thinks that’s going to make me leave Holly behind.
This woman is mad. This woman has never loved anyone in her entire life.
‘How do you even know Diana, by the way?’ I ask.
‘Who? Oh, that woman who came to your house and stuck a note on your door? We talked briefly that day. She wanted to know if you were home. I read that note, by the way. She doesn’t like you much.
I ran into her later in town. We had a bit of a gossip about you.
I told her Max was leaving you and you were losing your mind about it.
She was quite shocked. I got her email from the class list you keep in your kitchen. ’
I think back to that day. It was the first time I met Teri, when I helped her move that chair into her house. And Mrs Ashford-Wells left the note on my door. I had no idea they’d spoken that day.
‘You don’t care who you hurt, do you? Mrs Ashford-Wells must have been devastated to hear those awful things I’d supposedly said about her son. But you don’t care about that. You use people.’
‘I use people?’ she scoffs. ‘You are something else. Your little sister dies, so you decide that now Holly will be your little sister. And big bad Max is very dangerous! Why, he might just kill her! Do you know how deluded you are? So it’s your fault your little sister died.
Deal with it. Don’t bring Holly into it.
Don’t tell the whole world that Max is some kind of violent criminal just so you can replay your little fantasy and save your baby sister after all.
It’s time to move on, Kate. Leave Max and Holly alone.
They’ll be so much happier with me. After all, I’m Holly’s new best friend, haven’t you noticed?
She likes me a whole lot more than she likes you. ’
She marches me the few steps to the front door, her hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off.
‘And if I don’t?’
‘We just went through that, Kate. If you don’t, then the police will see the video and Holly will get arrested.’
‘Not if Scarlett tells them what really happened.’
She laughs. ‘And who do you think they’ll believe? Meanwhile, Max will see for himself what a terrible stepmother you are,’ she continues, ‘and he’ll dump you anyway. It’s all up to you, Kate. But put it this way, if you’re still here by tomorrow night, that video is going out.’
She taps the doorjamb twice, then closes the door in my face.