Chapter 65 Carter
CARTER
“You have to let me go,” I say, but DCI Bird does not answer. It sounds like she is crying on the other side of the door. “Are you okay?” I ask.
Because I’m not. The tunnel is cold and dark. And my head hurts.
She still doesn’t answer so I try a different question.
“Why did you hit me? Were you trying to protect me from something?” For a moment I think she might have gone, left me here, but then I hear her voice again.
“You can’t protect people, not even the ones you love,” she says.
“Everyone thinks that dying is the worst thing that could happen to them, but they’re wrong.
The worst thing in the world is not dying.
Something terrible happening to your child is worse than dying, but that’s not the worst thing either.
Something terrible happening to your child and it being your fault is the worst thing in the world. ”
“I don’t understand—”
“Marriage is a myth. A lie handed down from generation to generation, because someone somewhere decided that two people living together was a good idea. That’s what I think now.
And we do it because we think we’re supposed to.
Because it’s what everyone else does. But the truth is some people are better off alone.
I was married once, and I think it bent our love out of shape.
All the things I found charming about him at the start of our relationship were the things I couldn’t stand about him in the end.
The things we had in common became the things I most wanted to change about myself.
Funny that. I think love is a filter that turns everything ugly about a person into something that appears beautiful. ”
“Fascinating stuff, but what has this got to do with anything?”
“Everything. Because once upon a time I was married to Harrison.”
What the actual fuck?
She can’t be serious. She carries on and I think she must be.
“We were married until an accident that happened when our little girl was eight. Gabriella got hurt and I blamed myself, he blamed me too. Something got broken that day, and I genuinely thought they would both be better off without me.”
“Gabriella is your daughter?”
I picture the beautiful woman on the other side of the door, with her plaited hair and quirky clothes and amazing career as one of the best detectives in the country. Then I try to process what she just said but can’t. Too many questions are now swirling around in my head.
“But that would mean that you knew who Harrison was this whole time?”
“Well done, Carter. I knew you’d get there in the end.”
“But what about Eden—”
“Eden was just the hired help,” she interrupts.
“Harrison has always been a workaholic, and I was training to be a detective and trying to be a mother. So we got a nanny. Eden was only twenty-one when I interviewed her, but she seemed smart and reliable. I’m the one who hired her, so it was all my fault in more ways than one.
I thought I could trust her, but she ruined my life and took everything I cared about from me.
And I didn’t even know it until six months ago!
She made me believe that everything that happened was my fault.
“I only visited the hospital once after the accident. Harrison blamed me, and I felt like staying away was the right thing to do. When Gabriella finally went home, he invited Eden to move in with them to care for her, and I was so stupidly grateful that she did. She and Harrison got married a couple of years later—after he and I divorced—and Eden became Gabriella’s stepmum.
I never felt any resentment about that. At the time, I presumed their relationship began after she moved in.
I was thankful that my daughter and my ex-husband had someone to care for them.
Because I couldn’t. I got it into my head that they deserved someone better than me, and that she was it.
But that all changed when I found out the truth. ”
“I can’t believe you were married to Harrison,” I blurt out.
“Why is that the part that shocks you the most?”
“Because he’s such an arrogant, rude, narcissistic arsehole.”
“Well, I guess opposites attract.” No comment. “He wasn’t always the man he is now. Life changed him. We were happy in the beginning. And after that we were happy enough until Eden came along. We built a life together, a home, a child, a dog—”
“You had a dog with Harrison?”
“I’ve always had dogs. We had two together.
Harrison loves dogs as much as I do, there you go, he wasn’t all bad.
Harrison isn’t the villain in this story.
For years I thought it was me, and that Eden was the hero.
But I was wrong. She was a liar. She stole my family from me.
She was my husband’s wife—his second wife—and she deserved to die. ”
DCI Bird sounds like she’s lost her mind.
I have so many questions, but I ask the one that is loudest.
“Birdy, did you kill Eden Fox?”
“No. I just wish that I did.”