Chapter 46
Forty-Six
Gemma
Quinn is using Jasmine and her disappearance to scare me. I think she might be dangerous or seriously unwell. My children – I have to get back to them. I don’t know what she’s capable of.
As I struggle with each step through the snow, all I can think about is getting Morgan and Cora away from here.
I keep glancing around me. It’s like Jasmine is here, judging and taunting.
I don’t know where to look or what to do because I feel her eyes on me.
All I can do is keep going and pray that my children are okay.
Is Jasmine back or is it all down to Quinn? Surely Quinn wouldn’t want to bring up the subject of Jasmine again after all this time, but I think Quinn’s sick.
I keep trudging even though I’m breathless.
My mind goes back to that summer again. I don’t know what happened to Jasmine.
Quinn and I were the last ones to see her, and Quinn was upset with Jasmine.
My heart aches for my girls, Cora and Morgan.
If they vanished, I don’t know if I could go on.
I walk faster even though my muscles are stiffening.
It was easy for everyone to think that Jasmine had run away from her drug-taking mother and alcoholic father.
She’d been sixteen at the time. I went home to my mum’s the next day and forgot about her.
Jasmine wasn’t like us, she was more childlike, and the little jibes she made towards us were silly rather than spiteful when I look back now.
I can’t get Quinn out of my mind. Quinn’s knuckles were white from those jibes.
It hits me. Quinn must have gone back to the woods and hurt Jasmine, and she’s trying to blame everything on me now that I’m back.
Morgan has got too close. My heart ramps up with the threat of impending danger.
I need to get my children away from here, as far away as possible.
I finally reach the footpath. Snow falls around me and it’s getting thicker by the minute.
As I reach the entrance to the woods, I check back one last time to make sure no one has followed me.
Quinn’s car is parked at the end of her drive.
Ray is looking down on me – always looking down like I’m dirt on his shoe.
Ruby stares at me as she walks towards her drive and vanishes behind the trees.
Tessa pulls out so I wait for her to drive past. She doesn’t glance my way once, despite me looking dishevelled.
I have to stop blaming Ray for hating me.
I shake as I think back to then. Quinn spray-painted his pond ornament.
We played knock, door, run and…I can barely think this, as I didn’t want to touch a worm, but I laughed as Quinn dug one up and posted it through Ray’s post box.
I let out a long, slow breath as I remember Quinn doing something similar to Jasmine.
She thought she was being funny when she threw a worm at her on a rainy day, but Jasmine had shrieked and had some sort of panic attack – worms – how could I not see it was Quinn all along?
I dart towards the lane, my legs shaking.
I wasn’t a good kid. It’s time I faced up to my wrongs, but if it wasn’t for Quinn, I wouldn’t have done any of those things. She brought out the worst in me – and the worst in me failed to see Quinn as the person who left the original hamper with worms in it.
As I go to step onto our drive, Zoe walks up the path. Her full-length puffer coat brushes against me as she passes with a caddy full of cleaning products. She must be heading to Quinn’s or Ray’s.
‘Zoe, I just want to thank you for everything you did for us the other night.’ I don’t know what I would have done without her.
There’s a cold look on her face. ‘I only did what anyone would do.’ She keeps walking, her back to me.
‘No, it was more,’ I say. ‘You don’t know us well and I’m really grateful that you looked after Morgan and Cora.’
She turns and glances at my stomach, her mouth downturned.
‘Like I said, I was just being neighbourly.’ She looks at her watch.
‘I have to go.’ She walks away from me. She didn’t even ask me how I was.
Something has happened in my absence and it worries me that the only person who seemed to care has gone cold on me.
‘Zoe, please wait. Have I upset you?’
‘I have to go.’ She’s about to step onto Quinn’s drive.
‘Zoe, stop!’ Something happened while I was in the hospital and I have no idea what. Quinn – she’s said something to Zoe that has made her hate me. This is all a part of some sick plan of Quinn’s.
Once again she turns around. Her eyes widen. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? All you?’
‘I thought you believed me. What have I done?’
‘You know what you’ve done. You and your family, you’re poison. Just go, Gemma.’
I can’t swallow. Poison. She thinks we’re behind all the letters.
I can’t breathe. It’s like the world is closing in on me.
Ray still looks down on me but this time he’s smirking and all I want is to be anywhere but here.
My baby. I place a hand over my stomach.
My whole world has fallen apart. I have no one anymore and I haven’t done anything.
Or have I? No, no, no. I can’t let my mind wander.
That day…Jasmine…no…