Chapter 58
Fifty-Eight
Gemma
My stomach twinges as I run through the woods with Quinn. All around us, more snow falls. I’m dizzy from all the twists and turns. ‘Morgan.’ She doesn’t answer.
‘Diggerty,’ Quinn calls. ‘He might bark if he hears me.’
I don’t hear Morgan or a barking dog. We’re nearly at the den. Every step is hard because the snow is getting deeper. My sides hurt and I’m out of breath as we plough through but I don’t stop. I won’t stop until I’ve found Morgan.
My eyes start tearing up. She must have run off into the woods, upset and alone. An image of the past comes to my mind, Jasmine lying unconscious in the woods. I gasp as I imagine it’s Morgan.
Whoever is playing us left that smashed plaque.
They’ve been sneaking around spying on us, all because they think I know what happened to Jasmine.
They posted on the neighbourhood app, and they put the article in the hamper for me to find.
I have to save my daughter. The truth has to come out.
Somehow my aunt killed Jasmine and buried her in Clover House.
Thinking about the bones again makes my stomach churn.
All the time we’ve been in that house, Jasmine has been there, silently haunting us in more ways than one.
I can’t get Ruby out of my mind. I knew there was something off about her. She has this look. It’s intense and then there’s what happened with Ethan. She chose to hurt me.
As I trudge through even deeper snow, I think back to when I returned to check on Jasmine. The shock of not seeing her there hits me now. Somehow she’d got up and walked away, so what happened after that? I can’t reconcile how Jasmine ended up behind a wall in Aunt Dorette’s house. Why?
We’re here. The door to the first shed is slightly ajar and light bleeds through the gap. My stomach twinges again so I place my hands over it, hoping that Beanie is okay but knowing I must save Morgan.
Quinn steps in front of me. She’s spotted me holding my stomach. ‘I’ll go.’
I’m right behind her. She nudges the door open. That’s when I see my daughter being held at knifepoint.
‘Zoe?’ I’m taken aback. Ruby isn’t behind all this.
I know Zoe was off with us but I trusted her.
She called the police and told them the truth about Ethan.
She looked after our children while I was in hospital, but then she had the nerve to blame us and Morgan for the letters when it was now so obviously her.
The knife is pressing into Morgan’s neck and my shivering daughter looks a little blue.
Diggerty sits in the corner munching on a huge pile of treats like nothing’s going on.
‘Diggerty, out,’ Quinn orders, but Diggerty remains where he is and wags his tail.
‘Good boy.’ Zoe shrugs. ‘I guess he likes me better than you. Where do you think he is every time you let him escape?’
‘Zoe, what’s going on?’ Quinn takes a deep breath.
All I can do is keep eye contact with Morgan and mouth how much I love her. I clear my throat and find my voice. ‘Zoe, you’re hurting Morgan. Please let her go. We can talk about this.’
‘Too right we can talk. Both of you, start talking. We’re not leaving until I know exactly what happened to my daughter.
’ She pauses and lets out a tiny laugh. ‘I found your aunt’s notebook.
It told me that she’s dead. She’s an angel.
’ Zoe presses her lips together. I can feel her pain, really I can.
I can feel Morgan’s pain, too, like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
‘What happened back then? Quinn, you first. If I even sense a lie, Gemma will get to know exactly how I felt when Jasmine never came home.’
Quinn starts to mumble incoherently. She stops a couple of times, takes a deep breath and starts again.
‘Come on, Quinn, you can do it. You’re normally so full of confidence.’
Quinn starts talking, her voice quivers. ‘We were hanging out here, that summer. We didn’t see Jasmine, she made us jump. She said something mean…’ She stares at me.
I have to be the one to tell the next bit. ‘I pushed her, then we ran away.’
‘You left her to die.’ Zoe presses the knife again, and Morgan shrieks.
‘No,’ I say. Hoping that she stops. We don’t have time to overpower her. By the time we’re upon her, Morgan could be killed.
‘Why did you do that?’ Zoe’s brows furrow and her hands shake. She scores a tiny dot on Morgan’s neck and Morgan flinches.
Quinn speaks fast. ‘Gemma and I kissed. Jasmine was sitting on a log?—’
‘Skip that bit, I’ve seen the pictures in the stupid notebook. I saw it on Dorette’s worktop one day, open at that page. I couldn’t grab the thing in time. Stupid woman had no idea who I was. After the log, fog, dog, bit. Go on.’
‘We didn’t know she was there and she laughed, telling Gemma and me that she’d tell everyone at school, and I got upset. Jasmine stood up and started mocking us.’
‘I pushed her and she fell backwards,’ I say. ‘Then we ran away.’
Zoe shakes her head slowly. ‘And neither of you checked on her. You left her to die and what? You asked your aunt to cover everything up, to save you?’
Tears stream down Morgan’s face. It’s breaking my heart for her to hear all this. ‘No, I went back a while later but Jasmine wasn’t there. I thought she’d gone home. I went back home to my mum’s the next day and didn’t think about her again.’
Zoe shrugs and raises her brows. ‘You never thought about her again. How about you, Quinn? You live here. I came looking for Jasmine and I knocked at the houses on Clover Lane, including your house. Your mum answered. She watched as I fell to the ground. I also lost my baby that day, did you know that?’
‘I’m so sorry, Zoe.’ Quinn goes to reach out, but Zoe’s hand is rigid around the knife again, so she steps back with her hands raised.
‘No, you’re not. My ex-husband wasn’t sorry.
You’re not sorry and neither was your mum and you, Gemma, you should have stayed and helped Jasmine.
Quinn, I ran to your mum’s that night because one of the kids said they saw Jasmine at the den and you two were always hanging out there.
I called the police and it was all, oh you again.
Jasmine has run away before and weren’t social services involved?
That was their favourite one. Still on the drugs, are you?
Then they dismissed me with, “She’ll come back.
She’s sixteen, maybe she’s cooling off somewhere with friends.
We’ll inform social services.”’ Zoe frowns and sniffs.
‘I wasn’t perfect, I know that. I’d been off the drugs for a month but no one believed me.
The withdrawal was a killer, but not being taken seriously when Jasmine was missing hurt more.
We were just another problem family with a problem child.
I tried and tried to get the police to look into Jasmine’s disappearance and they did when she failed to turn up after about a week.
They found her diaries and she’d written how she was going to leave home and never come back…
’ Zoe starts tearing up. ‘She wanted to leave but I knew she still loved me. I still loved her. She never would have gone this long without contacting me.’
‘So, you only came back here to find out what happened.’ Quinn seems calm now, unlike me. I’m shaking uncontrollably, and Morgan is too scared to make the tiniest of sounds.
‘Sid fell for me and I knew that would be my opportunity to come back to Clover Lane. I’d been watching you all.
I knew where he drank and what he liked.
I knew I couldn’t just hang around the streets, watching everyone on Clover Lane.
The best thing for me to do after that was to become a part of the community.
Moving in was the next step. It was so many years on, and I’d changed a lot so no one recognised me.
Your mum had died, too, Quinn. That surprised me.
’ She raises her brows. ‘I then had to work out how to access your lives. Being a cleaner and a cheap one at that gave me your keys’ – she looks my way – ‘when Quinn recommended me to your aunt, I knew I was totally in with the locals. It was my chance to start digging, see who knew what. I found nothing at yours, Quinn, and I knew you and Dorette were close. I started decluttering for Dorette. I was never allowed in the office or her snug; she only gave me a front door key.’
‘You’ve been coming and going as you please. You put the recording device in our home. You were listening to us?’ I can’t help but mention all this. She’s loosened her grip on Morgan. I can see we’re getting through to her.
Zoe shrugs. ‘Yes, I had to know if you were talking about Jasmine. I installed that when Dorette was there, but it was a waste of time because not many people ever visited. When you all moved in I carried on listening.’
‘You wrote the letters.’
She nods. ‘I sent the hamper, too, with added worms and the article. The worms were for Jasmine, for when you and Quinn sent her home in tears after throwing a worm at her.’ I see the pain etched across Zoe’s face.
‘That note, I knew I’d slipped up by using my own writing. I didn’t let that happen again.’
The note I asked Ethan to throw away. ‘You managed to get into the office?’
She nods. ‘Your husband isn’t careful with keys.
He left them in the hallway when you moved in.
I sneaked in, took them, went all the way to Whitby to get a set cut.
When he came back I saw him looking for them in his pickup.
When he went back inside, I threw them back on the hall tiles and left.
I could come and go throughout the whole house then, apart from the apartment. He kept those separate.’
My fists ball up but I speak calmly. She still has the knife pointed at Morgan. ‘You could have killed Cora.’
‘You deserved everything, Gemma, after what you and your aunt put me through. I knew you’d reach her in time. I only left her in the balcony room to scare you.’
‘She fell off.’
Zoe’s mouth opens and she frowns. ‘I didn’t mean for that to happen. Is she…?’
‘She’s alive.’ The last thing I want her to think is that all is lost and that killing Morgan and us wouldn’t make a difference now. ‘Quinn caught her.’
I don’t know if the actual truth will help, but if I tell her what I know then she might let Morgan go. She will have closure. ‘I know where Jasmine is.’
Zoe stares. ‘Where?’
Morgan’s eyes are wide now, like she wants to know too.
‘Let Morgan go and I’ll tell you.’
Zoe scrunches her brows as if she’s thinking.
Quinn has started nervously biting her painted nails.
‘You’re lying.’ She looks at Quinn. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
‘Nothing.’ Quinn places a hand over her mouth and mumbles something.
‘This isn’t the time for lies, Quinny. Yes, I know what you both called each other because Jasmine used to talk about you.
I could never work out why you were both so mean to her.
She probably did pick on you the day she saw you kissing, but it was only because of what you were both like with her.
She liked you, Quinny, and you used to hang out with her when Gemma wasn’t around, but you’d ditch her like a rock as soon as the holidays started and Gemma visited. ’
‘It’s not my fault. We were kids, having kid arguments.
That’s all. I know my mother upset you with her words when you collapsed on our doorstep, looking for Jasmine,’ Quinn says, then she repeats what she mumbled before but clearer.
‘Mum said the same to me. “It’s all your fault. You were a bad mother. You bad, bad, mother.”’ Tears run down Quinn’s face.
‘My mum said that while I struggled to cope alone when Harry was a newborn. I freaked out at her the next day, went mad, shouting and crying. She crashed her car and died because she was shouting back at me.’ Quinn stares at Zoe.
‘You killed Dorette, didn’t you? You saw me leave, you… how could you?’
‘Quinn, please stop.’ Zoe is feeling the pain of Quinn’s words. Her hands are shaking, and I’m scared that Quinn will say too much and Morgan will get hurt. Morgan’s eyes are now closed.
Quinn dismisses me and I want to hit her. We can talk about this later, when I have Morgan safely away from Zoe.
Zoe continues. ‘I had the front door key. I went up to the balcony room and she was standing there angry and drunk. She had several pages of her notebook in her hand. She was about to put her lighter to them, and I snatched them off her. Once I saw Jasmine’s name on the paper, I asked her for the rest of the notebook, but she just laughed at me.
I’d spent all day psyching myself up to talk to her about Jasmine, and when I got there, she swore at me and told me to get lost out of her house and how dare I just come in.
She was struggling to stand she’d drunk so much.
I couldn’t hold back any longer so I told her who I was, and she lashed out.
I dodged her when she came at me…I didn’t mean for her to fall.
I only wanted to talk to her and get the notebook so I could take it to the police. ’
My stomach twinges again. Zoe drops the knife to her side and looks away.
I can tell she’s fighting back the tears.
I dart forward and knock Zoe sideways. Quinn leans in to help and our hands are grappling everywhere.
Quinn steps on the torch, breaking it, and we’re in darkness.
Diggerty whimpers as I accidentally tread on his tail.
I manage to pull who I think is Morgan out of the way then I take my phone out of my pocket with the other hand.
My fingers quiver as I light the way. I see blood, so much blood.