CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT #2
Glad to have the DNA results announced like this – presuming Connor’s attempt to record the call on his phone was working – Cristy said, ‘Before Anna comes will you ask Mia what time she’d like us to be there? Or would you prefer me to call her myself?’
‘It’s OK, I’ll do it and text you the time.
Actually, Jasper’s saying he’ll drive me over to Papillion, Anna, so you don’t need to come.
’ There was a pause before she said, ‘Cristy, will you tell my dad that I’ve listened to the interview and I …
I’m really looking forward to meeting him. And my uncle. Is Evie with them?’
‘Yes, she is,’ Cristy replied gently. ‘This is going to be a very special day for them, but most of all for you, so if you decide you’d rather see them privately, without us there …’
‘No, I want you to be there,’ Sadie told her. ‘I think it matters that you are, and then we’ll always have a record of just how special it was to see one another for the first time since I was two years old.’
CRISTY: ‘Connor and I have just arrived at the Villa des Roches. Sadie sent us a code for the gates, so we’re already through and winding down the hillside towards the main house.
The sun is glorious, splashing all over the immaculate gardens, and the views out to sea are spectacular.
It’s all so tranquil and perfect, it’s hard to imagine that some very dramatic scenes have recently played out at the heart of it all. ’
CONNOR: ‘I guess we’re about to find out if another is waiting for us when we get to the villa.
Apparently Mia’s lawyers know she’s meeting with us – we’re not sure if they’ll be there – but we keep asking ourselves, how is she going to convince us that it was Lottie who organized Janina’s death and the journals are all a lie?
Presuming that’s what this is going to be about. ’
To Cristy he said, ‘I hope we’ll be able to use that at some point.’
‘As do I,’ she replied, ‘and it’s good we have it in case something does shift to clear the way.’
CRISTY: ‘We’re here now, just pulling up outside the villa … No sign of any other vehicles …’
CONNOR: ‘God, this is a stunning place. I know Cristy’s already described it in an earlier episode, and there are photos on the website, but seeing it for real … It’s kind of blowing my mind.’
Ending the recording Cristy looked around the quiet courtyard with its sculpted bushes and neatly raked gravel, not sure what she was expecting to see, only knowing that a sense of unease was starting to come over her.
‘Are you feeling as creeped out as I am, all of a sudden?’ she quietly asked Connor.
He turned off the engine. ‘Let’s just say I’m not exactly inside my comfort zone,’ he replied. ‘Are we early or late?’
She checked the time. ‘A couple of minutes late.’ Neither of them moved, until she said suddenly, ‘Come on, we can do this,’ and pushing open the car door she stepped out into a swift, chill breeze.
‘What if Mia’s got a gun?’ Connor murmured, coming to join her a few steps back from the arched front door.
Cristy frowned. ‘You’re asking me that now?’
‘Thought it was better than when we’re already facing it.’
‘Why would she want to harm us?’
He scoffed incredulously. ‘Maybe because we’re planning to spill her crimes all over the airwaves and destroy her family?’
‘But how would offing us help prevent that?’
‘She’s got to know she’s beyond help so why would she care?’
Glancing at him, she said, ‘Do you want to turn back?’
‘No way. I’m just pointing a few things out. So, you go first.’
Unable not to laugh, she went to the door and as she knocked it creaked slightly open.
‘Fuck,’ Connor murmured.
Slanting him a look, Cristy pushed the door wider and stepped into the entrance hall. ‘Hello!’ she called out. ‘It’s Cristy and Connor!’
Nothing but the arrhythmic ticking of clocks.
She looked around taking in the paintings and pottery, exquisite formal furnishings, the original Arts-and-Crafts staircase and all the closed doors leading to other parts of the house.
All that had changed since her last visit was the posting of a sign outside Lottie’s rooms saying, Private, Keep Out.
‘Hello! Mia?’ Cristy shouted. ‘We’re here.’
Still nothing.
Starting to fear what they were about to walk into, she led the way through to the kitchen, all the time praying that her suspicions were wrong.
Please don’t let Mia have called them here to find her dead body.
Was that her plan, to spare Sadie the horror of it?
Would there be a note, blaming them for shattering her world, for trashing her and her sister’s reputations, for the corruption of her niece, for the relentless persecution of lies, all lies, all in the name of entertainment?
‘Mia?’ she called, gingerly opening the kitchen door.
‘Come in.’
The response was so unexpected that Cristy’s heart leapt.
She entered the room and her eyes immediately rounded in horror.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she choked. It wasn’t so much the chaos of upturned furniture and smashed everything, or even the bizarre sight of Mia herself – all pasty-faced and wild hair.
It was the noose dangling from a beam right above her head.
‘What the fuck?’ Connor muttered under his breath.
‘Come in,’ Mia said again, and she gestured for them to sit down even though there was nowhere, unless they righted some chairs.
Trying to keep her eyes from the rope, Cristy said, ‘You don’t look well, Mia. Can we call someone?’
Mia stared at her unblinkingly, her eyes burning like two small fires inside her chalky mask.
‘This won’t take long,’ she said, ‘but I’d prefer you not to record, thank you.
Your intrusion into my life and family has gone far enough.
It’s my intention now to bring it to an end.
’ She watched Connor as he stepped in closer to Cristy, presumably readying himself to stop Mia going for her.
Continuing, Mia said, ‘I want you to know that if you make my sister’s journals public I will hang myself and make sure the world is aware that my blood is all over your hands.’
Cristy stared at her in disbelief.
Beside her, Connor said, ‘Don’t you want to refute anything your sister said? This is your chance.’
Mia looked at him. ‘What is the point?’ she asked.
‘Regardless of what I say, everyone will believe her. What reason would she have to write such an account, they’d ask, if she didn’t want to set the record straight?
Tell me this,’ she continued, sitting forward slightly, ‘has it occurred to you that she didn’t write it in 2005, that she might actually have written it much later than that, say in 2012, or 2018? ’
Knowing from Sadie that the dates had been entered by hand, Cristy said, ‘What we do know is that she stopped seeing Robert in 2005, after you threatened to tell him about Sadie and Janina.’
Mia drew back. ‘Ah yes, you have me there,’ she conceded and glanced away.
‘So maybe she did write them at the time, but that still doesn’t make them true.
In fact, just so you know, the real truth is that I had no idea Sadie’s mother had ever made contact until two days ago.
Everything in those journals is a lie …’ She broke off suddenly and, apparently reassessing, said, ‘I suppose the part about forcing the car off the road is true, there certainly was one at the bottom of the cliff around that time, and yes, the police did come to find out if we knew who it might belong to. I think Lottie might even have involved herself in the search for a body, but at no point did I even suspect it might have been Sadie’s mother.
And I certainly didn’t know that the man who came to speak to her was Sadie’s father. ’
Although she sounded convincing, Cristy knew it couldn’t be the truth. Mia had to have known at some stage that Janina had been in touch, why else would she have threatened to expose Lottie to Robert?
‘What would you have done if you had known Sadie’s mother was trying to see her daughter?’ Connor asked.
Mia glanced down at her clutched hands and allowed a few moments to pass. ‘I’m not sure. I was never asked, and now it doesn’t really matter anyway, does it?’
Thinking that it did, that in fact it could go a long way towards telling them what sort of person she was, or had been then, Cristy said, ‘I’m intrigued to know why you think your sister would twist things around to make you the guilty party?’
Mia’s answering laugh was bitter. ‘Because that’s the sort of person she was. She hated me, despised me for being a burden she only ever wanted to shed.’
‘So why didn’t she? Shed you?’
‘You’d have to ask her that.’
‘You know we can’t, so why don’t you tell us?’
With a sigh, Mia said, ‘Lottie wasn’t satisfied with being our parents’ favourite, or with being the beautiful one, or the most popular in any room, she wanted to be the only one.
I stood in the way of that, I was always there, the other Winters sister, as if I was diluting her dazzling existence.
She especially detested me when it came time to inherit our parents’ fortune.
She wanted it all – of course she did. Not that she ever said that, but I knew.
She deeply resented the fact that she had to share everything with me, whereas I was always happy to share with her. ’
‘And yet,’ Connor said, ‘when she died she left everything to you and cut Sadie out of her will. Why would she have done that?’
Mia’s eyes darkened and Cristy could see that the question had rattled her. ‘How would you know that?’ she asked. ‘Did Sadie tell you?’
‘Yes, she did,’ Cristy replied.
‘Was she upset about it?’
‘I think she was hurt.’
Mia nodded as though understanding that.
‘So why did Lottie name you as her sole beneficiary?’ Connor prompted.
Mia’s head poked forward again as she said, ‘And why do you think it’s any of your business?’