Chapter 19 #4
“Why didn’t you want to see her again?”
Her head lifted, chin up, defiance steel in every bone. “She didn’t ever look after me. Him – her husband – hated me and she never helped me. She’d just tell me what to do so I didn’t make him cross but he was always cross with me.”
“Did you make him cross, Lily? You got into a lot of trouble before the fire.”
“Because I wanted to be taken off them, to be so bad they had to get rid of me.” She now looked at me, her eyes vacant.
“And you succeeded, didn’t you? You were taken into hospital and your mother didn’t come to see you. How did that feel?”
“Good because I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to see her here either but she had to come and find me and tell me she was sorry. It was too late for that.” Her shoulders dropped. Something had passed.
“What did she say to you when she came to see you, Lily? I think she was trying to find out who started the fire that killed your dad and brothers because she didn’t believe it was you.” There was no other explanation for why those printouts had been there.
Lily gripped her thighs, pressing her palms down hard on them. “She told me she was sorry and she wanted me to tell her what had happened that night and who I was with.”
“And did you?”
“I was drunk that night, Detective. I don’t remember anything apart from running out of the house because it was on fire.” She was back in full control and I didn’t believe her.
“The medical report done after you were found contradicts that. There was no sign of alcohol in your system.” It had been overlooked, maybe on purpose.
A fourteen-year-old girl being drunk and wild was easier to blame than a sober one.
An explanation was offered straightaway, no need for any further digging.
“That must’ve been a mistake. I haven’t drunk alcohol since that night.” More nail picking.
“The blood test results said otherwise. No alcohol or drugs in your system. In court, the responding officer described you as presenting as intoxicated, but the only smell was petrol, which tied you to the scene. You didn’t defend yourself, so the jury assumed you were drunk - ”
“I was.” She said it too quietly. “And Amanda was just after compensation. She said that if a court found I’d been wrongfully convicted, I’d have been entitled to a ton of money. She said she had enough evidence to get the court to relook at the case.”
“Why weren’t you interested?”
“Because she was just in it for her own sake. She probably needed to give The Holding more money, I don’t know. She never bothered about me.” Lily stayed staring at the floor, frozen, wrapped in self-pity.
I opened my bag and pulled out the box, wrapped in an evidence bag.
“What’s that?” She sounded like I’d just pulled a gun out.
“A box we found in your mother’s garden shed at the house she was renting. Do you recognise it?”
“Can I see it?” She held out her hands.
I took it out of the evidence bag and passed it to her. She held it, running her fingers along the grain of wood.
“What is it, Lily?”
She opened the lid, examining inside. The keys and the small jars were still there, a rather grotesque keepsake.
“My mother kept them. I thought they’d have been lost in the fire.” She lifted out one of the jars. “There our first teeth that we lost, and locks of our hair. My father found this once and threw it across the room, calling it sentimental. He was not a nice man.”
“What about the keys in there?”
“They’re for doors in our house. That one,” she held up a blackened key that could’ve been from a Victorian horror story. “Was for the room at the top where my mum did the accounts. No one was allowed in there.”
The room that had been emptied. “What about the others?”
“The pantry. That was locked so we couldn’t just get food, and the cellars. The keys scared me.” She put them back in the box and snapped the lid closed, almost throwing it back at me.
“I think your mother did love you in her own way.” I thought of my birth mother and how she had loved me, just never more than she’d loved herself. I thought of the man whose surname I’d chosen, a man I’d never met because he’d died rescuing a boy who’d fallen into the sea.
People didn’t come with a textbook. I’d be out of a job if they did.
For a moment I thought Lily was about to cry, then her expression changed, sun revealing itself from behind a cloud.
“Damien!” She stood up, big smiles, fingertips pressed together. “That seemed to go brilliantly.”
He nodded, looking shell-shocked. “It was a lot easier than I thought. Thank you for giving up your Sunday.” He looked from Lily to me. “Everything okay in here?”
“Absolutely. Detective McAllister was just telling me they have a lead on who may be targeting me, someone connected with another crime, but hopefully it’ll all be sorted soon.” She walked across to the door, catching up with Damien.
I followed, watching her talk to him, almost forgetting me as she went through what the reporter had said to her.
I left the house clearer about one thing; Lily was no more of a victim than me.