Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Now
Nothing could have prepared me for everything Leo has told me. And now I feel as though I’ve been gutted like a fish – there is nothing left of me. He tries to reach for me, but I pull away, holding the knife between us.
‘You’re lying! Kimmy wasn’t killed last year – I saw her two weeks ago. I saw her being strangled.’
‘No, Ria. That must have been some kind of flashback from a year ago. And it would have felt like it was just happening.’
As his words sink in, I realise this is the only thing that makes sense, if Leo is telling the truth about Kimmy dying a year ago. I shrink back; nothing feels real any more. There is no one I can trust.
‘Please, Ria,’ Leo begs. ‘Don’t be scared of me.
I know what I’ve done is unforgivable, but I love you.
’ Tears stream down his face. ‘I was trying to save that boy’s life, and instead I created this mess.
And it just snowballed. Got out of control.
All I wanted was for us to have a good life.
If I’d lost my job, then I’d have been finished. ’
‘I was happy in the flat,’ I say. ‘And you made me think I’d been attacked there. Pushed from the balcony.’ Deep in my gut, hadn’t I known all along that didn’t make sense? ‘You covered up a murder, Leo. And you protected the person who tried to kill me! Do you know who it was?’
Leo shakes his head.
‘You didn’t even report it to the police – you let me believe that one of Giles’s stooges was investigating.
It’s sick! Using my memory loss to manipulate me is bad enough, but all of that .
. . it’s despicable. I . . . I don’t even know what to say to you.
And you did it all to protect yourself and your precious career! ’
Leo sits on the sofa and hangs his head. ‘I don’t deserve forgiveness,’ he says. ‘And I’m not asking for it. But we have to stick together, Ria. Giles will never let us move. He’ll say that I killed Kimmy. I’m sure that’s his plan if I refuse to be blackmailed about my job.’
‘Did you kill her?’ I ask. It wouldn’t be too far a stretch to believe Leo capable of this after everything he’s told me.
‘Of course not!’
‘But she was having an affair with someone. Who was it?’
‘I don’t know. But Giles swears it wasn’t anyone from Silverleaf.’
‘And you actually believe that man?’ I shake my head. ‘I think you’re choosing to believe him because you feel guilty about bringing me back to the place I was nearly killed. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s the way you live with yourself.’
Leo’s face crumples. ‘I don’t know! Maybe you’re right. Maybe Giles just wanted to cover everything up to protect his precious Silverleaf. He’s lost it, Ria. Since Moira died. He’s . . . capable of anything.’
‘But would he poison his own dog? To make me look crazy? He loves Willow.’
‘I don’t know,’ Leo says. ‘But whoever did that wanted me to think it was you.’
‘And you did, didn’t you? Even after everything you’ve done. All the lies you’ve told me. You thought I was making it all up.’
He nods wordlessly, looking anguished. The gesture saddens me, even after all I’ve learned tonight.
‘I’m going to the police. I’ll tell them everything you’ve just told me. And you need to come with me.’
Leo jumps up. ‘I can’t go to the police. I can’t lose my job. I’ve worked too hard—’
‘Remember at Hampstead Heath you told me that I mean more to you than anything else? It’s time for you to prove it, Leo.’
He falls silent, only speaking again when I prompt him to answer. ‘How can I prove it?’ he asks.
Leo will never go for this, but I have to try. ‘We need to be free of this place and everyone who lives in it.’
‘We . . .’ he says. ‘You mean us. Together.’
‘Yes.’ I feel no guilt for the lie I tell Leo. Not after everything he’s done. How he’s reassembled the pieces of my life to suit him. Is he a murderer, too? At this point I’m not ruling anything out.
‘Okay,’ he says, relief visible on his face. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘Are there listening devices in our house?’
He walks to the window, turning his back to me.
‘Leo?’
‘I had no choice. Giles said when I went away I had to plant them. But I’ve got rid of them just now.’
‘So he hasn’t been able to hear anything we’ve talked about tonight?’
He faces me again. ‘No.’
‘Why did you pretend to go to New York?’
‘Giles said he needed to unnerve you, so that you’d stop asking questions about Kimmy. He thought if I was away, you’d be more spooked. I picked up your passport by mistake. Didn’t even realise.’
I’m tempted to ask him where he went, but I no longer care. All I know is I will never trust him again. So many other questions burn through my mind, but there’s one in particular I’m desperate to know. ‘Ethan,’ I say. ‘Did he know?’
‘I had to convince him not to tell you that we’d moved a year ago.
He tried to talk me out of it, but he’s my friend, Ria.
He did it for me.’ Leo hangs his head. ‘I told him I wanted to keep the attack from you so that you wouldn’t be traumatised by living in Silverleaf.
He knew nothing about Kimmy. None of the other neighbours did either.
They all kept quiet about us moving in a year ago to protect you. ’
My throat constricts. How easy it was for Leo and Giles to get people to go along with him. It sickens me that power and money can buy people’s silence. And the neighbours all trusted Leo because he’s a doctor. I can hardly get my words out. ‘I trusted Ethan. I was under his care.’
‘He didn’t want to lie to you, Ria. Every time I saw him afterwards, he tried to convince me to tell the truth.
But I was so deep into the lie that it became impossible.
And you couldn’t remember anything, so I told myself it was better that you thought Peter Harvey had attacked you.
I thought that would be better than not knowing.
Constantly being on edge. But I see now that was mistake. I’m so sorry, Ria.’
Every word he speaks increases my horror. ‘But I still was on edge! I thought Peter Harvey would come back for me! And all the time, he was innocent!’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I thought I was protecting you.’
‘No, you didn’t! You were protecting yourself. You brought me back here, to the place where it happened!’
Leo tries to reach for me again, but I shove him away with my free hand. ‘Don’t touch me.’
He holds up his hands and backs away, and minutes of silence tick by.
Still carrying the knife, I go to the kitchen to get some water. When I come back, Leo is standing by the window again. ‘We don’t tell Giles that I know everything,’ I say.
Leo turns to me. ‘What?’
‘It’s the only way this will work. We have to carry on as if I don’t know. Johnny’s still trying to find out who sent me that message. That will be evidence to take to the police. Until then, we stay put.’
‘Giles won’t fall for it.’
Perhaps Leo is right – the man has too much at stake to let me interfere.
He’ll be watching me like a hawk. ‘You need to go over to Giles’s.
Now. Tell him you’ve had some time to think since you’ve been away and you want out of Silverleaf.
You’re putting the house on the market. Tell him you don’t care if you lose your job.
All you need to do is use your phone to record him talking.
He’ll mention Kimmy’s body – he’ll have to.
Make sure it’s clear that he’s blackmailing you.
Then, when we go to the police, they’ll know you had nothing to do with Kimmy’s murder. ’
‘But I helped hide her body.’
‘Because you were being blackmailed. This is the only way out of this mess, Leo, surely you can see that? Someone filmed that video of me being attacked, and my attacker has to be the same person who killed Kimmy. It could have been Giles.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Leo says.
‘Then Giles could have been the one filming, which means he knows who Kimmy’s murderer is, so you need to get him to admit it. Do what you have to.’
His nod of agreement seems to take an eternity, but eventually it comes, and we have some semblance of a plan.
‘What will you do while I’m gone?’ Leo asks.
‘Pack my stuff. I’m not spending another night here.’
He nods, and I notice how pallid his face is, how grief-stricken.
Gone is the confident, ambitious surgeon, and all that’s left is what Leo has perhaps been all along: that little boy who was terrified of losing everything.
I want to believe in him – that a mistake he made in the operating theatre, albeit with the best intentions, spiralled out of control.
I want to accept that he had no choice in letting himself fall under Giles’s control, but right now that’s impossible.
From my studio window, I watch Leo make his way next door. Even though it’s late, the lights are now on in Giles’s windows.
There’s a heavy ache in my stomach, a twisting of knots that I’ll never be able to untie.
A million things could go wrong with this plan, and Leo might not come out of that house.
My hand reaches to open the window, to call out to Leo to stop, but I tell myself Leo is younger than Giles; if it came to it, he should be able to overpower him.
My phone beeps, and I’m relieved when it’s a message from Declan. But when I read his words, the floor feels like it’s collapsing underneath me.
I found this photo on Mum’s phone. I’m sending it now, but I just wanted to warn you first before you see it. I’m so sorry.
I hold my breath and wait for the photo to come through – and when it does, all the air is violently sucked from my lungs and I feel as though I’m suffocating.
It’s a photo of Leo. And he’s with Kimmy, their arms wrapped around each other, their lips locked in a kiss.