Chapter 101
Susan
Thursday
I’m standing in my kitchen, shaking, light-headed, struggling to process what I’m seeing.
The woman—Venetia—the woman I met in the cottage, is here.
Felipe’s wife. Aimee’s sister. She’s here in my kitchen, and she’s holding Bella.
Why is she in my kitchen and why is she holding Bella, and why isn’t she holding her properly, like you’re supposed to hold a baby?
She’s holding her by her arm, one arm, and Bella’s just dangling.
Like a ragdoll. Is she…she’s not…but Bella’s eyes are open, wide and puzzled.
She’s OK. But she’s not OK—what is this woman doing in my kitchen?
Where’s Greta? I look about wildly. Greta is here.
She’s on my kitchen floor, in a crumpled heap.
My eyes dart from my daughter to my sister and I move toward my daughter.
Venetia catches Bella around the waist with one arm then holds up her other hand.
“No you don’t. Stay put or I’ll show you what would happen if I hold her by the legs and slam her head against a wall.”
I stop still. “Please,” I whisper, “what…what do you want?”
In my peripheral vision, I see Greta move. Then a small groan.
“Greta, are you OK?” My eyes don’t leave Bella.
“She’ll be fine. It’s only a whack on the head.” Venetia nods toward a heavy metal rod on the worktop, about a foot long with a crook at one end. A tire iron, I think. Not mine…So she brought it with her? To hurt us. Oh god.
Bella’s face begins to crumple.
“Please, let me take her. She’s scared.” I reach for Bella.
Venetia whisks her to her side, tucking her under her arm, and waves me away.
“Ah, ah. No. You’ll get her back in due course, if that’s what you choose.”
“I do, that’s what I choose, please!”
“You haven’t heard the other option yet.”
What other option could there possibly be? Of course I want Bella back.
Greta pulls herself to a kneeling position, rubbing her head. She looks over at me, then at Venetia, her face creasing in confusion.
“This is Venetia,” I say, as calmly as I can. “Her sister, Aimee, was one of two people murdered last week in Cherrywood.”
Venetia shakes her head. “Interesting use of the passive tense there, Susan. As if it had nothing to do with you.” She turns to Greta.
“I’ll explain. Your sister here sent a message to hundreds of people last week, with a reference to Warren Geary and the PR girl from Bar Four.
That PR girl was my sister Aimee. And Aimee’s husband, Rory, was not a nice man.
He didn’t like Aimee going out or having friends and wasn’t mad on her having a job either, but tolerated it for the extra cash it brought in.
Then he saw that message and it tipped him over the edge. ”
Oh god, no.
Venetia leans against the counter, still holding Bella at her side. With her other hand, she picks up the tire iron and slides one end of it into the back pocket of her jeans. Then she pulls a knife from the knife block.
“Rory came home that night, and do you know what he did? He beat my sister to death.”
Blood roars in my ears. This can’t be happening.
Greta stares at Venetia. “That’s a horrific thing to happen.” Calming. Soothing. “For your poor sister, and for you. But it was Rory who killed Aimee, not Susan. Susan couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“That’s not going to bring my sister back, is it? Excuses and not-my-faults?”
Greta touches the back of her head and winces. “I understand, but whatever about Susan, it’s definitely not Bella’s fault.”
Venetia looks at Bella, then at me. “That’s why I’m giving you the choice.” She pauses. “You can choose your baby or your sister.”
“What?”
“I lost my sister. Now you pay with yours. Unless you don’t want to, in which case, you get to save your sister and we sacrifice the baby instead.” She holds the tip of the knife against Bella’s neck. Bella is crying now.
“Please don’t do this. I’m so sorry about your sister—”
“Say her name.”
“I’m so sorry about Aimee.” I take a tiny step forward. “But you must know that I couldn’t have predicted this. I never meant it. I’m not the first person in the world to send a message to the wrong group. We’ve all done it.”
Venetia shakes her head. “See, you’re doing it again. Making excuses. Deflecting blame.”
Deflecting blame. I think about my theory—that it wasn’t Aimee with Warren, but Venetia. Is that part of this? Putting the entire blame on me to deflect her own guilt, her own part in this mess?
“I know it wasn’t Aimee,” I say softly. I take another tiny, tiny step forward. “With Warren.”
Her eyes narrow. She wasn’t expecting this.
“You’re still doing it, still trying to blame other people,” she says, recovering quickly. “It doesn’t matter whether or not Aimee was really with Warren Geary, what matters is she’s dead, and that’s down to you. So now we’re going to even things up.”
She moves the tip of the knife so it indents the skin on Bella’s neck. I jump forward and, this time, she swipes the knife against Bella’s arm and draws blood. Bella lets out a loud, shocked cry.
“Susan, stop, stay back! She’ll hurt her again!” Greta croaks. She has hauled herself on to a kitchen chair.
Venetia smirks. “So who will it be? Your sister or your baby?”
I stand open-mouthed, staring at her, willing Bella away from her, unable to take any of this in.
Greta speaks, quietly and calmly. “She chooses me. She saves Bella.”
I turn to her. “No!”
“Cool, that’s agreed then, you choose to kill the baby.” Venetia brings the knife to the side of Bella’s neck, then pulls it away, as though ready to stab.
“Stop!” I yell.
“Which is it to be?”
“She chooses for me to die and Bella to live,” Greta repeats.
Venetia smiles and looks at me. “I need Susan to say it.”
Oh god. But there’s no option. No choice, not really. I say the only thing I can. My eyes fill with tears. I look at my sister.
“I…I choose for Greta to…to die and for Bella to live.”
Venetia nods. She tilts her head toward something on the counter. I can make out a syringe with a liquid inside, and what looks like a small leather belt.
“She’ll go out on a high, literally,” Venetia says with a grim smile.
“What…what is it?”
“Liquid heroin,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Let’s be honest, even with your baby’s life at stake, someone like you won’t be able to stab your sister or beat her over the head.
So tie the strap around her upper arm, get yourself a good vein, and off she goes.
And don’t even think about coming near me with it because I’ll get to this one before you get to me.
There are a hundred ways to kill a baby this small.
I can literally strangle her with one hand. ”
“I…I can’t do this.”
“Then we sacrifice the baby.”
“No!”
“So take the syringe.”
Greta calls my name softly. “Susan. You can do this. It’ll be painless. And it will save Bella.”
“I…I…”
Greta pulls her hoodie over her head. Underneath, she’s wearing a sleeveless running top. She holds out her hand. “Pass me the strap.”
“Greta.”
“You do have a choice, Susan,” Venetia says in a sing-song voice. She lets Bella slip, as though dropping her to the floor.
“No!”
But she’s still holding Bella, clutching her to her hip. Bella’s wails get louder, filling the room as, outside, fireworks pop.
“Your choice.”
Greta stands to walk over to the counter, to take the strap.
Venetia holds up a hand. “Susan has to do it. This is not a suicide. It’s a murder. She needs to live with this for the rest of her life. She needs to know she caused it.”
There’s something in the way Venetia says it, a crack in her voice. This is all a pretense, I realize. She knows she bears some responsibility for what happened. But it’s irrelevant; she’s not going to listen to reason. She’s way beyond reason.
Greta is buckling the strap around her upper arm.
“I’ll do this part, and Susan can do the injection,” she says calmly. My big sister. My rock. Giving her life for Bella. And I’ve spent the last five days thinking all kinds of things about her.
Greta sits back down. Her bag is hanging off the back of the chair and it slips to the floor now with a thud.
She picks it up and puts it on her lap. She looks at me.
Her eyes are trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what.
Am I supposed to do it a certain way? Not do it?
Fake do it? Is that even possible? Not with Venetia watching us.
What is she trying to say? I stare back. Maybe she’s just saying goodbye.
Greta coughs, a heavy, chesty cough, covering her mouth, closing her eyes.
“Take the syringe now, Susan, and off you go.” There is glee in Venetia’s voice.
Greta opens her eyes again and nods at me. This can’t be happening. I meet her eyes. They bloom with tears. In all my life, even when our mother died, I’ve never seen Greta cry.
One last time, I try Venetia. “Please?”
“No. An eye for an eye.” In her arms, Bella whimpers.
I pick up the syringe.