Chapter 67
FREYA
With the petrol can still in my hand, I watch from the shadows of the car park as flames leap up into the night sky.
I thought I’d feel more than this, knowing that Charlie and my mother are in there, battling for their lives. Regret, remorse, hatred, love … something. Anything. But there’s nothing other than a hollowed-out emptiness.
If I’m honest, I knew it was always going to end this way for my mother.
Our relationship had been built on eggshells, the pair of us tiptoeing around each other, waiting for the first to break.
There had been many cracks over the years, but whether it be out of a misplaced loyalty to me or a fear that she might not perhaps be as stupid as she looks, we’ve stepped over them, pretending they don’t exist. But each time, she was getting closer to the truth, her incessant need to poke and prod crawling under my skin, making it itch.
I feel strangely satiated—as if I should be congratulating myself for having held back for this long. I’ve done well—she deserved much more, much sooner.
But Charlie’s different. I dared to believe that together, we could survive anything.
That we were cut from the same cloth. Hadn’t he proved it that night of the accident?
He could have gone to the police. Told them it was me who had lost control of the car, mounted the pavement, and put Marcus Harding into a coma.
But he loved me enough not to, and I thought that was all we needed.
But looking back, we never really stood a chance, because something broke that night—in him, in us. And no matter what I did, it didn’t feel like I was ever going to be able to make him love me again.
So the baby was my last chance. If he couldn’t love me, he’d love our baby. All he had to do was believe it.
But like everyone else in my life, he’d not trusted me.
And the problem with not trusting me is that you find out things you don’t want to know.
I thought Charlie was different, but he’s just proved he’s the same as all the rest. And as an explosion rings out and I’m thrown back by the force, I can’t believe I let him get away with it for so long.