CHAPTER 34
Ella
Three days. The car accident wiped Jude and me out for three days. And for those three days, I got no calls, no threats, no messages. Nothing.
Because he thought I was dead.
Benji knew we had found out about him and Genie, and he drove us off the road, on a country lane, in the middle of a rainstorm.
He wanted us dead.
I prop myself on the pillow, my shoulder aching, but luckily the brunt of the impact has eased. Plus, the pain medication. There’s a gentle knock at the door, which must have stirred me from my doze.
“Come in,” I croak, my words heavy with sleep.
Marcus pokes his head through, his smile on full beam.
He’s been playing househusband since the accident.
Knocking on the door routinely to offer me snacks, water, and books.
He brings me pain medication, and cooks dinner for us both.
Jude and I are hobbling into either of our rooms to eat together.
They are surface wounds, apparently, but they are ones that Marcus is keen to fix.
Jude’s eagle eyes saved us. While I wittered on about Benji, she spied the approaching headlights.
Bracing herself and turning the wheel as they clipped into the bumper.
We skidded, jumping off the side of the road and slamming into a wooden fence that crumbled beneath her wheels.
The car shifted as Jude tried to regain control.
Luckily, the robust four-wheel drive of the Range Rover took the brunt of it all, leaving us scared but alive.
“How is my second-favourite invalid doing today?” Marcus comes in and places a cup of tea on the side.
“I feel so much better, thanks. I think it’s your magical tea,” I say. And the lack of threats.
“Good. I have to go into the office today, so you’ll both have to fend for yourselves, but I left out some lunch and snacks, plus the fridge is stocked. You have my number, right?” Marcus steps back, opening the window and grabbing another blanket from the cupboard.
I blink, tears welling irrationally.
“Hey, woah,” he says when he spies my tears. I wipe them roughly with the back of my hand. He reminds me of my dad, so truly good-natured that he’d look after me when I’m not even family.
“I should get out of your hair,” I say, sitting forward. My body is stiff and unwilling to move.
Marcus sits on the bed, putting a hand out to help me as I move to the edge of the mattress. Their spare bed is both luxurious and comfortable.
“Hey,” he smiles down at me, “Jude hasn’t told me a lot. Correction, won’t tell me anything. But I know things are tough right now for you. Stay for as long as you need. Remind my dear wife how to stay safe,” he says.
All I can do is nod at his kindness and grace. And ache for the fact that I’ve never had that.
“Thank you,” I call to him as he leaves.
Immi arrives with cake and a bouquet of wild pink and orange flowers, dropping kisses on our cheeks as though we had a cold and were not in a car accident.
“What did the police say?” Immi says as she cuts into the cake.
“There were no witnesses or cameras on the road. It’s a tough one. But they’ve impounded Jude’s car,” I say, leaning over to dip a finger in the thick icing. It’s sweet and fruity.
“Which is a pain,” Jude says, leaning against the fridge. She has a bruise forming across her collarbone. I’ve noticed her wincing at times.
“So, this Genie character?” Immi says, handing out slices of cake on blue plates.
“Immi, I’m so sorry,” I say. We haven’t had a chance to talk about it all, but it can’t be nice to hear about your boyfriend’s past.
Immi stabs her fork into the cake with vigour, but her face remains neutral.
“Don’t be, darling. Honestly, I always knew there was something he wasn’t telling me…” Immi’s eyes drift away, tears forming. “I just can’t believe it,” she finishes after a moment.
“Did you – have you spoken to him in the last three days?” I say, trying to keep the implication out of my mouth.
“I haven’t seen him since your party. He flew out the last morning for two days in Paris with work. He should be back today. Or so he said.”
Almost perfect timing.
“Genie has to be what sparked Benji, he loves her so much that he’ll do anything,” I say, dipping a fork into the sponge.
“Even drive us off the road. El, I know you don’t agree, but we need to take this theory to the police,” Jude says.
Both women’s eyes turn to me, and for once I can’t find a reason to disagree. I can’t fix this alone, not against a man who will kill me.
“I know,” I say into my plate.
“And why now?” Immi says, her brows furrowed. The cake loses its taste as it sits heavy on my tongue.
Why indeed.
I place the plate down and run my tongue over my lips.
They’ve both risked so much for me and I have to tell them the truth.
“I know why,” I say, their eyes turning to me.
It’s another fork in the road. Probably the same one I’ve been dancing around for the last ten years. The mistake that I can’t undo.
Inhaling, I say the words I never thought I’d say again: “I lied on the stand.”
I close my eyes on my friends and find myself standing in the prison, waiting for Henry.
It was the smell that I remember the most. The stale stench of sweat and dust that hangs in the air.
A line of Perspex divides hopeful visitors and inmates, and everything carries the same smell.
The seat is hard against my back, unforgiving as I struggle to get into the bolted-down chair.
I wait. Usually, Dad would be here and we’d fill the silence together.
But I had to do this alone. The door in the far corner of the room creaks open, and keys jangle as the bodies take their place on the other side of the glass.
My body’s reaction to Henry is adolescent, desperate and needy.
After everything that’s happened, I still want him, still need him in my life.
I suck in the stale air and wait for his chains to be uncuffed.
He smiles, holding my gaze as he reaches for the phone.
I wait. I sit on my hands to hide the nerves.
Then, when I feel I can, I take the phone.
“Elsabelle,” he says in a sultry way that makes me feel cheap. He speaks as though it’s only us, no guards, no rattling of keys, just the two of us in the whole world.
That was his superpower.
“Where is he?” I say.
“Well, hello to you, too.” Henry pulls that stupid smile onto his face.
“Where’s my brother?” I ask again, knowing that he is savouring every moment of this.
Henry shrugs, leaning on the table, his blue jumpsuit stretching over his biceps. “I’ll tell you what I told your dad. I don’t know.”
But I see it, the flicker of his brow. The way his smile grows.
I had lost everything by then, all because of this man. My mum was fading into the bottle faster than I could pull her out. My father wasn’t surviving and my brother was gone.
“Maybe my memory is coming back,” I say and raise my chin slightly.
This makes him sit up, his thick brows drawn together.
I heard that his defence relied on the fact that I was the last person to see Henry that night.
We had stood outside, arguing about the fact he had brought a weapon when we’d promised no one would get hurt.
Arguing while Robbie laid bleeding and beaten in the manor.
Henry admitted to beating Robbie. He also admitted to knocking me unconscious outside the manor.
But he hadn’t said what happened next. My memory was admittedly hazy but I saw his feet walking away from me, in which direction I couldn’t say.
Who’s to say it wasn’t back into the house, where Nate sat with a surface wound from protecting Robbie, and Robbie lay, half unconscious, unaware of what was to come. I straightened my shoulders.
“Maybe that bump on my head scrambled things up. But it’s falling into place now,” I say, voice shaking.
Henry shakes his head.
“That’s right.” I lean forward, staring straight into his green eyes. Part of me does remember seeing Nate, but there’s no way to tell if that was part of reality.
“Despite the blow to the head, I saw you in there.” I touch my temple.
“I saw you stab Robbie and then stab Nate.”
“No,” Henry said.
“And even if that feels hazy, I can say with certainty, before I blacked out, that you returned to the house.”
“I didn’t.” But we both know he’s lying. Robbie is dead.
“I was too scared to testify earlier. You threatened me, that night you came to my house when you were on bail,” I say.
“You bitch,” Henry says.
“Tell me where my brother is,” I spit.
“You’ll never fucking find him.” And that’s when I knew he knew.
“But now I just want to tell the truth, because my memories are coming back. And I’m not scared anymore. Not when I know there’s so much evidence against you. Right now, it’s me seeing nothing, or me seeing you stab my brother,” I continue.
And there it was. Because I knew he had done it, we both did.
“You’ll fucking regret this.” Henry’s hand slams into the table, his fingers trembling.
Maybe I would regret it, but at the time, there was no other way out.
Henry was bound to get away, and there was another person that everyone was ignoring: Nate.
They had no case against him without more evidence.
The weapon was gone, and he had an excuse for his prints being all over the crime scene.
But I could testify, giving a witness statement which put Henry alone with the victim. Well, that was something else entirely.
“Then again, if Nate came home,” I swallow, the truth hard to say, “or his body was found… maybe I’d forget what I saw.”
And maybe I would have. I really didn’t know.
“He’s not coming home, bitch. Nate’s fucking gone. And you will be too,” Henry screams, his face pressed against the flimsy Perspex. But I wasn’t scared. I had already dropped the phone, rising to stand. Even so, I heard him, his voice echoing around the room.
“She’s lying! She’s fucking lying!”
I blink away the memory, waiting for it to fade before I look at Jude and Immi again.
When I do, there’s a look so cold that my breath wraps at the bottom of my throat and stays there, burning.
“You lied in court?” Immi says, her words slow and careful as though she’s speaking a foreign language.
“In the end, I told them I saw him stab Robbie. It wasn’t enough, but he still got fifteen years and served even less. I had to do something to make him pay.” There are tears in my eyes and my palm presses into the cool countertop.
“But… did you?” Immi says.
“Did I what?” I say. Her face is rigid and the fork in her left hand hangs limp from her fingers as though she’s barely touching it.
“Did you see him stab that boy?” Jude fills the silence when Immi doesn’t speak, her face paling.
“No.” I shake my head. “But he did, Robbie didn’t die randomly. He hurt him.” There’s a desperation in my voice, I can hear it.
“Did it fix things? Doing what you did?” Jude finally asks.
Out of all the questions, I never thought she’d ask that.
I chew on my lip. “No, but I had to. My family was losing their grip on reality. I thought, by lying, I would give Robbie some justice and my family some answers about Nate.”
Henry never told us.
The look on Immi’s face is so raw that I turn away. Jude takes a moment before she speaks. “But Nate was never found.”
“I know,” I say.
“So, how did Robbie die?” Immi’s voice is barely a whisper. “And how is Benji part of it?”
“I… I don’t know. He has to be. He’s the link from Genie, who was obsessed with the case, to now. Maybe she poisoned him and is playing puppet master while he destroys me. All because I told the truth about what happened that night?”
“But you didn’t tell the truth, did you?” Immi’s voice is low.
“No. Well, not as I remembered it. But the truth that got justice,” I say, and yet, I hear it for the first time.
The string the stalker has been pulling.
The idea they’ve been pushing me closer to and that I have spent all these years running from.
There was no justice, not for Robbie or for Nate. Not while I kept lying.
Jude’s voice snaps me back into the room: “So, what is the truth then?”
The room is filling with a palpable tension. I shift in my seat. Jude’s jaw is tight, her eyes not meeting mine. While Immi stares through me, her face flat and lips pushed thin and white.
“I… I honestly don’t know,” I say. “I saw Henry attack Robbie. I saw him punch so hard that there was a snap. Nate was there, Henry was there, and Robbie was there. But when I woke up, Robbie was dead, Nate was gone, and Henry was the only one who knew the truth! He did something. Someone doesn’t just disappear by mistake.
I asked and begged, but he gave me nothing.
Do you know what that’s like? To have no idea what happened to someone you love with all your heart.
To have no idea how a boy you knew died. ”
My words are tumbling now, a fevered energy crawling up my spine. Not to make them understand or sympathise with me, but for them to realise that the truth died with Henry. My hands cover my eyes.
“Robbie was murdered, and Nate was gone. There was nothing pinning Henry to that night other than the fact he was there. Without my word, Henry would have walked free.”
It was wrong. I am wrong. But I needed the truth, and I believed I could get it.
“My family was broken without Nate, and we looked, God, we looked for him. But this… this was the only way I could bring any resolution to my family.” I speak into the floor, only daring to glance up once I’m finished.
“Maybe Benji, fuelled by Genie’s memory, wants the same truth for Robbie as I want for Nate.”
Jude nods, a gentle look on her face. Immi is gone.