Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
ERIN
Her face is a picture – shock, surprise, confusion, disbelief, horror – it’s all right there, in front of me. I only wish I had a camera to hand so that I could capture this moment and keep it forever.
‘How are you, Samantha?’ I feel light-headed with adrenalin, but strangely calm. ‘It’s been quite a while.’
She takes a few steps back as I make my way towards her, forcing her deeper into the apartment. ‘I don’t suppose you were expecting to see me, were you, hun?’
‘I’m sorry, who… who are you?’ Her eyes are like moons, but there’s no mistaking them, that dazzling emerald green…
‘I think you may have the wrong person… My name isn’t Samantha, I’m Tilly – my name’s Tilly Ward.
Why are you here?’ She glances left to right, quickly, as though searching for a potential means of escape.
That’s when I see the hearing aid, behind her right ear.
‘Are you a journalist? Because if you are, then I don’t want to talk to you…
The police have advised me not to. Please can you just leave?
I’ll have to call them if you don’t.’ She clutches her heaving chest with a hand as she cowers away from me.
For a brief moment, I suddenly doubt myself, wonder if maybe I have got it wrong and that she actually really is Tilly Ward, the same Tilly Ward who emailed me only yesterday, looking for solidarity and words of comfort in our shared experience and victimhood.
It makes me sick to think that even till the bitter end she’s been messing with my head.
I pull the gun out of my left pocket in one deft move, point it at her.
Her hands fly up to her mouth, but it doesn’t prevent the gasp escaping from it. Ha! She wasn’t expecting that!
‘Calling the police wouldn’t be advisable,’ I say. ‘Sit down, Samantha.’ I wave the gun in the direction of the table.
Her whole demeanour changes then. She sheds the scared, vulnerable victim facade like a second skin, replacing it with a different vibe altogether, bolder and more confident. Ah, there she is – Samantha.
‘Erin,’ she says my name as she stares at the gun. ‘Erin Santos… My, my, don’t you look different.’
‘I could say the same to you,’ I reply, glancing her up and down, my nostrils flaring in contempt. ‘How the mighty have fallen.’
A small, thin smile creeps across her face.
‘The blonde really suits you, hun. It lifts the green in your eyes, really makes them pop! I’m not sure about the length though.
’ She taps her lip with a finger. ‘Why are you pointing a gun at me?’ Her nose wrinkles, the way it always did when she found something distasteful.
I used to find it quite endearing. Now though, it makes me feel like pulling the trigger.
‘Put your hands on the table, where I can see them.’ She raises an eyebrow, but does what I ask. ‘That’s right, Samantha.’ I nod, admittedly enjoying myself now, enjoying finally being the one in the driver’s seat, the one, literally holding all the power. Could anyone really blame me?
‘I can still call you Samantha, can’t I – being as though we both know it isn’t your real name? In fact,’ I say, ‘let’s start with that first, shall we? What is your real name?’
Seven years I have waited. Seven long, soul-destroying, life-changing years. I just want to hear her say it out loud.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She blinks at me, nonplussed. ‘I think maybe you’re confused. Maybe you need to be in hospital.’
I grip the gun tightly, feel my finger twitch against the trigger. She watches me carefully. She’s trying to anticipate my next move. I can almost hear the cogs turning inside her twisted mind.
‘You’re right,’ she says after a moment, ‘I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a shock to see you, Erin, especially after all this time, turning up out of the blue like this.
And you haven’t even taken your shoes off!
’ She glances down at my feet, but I don’t follow suit.
If I look away, she’ll attempt to wrestle the gun from me.
She’s going to have to do better than that.
‘Ah yes, I remember. How did it go? “We take our shoes off, and we place them behind the door!”’ She joins in with me as we sing-say the words in unison.
‘That’s right!’ She laughs, and it’s still as infectious as ever.
‘I apologise,’ I say, ruefully, ‘how ill-mannered of me, and I would’ve paid you a visit sooner, only I’ve spent the last six years of my life a prisoner in an asylum for the criminally insane. But don’t worry, hun,’ – I grimace – ‘not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought of you.’
‘Hasn’t it, really?’ She looks touched. If I didn’t know better, I’d even say it was genuine. ‘Ahhh, that’s so sweet of you. You always were a big old softie.’
I nod slowly. ‘Wasn’t I just?’
‘So, what are you planning to do with that gun, hun? Surely you’re not going to shoot me with it, are you?’ A look of incredulity and mild hurt flashes across her features. Admittedly, she’s still beautiful, even as she is now, with her lank, greasy curtain hair and the tatty old clothes.
‘I’ve really missed you, Erin. I miss those times we had together – you remember that summer we met, don’t you? All the things we did, the places we went, all the champagne we drank? We were such good friends – you still are my friend, Erin.’
‘A friend who’d kill for you, you mean? One you could coerce and manipulate and brainwash into believing a fictitious story, a complete pack of lies?’
The gun is shaking in my hand. I can feel the emotion rise up inside me, threatening to spill out. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you do it to me, Sam?’
I hear the whine in my voice and I hate myself for it. Why do I still care? What does it even matter why anymore? The answer won’t change anything – none of it.
I know I should just pull the trigger. It’s what I’ve come here to do after all, to enact my revenge and get justice for myself and for Bojan Radulovic and Milo Harrison, justice that I’ve been denied all these years. I have to finish this never-ending nightmare. But first, I just need to know.
‘Who was Bojan Radulovic? Who was he to you? Why did you make me kill him?’
‘Make you kill him? Oh no, no, hun.’ She shakes her head, tuts.
Tilly Ward is now nowhere to be seen. ‘I didn’t make you do anything.
You really weren’t well at the time, don’t you remember?
You were having some sort of psychotic break when it all happened.
You thought he was abusing me. You believed his name was Ari Hussain and that we were engaged or something…
You were delusional, Erin, just as you seem to be now, pointing that thing at me. Trying to scare the devil out of me.’
‘Interesting choice of words, Sam. But I wasn’t delusional, was I? I saw photos of you together, photos you showed me of the two of you —’
‘Look, I was always your friend, hun.’ Her voice is soft now, like I remember it. ‘I tried to help you, Erin… I did everything I could to help you, but I’m not a doctor and…’
She’s doing it again, trying to get me to doubt myself, to question everything. I can almost feel her words slipping like poison beneath my skin.
‘Tell me the truth or I’ll blow your head off.’
She has no idea how much I have wanted to say these words to her, how long I have waited.
She holds her hands up, sighs heavily.
‘OK, OK… so I doctored the photos. It’s not difficult to superimpose someone’s face onto an image, Erin.
You just need the tools. Anyway, he was nobody.
Just some loser I had a fling with who thought he could ghost me afterwards, thought he could just use me and then discard me after promising me the sun, moon and stars. ’
I stare at her, dumbfounded.
‘That was the reason why?’
‘Good enough reason if you ask me, hun. These men, they think they can just take what they want and then throw you away like garbage.’
‘So why didn’t you kill him yourself? Why did you make me believe that he was abusing you? Why lie and convince me that you were in danger? You knew, didn’t you, that I’d have done anything to protect you? You knew because of my past trauma that I wouldn’t let that happen to you.’
‘Well, I wasn’t actually planning to kill him,’ she says from the side of her mouth, as though we’re a pair of old colleagues, chewing the fat about a bit of office gossip.
‘Not really. But once you came along, it just seemed like a fun idea. And it all sort of fell into place somehow. Serendipity, if you will.’ She smiles at me, warmly, flashes me those dazzling green eyes.
‘The police are searching for you, Erin. I have to admit, I’m a teensy bit jealous, all that attention you’re getting on social media!
Mind you, that photograph.’ She pulls a face.
‘I felt for you when I saw it. I wouldn’t want to see that flashing up on screen every time they mentioned me in the press.
You’re really so much prettier in the flesh, hun, even with this new look you’re going with.
I have to say,’ – her eyes sweep over me – ‘though I don’t dislike it, it’s definitely giving Myra Hindley vibes. ’
I really should just pull the trigger.
‘The police won’t find me, Sam. And by the time they find your body, I’ll be long gone. Just like you were on the night I killed your fictitious fiancé, six years ago.
‘How did you do it, Sam? That day, outside the apartments. You were there one moment, and the next… How did you vanish without a trace?’
She smiles, mock-bashfully, still desperate to keep the control she craves by denying me the truth.
‘I can’t give away trade secrets, sweetie, even to my bestie.
Anyway, you already know the answer, Erin – it was in much the same way you’re about to do yourself.
It’s not that hard, is it, to disappear, to change your identity, become someone else?
Sometimes, if you’re super smart, you can be many different people at once, though you need to be organised for that, have a very methodical approach, as admittedly, it can get a little confusing at times.
Anyway, killing me won’t exonerate you. Then no one will know the truth, will they, and you’ll be a murderer. ’
‘I’m already one of those, thanks to you.’
She sighs. ‘Don’t be like that, hun. No one forced you to stab the stupid bastard in the heart, did they? You did that of your own free will.’
‘The free will you manipulated and sabotaged, you mean, like some kind of Svengali cult leader?’
She laughs. ‘Oh, but you give me too much credit, Erin. I suppose I should really be flattered. But you’re not so different to me underneath it all.
You’ve a killer instinct in you, Erin Santos.
That night you saw your mother killed by your stepdad, you couldn’t find it then, could you, that instinct that’s buried within you, within us all?
I just helped you to dig deep. And you felt better for it, didn’t you?
Once you’d plunged that knife into him and stopped his heart from beating, you felt relief for what you didn’t do all those years ago, I know you did. ’
I swallow dryly. I can’t let her into my head. She mustn’t get inside my head!
‘You don’t know anything about me anymore.’ I point the gun at her as I stand, finger poised on the trigger. ‘Tell me your real name.’
But then, would you believe, the doorbell rings.