Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
DAN
Three weeks later
We sit in the waiting room at the hospital, Fiona and I.
I’m not a fan of waiting rooms. They’re transient places.
Nothing ever happens in them except for…
waiting. It’s our Jude’s first of what I know will be many assessments today, for what we hope will eventually become surgery to fit him with a cochlear implant.
And then maybe he will be able to hear when his mother gets cross with him, like she is with me right now.
‘Why do you always take such stupid risks, Dan? If you knew Tilly Ward was Samantha Valentine—’ We were still talking about the case.
Everyone is still talking about the case.
It’s dominated the news, just as I’d expected it to.
Erin Santos is more famous than the Kardashians right now.
If she’d played it differently, perhaps she could’ve made herself a very rich woman.
Only I don’t think it was that kind of compensation she was after.
I’m sure Erin will be pleased to know that thanks to her image captured on CCTV in a charity shop in King’s Cross, where she had undergone a makeover, it has largely replaced the one from six years ago. She’d really hated that photo.
I suppose I could sympathise. I’m still living down my own photo from that article, almost a month on.
‘You mean Julie Edwards,’ I correct her.
‘You know what I mean, Dan. If you knew that, then why did you go alone, back to her apartment? You also knew that Erin Santos was on the run, and out for revenge.’
‘Yes, but I had no idea she was going to be there at that time – or that she was armed.’
‘You knew she wanted to kill her. And frankly, I’d like to have killed her myself.’
I touch her knee with my hand. ‘Using your own son, our son, as a means to pull at your heartstrings. You’ve already got enough of those to pull as it is, a whole bloody orchestra of the things!
’ I squeeze it. ‘Every parent is protective of their children, Dan, but when your child is born with a… difference, it’s another level.
I just want to wrap him up in cotton wool and never let anything or anyone harm him. ’
‘I know, Fi,’ I say. ‘So do I.’
I’d been dreading it, having to face Archer during the debrief.
Julie Edwards is still in hospital, recovering well from her injuries.
The physical ones, anyway. Once the doctors see fit, she’ll be moved to a psychiatric ward where she’ll be assessed, all while under arrest of course.
Apparently, she has all the nurses on the ward eating out of her hand already. I wish I could say that I’m surprised.
It gives me no pleasure to say that Julie Edwards is a dangerous psychopath.
Or that there’s a room at Larksmere Hospital waiting for her.
I would’ve loved to have seen Dr Wainwright’s face when he no doubt heard it all on the news.
Davis had subsequently spoken to him on the phone, but he was adamant that his original diagnosis of Erin still stood – that she was, is, two different people.
Sometimes, the ego simply won’t allow people to accept the facts, or that they could be wrong.
What is truth if it’s not just a belief system anyway?
Erin.
Somehow, that day, she had managed to walk right out of Tilly’s apartment, past an entire group of emergency workers, neighbours and onlookers, armed with a gun, without anyone seeing her. I’m not kidding. It was as if she’d turned into a ghost. Just like Samantha Valentine.
We recovered the gun a couple of days later. She’d thrown it into the Thames. I was pleased to see that there was still a single bullet left in the chamber. One of two.
‘I don’t really want to have to talk to you, Riley,’ Archer had said as I’d sat up straight before her, hands in my lap. ‘Just tell me the facts. Is Erin Santos still missing?’
She was.
‘And you have no idea where she may have gone. Or who she might be with? If she’s using a new identity?’
‘No,’ I lied. On all counts.
‘I don’t quite yet know how to get you out of this one, Riley.’ She’d sighed, without looking up at me. She was too busy rearranging her pens.
‘I do, ma’am.’ I said, placing the bottle of Baccarat Rouge on her desk.
I’d remembered the name, you see, the name on the driver’s licence, Alexandra Fisher.
Erin had flashed it before me in a split second, but still, it had somehow gone in.
I suspect that she’s using that name now, and that she and Malcolm are in a different country somewhere.
Together. Maybe that one-night stand they had might’ve produced a pregnancy, who knows – it happened to me and Fiona with our Pip after all!
Honestly though, it’s what I hope for her: redemption.
‘He just disappeared,’ Molly said miserably, when I had called her to find out where Malcolm was. I’d been trying to contact him after the incident, but with no reply, I had gone to Molly for answers instead.
‘I’ve been knocking and calling for the last couple of days,’ she said, the anxiety heavy in her voice.
‘In the end, I let myself into his apartment. It looks as if he’s taken some possessions with him, some clothes and his aftershave he wears…
’ She sounded bereft, and I felt sorry for her.
Unrequited love is the worst kind. ‘Maybe he’s gone away, on holiday somewhere!
’ she said, hopeful. ‘You don’t think he’s with her, do you… with Erin?’
‘I’m sure he’ll be back soon, Molly,’ I said.
Some lies really are for the best.