Chapter 40
FORTY
I laughed at the sheer outlandishness of her demand, even as butterflies swarmed in my belly at the horrific threat, the idea that anyone could be so intentionally cruel.
‘I think it’s time you got your stuff and left,’ Thomas said coldly, standing strong beside me.
Jade folded her arms, even as more blood dripped from the leg of her jeans. She no longer seemed aware of it, her entire focus now on me.
‘Jade,’ I said, a disbelieving high-pitched tone bursting from my lips.
‘Even if I wanted to – which having heard what you’ve put Thomas through, I don’t – I don’t have it to give you.
A few months after Thomas signed everything over to me, the debt collectors came.
It turned out Mum and Dad had made some pretty poor financial choices.
By the time I cleared what they owed, there was only a small sum left, and I gave that to a handful of conservation charities more than two years ago. ’
At the time, it had felt important to make my own money, start selling the things I’d kept to myself for so long, put my woodworking skills to good use.
It had brought me a sense of pride, something I’d forgotten I was capable of.
Now, with things growing increasingly strained with Ron, I half wished I’d kept a little cushion to fall back on, but it was too late for regrets.
‘It might have escaped your attention,’ I went on, ‘but I live a pretty simple life here. I don’t need millions for fancy holidays and caviar. ’
Thomas looked at me in surprise, and I could see he was re-evaluating every assumption he’d made when our parents died. ‘You really gave it all away?’
I nodded.
Jade pointed a long finger at me. It was crusted in dried blood. ‘You still have the house. You can sell it.’
‘I live here. It’s my home. Do you seriously expect me to move onto the street so you can benefit from the profits?’ I laughed. ‘Go home, Jade. Do better, be better, for your daughter.’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘Don’t you get it? I’m doing all of this for her ! For her future. A decent life. There are two kinds of people in the world today. The rich, and everyone else. I won’t be left behind to bow and scrape my way. I deserve more.’
‘ Do you?’ Thomas asked.
‘Look at me!’ she shrieked. ‘Look at how easy it was to make you fall in love with me. You were begging me to marry you less than six months into our relationship! Of course I deserve the best. I was born to have , to acquire, to be given things. We’re not the same, not alike in the slightest. Surely you realise that? ’
‘Oh, I do. You’re nothing like me. Or my sister.’
His words brought a surge of comforting pleasure at the acknowledgement that he finally saw things as they really were, not how he assumed they had been. Outside, the church bells started up again, and he shook his head in wonder.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Those damn bells. I hated them growing up here. You, Mum, Dad – you all slept through the night, but I could never manage to tune them out. I’d just be drifting off to sleep and they’d start up again.
I used to wonder why – who on earth needed to know it was quarter past four in the morning?
Not me. The sound of them is imprinted on my brain.
I can’t delete them.’ He snorted. ‘Sometimes, if I wake suddenly at night, I still hear them. My imagination playing tricks on me. When Jade called me today, refusing to tell me what the hell was going on, why she’d disappeared without so much as an explanation, they were what gave away where she was.
’ He looked at her. ‘I couldn’t understand why you’d come here, or why you’d bothered to call if you weren’t going to tell me anything of use, but now I get it.
I suppose you were recording the call? Planning to ask me about the house and get me to admit I owned half of it? ’
Jade’s silence was all the answer we needed, the livid expression on her face giving away her intentions.
He shrugged. ‘Well, sorry to disappoint you. And if you think you’re going to threaten my sister, scare her out of her home, I’ve got news for you.
It won’t fucking work. If that worthless ex of hers turns up here, he’s going to find a whole battalion waiting for him,’ he added vehemently.
‘You don’t mind if we stay a while, do you, sis? ’
I shook my head, shocked that he would do that for me. That he would step up. The thought of letting him and his fellow soldiers into the house wasn’t in any way frightening now. Despite everything, the arguments, the estrangement, I knew that he would keep me safe.
Jade bowed her head, defeated, and I let out a long breath, relieved that she’d finally seen reason.
I would be the bigger person. Let her leave without making a scene.
I hitched the sleeping baby higher on my shoulder and began to turn for the doorway, the broken door lying on the ground, leaving nothing but a splintered frame, the light fading beyond.
I was desperate to get back out in the fresh air.
It stank of blood in here. She needed to go to the hospital. Find out what was causing it .
Suddenly, her head snapped up, and she let out a shrill screech that had me spinning back to face her. ‘You bastard!’ she spat. ‘You’ve wasted a whole year of my life! I won’t let you walk away without giving me what I’m owed!’
‘Perhaps you should have thought about that before you went behind my back with another man,’ Thomas said sadly. ‘You might have been entitled to a chunk of my pension, but now you won’t even get that. You voided the contract the moment you got into his bed.’
Jade launched herself forward, shoving him hard in the chest, slamming her fist into his belly with more strength than she should have had whilst bleeding so heavily.
She swung the axe, and I screamed as the blunt edge smacked into the side of his head.
As he stumbled back, clearly not expecting the attack, Amala woke in my arms and began to cry, startled by the altercation.
‘Watch out!’ I cried as his foot caught in a coil of chain I’d left on the floor. He fell backward, grasping at thin air, and I saw the silver flash of the axe in Jade’s hand as she raised it, her eyes wild as she prepared to swing it again.
‘No!’ I shrieked, clutching Amala. I looked around for somewhere to put the baby down safely, but I was too late.
Thomas gave an agonised bellow, and I spun back just in time to see him tumble out of the open doorway.
He rolled to his knees, crawling away, the chain still wrapped around his ankle, and as he disappeared from sight, the most horrific moan filled the air. Then there was silence.
‘ Thomas !’ I rushed forward, but Jade got to the door first, holding the axe up in front of her, barring my way.
‘Give me my daughter now ,’ she demanded, her eyes gleaming dangerously.
‘I have to go to him! I have to help?—’
She swung at my face with the axe, and I was so shocked that Amala nearly slipped from my arms. Her cries were frantic, deafening, and I felt disorientated, terror seeping through my bones. ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ I yelled. ‘I’m holding your daughter!’
‘Oh, don’t play Mother Teresa with me, Annie, it doesn’t suit you.
You killed your own baby. Stop trying to play the saviour with mine!
I don’t want your filthy hands anywhere near her.
You’re a murderer! You failed your son, chose yourself over him because you were too damned weak to find a way out of the life you’d let yourself end up in.
’ She gave a cruel laugh. ‘Do you think you’ve changed?
That you’re such a good person now? Is that it?
I know you think you’re finally ready to stand up to your ex and fight, but it’s too late!
You’re a joke! Nothing you do is going to bring your son back.
It’s pointless. You failed , Annie. You failed your baby, and you failed yourself.
And you can tell yourself your little fairy stories about how the next time you see him it will all be so different, you’ll be strong, but we both know you don’t have it in you.
You’re pathetic. You could never take the necessary steps to end him, no matter what you might let yourself believe. ’
I shook my head, her words cutting right to my core. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said coolly.
‘Right.’ She nodded, narrowing her eyes spitefully.
‘So it’s just a coincidence that the moment you thought Ryan was headed this way, you started work on that pit in the front garden?
Do you think I didn’t realise exactly what you were dreaming of doing?
I knew you were mad – I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it?
For a while there, I even wondered if you were planning to toss me and Amala into it.
But then you told me about Ryan and it all clicked. It was for him, right?’
‘It’s a pond! It’s going to be a pond. For the wildlife!’
She smirked. ‘Oh, yeah, sure it is.’
‘I need to see Thomas!’ I cried, listening for any sound of movement and hearing nothing. Was he lying out there on the lawn, bleeding to death? ‘We need to call an ambulance! Did you cut him?’
Jade acted as if I hadn’t spoken, as if my brother was of no interest to her now. I met her eyes and saw red.
‘You’re right, okay?’ I hissed. ‘You’re right.
I didn’t know it myself to begin with, but yes, the deeper the pit became, the more I realised what I was making.
What I had to do. If you’d lived even a year in my shoes, you would understand, but you haven’t, have you?
You’ve no idea what I’ve been through. So yes, I would have killed Ryan with my bare hands if it meant not going back to that life.
I would have done whatever it took and concreted over his rotting corpse without the slightest ounce of regret. ’