The Jealous Girl

Chapter 52

NOW

Late August

Sunday

‘Kirsty?’ Shock resounded in Ryan’s voice as the crowbar fell from his hand with a clatter.

‘What have you done?’ I gasped, rushing towards Ben.

‘He broke in,’ Ryan said, staggering backwards.

I dropped to my knees, letting the bank statement fall from my grasp. ‘Ben, can you hear me?’

No response.

I pressed my fingers to Ben’s neck and felt for a pulse.

There was a beat. Then another.

‘Thank God,’ I murmured, the tight pressure in my chest easing slightly.

I pulled my phone from my pocket. ‘He needs an ambulance,’ I said, already dialling.

I gave them the address, my voice shaking as I willed Ben to wake up.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Ryan demanded as I hung up.

‘Proving I’m innocent,’ I snapped back.

‘By breaking into my house?’ Ryan stared at me. ‘Are you completely crazy?’

A car door slammed outside, and we both turned towards the door.

‘Ryan!’ Denise called, fear resounding in her voice. ‘We got the alarm alert—’

She raced inside and stopped dead in the living room doorway, with Martin just behind her. She gasped as she saw me. ‘You!’

‘I was set up,’ I told Ryan as I scrambled to my feet. I grabbed the bank statement off the floor and thrust it at him. ‘By her!’

Ryan scoffed, refusing to take the paper from me. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Who do you think you are, breaking into my home and making crazy accusations?’ Denise demanded.

‘Just look!’ I shoved the bank statement at him again.

‘This account’s in your name,’ Ryan said, as he glanced at the paper.

‘It’s addressed here.’

He shrugged. ‘So, you opened the account when you were living here.’

‘Check the date.’

‘Don’t listen to her nonsense, Ryan.’

Ryan glanced back at the page.

‘It’s a recent statement. That means they’ve still been arriving here after I left.’

Deep lines creased his forehead. ‘That doesn’t prove—’

‘I found it in your mum’s bedside cabinet.’

Ryan’s gaze lifted to me. ‘But—’

‘How dare you go through my things,’ Denise snapped, stepping further into the living room.

His attention shifted to her. ‘Mum, what is this?’

‘She must have planted it there.’

‘It’s addressed here, Mum,’ he said, holding the bank statement out towards her.

Denise didn’t respond.

‘What did you do?’ Ryan asked.

‘I did what I had to,’ Denise said, pushing her shoulders back as she glared at me, her eyes dark and hard.

Ryan gasped, horrified. ‘Mum!’

Something snapped within me.

‘You set me up!’ I shouted, charging across the room. There was a time I’d been intimidated by her.

But not any more.

Ryan moved faster, grabbing my arm before I reached her, pulling me aside.

I struggled against him. Anger surging through me. He’d already attacked Ben, and now he was getting in my way. I wasn’t going to let him stop me from getting answers.

‘Why did you do this?’ I demanded.

‘It wasn’t Denise’s fault,’ Martin said, stepping in front of his wife. ‘The fraud was Charlotte’s idea. She’d worked out the stables were in trouble. Said she wanted to help.’ He shrugged slightly. ‘It was only supposed to be one foal,’ he added, as though that made it acceptable.

‘I know,’ I snapped, as I tried to tug my arm free from Ryan’s grasp. ‘The one you sold to her father,’ I added, repeating what I’d learned from David Harcourt.

Martin blinked. ‘Yes, how did you—’

‘I told you she was clever,’ Ryan said.

I stopped tugging against him and stared at him, stunned. Now he believed in me?

My gaze shifted to Ben, still lying unconscious on the floor by Martin’s desk. He’d always believed in me.

‘Charlotte said it was safer that way,’ Martin continued. ‘If her dad ever realised what we’d done, he wouldn’t do anything about it. Not to his daughter.’ Martin shook his head. ‘But it wasn’t enough. We were in too much debt – one sale wasn’t going to get us out of it.’

‘So, you reckoned it had worked once, why not again?’

‘I was desperate.’ He reached for Denise’s hand. ‘I couldn’t lose our home. Our livelihood.’

‘And it was Charlotte,’ Denise said quietly. ‘She was practically part of the family. We thought—’ Her voice cracked.

‘I think she saw her involvement as proof of her worth,’ Martin said.

‘Not just to the stables, but to us. To Ryan. But we didn’t realise it until it was too late.

’ He looked at Ryan. ‘It was like she thought she deserved to be with him. Marry him. Be part of the family. Everything. We didn’t know what to do.

We couldn’t risk her exposing the fraud, we were in too deep. ’

‘Her dad wasn’t around much,’ Ryan added. ‘I think that’s one of the reasons she spent so much time here. Perhaps that’s part of the reason she didn’t care about stealing from him.’

I stared at him, the ground shifting beneath my feet.

‘You knew?’

‘Not at first,’ Ryan said quickly. ‘But my parents filled me in, recently.’

‘How long?’ I asked, finally jerking my arm free from his grip and turning to face him. ‘How long have you known?’

‘Just over a week.’

I struggled to catch my breath. Ryan reached out to steady me, but I shoved his hand away.

‘You knew before you broke up with me?’

He nodded. The movement was slight. Barely visible. But I saw it.

I blinked furiously. I wouldn’t cry. Not here. Not in front of them.

I kept glancing back at Ben. I wanted to go to him. Help him. But what could I do? Right now, I had to focus on keeping them talking until the ambulance arrived and I could get him out of here.

‘And the bank account?’ I asked, jerking my head at the statement in Ryan’s hand.

‘I didn’t know about this,’ he said, lifting the paper and staring at it again. ‘I swear,’ he added as his gaze met mine.

I studied him. Could I believe him?

‘Mum?’ he said, stepping past me towards Denise. ‘Why did you do this?’

She gritted her teeth and glared at me.

‘You don’t think you’ll get the truth out of her, do you?’ I spat the words out. I no longer had to hide my contempt for her.

‘Mum!’ Ryan said sharply. ‘Kirsty and Ben triggered the alarm when they broke in and I called the police when I saw the broken lock. They’ll be here any minute. You either tell us everything.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Or you tell them.’

‘You know most of it already,’ Denise said, her voice sounding defeated.

‘Clearly not everything,’ Ryan snapped. ‘Tell us. Now.’

‘Fine,’ Denise said irritably. ‘It started when you left for university. Charlotte was so desperate for you to come home… It was as though you’d left her.’

‘Left her?’ Ryan shook his head. ‘It wasn’t like we’d dated, not back then.’

Denise shrugged. ‘I’m not sure that mattered to her.

Every time you left after the holidays, to go back, she became subdued.

Irritable. The weeks leading up to your final exams were different.

She was excited. And then you told us about Malta…

’ Denise shook her head. ‘When you didn’t come back for graduation, she started to threaten the sale.

The foal hadn’t been born yet. If she told her dad about the fraud, not only would he cancel the sale, but she said they’d report it, claim we forced Charlotte to be involved.

We’d have been ruined financially. Reputationally. ’

‘That’s why you kept calling Ryan. Kept pushing,’ I said with understanding.

Denise nodded. ‘We needed him to come home.’

‘Why not just tell him the truth?’

Denise glanced at Martin.

‘I didn’t want him to know how bad things were at the stables,’ he said, lowering his gaze. ‘How bad I’d let them get. And then I ended up in hospital—’

‘And I came home anyway,’ Ryan finished for him.

‘With me,’ I added.

‘Charlotte was furious about that.’ Denise snorted.

‘At first, it didn’t seem like a bad idea, helping her run you off.

She belonged here more than you did. More than you ever would.

We were indebted to her. She’d always been more than just a yard hand – she was already practically part of the family. ’

‘The daughter you’d never had,’ I repeated the words she’d said to me when I’d first arrived two years ago. ‘A role you were adamant I would never fill.’

‘But your arrival did give us an opportunity to protect ourselves, just in case Charlotte followed through on her threat to expose the fraud.’

‘By making it look like Kirsty was the one behind it?’ Ryan asked, the colour draining from his face. ‘You framed my girlfriend for your crime?’

‘I was protecting your father.’

‘That doesn’t make what you did acceptable,’ Ryan said, shaking his head, looking at his mother as though he no longer recognised her.

‘But that’s not all you framed me for, is it?’ I demanded. I had proof she was behind the fraud now. But that wasn’t all I’d been arrested for.

The police believed Charlotte had been murdered. That Atlas had been deliberately overdosed on his supplement to make him uncontrollable.

And I knew who I’d seen in the barn the night before Charlotte’s death.

My gaze shifted to Martin. The memory of him feeding Atlas the apple mixed with his medication flashed through my mind with sudden clarity.

‘I had to,’ Denise said.

My head snapped back towards her. ‘You?’

She looked at Martin, her lower lip trembling slightly. ‘I couldn’t risk losing you. Not again.’

‘Losing him?’ I glanced back and forth between Denise and Martin. ‘What do you mean?’ Ryan was the one they were afraid of losing to me, wasn’t he?

They exchanged a look.

‘What?’ Ryan asked.

‘I didn’t have a heart attack,’ Martin said quietly.

‘Presentation atypical for myocardial infarction,’ I said, repeating the words I’d read on Martin’s hospital discharge letter.

Denise and Martin stared at me in surprise.

‘You knew?’ she asked.

I nodded. ‘But I still don’t know exactly what it means. Or why you kept it from Ryan.’ I frowned. Or even what it had to do with any of this.

‘The doctors thought it was a heart attack initially,’ Denise said. ‘But, when they ran their tests, things didn’t quite add up.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Ryan asked.

‘We couldn’t risk you finding out your dad had recovered quicker than expected. If you had…’

‘He might have left,’ I said with a snort.

‘We couldn’t take that risk.’

‘That Ryan could have a life of his own? With me?’ I shook my head. ‘Was that really so bad?’

‘Yes,’ Denise said flatly.

‘Then, when you two got back together, Charlotte was so angry,’ Martin said, looking at me.

‘She demanded that we break you up. Threatened to expose the fraud if we didn’t.

But Ryan was so determined not to let you go this time.

’ Martin shook his head. ‘Even when we told him about the fraud, and about Charlotte’s threats… ’

I turned to Ryan, my eyes welling with tears. He had wanted this. Wanted me.

‘Why didn’t she report you, when you failed?’ I asked.

‘She found another way to make us comply,’ Martin said.

‘Charlotte started making comments,’ Denise said. ‘Little ones. Ambiguous. But—’ She swallowed.

‘What comments?’ I asked.

‘“We wouldn’t want you to get sick again…”’ Martin said. ‘We never knew anything for sure, but—’

‘You think Charlotte caused your cardiac event?’

‘David was here last week,’ Martin said. ‘He commented on the foxgloves being back. We’d had them a couple of years ago, but Charlotte had dug them out. Apparently, it had been David’s recommendation. He’d warned her that they were poisonous.’

A chill ran through my body.

‘So I did some digging,’ Denise said, her voice taut. ‘If ingested, they can cause digitalis poisoning, with nausea, dizziness, confusion, irregular heart rhythms. All symptoms Martin had experienced initially. A stronger dose can lead to a cardiac event…’

‘We didn’t know what to do,’ Martin added. ‘It wasn’t like we had any proof to report her. And confronting her felt even more dangerous. We got the alarm fitted, but it didn’t feel like enough.’

‘That’s why you were so freaked out when Ryan told you about our commitment ceremony in Malta.’

You’ll kill your dad.

Denise’s words echoed through my brain.

‘It wasn’t Martin you were worried about finding out. It was Charlotte.’

‘If she thought she was too late. That she didn’t have a chance with Ryan—’ Denise closed her eyes. ‘I couldn’t take that risk.’

‘That’s when we realised, we had to tell Ryan the truth. About the fraud, Charlotte’s threats, our suspicions… Everything,’ Martin said, moving further into the room, and leaning on the back of the sofa.

‘Not everything,’ Ryan said through gritted teeth. ‘I didn’t know you’d framed Kirsty.’ He turned to me. ‘I swear, I didn’t know.’

I nodded. I believed him.

‘So that’s why you left me for her,’ I said, understanding now what he’d meant the day he’d left.

It’s too much.

He hadn’t meant me. He’d meant the situation his family had placed him in. The impossible choice he’d had to make.

I turned back to Denise, stepping past Martin as I closed in on her. ‘But that’s not the end of the story, is it?’

‘No,’ Denise said coldly. ‘I couldn’t risk Charlotte not getting her way and killing Martin. But letting her get what she wanted…’

‘Meant Ryan would always be in danger,’ I realised, my stomach churning at that thought.

‘I had to get rid of her.’

The room fell silent as Denise’s confession landed.

‘It wasn’t even that difficult,’ Denise said, slightly stunned.

‘Leave the instructions for Charlotte, slip Atlas a little extra supplement and then lie in wait and make sure he got spooked at just the right moment…’ She shrugged.

‘I knew there was a risk she might see me, but the fall was so high I figured it wouldn’t matter.

She wouldn’t survive to tell anyone that I’d been there. ’

‘And framing me meant you could get rid of me too.’ I spat the words at her as my body trembled.

‘Neither of you were good for Ryan. He was too besotted with you to see it. But I did.’

‘So you framed me for fraud and then murder.’

‘It’s a mother’s job to protect her son. No matter what.’

‘You put me through hell—!’ I screamed, as I lunged at her.

‘Kirsty, stop!’ Ryan shouted behind me.

I didn’t listen.

He grabbed me, trying to pull me back. But this time my resistances were stronger.

He wrapped his arm around my waist, but I shoved him away, breaking free. Anger giving me a strength I didn’t know I possessed.

‘Stop!’ Martin yelled, but I ignored him as I moved back towards Denise.

A loud click resounded behind me.

I turned back. And froze.

My gaze locked on the shotgun in Martin’s hands.

Aimed straight at me.