Nell
PRESENT
It’s only when Sadie calls me on my cell phone that I remember I was meant to have gone into work after my meeting with Superintendent Moss.
“I wanted to make sure you were all right,” she says. “As you said you’d be in at lunchtime.”
“I’m so sorry, Sadie, I should have let you know.” I search for something to tell her because to say I forgot won’t cut it. “I didn’t feel great, so I came home after my appointment. I meant to phone you but I fell asleep on the sofa.”
The part about not feeling great is true, the rest is a lie. I can’t imagine ever being able to sleep again, not with the weight of so much guilt on my shoulders.
“And now I’ve woken you,” Sadie says, contrite. “It’s just that when it got to three o’clock, I got worried. You sound dreadful—are you coming down with flu, do you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, no coming back to work until after your holiday. You need to be well enough to spend Christmas with Romy and Rob.”
I’d forgotten that I’d told her that. “It doesn’t matter if I can’t,” I say.
“You can’t spend Christmas Day on your own!” She sounds so aghast I almost smile. “Look, I need to go but if you need anything, just shout.”
My eyes blur. “I will. Thanks, Sadie.”
When Alex calls in the evening to tell me he’s arrived safely in Paris, I can barely speak to him.
All I can think is that within a few weeks, I’ll have lost everything that is dear to me, not just Alex, but my friends, my job, my house, because the only way to avoid the nightmare heading my way is to disappear again.
This time, I’ll go abroad, change my name again and live a quiet life without friends, as I did before.
I’m too much of a coward to stay and face it.
I vaguely remember Superintendent Moss telling me that I shouldn’t let the knowledge that I’d been wrong about Brett Parker define the rest of my life.
But it’s changed everything. Two lives were lost because I stubbornly refused to accept that I might be wrong, despite the police repeatedly telling me that Brett Parker wasn’t involved in any way in Bryony’s murder.
I had never wavered from my belief that he was driving the car that Bryony had gotten into.
I had even begun to think he was also responsible for her murder, because if it wasn’t him, why had her murderer never been found?
It had afforded me the luxury of being able to justify my actions.
How did I ever think that I, a twenty-two-year-old girl, knew more than detectives with years of experience?
I spend the next few days in a daze, unable to sleep because Brett Parker haunts me.
I can’t stop thinking about how bewildered and angry he must have been when I insisted he’d picked Bryony up in his car that day.
No matter how much I tried to dress it up by calling it “collating information,” I see now that my actions were those of a stalker.
When Brett Parker isn’t haunting me, his son, having spent the best years of his life in prison because of me, takes his place.
I have never blamed him for wanting to kill me, I’ve always understood where he was coming from.
But I always thought that one day, he would see that I was right about his father. Now, that will never happen.
Sadie keeps in touch, asking how I am, and because I don’t want her to worry, I tell her I’m feeling a little better each day. I should have told her that I was feeling worse because on Christmas Eve she messages to say that she’s on her way over. Alarmed, I message back.
I’m still full of cold. Please don’t come, I don’t want you to be ill for Christmas.
I wait, hoping I’ve managed to discourage her. My screen lights up.
That’s exactly why I’m coming—Christmas!
Knowing that nothing I say will make her change her mind, I hastily change out of the pajamas I’ve been wearing since the morning and run a brush through my hair.
A look in the mirror makes me reach for my makeup bag.
There are dark circles under my eyes and my face looks pallid.
By the time she rings on the doorbell, I’m a better version of what I was before.
“Oh my God, you look terrible!” she exclaims. “Have you been eating?”
“Well—” I begin.
She barges into the hallway, carrying two large bags.
A delicious smell of roast chicken emanates from one of them.
“Go and sit down!” she barks. “I’m going in the kitchen, I’ll call you in a minute.
And if you really want something to do while you’re waiting, there are a couple of emails that need your attention.
I forwarded them to you on the way over. ”
“Can’t I just—”
“No!”
I do as I’m told and go and sit with my laptop in the living room.
There are more than a couple of emails and I know from their dates that Sadie has been holding them back so I wouldn’t be overloaded while I was ill.
I also know that she’s only giving them to me now to keep me away from the kitchen, when the sounds of pots and pans being taken from cupboards makes me wonder what she’s preparing.
Forty-five minutes later, I find out when she calls me through.
The trouble she’s gone to makes me cry. There’s a small Christmas tree on the island, complete with tiny lights, three prettily wrapped gifts at its foot.
The island itself has been beautifully laid with red place mats, champagne, and wineglasses.
A bottle of champagne waits in an ice bucket and there’s an assortment of canapes on a china plate.
“It’s beautiful,” I say through my tears. “But I don’t deserve it, I don’t deserve any of it.”
She rushes over and gives me a hug. “Of course you do! Why would you even say that?”
“Because of what I’ve done. I’ve done some terrible things, Sadie.
” I try to stop, because even in my distress I know I’m treading on dangerous ground, and that if I continue I might end up telling her everything.
But I can’t seem to stop myself. “I’m not the person you think I am.
I’ve lied to you, to everyone, even to Alex.
” The mention of his name makes me cry harder.
Sadie doesn’t say anything, just leads me to the island and makes me sit down.
She takes the champagne from the ice bucket, unscrews the wire, and pops the cork.
Her silence is so unusual that my tears stop.
She hands me a sheet of paper towel and I dry my eyes and blow my nose while she fills our glasses with champagne.
All I can think is that she’s decided to ignore what I said.
“I know who you are, Nell,” she says, handing me a glass of champagne.
“You don’t,” I say. “If you did, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”
“You’re Elle Nugent,” she says. “And it doesn’t change anything.” She clinks her glass against mine. “Happy Christmas, Nell.”
I stare at her, wondering if I heard right. “You know? But—but how?”
“Simon,” she says. “When he first met you, he thought he knew you from somewhere.” She smiles. “It was your big eyes, apparently. But it was only because of the Bryony Sanders case being reopened that he realized who you were.”
“Is he involved in the case?” I ask, still trying to get my head around the fact that she knows who I am and is still sitting in my house, about to have dinner with me.
“No. But a week or so ago, a photo of you from back then was circulated internally by someone high up in the force who was trying to find you, and Simon recognized you.” She pauses. “He hasn’t said that he knows where you are. He wanted me to speak to you first.”
“It’s all right, we found each other. Funnily enough, it was me who contacted her.”
Sadie slides off the barstool. “If you want to talk about it, I’m here for you. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. But before we do anything, we’re going to eat.” She moves to the oven. “I hope you’re hungry.”
“I am,” I say, realizing. “Is that roast chicken I can smell?”
“Chicken?” Sadie looks affronted. “It’s Christmas, girl.
I cooked a turkey at home, just a small one, and it’s in a special bag, so it should still be nice and hot.
In the oven, there’s stuffing, pigs in blankets, roast parsnips and carrots, and roast potatoes.
” She ticks them off on her fingers. “And on the hob, sprouts, which I’m going to do with bacon and walnuts.
” She laughs at the look of my face. “Does that sound okay?”
More tears well in my eyes. “It sounds perfect.”
“Before I have another drink, is it okay if I stay the night? Simon doesn’t finish until six tomorrow morning. He’ll go home for a sleep and pick me up here around ten to go to Mum’s in time for Christmas dinner. Unless you need to leave earlier to go to Romy and Rob’s?”
“Of course you can stay the night,” I say, neatly avoiding her mention of Romy and Rob’s. If I tell her that I’m not spending Christmas with them, she’ll insist I join her and Simon at her mum’s.
“Great,” she says happily. “I brought my toothbrush and pj’s, just in case. If we stay up until midnight, we can see Christmas in together.”
I laugh at her enthusiasm, feeling lighter than I have in years. If Sadie can forgive me, maybe others can too.
Later, we take our heavy stomachs through to the sitting room and once we’re settled on the sofa, I tell her everything, including being wrong about Brett Parker driving the car.
“I only found out on Monday,” I say. “For all those years, I truly believed it was him even though the police told me I was mistaken. But I thought I knew better than them. I always thought—hoped—that one day I’d be proved right.
To know I was wrong all along is devastating.
It’s why I didn’t come to work. It wasn’t flu that kept me way but the knowledge that I have no excuse for causing the death of two men. ”
“Two?”
“Yes. Brett Parker and the man who fell in front of the tube train which was meant to have killed me.”
“That wasn’t your fault!” Sadie protests. “That was an accident. A horrible one, but an accident.”
“If Damon Parker hadn’t been trying to kill me for stalking his father and ultimately causing his death, that man would still be alive. And what about Damon Parker? He was just a kid when he went to prison and he’s spent his best years locked in a cell. I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”
“Then you’ll have to learn to live with the guilt,” she says pragmatically. “Although I think you’ve atoned enough. It hurts me to think of the lonely life you led for all those years, just to punish yourself.”
“There’s something else,” I say, because now that I’ve told her about my past, I want to tell her everything.
“You know when someone broke in here and you and Simon asked me if I had any enemies? I thought it was Damon Parker who’d broken in, because he was due to be released from prison this summer.
I also thought it was him stalking me. But I just found out that he’s still inside. ”
Sadie stares at me. “Stalking you? You have a stalker?”
“Yes.”
“But—” She seems unusually lost for words. “Since when?”
“About six months, maybe longer.”
“So that time we came over, it wasn’t just a random break-in?”
“No.”
“Have you told the police?”
“Yes. And I’ve got a number to phone if I’m worried.”
“Worried? You must be terrified!”
“I’m more terrified now that I know it isn’t Damon Parker stalking me. When I thought it was him, I just sort of accepted it, because he told me he would kill me when he got out of prison.”
“Nell!” Sadie’s eyes fill with tears. “I can’t believe what you’ve been going through. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t. I haven’t even told Alex. The police officer I told thinks there’s a chance it’s someone I know. I did think it might be Marcus, because he’s bought the house across the road. But now I’m not so sure.”
“What—Marcus has bought the house across the road?” Sadie looks affronted.
So I tell her about Marcus and when I’ve finished she asks if I have any more creepy friends.
“No, thank God,” I tell her. “Apart from you and Simon, my only friends are Romy and Rob, Marcus, Alex’s sister Béatrice and her husband Victor, and Inès. And Alex, of course. I trust each and every one of them implicitly. It’s not possible that any of them have a secret agenda, is there?”
“I hope not,” she says soberly.
And out of the blue, Alex’s two dead ex-girlfriends come into my mind.