Her Last Tomorrow (17 page)

She swallows. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.’

‘It’s probably in your loft,’ I say, readying myself. ‘What else is up there?’

Emma is silent for a few moments.

‘Nick, what’s this all about?’

I keep my face neutral.

‘I’ve worked it all out. I’ve been reading the whole situation wrongly for years. You never got over us, did you? You never came to terms with me getting together with Tasha, and when Ellie was born it crushed you. Didn’t it?’

Emma’s voice is calm and quiet. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘No, I know exactly what I’m saying. And I know exactly where Ellie is.’

She ignores the point. ‘I loved you, Nick. I still do love you. Do you have any idea what that means?’

‘I know what it means to most people,’ I say. ‘But I’m not quite sure what it means to psychopaths.’

She raises her voice for the first time. ‘I am not a psychopath!’ She blinks and reverts to her calm quietness. ‘Ellie is safe. She’s far safer with me than she is with
her
, anyway.’

‘I don’t doubt that,’ I say, meaning every word. ‘But she needs to be back with her parents.’

‘I should have been her mother,’ Emma replies, choked. It’s the first sign of any emotion I’ve seen from her in years. ‘She should have been ours.’

I shake my head. ‘That doesn’t change the fact that she isn’t. She’s mine. Mine and Tasha’s.’

‘It would have kept us together, Nick. It would have changed everything. She was the only thing keeping you and Tasha together, too. But you don’t have her any more. I do. You need to come back to me.’

I laugh, involuntarily. ‘I can’t do that. She’s not our child. She’s mine and Tasha’s.’

Emma moves towards me far more quickly than I can even anticipate. It catches me unawares as she’s not threatening, not violent.

She’s pressed up against me, trying to kiss me, forcing her tongue into my mouth and her hand down the front of my jeans.

‘Let’s do it, Nick,’ she says. ‘Let’s have one of our own. Let’s secure our love.’

I wriggle free and push her as hard as I can. She stumbles backwards, her head bouncing off the corner of the coffee table as she groans like a wounded animal.

I take my chance and head for the stairs.

I take the stairs two at a time, my feet pounding down on them as I yell Ellie’s name. When I get to the top of the stairs, I realise I’ve never been up here before. I’m disorientated. In all the years Emma’s lived here, we’ve never been invited upstairs. Not that we should have been, but it strikes me as odd.

I look around for a loft hatch. There isn’t one. There are three doors off the hallway, all of them closed, and another set of stairs above the ones I’ve just climbed. They seem to lead to the loft.

I run up those stairs too, and get to the top. There’s just a brown wooden door, standing stern and solid. I yell Ellie’s name and hear her call
Daddy
. I tug at the handle and shoulder barge the door, but it’s not moving.

‘Stand right away from the door, sweetheart,’ I shout. ‘I’m coming in.’

As I step backwards ready to throw myself at the door, Emma wraps her arm around my neck. Without even thinking, I grab it and pull it downwards, the adrenaline coursing through me as I wrench her arm around and hear the shoulder pop like a cork gun at a funfair.

She yowls in pain as I instinctively bend my leg at the hip and kick backwards, feeling my boot connect with her stomach before there’s nothing — just air and silence, until the sickening thud as her head hits the wall on the landing at the bottom of the attic stairs.

Instantly I know she won’t be coming round from hitting her head this time. Her eyes stare forward, empty and glassy, as the blood trickles from her nostrils.

Not even stopping to think, I throw everything I’ve got at the door. Once, twice, and then finally it gives.

The room’s dark, save for a glowing yellow lightbulb that hangs from one of the rafters. In the corner, I see a pair of scared, tired eyes looking out from behind a cardboard box. My heart melts.

‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ I say, trying to sound as calm and reassuring as I can. ‘It’s me. It’s Daddy.’ My voice cracks as I speak.

As I move over to the boxes, Ellie crawls out and slowly stands up before walking over and wrapping her arms around my legs. We stand like that for a good minute or so before I bend down and pick her up.

As we head for the door and down the stairs towards where Emma’s body is lying, I pull Ellie into me, burying her face in my shoulder. She doesn’t need to see that.

When we get outside, the cold night air whips against my skin and I feel the spots of rain landing on me. For the first time in a long time, I can feel again.

When I got home, I called the police. The walk home gave me plenty of time to think about what I was going to say.

I told them Emma had called me and invited me over. One small white lie, but the rest was true. I said I went over, Emma made a move on me and I heard noises coming from the loft. I said that Emma tried to stop me going up and we fought. She fell and hit her head. Twice. Bizarrely, this was the bit the police had trouble believing. Sometimes it’s weird how the truth can be stranger than fiction.

As far as the police are concerned, that all adds up. They have no inkling that I tried to kill Tasha. The only real chance of that happening was extinguished with the light in Emma’s eyes.

Tasha has been her usual stoical self over the whole thing. I can never really tell what she’s thinking. I doubt if I ever will.

McKenna’s sitting on the sofa opposite me and Tasha, whilst Ellie sits, oblivious, in front of the cartoons on TV. As far as she’s concerned, it’s just another day.

‘We found some old photos,’ McKenna says. ‘Quite a few, actually. One of the upstairs rooms was virtually a shrine, Nick. There were hundreds of photos of you and Emma from your university days, as well as some of the three of you. Tasha’s face was... Well, let’s just say removed from most of them. She had a diary, too. Most of it’s about the two of you. Her obsession with you. We still haven’t had time to go through it all yet, though.’

‘No, I understand,’ I say. ‘I’m just glad it’s all over. I appreciate you tying up the loose ends, though.’

‘There is one other thing,’ she says. ‘Derek. In Emma’s... room... we found more. She’d photocopied pages from her diary back when she was a schoolgirl. We haven’t found the original yet, but that’s only a matter of time. In it, she wrote about how Derek had invited her into his house and begun sexually assaulting her over a course of months. To me, that explains why she was so damaged as a person. She’d been using that to blackmail him.’

My mouth hangs open. ‘That’s why he told you he hadn’t seen me put Ellie in the car. She had him over a barrel.’

‘Exactly. And it explains why he’s been so wary and suspicious of you all these years. He would’ve seen Emma coming and going from yours every now and again and realised how close to the wind he was sailing.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘And I think it’s only fair to assume that she was behind your mugging, too, Tasha. We haven’t found any of the stolen items yet, but I’m sure we will. It’s the only thing we can assume, and without Emma around to testify otherwise that’s going to be the assumption I’ll make.’ McKenna looks at me as she says this. A small part of me thinks that perhaps there’s some hidden subtext behind her words.

I break eye contact with McKenna to look back at Ellie, who’s still transfixed by the cartoons on the screen. I just hope to God that she grows up to forget this whole ordeal and to become a confident, well-rounded person. More like her mother.

Perhaps the perfect murder wasn’t so difficult after all.

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I tend to write books very quickly, but
Her Last Tomorrow
had me stumped for quite a while.

It began as a nugget of an idea and developed into a plot. One thing I didn’t have, though, was an ending. Rather, I did have an ending but I couldn’t find a way of weaving it into the existing plot in a way which I was happy with.

I spent a few months discussing the book every now and again with my wife (during which time I wrote and published two other novels) until we finally managed to get it right.

As a result, the biggest thanks have to go to my wife for actually helping this book see the light of day. Without her input, it’d still be stuck in a drawer somewhere.

I must also thank Lucy Hayward, who did a sterling job on feeding back her views on the story and plot and helping to polish
Her Last Tomorrow
into the book you’ve just read.

My thanks go also to Debbie Bright for the cover design. I told you I’d finish the book and use your cover eventually...

Huge thanks must go to David Parry, formerly a Detective Sergeant with Leicestershire Police for his insightful and in-depth advice on policing methods and procedure. My thanks also go to those police officers and detectives who provided me with additional information and fact-checking but would prefer not to be named here.

Thanks also to Dave Whitelegg, one of the UK’s foremost IT security experts for his information on the Dark Web.

And thank you to you, the reader, for buying this book and (hopefully) enjoying it. Who knows... Maybe one day I’ll release
 
a version with the original ending...