The Beauty of the End (25 page)

49

O
nly now, with Will remanded in custody, do I finally hear what he's been telling me. But the doubt it leaves, which screams from inside my head, is just the prelude to the collision of voices that follows. People who have stayed silent for reasons of their own now tell their stories, small tales that alone are insignificant, but collectively hold the truth.

The second time I go to their house to talk to her, the pleasure that flickers in Ella's eyes touches me, but Rebecca misses it. She's flustered. It's in her darting glance, the restlessness of her petite, manicured hands. Instantly recognizable. Fear. She, too, has kept quiet all this time, for her own selfish reasons. Thought only of the glittering career that's everything to her, been terrified of saying the wrong thing.

Trying to make sense of recent events, Rebecca tells me what had gone on. “April had started calling the house. She was desperate to see Ella. I was petrified she'd just turn up. She seemed distraught.”

I can't help wondering if without Norton's murder and Will's subsequent arrest would Ella's parents ever have told her the truth?

She rests her head in her hands. “He was obsessed with her. He always had been, ever since I met him. I put up with it, hoping he'd change.”

Talking about Will. I wonder why she's kept quiet about this, but then I see it. She's another unwitting victim. Another person who doesn't love, isn't loved, by her husband, by her daughter, only by the nameless masses who flock to watch her perform, who adore her.

“Did Will know?”

She nods. “He called her. Told her she couldn't see Ella. It was what we'd agreed, after all. But it didn't make any difference. I think it was around the time she found out about Will's selection of patients at the hospital. That was when it started.”

The instant she says this, I understand. April must have known that despite Will's obsession, he'd always looked down on her. She was one of the unworthy, undeserving, someone to be bypassed for someone richer, from a better background, who had social standing. She would have detested what Will was doing. Perhaps she feared, too, that he felt the same about her daughter.

* * *

When I next talk to Bea, she gives me more insight into how April's life really was.

“No one can say for certain if Norton did anything to April. Not recently, anyway,” I say, looking at Bea.

But she shakes her head. “How can you say that? Between them, he and Will destroyed April.”

Then her composure slips, her voice wavers. “After losing Theo, not to be able to see her own daughter—I can't imagine how that must have felt.”

* * *

But I'm still missing something. I call round to see Lara, who seemed to understand April so well and it's she who makes me question everything I think I know. Lara, whom I believed was April's client, was in fact her closest friend. The holder of her secrets.

“I know April tried to call you that evening. She was quite upset when you didn't answer, but then she said it didn't matter because you'd find out.”

“Find what out?” Was she talking about Theo? Or maybe Ella? Or something else?

There's a quiet determination in Lara's voice as she goes on. “I didn't tell you. I couldn't—not until now. And Ryder . . . he asks all the wrong questions, that man. But the truth is, Will had a power over her that she couldn't escape. He used it whenever he felt like it, when he wanted sex, anytime he needed to know he could still manipulate her. Then just lately, something changed. She told me she'd found a way to show the world what he was really like.”

“Yes. Now everyone knows Will's guilty. All the evidence points to it.”

“It does? Are you certain?” As she holds my gaze, as the truth flickers there, my skin crawls.

We can't, all of us, be wrong
.

Lara's eyes are unblinking. “There's another possibility. April didn't lose her phone. She made it look as though she had. She only used it to make those last two calls to Rebecca—the final pleas of a desperate mother who wanted to see her daughter. Rebecca hung up on her. It was the only time I saw April lose control.”

I'm floundering. This was no theory Lara was proposing. She'd witnessed April making those calls. “But . . . if it was deliberate, she'd have left everything in order. Paid her bills. Found a home for the cat.” Staring wildly at her, I clutch at hope that she's wrong.

Lara shakes her head. “So everyone would know she'd planned it? You're missing the point.”

“You knew what she was going to do?” My voice is hoarse.

Lara shrugs. “I wasn't sure, but I thought there was something. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she wouldn't.”

“You didn't even try to stop her.” But my accusation is halfhearted.

“Do you really think she'd have thanked me for that? I'd have condemned her to more years of unhappiness.” Lara sighs. “Stop thinking like a lawyer, just for a moment. Put yourself in April's shoes. The woman who chose to end her son's life, for his sake, not hers. Risked her own future to end his suffering. It's something she's lived with, every moment of every day, ever since.”

Lara looks away. “I think . . .” She breaks off. “She was tired, Noah. She'd been fighting just to survive for most of her life. Imagine what that does to a person.”

As I stare at her, I see what's been right under my nose. No one framed April. She'd lied about losing her phone. She arranged to meet Will, hiding one of her gloves in his car, then later, after killing Norton, left the other with her phone in
his
car. All along, it was April, not Will.
She set him up.

“He blackmailed her, stole her child, broke her soul.” Lara's voice, steady, resolute, breaks into my thoughts, my heart.

And as she says that, only then do I fully understand how the neglect and abuse of April's childhood had leached into her future, corrupting it even before she'd got there. There'd been no choice in what had followed. It had been inevitable.

She was a victim. Exploited, damaged, ultimately destroyed, by both Will and Norton, each of whom paid the price.

* * *

A day later, I set off for home, though Ryder tells me I'll be needed to give evidence at Will's trial. Will's career is over, the respect of others destroyed. He may not be a murderer, but there are other crimes for which he must be tried.

As I drive, I'm still consumed with thoughts of April and Will, then Ella, not yet able to mentally file them away, even hours later, as I pull up outside my cottage. But as I unlock my front door, drop my bag on the floor before closing it behind me, I'm thinking about myself, then about the last five years, during which I've earned nothing, living off my savings and my inheritance. About my latest book, which remains unwritten.

I've achieved nothing. Nor have I given anything of myself. Within the walls of this cottage, I've become a recluse who cares about no one, my so-called writing part of a spiraling, self-obsessed descent into alcoholism.

Thinking furiously, I go from room to room. The house is untidy, with a cloying mustiness that pervades throughout. In each room, one by one, I throw the windows open, watching rays of sunlight filter in, lifting the gloom, catching the dust I've disturbed, as I properly see my home for what it is. Something neglected and unloved, the same way I've treated myself.

Not surprising then, I imagine I hear Clara's voice.

But even before I turn, I know that the room behind me is empty and she won't be rushing over, happy to see me back; that on this occasion, her voice is in my head. She talks sense, Clara. Maybe I'll knock on her door and thank her.

I sit down heavily, the cloud of dust I disturb making me cough. I'd always known I'd come back, but now I'm here, I'm no longer sure what there is for me, noticing also the cottage is as it was when I moved in.

I know now, I've been stuck far too long. Leaping up, wasting no time, I go through to my study, gather the years of notes I'll never use, for the book I know is going nowhere, carry them over to the fireplace, where I scrunch them up and throw them into the grate. Hunting around for matches, then lighting a fire, watching the flames leap up. And all without regret, because I don't need them. Liberated, I'm thinking of the new idea that I've had, that's burning just as brightly in my head.

As I watch the pages melt into the flames, I remember the pile of mail I'd kicked to one side earlier as I came in, mostly junk mail and bills, with the addition of a cardboard box, which must have been placed there at some point by Clara.

Picking up the box, I notice my address neatly printed on the front. I take it through to my study, sling the junk mail into the flames, and open it.

There's a letter, brief, the format familiar.

Inside, I find a small wooden chest inlaid with brass and mother of pearl. I stare at it. I last saw it in April's London flat. I'd assumed she no longer had it. After we moved in together, she must have hidden it.

Lifting the lid, I see there's a letter, dated six weeks ago. Six weeks since Will phoned here that night, though it feels so much longer. And as I read, slowly walking across the room to sit on the windowsill, at last, I'm able to understand.

I pause for a moment, because I know about this, from Bea. Then I read on, because I want to hear April's story, too.