Where the Memories Lie (29 page)

probably stale by now. I thought about adding digestives to my

mental shopping list but then thought, Sod it. I didn’t care anymore.

‘Oh, hi.’ I put my bag on the island. ‘I didn’t know you were all

here.’ I smiled tentatively at Ethan, who gave me a brief tight smile in return and looked away.

‘Have you got some news? About the DNA results?’ I asked

hopefully.

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Sibel Hodge

‘I’m afraid not yet. Any time now we’re expecting it.’ DI Spencer

stood and glanced at DS Khan, who followed his lead. ‘We’ve got

more enquiries to make so we’ll leave you to it.’ He nodded briefly before they showed themselves out.

An oppressive silence settled over the room after they’d left,

buzzing in my ears, and I had to fill it.

‘What did they want?’ I asked Ethan.

He shrugged. ‘They just wanted to talk to me about where I was

that Sunday when Katie left home.’

‘Right.’ I sat down next to him. ‘Where were you? They asked

me if I remembered what you were doing but I couldn’t remember.

I mean, I know we saw each other in the evening, after I’d come

back from looking for her, but—’

‘I don’t remember, OK? How am I supposed to remember what

happened twenty-five years ago?’

I was momentarily stunned by the anger in his voice and the

look in his eyes. ‘I remember.’

‘You only remember some of it. And that’s because you kept

going on and on about it after she left. Just like Chris did.’

‘She didn’t leave, Ethan. She was murdered.’ I surprised myself

by keeping my voice on an even keel.

‘We don’t know that yet.’

‘She had a fractured skull. She’s hardly unlikely to bash her

own head in, is she? What’s wrong with you? I know you’re grieving

about Tom’s death and frustrated and upset about his confession,

but what’s happening to us? It’s like you don’t even want to be in

the same room as me anymore.’ He was silent so I carried on. ‘You

don’t want to talk about anything—’

‘Of course I don’t! Dad talked to you and looked what

happened! That’s
your
job, the talking. And you go on about things until we have to
talk.
’ He said the word mockingly. ‘I don’t want to bloody talk!’

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Where the Memories Lie

I counted to ten, trying to think of something nice to say.

I carried on to twenty, but niceness had upped and disappeared

somewhere. ‘Look, this isn’t my fault, so why are you blaming me?

I had to do something. I had to tell the police. Stop distancing

yourself. We’re supposed to be a family – bloody well act like it,

instead of leaving me to deal with Anna and going off on your own

all the time, brooding. You’re not the only one who’s upset by all of this. You’re not the only one grieving.’

He rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands.

I didn’t know he was crying at first. I’d only ever seen him cry

once before, and that was when Anna was born, so it seemed so

alien that I didn’t understand. It was only the shaking of his shoulders that gave it away.

I sat next to him, arm around his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’

I leaned my forehead against the side of his, feeling his heat through my hair.

He turned towards me, his face a mass of anguished wrinkles.

‘I don’t know how to deal with something like this.’

‘Together. We’ll deal with it together.’

Whoever was up one minute was down the next and vice versa.

Ethan was happier at dinner that night, but I couldn’t shake the

feeling of impending disaster. Lucas was quiet and withdrawn, and

Nadia was almost manic in her liveliness. Anna was back to ask-

ing a million questions, this time about the entomology of insects

on buried human bodies. Not a very appetising conversation for

the dinner table. Charlotte obviously agreed because she ran to the bathroom a few minutes later and vomited up Nadia’s roast beef.

How Nadia had the time or inclination to cook a full roast dinner

in the midst of everything going on beat me, but it was Lucas’s

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Sibel Hodge

favourite, and since he was only home for one night before jetting

off again, she somehow found the time, as she always did. Maybe

that’s what Ethan needed: a nice roast dinner to make everything

OK again!

DI Spencer and DS Khan appeared an hour after we all finished

eating. Nadia poured red wine into large, almost bowl-shaped

glasses. I looked at it as she handed one to me and thought that

definitely wasn’t going to be enough to blot out what was going on.

Lucas was on beer. Ethan hit the whisky. DI Spencer and DS Khan

declined anything.

‘We just have a few more questions for you and Nadia, actually,’

DI Spencer said to Lucas. ‘You don’t all need to be here.’

‘Right.’ I stood up.

Ethan and I went into the lounge to wait, avoiding each other’s

eyes. There was one of those awkward, fidgety silences that you get on a blind date when you find out you’ve got absolutely nothing in

common with the other person. I chewed on my lip and stared out

into the garden.

A little while later I heard Nadia talking in the hallway outside

as she showed them out.

‘So, we’re no further forward, then?’ Nadia asked them.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ DI Spencer replied before they left.

Nadia poked her head round the door. ‘Come into the kitchen.

I need another drink.’

‘What did they ask?’ Ethan asked her as he sat at the sparklingly

shiny glass dining room table.

Nadia set her glass on the worktop and uncorked another bottle

of wine. ‘They wanted to know if I remembered where Dad was

that Sunday when Katie left home, but I don’t know. It was a long

time ago. Apparently Chris told them that Tom mentioned he had

something urgent to do that day and couldn’t give him a lift to

boxing, and they wanted to know if he’d mentioned what might’ve

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Where the Memories Lie

been so urgent.’ She poured some wine into her glass and topped up

mine, then sat in between Lucas and Ethan.

Lucas sighed. ‘They wanted to know if Tom could’ve been

working at the barn, but he couldn’t have been, could he? He never

worked on Sundays. Ever.’

Nadia took a sip of wine, and when she set it back down, the

base of the glass clipped the edge of the table and the glass tipped over. She leaped back as red wine splattered across the glass and

dripped onto the laminate beech floor.

I shot up and grabbed the tea towel resting on the back of the

oven door as Nadia reached for the kitchen roll, and between us we

mopped up the spilled mess.

‘Sorry. Sorry about that!’ Nadia sat back down, face flushed,

wiping her hair away from her forehead.

Ethan took Nadia’s glass and silently refilled it. Lucas stared at

the floor, looking blank. Or bored. I wasn’t sure which. Probably

wishing he was a million miles away, just like all of us.

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Chapter Twenty-Five

That night in bed it felt like I had the old Ethan back at

first. After I’d seen a sullen and uncommunicative Anna

to bed, we went upstairs to avoid Nadia and Lucas’s jibes

to each other.

‘It’s only nine o’clock.’ Ethan lay on top of the bed, rigid, like a corpse. ‘I feel like a prisoner here, too. It’s like we’re in limbo. I can’t stay here anymore. I need my own space.’

I felt the same. The only one who was enjoying being at Nadia’s

was Poppy.

‘What about Anna, though?’ I asked. ‘You said we’d stay until

the weekend. This is a lot for her to handle. Just give it a few more days.’ I lay on my side facing him, propping my head up with the

palm of one hand.

I twined my fingers through his. He stared down at them as if

they were something foreign.

He sighed. ‘OK.’

I stroked the stubble on his cheeks. He hadn’t shaved in days,

and it was flecked with grey now.

‘Are you growing a beard?’ I laughed, trying to lighten the

mood. ‘I hate beards. Especially grey ones.’

Where the Memories Lie

‘What about Sean Connery? He’s got a grey beard and you

fancy him.’

His words catapulted me into the past, sparking off a memory.

I gasped. ‘I don’t think it was Tom’s baby.’

He glanced at me sharply. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I just remembered something. One day Katie and

I were having a conversation about older men, and she’d said they

were disgusting and they made her feel ill. I mean, I was talking

about good-looking older men at the time, and I was listing my

top five actors who I fancied.’ I waved my hand around. ‘Anyway,

I said Sean Connery and Jack Nicholson and − God, I can’t remem-

ber who else − but she got . . . I don’t know, really angry about it, and upset. Saying it was sick and twisted to have some old man

pawing at young girls and they had no right to do it and why didn’t anyone listen to them.’ I shook my head. ‘I mean now, suspecting

Jack might have sexually abused her, it puts all that into context, but at the time I just thought she was overreacting.’

Ethan watched me without saying a word.

‘So, you know, she wouldn’t have slept with Tom, would she, if

she felt like that? Did you ever see Tom looking at her in that way when she was at the house with Chris or us?’

‘In what way?’ He pronounced every word slowly like I was

stupid, and it was clear he was only humouring me.

‘You know. A sexual way.’

‘I can’t believe you’re even saying it. No, I didn’t notice that. Of course not.’

‘Neither did I. Unless . . .’ Another horrible thought hit me.

‘What if he raped her?’

Ethan dropped my hand and sat up. ‘He did
not
rape her.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because no one needed to rape her. She would’ve dropped her

knickers for anyone.’

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Sibel Hodge

A fire sparked in my head, molten anger bubbling to the

surface. I sat up. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. How can you trivialise being raped?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, here we go again.’

‘What?’ I blew out an angry breath.

‘I can’t say anything right these days, can I?’

‘Well, neither can I!’ I hissed, hyper-aware that the walls were

very thin and we were in someone else’s house. ‘Victims of abuse

come in all shapes and sizes. Even the strong ones can be abused,

you know. I once worked with this surgeon whose husband was

beating her up. You’d never have guessed this composed, confident,

competent woman was a victim of domestic violence.’

‘How do you know Jack wasn’t the one who got her pregnant?’

He bit back.

‘If Jack raped her, she wouldn’t have kept the baby, would she?’

I muttered.

‘What?’

‘DI Spencer said she was almost six months pregnant. Why

would she have kept it, if it was Jack’s baby? She would’ve had a

termination, wouldn’t she? I mean, no one in that situation would

want to have their father’s baby.’

‘How the hell do I know what she thought? Maybe she couldn’t

afford an abortion.’

‘She could’ve explained what happened and got it done on

the NHS.’

‘Maybe she didn’t want to explain anything. She didn’t even

tell you at the time how bad Rose and Jack were and you were

supposed to be her best friend. She didn’t tell you she was leaving.

And she didn’t tell you she tried to sleep with me!’ He had a defiant glint in his eye. ‘You didn’t really know her at all. All you’ve got is speculation and pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit anywhere. We’re

just going round in bloody circles here!’ he spat out, trying to keep 224

Where the Memories Lie

his voice down and failing miserably. ‘There’s no point in going

over and over this until the police tell us the results of the DNA

test. And even then I don’t know what that proves. No one saw

anything, and the only people who remember much are you and

Chris. Maybe we’ll never know what really happened. The police

investigation is going nowhere. They’re not going to find out exactly what happened. Not after all this time. I don’t know why they’re

even bothering. But just remember that if it wasn’t for you, none

of this would’ve happened! Dad’s dead because of your actions.

I just hope you’re satisfied now.’ He lay down and turned away

from me onto his side so hard the bed bounced up and down under

his weight. He stayed in that position, ignoring me, for the rest of the night.

I stared into the darkness, tears silently falling down my

cheeks, wondering again if I should’ve done things differently.

But then wondering just what I could’ve done instead. Whether

I could’ve lived with myself if I hadn’t shared Tom’s terrible secret.

I waited for sleep to claim me, for some sort of reprieve from

the blame I shouldered, but all I got were more tormented images

of Katie in my dreams.

The next morning when I was heading to work, I bumped into DI

Spencer outside Chris’s house again.

‘Morning,’ he said.

‘Morning. Is everything OK?’ I glanced at Chris’s front door.

It was shut and the curtains were still closed. His pick-up was on

the drive.

‘We were just giving Chris an update. It appears there’s no