‘What?’ I’m so shocked it comes out louder than I intended. Mum winces. ‘How do you know?’
She doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Because Selena killed him.’
27
There is a shocked silence, just the faint hum of the Sky box and the wind rattling the window panes. I stare at her, my mouth hanging open. I feel sick. I must have misheard her. I can’t believe that Selena killed Uncle Owen. I wonder if this is due to the stress of the last two days – she’s confused, she has to be.
Her voice is detached as she says, ‘I know it’s a shock. I wanted you never to find out.’
I feel like I’m on a ship, dizzy, off balance. I have to hold on to the arm of the sofa to steady myself. ‘Selena killed Uncle Owen? Shekilledhim?’
‘She said it was self-defence and that Uncle Owen had been abusing her. She was pregnant, she said, with his baby.’
No. No. No. No. This is all wrong. All wrong. She was lying about Uncle Owen. She told me.
‘She made it up!’ I cry.
‘Of course she made it up,’ she snaps, much to my surprise. I was expecting her to shout at me and accuse me of being despicable for not believing Selena. She continues, ‘I found that out later. But at the time she made me believe it.’
My mind is whirling. ‘So you knew? All this time you knew she’d lied? But you always seemed so – so fond of her. You said she was like another daughter.’
Mum closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. When she opens them again, she says, ‘I wanted to protect you. All of you. And I felt responsible, in some ways, for how she’d turned out. Her mother,’ she practically spits the word, ‘damaged that poor girl. She was a monster. Owen’s only crime was that he was too soft. He stood back and did nothing. The bruises, they were from Aunt Bess. Your dad and I, well, we tried to protect Selena. We tried to persuade Owen to get Bess help. And I think he did try, but he was ineffectual at the end of the day.’
Oh, God. I sink on to the sofa next to her. My legs feel weak. ‘What on earth happened? How do you know Selena killed Uncle Owen?’
‘She came to me. Not long after you’d left for university. It must have been the October. She told me everything. How she’d argued with her dad, how she’d pushed him and he’d hit his head on the fireplace. Bess was out somewhere on a drinking binge and Dean helped her bury the body.’
I know too much.So Dean must have sent the note.
‘Where?’
‘She refused to tell me. I think it must have been out in the woods somewhere. At first she tried to make out that Owen had left her mother. I believed her at first, although I thought it was odd that he didn’t come and say goodbye to me. Then, after he’d been dead a week, she came to me and admitted the truth.’
I frown. ‘But why? Why did she tell you? She could have kept it from you.’
‘Because she was pregnant.’
‘Who was the father?’
Mum clenches her fists in her lap. ‘That’s the thing. She told me it was Owen and that he had raped her. She made me believe she’d killed him in self-defence.’
I groan. ‘Oh, God, Mum …’
I feel as if everything that’s happened in the last two days isn’t real. I watched a film once, years ago with Adrian, where the main character was experiencing very realistic lucid dreams, which started to become nightmares. That’s what this feels like. I lower my voice, shooting a glance at the door. ‘I think we need to go for a walk.’ I check my watch. It’s gone five thirty. I hadn’t got round to putting the chicken in the oven. ‘We can’t risk somebody overhearing us.’
Mum agrees and gets to her feet slowly, pocketing the now-crumpled note. It’s like she’s aged ten years in the last ten minutes.
I go to find Adrian. He’s still at his desk. I pop my head around the bedroom door and ask him to put the chicken on, disappearing from view before he can answer or ask me any questions.
It’s drizzling, a fine rain that falls softly on our hair and coats as we walk. It’s not quite dark yet, that strange ethereal time between night and day. The sky is one thick smoky-grey cloud. The clocks go back on Saturday. This time next week it will be dark by now. I inch my scarf further up my chin. The damp air hurts my chest. Mum is walking beside me. We are aimless, our boots thudding on the pavement as we take a right over the bridge that crosses the River Usk to the high street. There is nobody around. The shops are shut, the nearby park empty. Even the Seven Stars looks desolate on this wet Thursday evening. It’s impossible to see the tops of the mountains, shrouded in a heavy mist.
We stop on the bridge. We are completely alone. ‘Tell me everything,’ I urge.
Mum holds on to the railings for support. Her hands look shrivelled in the cold, the veins protruding. I thought I knew her but she’s constantly surprising me. She’s so strait-laced, so proper. And yet she’s telling me she’s concealed a crime for the last twenty years.
‘Tell me. From the beginning, Mum.’
She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and presses her fingers into the sockets as though trying to erase the memory. ‘Like I said, you were at Durham and Nathan had just started sixth form. It was late. Nathan was out with his friends and Selena came to me in a dreadful state. She said she was pregnant and wanted an abortion. I tried to persuade her to contact Owen for help – he’d been gone about a week at this point. She broke down and admitted the truth about Owen, that he didn’t leave but was, in actual fact, dead, that she’d killed him in self-defence and Dean helped her bury the body. She told me that Owen had been sexually abusing her. I promised I’d keep her secret and I’d pay for the abortion. We had an appointment all set up for the next week. But as I was driving her to the clinic she told me she wanted to keep the baby.’ Mum shakes her head. ‘I couldn’t believe my ears. I told her not to be so stupid, that the baby was the result of abuse, of incest, that it could be born with a disorder. I went on and on about it until she screamed at me. I’ll never forget her words. “The baby’s not my father’s! I lied! I lied about the abuse, okay? The baby’s Dean’s.” ’
