I place my hand over hers. ‘I’m here as your friend. All of this … it’s made me realize how much you meant to me. We were such good friends. I’ve never found that again.’ I feel a stab of guilt. How can I tell her I’m here for the story too? Although the friendship thing is true.
She lifts her eyes. ‘Really?’
‘Really. I mean, I’ve got Rory, of course, and Jack whoworks with me on the newspaper. But no really good female friends. I … well, I miss that.’
She smiles, and it changes her whole face, brightening her instantly. ‘Me too. My life had become a bit insular, really. Just Adam and Ethan – and Mum, of course. I hardly see Uncle Leo any more.’
I nod, remembering our meeting the other day, reminded again of the ripple effect that Flora’s disappearance has had on the whole family.
If I don’t come back with an interview, Ted will be furious. But I can’t ask her. Not now we’re getting on so well. If it was anybody else, I would. But not her.
I’m angry with myself. I’m too close to this story. I should have handed it over to someone in HQ.
She touches the bandage on her head. ‘I can’t remember that morning.’
I’m confused. ‘Which morning?’
‘The morning it happened. The shootings. The last thing I remember is arguing with Adam. It was a stupid row that just escalated. I was tired, overwhelmed, felt like I was doing too much and he not enough. Ethan had been teething and not sleeping. I just felt …’ she shrugs ‘… knackered.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We argued. He told me he’d stay at his mum’s, with Ethan. Give me some peace if that was what I wanted. I opened a bottle of wine, cried a bit. Flopped onto the sofa. I think I passed out. And then …’ she’s fiddling with her rings again ‘… and the next thing I know I’m here.’
I can’t imagine not being able to remember something.A whole event just gone, wiped from my memory. Even when I’ve been at my drunkest, I’ve remembered everything the next morning, even if half of those memories were excruciatingly embarrassing and all jumbled up. I’m no psychiatrist but it sounds like some kind of blackout. Or maybe it’s because of the head injury.
She wrinkles her nose and, in that moment, I see the teenage Heather in her. ‘It’s so frustrating. I hate not being able to remember.’ She looks at me, imploring. ‘I just don’t understand why I would kill anyone, particularly those two people. I’ve never met them.’
‘I think you met Deirdre, though. Your mum told me she rented a caravan from you earlier this year.’
‘Oh, yes. But I barely remember her. Only that she seemed chatty and had a really cute dog I couldn’t stop cuddling. It looked like a bear. She said she bred them. That’s all the conversation we had.’
The outer corner of her eyelid flickers, her face impassive.
I remember her twitchy eye. It’s hardly perceptible – you’d only notice it if you knew her well. If you’d maybe grown up with her or, like Adam, loved her and knew all her little idiosyncrasies.
Her eyelid always flickered very slightly when she was lying.
She’s still playing with her hands, almost like she’s nervous. I glance down. And that’s when I notice it. The rings. There’s her wedding and engagement ring on her left hand, a modest ruby among a cluster of diamonds. But also two others, one on each little finger, identical, small and gold with an oval crest on the front that looks a bit like a lion. I remember asking her about it whenwe were kids, because she always wore it. Then it was on her middle finger. Now there is one on each of her little fingers. She’d told me it was a family ring, handed down through the generations. She had one, so did Flora and her mother. I’d never heard of them before and was intrigued by this grown-up piece of jewellery that she was allowed to wear to school. It sounded very posh and aristocratic to me, and they weren’t like that, the Powells.
Flora never took hers off. She had been wearing it the day she disappeared.
So why was Heather wearing it now?
43
Jess
Heather doesn’t notice me staring in horror at the rings. Two, when there should be one. Maybe I’ve got it wrong. Maybe Flora hadn’t been wearing the ring when she disappeared. Except … I was there when Margot first reported Flora missing. Heather and I were standing at Margot’s side, Heather quietly sobbing. It had been late. Gone 11 p.m. Flora was never that late. I remember Margot giving a description to the police, telling them between hot, panicked breaths what her daughter had been wearing that day, including the gold signet ring. I remember because I’d loved the way it sounded like ‘cygnet’. My fourteen-year-old self had imagined lots of fluffy baby swans.
Why had Heather been crying? Could she have known then that Flora would never come home? As far as we were all aware at the time, she was just a few hours late. It was concerning, yes, given Flora’s history of always being punctual. But to cry? Had I thought it odd? I can’t remember. Because I had my own guilty secret: I knew Flora had gone off somewhere for the day with Dylan. I thought perhaps she’d decided to stay the night with him. But I wasn’tworried that she’d run away: the backpack she’d been wearing that morning was too small, not large enough to hold even one set of clothing, never mind more.
Heather had left me alone at her house earlier that evening, at around 7.30 p.m. I hadn’t remembered that until now. When she’d returned she had been wet and covered with mud. She said she’d slipped and fallen after getting her pony in from the field. She’d been wearing a skirt, not her usual riding gear. It had rained that night and I’d thought nothing of it. I’d waited for her in her room, happily doodling and listening to music until she came back. What time had she returned? It must have been nine-ish. Definitely before the curfew anyway, because I remember her looking at her watch and becoming agitated when it got to nine thirty and Flora wasn’t yet home, muttering something about Dylan.
I haven’t thought about that in years. Even after Flora went missing I didn’t think it was strange.
Until now.
Heather had killed her father, whether by accident or not, and now Clive and Deirdre Wilson. She was seen exiting their house on the morning of the murders. And she was caught on CCTV near Clive’s Bristol property earlier that same morning. Does she really not remember or is it just some convenient excuse? And as I watch my one-time best friend, sitting on the hospital bed, twisting the wedding ring on her finger and staring wistfully into nothing, I realize I hardly know her at all. We were friends for just over two years. Two years is such a short time in the grand scheme of things. It might have been an important moment in my life, but it’s a tiny slice out ofour thirty-two years. Heather is a killer. There is no disputing that, however much I’ve been trying to convince myself. She’s killed not just once but three times. And now she’s wearing Flora’s ring. What does that mean?
