‘Shut up!’ In one swift movement Marielle lunges at me and grabs me around the throat. ‘Don’t lie to me, you little witch. Now, for the last time, tell me where my son is.’
She’s never going to accept it. Henry’s right. She squeezes my windpipe harder and I struggle to breathe. I need to strike now. I bring the hand up that is still clutching the nail and drive it into the side of her neck. She screams and clamps her hand around the nail as blood spurts out. I’ve missed her jugular but at least I’ve managed to stop her. She stumbles backwards, the nail poking out of her skin, and I take the opportunity to leap from the bed. The room spins: the drugs aren’t yet out of my system, but I make a run for it, slamming the door behind me. The key is still in the door and I quickly turn it, locking Marielle in.
A burst of adrenaline overrides the woozy effects of the injection. Carefully, I lean over the banister. I’m surprised by how dark it is now. I must have been in the attic for hours. I can’t see Henry. I tiptoe down the first flight of stairs. I don’t have long. Henry might have heard the commotion. I flatten myself against the wall, listening for him. I’m scared he’ll hear my hammering heart as I make my way across the landing.
And then I hear his foot on the stairs.
I dart into the nursery, trying to decide on the best way of getting out of the house. Henry is now coming up the stairs. I can just about make out his bare calves and his shoes that squeak when he walks. He’s whistling to himselfas he passes the nursery door. He has the syringe in his hand, holding it aloft. He’s come to kill me and he’s whistling. The knowledge makes my insides turn to ice.
I wait, holding my breath. My heart is thumping so much I can feel it reverberating through my whole body, like tiny electric pulses. He’s going up the next staircase now. I take a deep breath and count silently. One, two …
My hands are tingling with panic. I’ve got one chance to get this right.
Three …
And then I run.
60
HENRY
July 2023
Henry killed Hugh Warrington on 16 July 2023. It was a Sunday.
He’d had no choice. Marielle was getting suspicious, and he had to act quickly to stop her finding out everything.
Five years earlier he’d received a phone call from Hugh out of the blue. He hadn’t heard from him since he was sent to prison back in 1999 for prescription fraud and stealing drugs from St Calvert’s to sell.
‘I’ve tried to make ends meet,’ Hugh had said, sounding decades older since they’d last spoken. ‘But it’s difficult now I’m no longer able to work as a doctor. I need cash, Henry. And I know you have plenty of that. I’ve been following your career from afar. I know your lovely wife would never understand what you’ve done, but I can be paid to keep quiet. For the right amount.’
Henry had agreed to pay him a monthly sum. Thankfully, he dealt with all the outgoings, so Marielle never saw monies going out to H. E. Warrington every four weeks.And then Hugh started getting greedy, demanding more and more. Once, he had travelled over a hundred miles from his place in Nottingham to where Henry was living in Reading, after Henry stopped answering his calls. Henry had been furious. Marielle knew Hugh was the doctor who had delivered their baby, and if she’d recognized him she would have bombarded him with questions about the birth. Henry had managed to keep her away from the court case all those years ago by moving them to a remote village in Scotland and shielding her from the news. Marielle had been so grief-stricken that she hadn’t put up much of a fight or taken an interest in the world around her.
But it hadn’t ended there. Of course it hadn’t. Blackmailers never stopped. They kept on and on and on until their victim snapped. And Henry believed he was a victim in all of this, he really did. Hugh didn’t have as much to lose as Henry if the police became involved. After all, Hugh had already lost his career, thanks to his drugs conviction, and his marriage had ended. Henry couldn’t risk Marielle ever finding out what he’d done.
It all came to a head when Marielle saw Hugh lurking in their street.
Marielle never forgot a face, even if that face was jowly and twenty years older.
She began questioning Henry, asking to speak to Hugh, telling him how much of a fog it had been after losing Peter. ‘He might be able to give us answers, Henry. I didn’t know you were still in touch with him.’ When he put her off, she started her own investigations, trying to find his address.
Henry knew he had to act fast. He couldn’t risk Marielle finding Hugh.
He planned it carefully. He drove to Nottingham late one night on the pretence that he wanted to talk to Hugh about the money situation. He got his old adversary drunk and injected him with a lethal dose of fentanyl. Hugh died slumped in his armchair. Not a bad death, Henry reasoned, as he arranged the scene to make it look self-inflicted.
They moved again. This time to Salisbury. Marielle had decided to retire by then and was happy to move somewhere more rural.
He really hoped that would be the end of it.
Until Marielle found that photograph in the local newspaper of Simone Harvey.
61
LENA
I run as fast as I can along the landing, almost tripping over my feet in my hurry to get away. I hear Henry shout something. I take the stairs two at a time. I can hear Henry’s footsteps behind me, sense him making a grab for me. If he gets close enough to inject me, that’s it. Game over. I jump down the remainder of the stairs and hit the tiles hard. I wince with pain, but I get up and grapple with the front door, just as Henry is behind me. I’m all fingers and thumbs. Why won’t it open?
He reaches out, his fingernails sharp against my bare shoulder and I scream.
