“My boyfriend,” she says, as though it’s information I already know.
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“Well, I do and I want you to meet him.”
“Okay, sure. I’ll look forward to it.”
I hear Penny exhale with relief. “Great. Thanks, Mum. It’ll be so nice for us all to hang out. It’ll be like… like when me and Nathan were kids.”
I don’t think it will, but I agree anyway.
“So, what’s Tim like? What does he do?” I ask.
“He works at an insurance company, which sounds stuffy, I know. But he’s pretty fun. We have loads in common.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I say.
“Shit,” Penny says. “I need to go. I went for a wander and now I have ten minutes to get back to work. I might have to make a run for it.”
“All right, sweetheart.”
“Speak soon! Love you!” she says.
Before I can reply, she’s gone. I didn’t even get a chance to tell her about Rachel and Dina Lacey. Maybe such a huge topic should be handled face to face.
I think about Tim, the new love interest. I’ve met plenty of Penny’s boyfriends over the years. Older men with motorbikes. Baby-faced boys in skinny jeans with spiky hair. There are rarely any similarities between them except that she jumps into relationships fast, lets them burn out and then moves on. It’s all par for the course with her and I’ve just learned to be happy when she’s happy. There have been times when her spontaneity leaves me riddled with anxiety. Impromptu holidays I don’t hear about until she’s home, like that boozy trip to Ibiza when I so nearly reported her missing. I’d had my hand hovering over the phone ready to make the call when she finally replied to me with one text.
Clubbing in Ibiza. Mad times.
It’s been a while since I last saw Nathan. It was about a month before the divorce was finalised. He’d made some comment about how I’d never want to see him again and I’d reassured him that wasn’t true. But the truth is somewhere in the middle. Nathan reminds me of many things. I see Scott in him. Too much of Scott. That superiority. Wanting his own way. Even as a child he knew how to control people. But I also see the hurt little boy who had just lost his mother. I see all the rage and spite he showed me as a child, and a teenager, and, to a certain extent, an adult.
Penny loves him. He’s her brother after all, and it’s good that they have that relationship. But I’m not sure I could ever love him as a mother. Not after everything he did.
CHAPTER 16
THE GRAVEDIGGER
The heavy curtain of unconsciousness starts to pull back over his eyelids.
When he wakes, the night has turned into a pale summer morning and he blinks against the sun. Once his eyes adjust, he pushes against the moist grass at his side, sits up and sees a herd of cattle in the distance. Then he remembers.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Where is she?
He gets to his feet, a sharp pain tearing across his skull. Reaching to the back of his head, he feels his sore flesh and touches dried blood. At least the blood isn’t flowing anymore.
The events of the last few hours come back to him. The chase, the fall. He thought that he’d killed her for the second time. There’s no sign of her but there are traces of what happened here.
There’s nothing else for it. With the sun coming up, he has to fill in the grave he dug and get away from here.
He brushes the dirt from his jeans and staggers back up the hill.
The shovel is where he left it and he starts moving the earth as fast as he can, filling in the empty void which was supposed to entomb her forever. Then he pulls clumps of grass and loose heather over the large rectangle, trying to disguise it as best he can. Satisfied it looks natural enough, he hurries back to his car and throws the shovel in the boot. Soon he’s back in the driver’s seat, and his heart racing, he starts the car.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Maybe she hasn’t gone far. Weakened by the head injury, she might be close and incapacitated. Maybe he can find her on the road. But deep down he senses that he has blown his chance to do this quietly. It’s messy now. She knows he’s coming after her.
But maybe he still has time, because he knows she won’t go to the police and she won’t go to the hospital. There are reasons why she can’t explain what has happened to her. She is not innocent in all of this.
