My head spins, my emotions in tatters. She’s right. I can barely make sense of what she’s saying.
‘Elise. Was. Never. At. Drummondale House.’
‘What? But I saw her.’
She shakes her head. ‘Nobody saw her. How could they? She was never there. Although it was fun pretending she was.’
‘But she phoned you. She saw someone in a mask at her window.’
She shakes her head. ‘She wasn’t on the other end of the phone line that day.’
‘There was no intruder?’
‘Exactly. No intruder that night. I made the footprints in the snow. I even set out the Monopoly game as though we were playing. I built the snowman, whilst wearing Elise’s hat and coat – hoping you and Finn – both early risers would see me. And I walked to the top of Vine Hill when you were tobogganing, wearing Elise’s coat and hat. I looked down at you – hoping you would think I was Elise. I even sent a couple of threatening text messages to myself from a phone much like Elise’s, and left it on the bench for you to find. Though, if I’m honest, I got lucky with that one. The signal up there was pretty awful.’
She moves the blade from my throat, and brushes the flat side against my cheek.
‘But why?’ I manage.
‘Elise died at my hands, Amelia. Neil would never have forgiven me for that. I couldn’t let him find out. He was away, you see. I was watching TV, when Elise appeared in the lounge. She was spiteful. Angry. She’d found a letter your mum sent to Neil.
‘I got up, angry too, yelled at her for snooping in my things. But she was so vehement.’ She lowers her head. ‘God knows why I didn’t destroy the bloody letter.’ A beat, as she looks up and into my eyes, hers vacant and lifeless. ‘We rowed and she pushed me hard. I fell against the corner of the coffee table. The pain was like nothing I’d felt before. I knew I was losing my baby.’
She’s no longer brushing my face with the blade, and there are tears in her eyes. And despite the awful position I’m in, I feel her sadness, her pain at losing her child.
‘I cried out to Elise,’ she goes on. ‘Told her I was losing my baby, but she spat that the baby deserved to die.’
‘Oh God, Rosamund. That’s awful,’ I find myself saying, but she straightens her shoulders and the blade is back at my throat.
‘I reached for a brass ornament,’ she says. ‘Struck Elise.’
‘But you didn’t mean to kill her.’
She smiles, and shrugs. ‘When I heard on Maddie’s video log that you were all having a little anniversary reunion at Drummondale House, I knew what I had to do. If I could convince everyone Elise vanished from the Scottish Highlands, at the hands of the same person who took Lark, Neil would never find out what really happened.’
‘So you set it all up?’
She nods slowly. ‘I knew Ruth would bring towels to the cottage and snoop about – she always did that – such an annoying woman. She totally deserved to die. I hid in Elise’s bedroom with the door locked. I heard Ruth call out, and pretended to be Elise.
‘When Ruth went into my room, the power finally came back on, so I dashed from Elise’s room and turned on the shower, giving the illusion that Elise had gone into the shower, then hurried downstairs to put on the mask.
‘My idea was for Ruth to think she’d witnessed the masked intruder, before being knocked unconscious. When she came round, she was supposed to think Elise had been abducted, and tell everyone what happened.’ She shakes her head. ‘But my timing was out. Not helped by the loss of power. What can I say? I made a mess of things.
‘When I came up the stairs in the mask, Ruth was already in the bathroom. She would have seen Elise wasn’t there.’
‘So you killed her.’ Nausea rises. This woman is a monster.
‘Yes. I killed her. I had no choice. If Ruth had told everyone Elise wasn’t on the estate, the search for her would go wider. Neil would find out what I’d done.’
I’m aware if she stops talking, she will kill me, so continue with more questions, ‘But why Maddie? Why her?’
‘Maddie worked it all out, so I had to kill her too.’ She pushes the knife into my flesh, pierces my skin once more, and I cry out, pain and fear building. ‘She wasn’t on the porch smoking when I went out to confront her that day, but I saw her about to disappear into the wooded area near Vine Hill.
‘I caught up with her. She told me she was meeting Finn, and I knew by the look on her face, she was afraid of me.
‘I told her I’d seen her take the Monopoly token from my cottage, asked her why, and she cried, and tried to hurry away, saying Elise wouldn’t want to be the top hat. That she’d want to be the dog. She’d worked it out, you see.’ She moves her head from side to side, staring into my eyes, a small smile on her face.
Blood trickles down my neck, the second nick in my skin so painful.
‘It wasn’t in the plan to kill either of them. In fact, I didn’t want any of you to die – not even Elise. I’m not a murderer.’
A thought seeps into my head, like a black river drowning my hopes. ‘Did you kill Lark and Jackson?’
‘No.’ She presses the knife against my neck once more. ‘Why would you even think that?’ She lays her hand
