Recognise? Find us? I had recognised him – he had reminded me of someone that very first night I saw him… I’d chosen to ignore it, though, thinking it didn’t matter. Remember. Remember. Oh, god, no. I felt the blood drain from my face, a rushing sensation that rocked me.
Lexie’s pretty eyes. He looked nothing like Lexie, but his eyes! Of course, they were the same as his mother’s, his sister’s. Those pretty eyes. I hadn’t been able to place them in his grown, male face, so I had ignored my intuition that he reminded me of someone. His hair was so much darker than I remembered – the contrast had fooled me. He’d been so blonde as a child. All the revulsion I felt toward myself for the affair expanded inside me and it took every ounce of control I had not to be sick again.
‘Liam,’ I whispered, clutching my phone so hard I thought it might crack. ‘Liam. Oh, god, Liam.’
‘Finally she figures it out. Well done, Rachel.’ Confliction gone, sarcasm bathed his voice instead, and it didn’t suit him; it made him sound hard and uncaring. He was hard and uncaring. ‘Is Vivian with you?’ he demanded, brushing my realisation, my remembering, away, stoking again the blazing fury that he had sought to come between us like this, in such a vile way.
‘I’m not telling you!’ The line beeped as another call tried to connect; I couldn’t hear anything else he was saying, so I shouted over him: ‘Just leave us alone!’
I hung up, and I put my head in my hands. What had I done? Who had I let into my life? I should have realised who he was. I cast my mind back over those hours we spent together, his strange questions about Vivian: what she was like, our relationship. There was only one reason he would have tracked us down, ingratiated himself with us, entwined himself so thoroughly in both our lives.
Revenge. He was here to punish us, ruin us, for what happened to Lexie. An eye for an eye.
Shaking, brushing away useless tears, I picked up my phone to call Vivian, to find her, warn her, when I saw that I had a voice message from Abi. I dialled in, expecting it to tell me that Molly had come home, desperate for a small relief.
‘Rachel?’ I felt a peculiar shift deep in my chest as I listened, the fluttering hope I’d had that Molly was safe being shredded by terror. Her voice. ‘Rachel… the police.’ The words caught and tore in her throat, choking her. ‘They found her, my baby, they found her body in the woods, and now they are at your house. Why are they at your house? What did you do? What did you do?’ Then she broke, wrenching cries echoed down the crackling line, silenced abruptly by the end of the message.
I dropped the phone, fingers nerveless, ice cold. Molly hadn’t run away. Molly was dead.
I had to find Vivian.
Vivian
The wind has really picked up. My face is stinging, my hair thrashing at it, sharp strands getting in my mouth and eyes. The thin purple line on the horizon is topped now with billowing clouds, dirty yellow, grey and blackening. Swelling up like bruises. I should get back down to the cottage. All the other people who were on the path are gone; I could be the only person in the world up here, a queen on high. I struggle to turn away from the scene, but I do, pulling my feet and legs around to follow the smooth stones back to my mother.
My phone is ringing. It’s Alex.
‘Where are you?’ he says, loudly.
‘Er, hi, Alex. I’m fine, thanks. You know where I am. I just sent you a photo. I’m in Dorset, idiot.’
‘So am I – are you still on the cliff path?’
‘What? Why are you here?’
‘Are you still on the path?’ His voice is clipped, like he’s running.
‘Yes, but…’ He hangs up on me. Why the hell has he followed us here? I stop at the top of the cliff path, to think. How will I explain him to my mother if she sees him with me? Why did he sound so weird? I am beginning to think that maybe Alex is more trouble than he is worth, that maybe it’s time to just start all over again. I’ve done it before. And if someone like him is interested in me, not Molly, then I don’t have anything to worry about, do I? I can be whoever I want to be. I don’t need either of them, any more.
I don’t want Alex to find me until I have figured out what the hell is going on. I am debating trying to call him again from here, high on the cliff, where the reception is best, when suddenly Mum comes running up to me out of nowhere, making me jump. She grabs me with hard fingers, digging them into my arms.
‘Ow, Mum, what are you doing? Get off!’
‘Come back to the cottage, Vivian, quickly. We need to get back.’
‘Why? What’s going on?’
‘Oh, god, darling, I don’t know how to say this – Abi, she just called, she left a message…’
‘What?’
‘They found Molly. They found her, in the woods. She’s dead.’ Her face creases and reddens horribly. ‘She said the police are at our house, Vivian. Why are the police at our house?’
Shit.
Rachel
Vivian was silent, shocked, when I told her what Abi had told me. She collapsed, pulling me down beside her. She had gone painfully white, staring at nothing, hands clenching and unclenching in her lap, her lips moving soundlessly. I scanned the edges of her face, the face I loved. She was so beautiful, like a perfect line drawing, colourless. All the colour must have been on her inside.
I took one
