I cringe at his words as they fall about us. Molly’s hair, black-blood drenched in the light from the moon, running and twisting in the stream. Lexie’s eyes. My mother is gaping, looking from face to face – does she believe him? She can’t. I need her to believe that I haven’t done any of this. She always believes me! I scratch and writhe trying to get away. We’re so close to the edge, but I don’t think he even realises. I can hear the sea smashing the cliff beneath us. I pull, and kick, but I can’t get him anywhere it will hurt him.
‘Mum, help me!’ She’s just sitting there like a fucking idiot, her hair slick wet from the pouring rain, pasted in ribbons on her cheeks alongside the scarlet marks I shouldn’t have made. I kick and twist again, waiting for a chance.
Then his grip loosens, slippery now, just for a heartbeat.
I get my chin down and I bite his arm as hard as I can, so hard it hurts, and now I really taste blood, iron in my mouth as his skin splits, tears beneath my teeth. I don’t let go, and he cries out in pain. I love the sound.
He lets go of my hair to try and prise me off his arm, and as soon as I feel his hold on my neck slacken enough I let go and I wriggle down, and I’m free. I turn and I push him as hard as I can. I want to kill him. I want to see him fall. He has ruined everything, this is all his fault.
‘Vivian!’ My mother’s voice above the shrieking wind reaches me, but doesn’t. ‘Vivian, stop!’ I shove him again; he’s hurt and off-balance, holding his injured arm, and it’s my turn now. I put my shoulder into it. Admittedly, it’s not as easy as pushing an interfering old bitch down the stairs, but maybe I’m stronger than I thought. He slips and falls to the wet ground, blood pumping through his fingers. I am the last one standing.
‘You want the truth, Liam? Really? I hated your sister! She was as worthless as you are!’ I kick him as hard as I can in the stomach – there’s a satisfying grunt – then I stamp at his face with my foot, trying to push him over the edge. I’m vaguely aware of my mother getting to her feet behind us. I swear, if she touches me, she’ll be the next one to go over.
The sky breaks, thunder cracking so loud – only it doesn’t just come from the air, but the earth beneath us too, as the cliff begins to give way, to shake and shudder, and fall. He somehow scrambles away, but I’m too slow: I start to slide and I only just cling on to the dead grass, crumbling soil and stones slithering away, dragging at me.
‘Mum! Mummy, help me!’ I scream as my fingers dig into the earth, feel the dagger pain of my nails splitting, and she’s there, oh, thank god, she’s there, she believes me, she always believes me! She throws herself towards me, arms and hands reaching out for mine. Her fingers gripping, she has me, she’ll save me. It’s not too late.
‘Did you hurt Molly?’ she shouts, but I can barely hear her over the wind. ‘Did you? Did you hurt my mother?’
I can’t help it. I laugh.
Rachel
I let her fall.
Rachel
Six Months Later
Her face, her bloody mouth, red teeth, screaming with laughter. I see it every night in my dreams. How could she laugh? She looked just like her father in that frozen moment. Conception and end. I let her fall. I watched her go. I hoped the cliff would take me too, but it didn’t. It left me there, hollow and numb, staring, Liam beside me, weeping.
I watched my daughter die.
They uncovered her, down on the beach in the soil and the stones, her body as broken and twisted as her heart had been. I was afraid they wouldn’t find her, that she would haunt me always, but she is dead and buried, nothing now but a drawing in a book, her face immortalised in print with her dark prince beside her.
Those endless hours in the police station: interviews, interrogations. Did you know? Did you know? Vivian. Tristan’s car. Molly, skull crushed by a rock, found in a stream in the woods, a bloated horror. Those long showers she took. It was all her. Liam made a call to the police, when he found Molly among the watching trees, told them what he knew, who he suspected, then decided to take matters into his own hands. He wanted to save me, but I saved myself.
After finding Molly’s body the police got a search warrant for our house. They broke the door down not an hour after we left, searched Vivian’s room. They found a small pink laptop underneath a drawer, underneath the whole unit. I’d never have thought to look there. Molly’s laptop, to send emails from Molly’s account. An unutterable cruelty, making the people who loved her believe that she was still alive while she rotted, alone in the woods. Alone. We don’t know how Vivian lured her there, in the dark. Maybe Molly thought it was an adventure, an excitement. The forest at night. Friends. A rock from a stream. Those long, long showers, washing away what she’d done. They found the search history on her phone too: mechanics, brake lines. You can find anything on the internet
