She looked at her husband. Her eyes were red-ringed, dark circles beneath them.
‘I know. I am too. Something happened at work.’
‘To you?’
‘Sort of… not really.’
Beth frowned. Charlie relayed the incident with the perfume. Her face contorted in an expression of horror as he reached the ending.
‘Charlie, that’s awful.’
‘It was meant for you.’
He handed Beth his phone, showing her the message he received. She passed it back without saying a word.
‘There’s more,’ Charlie mumbled.
Beth waited.
‘You’re not going to like it. At all.’
‘What?’
‘I had a visit from the police because I was the one who had given the girl the bottle. They asked me all sorts of questions. I tried to lie to them, Beth, I did, I swear. But she knew I wasn’t telling the truth… the way she looked at me. You should have seen it.’
Beth reached her hand out, gently stroking Charlie’s fingers on the counter.
‘They said they would probably find fingerprints. They thought I had something to do with it. I’m so sorry.’
Beth’s eyes narrowed.
‘Charlie, what did you do?’
The room was quiet.
‘I told them.’
‘Told them what?’
‘They were pressing me, threatening me. They said I could be arrested if I was lying. She knew, Beth.’
‘Charlie, please tell me you didn’t.’
There was a lengthy pause.
‘I told them who you are.’
Beth pulled her hand away. The sound of the morning news on the radio drifted away from her ears, and for a moment, all she could hear was the twittering of some sparrows from the garden, without a care in the world. She wished she could be a bird, and fly away into the distance. Her face felt hot, her heart pounded.
‘How could you do that to me?’
‘It was the police, Beth. You can’t expect me to lie to the police.’
‘Do you realise what you’ve done? My life is over. Everything I have fought so hard to build here, from scratch, it’s all ruined. Do you understand that? Our lives are over. Mine, yours, Peter’s and Daisy’s. There’s no coming back from this.’
She stood up and paced.
‘Beth, this is a good thing. The secret’s out now. You won’t have to pretend anymore.’
‘It wasn’t your secret to tell!’ Beth screamed at Charlie across the kitchen. ‘It was mine; you hear me. My secret!’
‘No more lying. No more pretending.’
‘And you think that’s a good thing, do you?’
‘Well–’
‘No, Charlie, its most definitely not. I’ve been through this many times. I’ve lived so many lives, I can’t even begin to tell you. It always ends the same way when people find out. Trust me.’
Charlie lowered his head.
‘I can’t believe you’ve done this to me … to us. Do you realise you’ve ruined everything, you stupid, stupid man!’
Charlie stood up, walking round the island to stand beside her. He reached his hand out towards her arm, but she slapped it away.
‘Why don’t we wait and see what happens. Maybe it won’t get out.’
Beth laughed.
‘Of course it will. People hate her. They despise Kitty Briscoe. They blame her for what happened to Billy Noakes as much as they blame Kieran Taylor. And they’re right. I am responsible. It was my fault. I took him. If I hadn’t… maybe Billy would be alive now, with a family of his own.’
Charlie grabbed Beth, she tried to force him away, but he pulled her close to him, hugging her head into his chest.
‘No, Beth. It wasn’t your fault. You were a little girl. You can’t have known.’
‘Can’t I? Really? Because I look at Daisy, I watch her, how she behaves, and I think she is definitely capable of making decisions. She knows right from wrong. So I must have done too. I was a year older than her! I would have known it was wrong to lure that poor little boy away from his mother.’
Beth sobbed uncontrollably. Charlie stroked her head.
‘He was two years old for Christ’s sake. A baby! I go over this every single day of my life. I think about it. It’s all such a blur. I barely remember it. Of course, I’ve read the stories so often that I feel like they are my truth, but I was seven. Can you really recall specific things that occurred when you were that young?’
Beth stopped rambling. She stood, hugging Charlie, letting him hug her. Crying into his shirt.
‘What if I’m a bad person, Charlie. What if there’s something evil in me? And I’ve passed it on to our kids somehow.’
‘You’re not a bad person, Beth. You’re… amazing. And look at those kids. They don’t have a bad bone in their bodies. So you can stop worrying about that. They are perfect, both of them.’
‘But–’
‘But nothing, Beth. You know it.’
They stood in the kitchen together. No words between them. Only love and support in an endless void of nothing. Charlie held his wife, and she let him.
With the sound of Beth’s sobs filling the house, as if years of sorrow were pouring out of her, seeping from every inch of her, they stood like that for a long while, until Beth pulled away. She wiped her eyes, and suddenly she was calm, collected, the familiar Beth again. The emotion gone.
‘So what do we do now?’ she finally asked.
‘We need to find out who is doing this to us.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then we get the bastard.’
45
Charlie had stayed with her until lunchtime, but eventually made his excuses and left. He told Beth not to worry, they’d get through this.
She wasn’t so sure.
He seemed optimistic. But Beth had been here many times; experienced the hatred once people discovered who she was.
This was Charlie’s first time, she couldn’t blame him for not understanding. But she couldn’t shake the overwhelming sense of foreboding that consumed her. It always ended the same way. With her leaving. Starting again somewhere new. It was easier in the past. She had no ties, no family. Packing a bag and moving was simple. But now, with Charlie, Peter and Daisy, things were different.
She had allowed herself to believe
