was only because Mark had texted me one morning to ask if I was ready and I’d answered with that picture with the caption Not quite, lol, for a joke! A joke! You’ve taken it completely out of context. Mark and I used to make each other laugh all the time, this is what I mean by you twisting everything against me. He only deleted it because he said his weirdo wife might not understand my sense of humour. She might get the wrong idea. I mean, not being funny, but if she couldn’t trust him to be friends with someone, it’s obvious they were at the end of the road. I’m certainly not to blame for the shitty state of their marriage.
And as for the people who have come forward with stories of how she helped them talk through their problems, how they’d come to think of her as a friend, I can see what you’re doing, pitting her profile against mine, but, well, they’re weirdos too. Dog walkers are strange, end of. They buy an animal so that they can stick it on the end of a rope and walk around the neighbourhood in endless circles picking up poo and making small talk with people they don’t know, never will know and will never invite into their homes. Weird. I wasn’t doing that, was I? All I did was go for a couple of walks and that’s enough to put me in the frame for brutal murders? Rachel Edwards could easily have broken into my flat, smeared the victims’ blood over my clothes, nicked my silk jacket, my shoes and secretly put them at the back of the wardrobe when I wasn’t in the house, stolen some cigarette ends and placed them at the scene, somehow got my fingerprints on that car. And how anyone could tell it was me from those CCTV captures I don’t know. What a joke. My own mother wouldn’t have known me.
(Pause)
HS: For the tape, Ms Taylor is composing herself.
IT: OK, so you’ve got evidence for that Golightly woman, that David guy and the tramp kid. OK. Happy? I have no chance, I get that. I mean, who can compete with the mother of a murdered child? No one. In the Top Trumps of Victimhood, she holds the winning card, even if she did keep a file of death in her kitchen and go around chatting up strangers in the dark. People always prefer the underdog, the down-at-heel middle-aged woman, over the younger model when it comes down to who to believe. That’s just sexism, pure and simple. All the blame cast on me for no other reason than that I’m more attractive. Well, I’ll tell you something. As far as I’m concerned:
Rachel Edwards steals husbands, not me.
Rachel Edwards ruins lives, not me.
Rachel Edwards is a murderer, and I’ll tell you how I know.
I should have said it straight away. I should have told you, but I could tell you were trying to pin all this on me. But I saw Rachel Edwards go into the park with that girl. I saw her but I said I didn’t because only a fool would put themselves at the scene of the crime. I said I wasn’t there but I was. I was, OK? I saw her. I know you don’t have the CCTV, but I was there, I did see her, I swear. And the next day, when I read about that girl in the paper, I knew it was her, Rachel, Rachel Edwards. I couldn’t believe it when you didn’t trace it to her. Middle-aged woman, little black dog, walks the streets, talks to strangers, keeps a file of death? Just how much evidence do you need? It was exhausting. I would never have killed so many if you’d done your fucking job. Two more deaths and one near miss… and even then she had to do your job for you, turn herself in. I know you’re under-resourced, but honestly, you’re as stupid as her blind, trusting husband, to whom I dropped enough hints to sink a battleship. I’m telling you, Rachel Edwards killed Jo Weatherall. Rachel Edwards, do you hear me? I might be a murderer but she’s a murderer too.
57
Rachel
One year later
Amanda Frost recrosses her legs and fixes me with that blue gaze. It’s almost a year since I turned myself in. I’m off the antipsychotics now and this third type of HRT suits me a lot better than the other