past Emma’s face and fix on the white cupboard behind her. She remembers the blood spattered there. She closes her eyes. The babies clamour.
Then, with a great strength of will, she opens her eyes again and focuses on her babies. She takes some wet wipes from the table and wipes up first Emma’s face, then Jackie’s. She puts on a cheerful expression and uses her singsong voice. She must be a good mother. She must be there for her girls. She will figure something out. ‘There we go! Time for carrots! Yum-yum!’ She spoons the puréed carrots, a lurid orange, into their open mouths. They’ve stopped crying now and both of them have fixed their big round blue eyes on her face. They’re like plump little birds in a nest, mouths open, waiting.
‘Your daddy loved us very much,’ she tells them, in her high-pitched voice. ‘He loved you both so much. People said terrible things about him, but they were all lies. He was a good man. He didn’t do anything bad. It was all made up by an evil witch.’
She spoons the food into the babies’ mouths as they smile and gurgle back at her. She remembers how she’d tried to run down Erica with her car, that night. After Erica left the gift for the twins and Patrick had been so unnerved by it – she knew she had to stop Erica from going to the police in Creemore. That night she’d told Patrick she couldn’t stand the crying any more and was going to the movies for a break, and left him on his own for a while to cope with the twins. She drove to the theatre and bought a ticket, but left again. She told Patrick later that she’d slept through the whole movie. But she drove to Newburgh. She knew where Erica lived – Patrick had told her earlier. She had no plan; she was too stressed and sleep-deprived to come up with one. She was sitting in her car, dithering about whether to press her buzzer and what to say to her, when she saw Erica come out of her building. When Erica started to walk towards the road, Stephanie followed in her car at a distance.
She acted on impulse. Erica was walking alone, on the side of a dark road. There was no one around. Stephanie found herself gripping the steering wheel, flooring the accelerator, all her rage trained on the lone figure in front of her. She never meant to hit Erica, only to scare her away, but it was a close call – in her fury, Stephanie had almost not veered away in time.
She’d driven home, shaking all the way, shocked at herself, at her almost fatal loss of control. But what she’d done had the opposite effect from what she intended. Erica went straight to the coroner.
But at least Stephanie now knows the truth about Patrick. And she is grateful, really. Just like Erica said she would be. Better to know.
The twins smile and gurgle back at her. But Erica has become a problem again.
Stephanie will figure something out. She has to.
CHAPTER SIXTY
ERICA DRIVES BACK to Newburgh, rather pleased with herself and with how things have turned out. She couldn’t have predicted this turn of events, but she knows how to roll with the punches. She goes where the opportunities are.
Patrick had never meant anything to her. They slept together, that’s it. She’d never cared for him in the least, and he’d never cared about her. It was purely physical, the selfish satisfaction of needs, for both of them. But when Lindsey died … that had surprised her, and made her think. She thought about how convenient Lindsey’s death was for Patrick. She thought it might have been the perfect murder.
There had been no look of triumph, no silent glance between the two of them at the scene of the accident that day. But she’d watched him and wondered. She thought he was acting a part. He’d never told her he was unhappy with his wife, but she’d deduced it on her own. If he was so happy with his wife, why was he sleeping with her? And why did he seem so unenthusiastic about the baby? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
She didn’t know for sure, but as soon as she suspected that he might have killed his wife deliberately, she decided to snub him and keep it in her back pocket for the