I Know Your Secret - Ruth Heald Page 0,87

I hate that she’s making this about my mother. ‘It started long before she came out of prison.’

‘What did?’

‘How did you lose your teaching job, Beth?’ I smile now, enjoying this once more. ‘I expect you deserved that.’

‘It was a mistake,’ she starts and then stops, looking at me, tears in her eyes. ‘Was that you too? Were you the member of the public who reported the fight and cost me my job?’

I smile. She’s starting to get it now, starting to understand. When I was out of foster care and at university, I’d looked Beth up. I couldn’t believe that she was carrying on with her life as normal, that she was still teaching. I had a long summer vacation from university which started long before the schools broke up. I’d rented a room near her new school and watched out for her, hanging around outside the school, hoping the other teachers would assume I was a parent.

I had wanted to tear her life apart just as she had torn apart mine. Was she still manipulating students the way she had manipulated me? Telling them they could trust her, that they should confide in her? She’d told me that she’d protect me, that she’d look after me. But all the time she’d only been interested in my father.

‘I didn’t have to do much. I already knew the kind of teacher you were. The kind who often had one-on-one time with the kids, who let them skive off their lessons and sit in your classroom, the kind who listened to their problems, the kind who didn’t have any boundaries. I knew if I could just get them to investigate you, then your career would fall apart.’

When I saw Beth break up a fight between two girls at the end of the school day, I saw my opportunity. I reported her for being too physical with the girls. And that opened up a whole other load of questions about Beth’s competence as a teacher, just like I knew it would.

‘It did,’ she says sadly. ‘Because of you.’ I see the undisguised hate in her eyes. And for a second I wonder if I’ve miscalculated, if she might get violent, if this whole evening might not go to plan after all.

‘And then you went mad. You thought you were being followed, but then you convinced yourself it was all in your head, that there was no one there. Except there was.’

‘It was you following me?’

‘Yeah,’ I say proudly. ‘I enjoyed it. Making you feel afraid. Making you feel small. Alone. You left me completely on my own. My father dead. My mother in prison. Me shunted round emergency foster carers like an object. All because of you. All your promises turned to dust. You said you’d take me in if I ever needed a break from my arguments with my mother. But when I needed you the most, you abandoned me. Because it was never me you wanted. It was my father.’

Sixty-One

Beth

‘That’s not true,’ I say, my face flushing. But it is, partly. I’d imagined the three of us together, a happy family. I’d got on with Sophie so well. And Nick and I were head over heels in love. I’d imagined days out together, laughter. The family I never had. But it wasn’t to be. Because of her mother. And she deserved to go to jail for it. She deserved everything she got. She’s out of prison now, free to do as she pleases. But Nick had a death sentence.

‘Why did you hate me so much? Your father loved me, you know.’

‘Why did I hate you?’ She looks at me, incredulous. ‘Your affair killed him.’

‘Your mother killed him. You know that.’

At first I’d thought the fire was an accident, that the candle had been knocked over by mistake. It was only later I learnt that Virginia had been arrested for murder. Every scrap of evidence had pointed to her.

‘If you hadn’t cheated with him, it would never have happened.’

‘It was my fault your parents were unhappy, was it? My fault they already hated each other? You told me what you went through in that house. You told me about your mother’s temper.’

‘You’re so judgemental. What did you know about their relationship? You should have stayed out of it. But instead you manipulated me and my father.’

‘So you got your revenge by stalking me? By making me think I was going mad?’

‘It was what you deserved. Imagine how my mother felt. She