sake, and you’re still here, you’re still fighting. You can do this, and we’re going to make sure you get all the help you need, OK? And we’re going to find Danny and make him pay for what he’s done to you, and to all those men. We’re going to leave here and make an urgent press appeal, and within hours his face is going to be on every TV news bulletin, in every paper, on every news website, not just here but across Europe, across the world. We’re going to find him, Gemma, OK? And his cousin too. He’s going to pay for this as well, they both are.’
She’d told me, to my great relief, that Albert was fine, distressed but unhurt, and had been taken again to the local kennels to be cared for until I was better. She made some phone calls for me then too, breaking the news, and Eva was coming today, and my parents too, I remembered. Tears suddenly sprang to my eyes, and I moved my hand from my throat to wipe them away. My parents … how would they ever understand all of this, how could I explain …?
And then another thought struck me, and I gasped. Danny had tried to kill me to stop me telling anyone what I now knew, what he’d done. But I wasn’t dead, and I had told. And very soon, he’d know that, because the police would make their appeal, the appeal that would see his face being beamed from TV screens and on social media sites around the world, naming him as chief suspect in the UK serial killer case. Danny would see that, there was no way he wouldn’t, and he would know. He would know I was still alive, and what I’d done. And what would he do then?
Fear began to sweep over me, and suddenly my breaths were coming fast and shallow, black spots dancing before my eyes. When Danny had pulled out that knife, in our kitchen, it had been so quick, so unexpected, that I hadn’t had time to feel real fear before the sharp blade whipped across my throat. I’d felt the blood spurting, oozing, felt the weakness in my body as I sank to the floor, heard Danny’s footsteps crossing the room, pausing, moving on again, heard Albert howling in the hallway, heard the front door slamming, closed my eyes as the darkness descended. But fear … not fear, not really, not then. Now it was there though, in every rasping breath, in the tremor running up my spine, in the pain shooting across my throat, in the sweat running down my forehead into my eyes, blurring my vision.
‘Mrs O’Connor? Mrs O’Connor, are you awake? Are you OK?’
I jumped in terror, then took a shuddering breath as I recognized the doctor who’d been treating me. He was peering down at me, a concerned expression on his kind face.
‘Fine. I’m fine,’ I managed.
‘Well, good. Because I have some news for you,’ he said.
Chapter 47
Seven months later
‘Gemma, are you coming in? We’re pouring the bubbly!’
Clare’s voice rose above the hubbub of chat and laughter coming from the living room. They were all there today – Clare, Tai, Eva and a whole group of other women too, ones I’d met over the previous months at the classes I’d unexpectedly found myself attending, women who were now firm friends, my support group, my Bristol family. Women I could laugh with and cry with in equal measure; there’d been plenty of the latter but, thankfully, enough of the former to keep me sane, to keep me moving forwards, to stop me from looking back too much. I still did, of course, in the dark, silent hours, when the fear would grip me and I’d cling to Albert, shaking, desperate for dawn when the sunlight would drive away the shadows. But I was trying, and I was winning, most of the time.
Out in the hallway, I bent to scoop a small pile of letters from the doormat.
‘Be there in a mo. Just checking the post!’
I flicked through the envelopes, most of them clearly greetings cards. I’d had so many in the past week, from friends, former colleagues, even from strangers, all sending me love and wishing me well as I embarked upon this new, unforeseen journey.
As I put the pile down on the hall table, there was a burst of laughter from the living room, and then the pop of a champagne cork followed