The Vow - Debbie Howells Page 0,69

‘If you really want to know, each day you’re on your own, I’m worried you’re going to kill yourself.’

‘That isn’t true.’ Shocked, I stared at him. I had no idea where this was coming from. ‘And I’m not on my own, Matt. I have you.’

‘Amy …’ There was anger in his voice. ‘It’s too much to expect me to go on like this. That’s the whole point.’ Taking a breath, he spoke more calmly. ‘If you were in your right mind, you’d know it’s what you need to do.’

‘But I’m fine.’ I looked at him, bewildered. ‘I really don’t need to go anywhere.’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ His expressionless eyes gave nothing away. ‘You don’t know anything. It’s like living on a knife edge where either I give you what you want, or you lose your temper and I’m forced to suffer the consequences. You don’t love me, Amy. You love the idea of me, slotting into your twisted little vision of how life’s meant to be.’

I remember flinching away from him, then hunching over, as if protecting myself from his cruelty, shielding myself from the sting of his words. ‘Don’t,’ I sobbed, turning, heading down the stairs. Feeling my legs give way, I stumbled over to the sliding doors, then opened them and walked into the garden.

Outside, I’d gulped air as if I couldn’t breathe, as if the pain itself was suffocating me. Everything he’d said, all of it was backwards, every word. It was me who was perpetually on the knife edge. Me who had to slot into his world. Pain enveloped me, before I did what I always did and blanked it out.

‘Amy.’ Matt’s voice came from behind me.

‘Don’t.’ I cried out. ‘Get away from me.’ As I started heading across the garden, I heard him behind me.

‘Amy, wait. Don’t do something you’ll regret …’ Matt didn’t want me to hurt myself. And in that moment, in my madness, I’d clung on to what I so desperately wanted to believe, that deep down, he still cared.

1996

That summer at your gran’s cottage, Kimberley’s spirit burned brighter. From your bedroom window at the top of the house, the two of you watched her and Charlie lose themselves in a night of a million stars; felt your capricious heart break into as many fragments.

It was a night when you couldn’t sleep. Then the next morning, under a waning moon and rising sun, the two of you made a spell to a dawn chorus. Justice, you called it. Something to put out the stars, one of you giggled. Carried along on your wave of madness.

Dewdrops, cyclamen, marigold, yellow rose, salvia.

Then at the last minute, taken from your pocket. A few drops of Gran’s bottle labelled DARKNESS.

Just briefly, you watched Kimberley’s eyes burn brighter, darker, more hypnotic, the constancy of her heart suddenly erratic. Her love headier, giddier as she rushed outside to greet Charlie. At her most dazzling, a lifetime’s brilliance condensed into her final moments. She stopped briefly, a look of confusion on her face before her body went into shock, before the world started to spin; before she lost control and staggered in front of the van.

Hitting her hard enough, that second by second, her life was ebbing away from her.

And the two of you watched, didn’t you? As Gran brought out a cushion and placed it under her head, as Charlie knelt beside her, his face ashen white, helpless as her heart slowed, as her life faded, until the ambulance came.

But not before you’d stolen away to one of your hiding places.

It didn’t end there, though. Violent, unresolved deaths don’t dissolve conveniently into the earth. Gran was implicated, wasn’t she? Kimberley’s death was accidental, everyone said. Gran was the one who could have prevented it.

And you let everyone believe that. Let an old lady take the rap. Thinking you’d got away with it; that nobody knew what you’d done.

You gave no thought to what would come after. Not thinking, not caring that death changes the lives of those who are left behind. The heartbroken parents, siblings, lovers; the shock waves crashing through their lives. You didn’t think about them, either. Kimberley and Charlie, who wanted to live together. You couldn’t have known that they didn’t want to live without each other. That there would be more shock waves. That after one went, it was inevitable that before long, another would follow.

Fiona

Chapter Twenty-Six

Through the legal grapevine I heard a woman had been arrested in connection with Matt’s disappearance.