birds with one stone, so to speak. Clears the way to get his child and his lover. You find out and decide to protect him by lying about burying the knife.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘Then tell me what happened in that forest in those days after your son died, Melissa,’ Detective Powell said. ‘Tell us why you disappeared for so long with a man who’s just a friend? Tell me, why do we have a witness saying they saw you sleeping in Ryan’s lodge for the duration of the week?’
Melissa swallowed. What witness was this?
‘Melissa?’ the detective pushed. ‘What happened those few days in the forest with Ryan Day? Why did you stay with him when you could have stayed at your parents’ cottage?’
She slumped back down on the chair. ‘He was helping me,’ she said in a quiet voice.
‘Helping? Why?’
Melissa took a deep breath. ‘I attempted suicide.’
Chapter Forty-Seven
Saturday 27th April, 2019
11.55 a.m.
Memories from those lost days after Joel died came back to Melissa. After walking out on the kids that day and falling asleep in her old cottage, she had woken in darkness, the familiar smell of the place confusing her, making her think her mum was still there, pottering around. But as she’d grappled through the darkness, seeing furniture covered in dust sheets, she’d remembered: her mum was gone . . . and Joel was gone too.
The pain overwhelmed her, making her double over. She just needed the grief to be gone too. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of her dad’s old bottles of gin beckoning her, so she’d gone to it, doing what her father and Ryan’s father did to chase their troubles away: she drank it. Drank it and drank it and drank it.
But the pain wouldn’t go away. It was a toxic combination, grief, guilt and gin, like a million bugs all over her, itching at her.
As she’d stepped outside, ready to walk back, she’d hesitated before the ancient oak, looking up in the darkness at the moon-encrusted branches above. It felt as though her mother was calling for her to stay as they swayed in the breeze.
Stay, Melissa, stay.
She could imagine her mother doing that, telling her she needed time; that the forest heals. And God, she needed healing, because she felt broken, cracked open, ready to crumble.
So she had stayed. She’d sat on a log and she’d breathed in the night forest, stilling her mind. It was so quiet, the oak tree casting shadows across the forest floor before her. As she sat there, she thought of her poor mother. Her death had been a complete shock to them all. She’d disappeared in the night three months after they’d moved in with the Byatts. Bill had gone to look for her with Tommy and had discovered her beneath the old oak. It was a particularly freezing-cold night in late October and, unable to get into the cottage, which Bill had boarded up, she’d chosen to just sit by the oak tree rather than return to the Byatts’. She had passed away from hypothermia right there, by the tree she so loved. The guilt Melissa had felt had been unbearable. She had been so wrapped up in the excitement of being with the Byatts, and with Patrick too, that she hadn’t noticed her mother was so desperate to leave that she’d sneaked out in the night.
The guilt had itched again. Itch itch itch. The grief swirled around, snapping its teeth. She threw the bottle away, watched as it smashed against the oak tree. A piece of glass rebounded, cutting her, but she didn’t notice, just walked to the tree, her blood dripping on the leaves below. The rope from the makeshift swing her father had made her still draped from one of the oak’s old branches, the seat rotten and black.
Melissa kicked it to pieces with her foot, her silver ballet slipper falling to the ground below. Then she took the rope that remained and twisted it around her neck, the only way she could think of getting rid of the pain. The last thing she saw before she passed out was her ballet shoe, the blood on the leaves, an image that had haunted her dreams since.
Looking back, it was awful to do that to the twins, who were themselves having to deal with the horror of losing their brother. But she simply wasn’t thinking straight. She’d been drunk, out of her mind. It was something she’d never dreamed of doing.