I stared at the words scrawled on the pages. ‘I don’t understand.’ My voice sounded strange and hollow. It was Mum’s notebook. It was her writing. And yet, it couldn’t be. Because if it was, then…
A cold drop of water splashed onto my hand as I held the notebook. Everything I’d known. Everything I believed had been thrown into chaos.
That book had changed everything.
The past. The present.
Adam had tried to warn me. We’d had so many arguments about Mum. He was certain that she was bad for me. I’d never listened. I hadn’t wanted to hear it. Hadn’t wanted to believe it.
But now I knew.
I’d read it with my own eyes.
I’d read it in her own words.
I gagged and I flung the car door open. The notebook slipped from my fingers as I ran to the bushes to throw up.
‘Miss Harper?’
I closed my eyes. My head spun. It couldn’t be real.
None of it could be real.
‘Jess?’
I blinked and turned my head at the sound of a familiar voice. PC Davidson ran towards me and I groaned.
I wiped my mouth with the tissue I still held in my hands and tried to summon the strength to stand up straight.
I stared at him. ‘You’re here?’
‘I followed you.’
‘You…’ I shook my head. It didn’t matter.
‘Are you all right?’
I gazed at him blankly.
All right.
The concept felt so unfamiliar. Nothing in my life had been all right for a long time. More so than I’d realised.
‘Jess, what are you doing here?’
‘Adam… I…’ I glanced towards the path that lead to the clifftop.
‘What happened to Adam, Jess?’
My gaze met his as my body swayed. PC Davidson reached out his hand and held my arm, gently steadying me.
‘I should get you a doctor.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t need a doctor. I need…’ I ran out of words. What did I need?
I thought I’d wanted answers. Now I had them. But they weren’t the answers I’d expected. They weren’t even the ones I wanted.
‘It wasn’t me.’
My voice was quiet and hesitant. As much as I’d fought against it, part of me had always feared that I had been responsible. Not just for Adam, but for everything. There had always been a doubt that niggled at the back of my mind. A question that I refused to consider for too long, just in case.
‘I didn’t kill Adam.’ My voice was firmer this time. Clearer. More certain.
My body shook with an overwhelming sense of relief, my palms felt sweaty and my hands trembled. I had actually believed that I was capable of killing the man I had once loved.
That fear had driven me here. If I hadn’t found that notebook… I glanced back at the path. I’d almost met the same fate as Adam, and this time it would have been at my own hand.
‘I think we should talk about this back at the station.’
I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Jess—’
‘It wasn’t.’ I grasped his arm with my other hand. ‘I know that now.’
PC Davidson’s eyes narrowed. ‘You really didn’t remember, did you?’
‘I…’ I frowned, as I tried to make sense of the tangled mess of facts in my head. ‘I was afraid I didn’t.’
He tilted his head to the left.
‘But there was never anything for me to remember. I hadn’t forgotten. I had never been there. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do any of it.’
‘Then who did?’
I turned back to my car, and my gaze fell upon the notebook sprawled open in the dirt. There was only one person it could have been. And yet that was the one person that it couldn’t possibly be. The one person who would never hurt me. The one who always stood by me. The one who loved me, no matter what.
‘What is that?’ PC Davidson pulled free from my grasp and my hands fell to my sides as I watched him walk over to my car. He crouched beside it and studied the open pages.
He glanced back at me. ‘You wrote this?’
I shook my head, my feet welded to the spot.
He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket, slipped them on and picked up the notebook. I peered over his shoulder as he flicked through the pages. ‘There’s a lot of detail here about Paul, the damage to his car…’
‘Everything is in there. Everyone I’ve ever loved. Everything that happened to them.’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘And yet you’re telling me it’s not yours?’
I shook my head again.
‘So whose is it, then?’
‘Mum’s.’ The word felt like a betrayal. I was accusing her of the impossible. It was unthinkable. I was wrong. I was evil to even think such a thing; to doubt her.
PC Davidson glanced at the notebook and then back at me.
‘Mum had hated them. She’d hated all of them.’ Every person in my life who had meant anything to me was recorded in that book. Their faults were scrawled across the pages. Their arrival was detested and their departure plotted and savoured.
‘Your mum wrote this?’
I nodded.
‘But then that would mean…’
I stared at him, willing him to explain; to tell me the thought that repeated in my head was wrong; to tell me Mum hadn’t done this.
His eyes met mine and I could almost see the pieces of the puzzle falling into place in his mind. In that instant I knew the truth. It was her. It had always been her.