He felt an avalanche of release once he’d made the decision to confess. The weight lifted from his chest and, for a fleeting moment, he was almost elated. He didn’t realize he was crying until he felt the moisture on his collar and saw Johnson watching him with that scathing expression.
They were back in the interrogation room, camera rolling, Chris alone on his side of the table. The elation crashed away, but he knew he had to go through with it. For his own sanity, for Freya’s parents, who were trapped, not knowing, not deserving this. For Freya herself.
Ford recited the date and time and other details. Chris wished he could just open up his brain and show them the memory of that day, rather than have to describe it in words.
“We’ve established that Freya Harlow had been blackmailing you,” Ford summarized brusquely, “and that you were contacted by an unknown woman who offered you money to make Freya think her mother was having an affair. This woman then offered you more money to take Freya away.”
Chris nodded. He couldn’t stop imagining Vicky’s reaction if she could hear this. The hope he’d dared to feel when they’d spoken on the phone seemed absurd now, as did all his attempts to hide what he’d done. He would release Vicky from any obligation to him. He didn’t want her to visit him in prison, wait for him, put her life on pause.
“Which brings us to March the fifteenth,” Ford said. “Tell us what happened.”
Chris sat up as straight as he could. His body felt soft, withered.
“I planned to get us ‘lost’ during the driving lesson, and somehow lose Freya’s phone as well, keep her out of touch long enough to panic the Harlows . . . To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull it off, and I was having serious second thoughts.
“In the end, Freya and I argued before I had a chance to do anything. Like I said before, she seemed generally angry, and she started shouting, driving crazily. So I forced her to pull over and swap seats with me before she killed us both.” His own turn of phrase lurched through him.
He made himself continue.
“I pretended I was going to take her back to school but I drove out of town. When she realized we were going the wrong way she started screaming and trying to get out of the car. She grabbed the wheel a few times. I only just managed to stay in control.”
He remembered how his mind had blanked. He was no longer thinking about what he’d been paid to do, no longer deliberating about whether he could go through with it, or how to execute the plan. He was just trying to keep the car from crashing. It had been a relief, in a way, to be able to focus on something so immediate.
“At one point she was fighting me for the wheel, making the car swerve. We were on a quiet road by this point but we could easily have hit a tree, and if anything had come in the opposite direction . . . I was shouting at her to stop but she wouldn’t let go, and I swear I thought, I’ve just got to keep us alive and then I’ll take her home. I knew things had gone too far.”
Chris put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. His palms were burning hot.
I really was going to bring her home.
He realized he was speaking to Vicky in his head, saying the thing he most wanted her to know.
“She just wouldn’t let go of the wheel,” he said into his palms.
“Could you speak up, please?”
He lifted his head and looked at the camera. “She wouldn’t let go so I shoved her away. Her head hit the window . . .” He shuddered, the sickening crack reverberating in his mind. “It knocked her unconscious. As I was looking at her, trying to see if she was okay, I realized we were about to hit a road sign. I swerved . . . but because she was unconscious and not wearing a seat belt, she slumped forward and her head smacked the dashboard . . .”
Chris began to splutter, as if choking. The air in his lungs felt noxious.
After that second blow to the head, he’d known she was gone. But all he’d felt able to do was keep driving. He’d driven like a robot as Freya had crumpled down, blood oozing from her head. The sight that would never leave him.
He’d pulled over down a deserted lane and called The Woman. It’s gone wrong, he’d told her, in a voice he’d never heard himself use before. Very wrong. She’d asked him where he was and told him to stay put. When she’d arrived in an old Fiesta half an hour later, he’d still been in shock. He hadn’t yelled at her, like he had in his head a hundred times since. Hadn’t asked who the fuck she was. She’d been wearing a hat and scarf so he couldn’t see her whole face, only watery green eyes. When she’d caught sight of Freya she’d let out a low, pained moan, and chanted softly to herself as she’d felt for a pulse, inspected the head wound, gestured for Chris to help her move Freya into her car. Seconds later she’d been gone, leaving Chris to fall to his knees at the side of the road.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d stayed there, kneeling, in denial. How long it took him to emerge from the fog and realize that Freya’s jacket was still on his passenger seat, that there was blood everywhere, that he had to deal with these awful, awful facts, and then return to his house where Freya’s parents also lived.
“I’m so sorry,” he said out loud, feeling as if he were breaking into tiny pieces, disintegrating all over the desk. He was no longer sure whether he was apologizing to Freya or the Harlows or Vicky or himself. All the lives he’d destroyed.
The only crumb of hope was that Vicky would recover. That her life could still be good. Chris would set her free, and Di and Jane would look after her, and eventually, hopefully, she would forget she had ever known him.