I hold a cup of hot tea in my hand, feeling its warmth spreading through me. Andrea’s house isn’t cold, but I don’t seem to have fully thawed since coming in from the snow. She got me the tea when I broke down in tears after what she’d said. She just rose up and went to put the kettle on while I sat there, uncomforted, worrying about what was coming.
‘So,’ she says, setting her own mug of tea down on the coffee table. ‘I think you’ll agree you owe me an explanation. I want to know the truth. The actual truth. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want you to answer them properly, without thinking about how you can embellish them or remove your own culpability.’
I nod. It’s all I can do.
She takes a few moments to compose herself, dabbing again at her eyes with her tissue. Then she says: ‘Were you present when Adah drowned?’
I don’t wait. I don’t think about it. I just answer, like she’s requested. ‘Yes.’
I see a few more tears slip from her eyes. ‘Did you watch her drown?’
I continue to stare at her, ignoring my tears forming. ‘Yes.’
Andrea lets out a strange sound, halfway between a cough and a sob, as if some energy, some pent-up emotion, is making a bid for escape. It alarms me, this insight into the distress that must be bubbling beneath her otherwise calm exterior.
‘Could you have saved her? Like you did in the book?’
I think of the branch on the bridge. How I’d imagined running to get it. How I thought about it at the time. How I did nothing, except stand there and watch the life leave her body. And how now, years later, I’ve written myself out of her death, absolved myself of the biggest sin in my life.
‘I think I could have, yes.’
Andrea doesn’t speak for a full minute after I say this. Then she says, ‘Why did you have your dad and Amanda kill her? In the book?’
This I have an answer for, and it’s one I feel no remorse in giving. ‘Because they deserved it,’ I say, harshly.
She doesn’t move when I say the words, but I see her eyes widen ever so slightly. Then the tension goes out of her face, and she picks up her mug of tea off the coffee table. ‘Maybe they do,’ she says, quietly. She takes a long sip of her tea, swallows and then surveys me, as if trying to work out how to phrase her next question. ‘So you do admit that you lied to the police when they asked you about Adah all those years ago?’
I shuffle uncomfortably. ‘Not exactly. Well, by omission I suppose. I said I hadn’t seen her for a while, and we’d played together in the woods. I even said I’d warned her not to go near the stream. But I did tell Dad and everyone that I hadn’t seen her that day. So yes. That was a lie.’
Andrea takes in a deep breath and sighs. She gets up, stretches her shoulders and neck a little, and goes to put the book back on the shelf. After taking a moment to straighten an ugly and oddly out-of-place plastic figurine of an owl on one of the higher shelves, she turns back to me. ‘They didn’t believe her death was suspicious. They found that her shoe had hooked on to a large piece of fallen tree submerged in the water. She struggled to free herself and took in a long gasp of water and … never came out. Depressingly common with children. Happy one minute, the next in mortal peril.’
I nod, vaguely, but something she’s said has caught my attention. ‘So,’ I say, ‘if I had … if I had tried to help her … if I’d lowered a branch in to help her out … she still may not have survived.’
Andrea looks up at me quickly, and I see something flash in her eyes – anger, resentment, grief? – but it’s gone in a second. Then she says, with a horrible air of finality: ‘Well, I guess we’ll never know, will we?’
I don’t respond. I’m not sure she expects me to. After a minute or two of sitting in silence together, she stands up and stretches out a hand for my mug. I give it over, only half drunk, and I think I’m being dismissed, but then she speaks, making me fall still. ‘Follow me into the kitchen,’ she says, ‘I’ve got something I want you to see.’
I look around, slightly panicked, wondering what she’s got in store for me. She walks ahead and I follow, taking in the very modern-looking oven and stove. ‘This is a nice place,’ I say, then regret it, thinking it sounds oddly insensitive and out of place. Andrea shrugs. ‘You get more for your money up here.’
‘What is it you do?’ I ask, realising I don’t know.
‘I’m an accountant.’ She doesn’t say it with much emotion, but the lack of elaboration shuts down the chance of any further questions. With an almost seamless movement, she takes something out of a drawer and drops it onto the kitchen table. It’s a copy of the London Evening Standard magazine. I stare at it, and then turn to see her looking at me. ‘There’s an interview you gave in there.’
I nod, slowly. ‘I know. I didn’t realise you’d get that … in Glasgow.’
An irritated look flickers across her face. ‘I was sent it. By your stepmother.’
I wince at the term. ‘She isn’t my stepmother. I don’t think of her as that.’
‘It was in her little parcel,’ Andrea continues, ignoring my interruption. ‘You talk about the book just coming to you like a strange dream, woven into moments of your childhood.’
‘Yes,’ I say, looking at the front cover of the magazine. It’s filled with a well-known model and Instagrammer, one hand lifting up his white t-shirt as if to scratch an imaginary itch on his perfectly toned torso. He has his mouth open, laughing down the lens of the camera, a wave of blond hair flopping untidily over his forehead. The insincerity of the image here, in this strange world of grief and lies, is almost too much to bear. I turn away from the magazine and say to Andrea, ‘I didn’t say anything untruthful in that interview. Not really.’
‘You did. By omission. As seems to be your trademark.’ Her eyes are sharp on me now, and I can tell she’s building to something. She folds her arms, takes a breath, and then says, ‘Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to write a small piece and post it on Facebook, or whatever platform you like. I’ve seen your Facebook page, and I’m sure that would do nicely. I’m not sure many people will care, or even see it, but that’s not the point. I just want you to explain everything properly and publicly. I want you to tell the truth. The whole truth. The true story behind your book; how you came to write it. No evasion, no innuendo, no sly way of phrasing it. You paint yourself in that book as an innocent victim. You owe it to Adah to tell the world that you’re not innocent. I suffered my share of hatred. The neglectful guardian, letting her child roam the forest. But it was you that did something truly terrible, no matter how young you were. And it’s your turn to let it out into the open. Explain why you let her die.’
I raise a trembling hand to my face again. ‘I don’t know why I did it. Really, truly, I don’t. That whole autumn … it was like I was in a strange other world. It was all so long ago now.’
Andrea’s lips grow thin and she lifts her chin up, defiant. ‘Not to me. To me, it’s like it was yesterday. And this,’ she points at the magazine, ‘along with that book, have made it more present than ever. You decided to send this out into the wild. Now it’s your job to own it properly for what it is. A confession.’
I stay completely still, watching her. She shows no sign of softening; changing her mind; reaching some kind of compromise. I suppose, in a way, this is her form of compromise.
‘Do you have any more interviews coming up?’ she asks.
I nod. ‘One with The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine this coming week.’
‘Well, think about it,’ she says calmly. Then she starts to walk out of the kitchen and out into the hallway. I take it I’m supposed to follow her. ‘But I should mention: if you don’t, things might get a bit trickier for you.’
She’s got her back to me, so I can’t see her face, but I notice a strange change in her voice. It sounds slightly higher, as if she’s a little unsure of what she’s saying. Or unsure if she wants to say it.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
We’re at the front door now, and she turns back to face me. ‘A kind young police officer who was a great help to me back when all this happened recently got a promotion. He’s a superintendent now. And do you know, I think he might just remember me. If I were to get in touch, that is.’
‘I … you mean …’ I stammered, feeling panic grip me.
‘Just … do the right thing, Katherine, and all will be fine. Or as fine as it can be.’
With that, she opens the door and a huge gust of wind and snow swirls among us. She gives me a little nudge towards the open doorway. ‘Go on, I don’t want to let the cold in. Thank you for coming all this way.’
I step outside, the bitter cold cloaking my body with alarming immediacy. I’m about to turn around and say something to her, though I’m not sure what, but the door closes in my face. It stuns me for a second or two, then I regain my senses, knowing I need to get out of this horrendous weather. I take out my phone and book a car on my Uber app, then spend the ten-minute wait walking up and down the street in an effort to keep warm, my shoes upturning some of the virgin snow covering the pavement.
When the car arrives, the driver asks me if I really want to go to the airport in this weather. He seems doubtful about whether the planes will be taking off. I tell him I’ll risk it, and he shrugs in a ‘rather you than me’ sort of way.
The journey is excruciatingly slow, although I still have a few hours before my flight is supposed to leave, and according to the airline’s website it’s still on schedule. I go through security in a sort of daze, not properly focusing on anyone or anything, just dumping my bag and phone into the trays and walking through the body scanners. I almost don’t hear the airport guy telling me to take my belt off when the machine bleeps at me.
Waiting for the flight becomes more and more torturous. They’ve cancelled a few and are delaying others. Mine gets pushed back an hour, then an hour and a half; then finally we get called for boarding. By some miracle, the flight leaves Glasgow and its snow-strewn landscape behind, and I spend the short flight replaying Andrea’s words in my head. Now it’s your job to own it properly for what it is. A confession. But this wasn’t ever meant to be a confession. This was to punish, not to absolve – to prove to Dad and Amanda that their messed-up little experiment had lasting consequences they can’t escape from. And they’ll never escape from them now.
Back in London, I get home and collapse onto my bed without properly undressing. I think I sleep for a few hours, but I wake up in the night strangely hot, and I go over to the open window. There was snow on the streets when I landed. Now, thick flakes are falling fast, and instead of feeling bitter and biting like it did in Glasgow, the wind here is soft and almost non-existent. The snow floats to the ground at a leisurely pace, and the Christmas lights adorning the outsides of the shops below give the whole place a wonderfully tranquil, festive feel. I feel myself calming down a little, although with this calm comes the ability to think clearly. And with that comes anger. How dare Andrea lecture me; tell me what I can and can’t do; offer empty threats while throwing me out of her house? All of it is just words. She doesn’t own me or my writing, or have any say in what I tell the press. I paid her the courtesy of visiting. And now I need to carry on with what I’m doing.