‘Can you talk us through exactly what happened on the 31 October 1987?’
DI Cousins looks at me as she says it, then looks down and swaps the two folders over in front of her. The older-looking folder is now on top. I find its faded, dark-beige cover unsettling and foreboding.
‘Amanda really did suggest I ask one of my new friends round for tea. But it was just that. Tea. I don’t think they had any sinister designs on her. So I did as I was told. I went out to find Adah and we played for a bit in the woods. Things turned sour a little later. Adah seemed to guess that I liked Levi. The boy my mother attacked with the knife. And I did like him – but not sexually; we were only about ten, him a bit older. She teased me about it. And then her teasing took a nasty turn.’
I feel the atmosphere in the room intensify. DI Cousins has ended her huffs of frustration. DC Malik is completely still. I take a moment to consider my next words, then carry on.
‘Adah began to speculate on how Levi’s sudden absence – the fact he had left the area – was my fault. That I had driven him away. Frightened him away, somehow. How the rumours were true. How the cottage in the woods was cursed, and I was the witch who had died there, and I had returned to take lives and terrorise the surrounding villagers.’ I take a sip from my now barely-warm tea, trying to stop my hand shaking as I lower the mug back onto the desk. ‘Adah’s words, her stories, all the rumours and legend she kept talking about – all of it was too closely related to what was happening in my home. It frightened me in a way I cannot describe. I felt I had no escape from a constant, prevailing sense of threat. It had become so sustained and acute that I couldn’t think clearly. The resulting fight was stupid and childish, but in that moment, I thought if I could just stop her existing, all the things she’d said would stop existing too.’
The tears return as I say these last words. And to my surprise, after some seconds have passed, DI Cousins speaks in a gentler tone than before. ‘I’m sorry, Katherine. I realise this is difficult to talk about. But can you give me a clear answer to this: how did Adah come to enter the water?’
I shake my head slowly. ‘I honestly don’t know. There are times I think it may be my fault. That maybe I … pushed her. We were shoving each other and arguing. And there are times when I think she took a misstep and fell in. We were already close to the river bank when we started arguing.’
DI Cousins nods. Then she opens the file. ‘On the first of November, after Adah’s disappearance had been reported to the police the night before, a child’s body was found floating in the stream by the bridge you describe. It says in the details we have from the investigation that a family staying in a cottage nearby was questioned by police at their home to discover if they had seen anything or come into contact with the young girl. Each member of the family – a father, a mother and their daughter – said no, they had never seen or heard of a girl named Adah or recognised a girl matching her photo. They said they were just staying out in the cottage during the half-term holidays, during which time their daughter had caught the flu. They explained that they’d stayed longer to allow her to recover before travelling home. They were certain their daughter never went off into the woods alone.’
DI Cousins looks up at me when she finishes talking and waits for a response. And I have one to give.
‘They lied.’
‘Both your parents?’ DI Cousins asks.
‘The police only spoke to one of them. That was Dad. The woman they presumed was my mother was actually Amanda. Mum was upstairs asleep. She never saw the police, and they never saw her. That was how Dad wanted it.’
DI Cousins’s eyes narrow. ‘Did they tell you to lie too?’
I rub my eyes and give a little shrug. ‘Sort of. Not exactly. I don’t think they really needed to. They didn’t truly know what had happened in the woods. But they knew there was more to the whole thing than I was letting on. I had come back soaking wet, without the friend I was supposed to be bringing over for tea. I never told them everything. Over the years, we sort of had an unspoken understanding not to talk about it.’
DI Cousins nods, then takes out another page from the file. ‘The postmortem report from the time says that there were bruises and cuts to Adah’s right ankle, which fitted with what the police discovered when they removed her from the water. Her shoe had caught on a submerged piece of fallen tree. She had been unable to pull herself free. They never really thought the death was a homicide, but due to a previous murder in the area that went undetected due to police incompetence, they wanted to be sure. Everything tallied up, in their eyes. She was out playing, she fell in, she couldn’t free herself.’
As a mixture of regret, guilt, and deep sadness rises up within me, I cling to the one small hope that I’d offered to Andrea a week previously. ‘So … I couldn’t have saved her. Even if I’d tried?’
DI Cousins closes the file and leans back in her chair. Like Andrea, she doesn’t seem in the mood to offer reassurance or absolution.
She folds her arms and says quietly, ‘I can’t be sure of that, Katherine. Nobody can.’