‘What do you mean, you’ve not told me the truth?’ I asked Michael.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think I mean? You’re a smart woman; you must have figured it out by now. I’ve been lying to you all this time. People like to write me off as stupid. But I’m not a stupid man.’
He stood up again, walked back and forth across the classroom. He still had the knife in his hand and I couldn’t help but flinch each time he came close to me.
He crouched down beside me. ‘Don’t be scared, Rachel. I’ll be gentle,’ he said before pulling himself to standing and walking back across the room.
He seemed to be thinking and I heard him laugh before he turned to look at me again.
‘You know nothing about me. Nothing about the real me. Michael O’Neill isn’t even my real name. I know him, of course. We were good friends, you know. Before Laura died.’
My head hurt. My body ached. I could feel pain shift and move from my arms to my legs to my head. I was just so tired now. What little energy I’d had was seeping from me, as was any hope of being saved.
‘So who are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure I should tell you,’ he said, pacing back and forth again.
I was sure I heard the sound of a helicopter in the sky. Most likely the police. Dare I hope they were looking for me?
Michael, or whatever his damn real name was, heard it, too.
‘You’ve got to give them extra points for trying,’ he said coldly. He pulled his chair closer to me and sat down again. ‘Maybe you could guess who I am. So I’ve told you I’m not Michael O’Neill – and I have to say I’m surprised you never made the connection between that surname and Laura. Didn’t you think it an odd coincidence?’
I didn’t want to tell him that until the last few days I hadn’t thought about Laura O’Loughlin in years, let alone wonder if she’d married and changed her name. I stayed quiet.
He shook his head. ‘Silly, naive, self-obsessed Rachel. Never looks beyond the end of her own nose. Is it any wonder your husband found another woman?’
I wanted to cover my ears. I bowed my head, tried to make myself as small as possible.
‘Look at me, Rachel,’ he said.
I stayed staring at the floor until I felt the tip of his knife at my chin, urging my head upwards.
‘I said look at me!’
I raised my head, blinked and looked at him. This mystery man hell bent on revenge.
‘It doesn’t matter who I am, don’t you realise that? I might as well have stopped existing the day she died anyway. Everything changed. I realised that I didn’t matter. All everyone could think about was poor Laura. Even our own mother. It didn’t matter to her that she still had one living child. I became invisible to her. Do you know what that felt like, Rachel? To lose my sister, to lose my mother, too? And all of it because of you and your stupid friends. For a long time I wasn’t strong enough to do this, but I am now, Rachel.
‘I’ve been planning this for a long time. Watching and waiting. Following you all – playing the game. Do you really think it was a coincidence that it was my mother who found Clare on the road that morning? That was a key part of all this. To give her the justice she’d been denied. I wanted her to see what I’d done to the person who hurt Laura so badly. Now it’s time to finish what I started. And my mother will see me now. She’ll forgive me for the person I became. I won’t be invisible any longer.’
The thrum of helicopter blades overhead distracted me. They appeared to distract him, whatever his name was, too. He looked up and walked to the window, pulling back one of the boards just a fraction to try to see out.
This was perhaps the one chance I’d have. I scrambled across the room, half crawling, half walking as I tried to pull myself to an upright position. The door to the classroom was open and I knew if I could get out, there was just the slightest chance I could get away. I’d have to hope I knew the twists and turns of these corridors and school buildings better than he did.
I was holding my breath, afraid that any noise would cut over the sound of the helicopter and attract his attention. I’d just managed to turn right and start to run towards the stairs, when I heard him bellow my name.
I ran as fast as I could in the darkness, in the dank, sweaty smell of this crumbling building, and I hoped I could outrun him, because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that when he caught me, he’d make sure that I’d never be able to run from him again.