Sunday 10th December 2023
Alice
‘Where are we going?’ Alice asks, as Peter drives straight past her house. ‘Pete …?’
After a night at the police station, then his place, she is desperate to go home, shower, see Beech, think. When she realises where he is taking her instead, she slams her foot on an imaginary brake.
‘Peter,’ she says. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can,’ he says. ‘You have to.’
She shakes her head, thinking about jumping out of the slowing car. ‘You’re supposed to be on my side!’
It’s all so much more complicated now that he has a stronger link to Chrissy, arguably, than to her. Is that what’s hurting her the most? She looks over at him, steering determinedly up to Chrissy’s cottage. He feels far away, as if she’s losing him.
He brings the car to a stop but neither of them moves.
‘You go in, if you want to,’ she says, folding her arms. ‘I’ll walk home.’
‘I’m not going in,’ he says. ‘You are. You need to talk to her. This has gone on long enough.’
‘You can’t force me.’
‘No. But this is all going to be so much harder, Alice, if you two stay at war.’
‘Being friends with her was the hard part. It’s brought nothing but grief.’
He shakes his head. ‘It’s not being friends with her that’s tearing you apart.’
Her anger flares, tears rising with it. ‘Losing my son tore me apart. And she … she—’
‘You don’t need to tell me how that feels.’
‘Your son is still alive!’ she half-screams, banging the dashboard. As she hears herself, she knows they’re the words she’s wanted to scream at Chrissy for the last two years. The unfairness of it. The injustice. To hear Peter talking about ‘making things easier’ is an insult.
‘Neither of us knows if that’s true,’ Peter says softly, bringing her anger back down.
Alice buries her face in her palms, unable to look at him. Then she gets out of the car, slams the door, and marches towards Chrissy’s house.
She thinks it’s Chrissy who’s opened the door, until she realises it’s her sister. Tess looks shocked to see her, and Alice is thrown too, memories of Christmas drinks with Chrissy and Tess flashing through her mind, Leo bantering with his aunt, playing in the pub garden with his cousins.
‘I …’ She flounders as Tess gazes at her, not quite friendly and not quite hostile. ‘Is Chrissy here?’
Tess pauses. Alice wonders how much Chrissy has told her about the way things have been between them. ‘I’d better ask if she …’
But then Chrissy’s voice comes from behind: ‘It’s okay, Tess. Let her in.’
Tess stands aside and Alice walks slowly through. Her heart is beating fast and she wants to change her mind, run away. Chrissy looks dishevelled and unslept, as she probably does herself. The house is spotless yet there is a bodily smell of stress and fear.
In the kitchen, a woman she’s never seen before is making tea, but Alice’s eye is drawn to a collage on the wall, a patchwork of photos of Chrissy and Leo. She remembers the Dean family photos all over the flat above the pub, the wide smiles and huggy poses telling a different story from the truth. And she remembers the photo of Alice and Robbie that Chrissy used to keep in a frame next to her side of the bed. It annoyed the hell out of Ethan. He always hated Chrissy’s closeness with Alice, wanted everything to be about him. But Chrissy refused to take the photo down.
Alice is left hanging for a moment, until the woman offers her a cup of tea, seeming to have a spare ready-made. Alice accepts, just for something to hold.
‘Could you give us some privacy?’ Chrissy says to Tess and the other woman.
The tea-maker leaves politely. Tess lingers, like Chrissy’s bodyguard, until Chrissy nods at her and she retreats, shutting the door behind her.
Alone for the first time in two years, they stare at each other. Alice’s legs feel soft and she longs to sit down, but she’s afraid of acting too familiar, maybe of looking weak. Silence wraps itself around them, as if neither wants to be the first to say something.
‘Any news on Leo?’ Alice asks finally.
‘Do you care?’ There’s an edge to Chrissy’s voice, a challenge, but it’s not entirely aggressive. It’s as if the question is genuine. Alice decides to treat it that way.
‘Yes,’ she says, and knows that it’s true, but complicatedly so.
She sees Chrissy swallow. ‘No news, really. Some leads, I suppose, but nothing …’ Her voice cracks. ‘Nothing good enough.’
Alice looks down, worried she might cry too. She wants to get through this without tears, though she doesn’t know why it feels important.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘about that.’
‘Only about that?’
Alice raises her head. Chrissy looks back at her, unblinking, her tears gone now too. Alice never thought she would apologise to Chrissy. She’s been living, every day, with the need to make Leo and Chrissy hurt as much as she has. But she’s got that wish, now, hasn’t she? And it feels disgusting. Layers of hurt on top of hurt.
Still, she can’t answer the question. The anger is part of her, now; it’s in her blood.
‘Did you write Robbie and Leo’s initials on the pub wall?’ she blurts.
Chrissy’s head snaps back. ‘What?’
Alice falters. Saying it out loud has burst the bubble of her own certainty. She’s been imagining Chrissy smug about Leo’s release, defiant of all her haters in the village, but now that she’s in a room with her the image crumbles. She’s not a troll, is she? She’s a terrified mum.
‘Someone’s …’ Alice feels lost. If Chrissy didn’t do these things, she has no idea why they’re happening.
‘Have you been sending me threatening notes?’ Chrissy counters.
Alice freezes. She doesn’t want to lie but she can’t bring herself to tell the truth. She stays silent and knows that’s worse, a cop-out.
‘You’ve been trying to drive me out of my home,’ Chrissy says, visibly shaking. ‘Even if you didn’t send the notes, you’ve been trying to ostracise me anyway, with your fucking committee, your emails, your … cruelty.’
The last word swings hard into Alice. Her own anger flies up like a shield. ‘I’m cruel?’ she says, lifting her arms. ‘You think it was a kind idea to bring Leo back here? To rub it in my face that …’ She thinks of what she half-screamed in the car – your son is alive – but stops short of saying it, closing her fists at her sides.
‘I wasn’t doing that to taunt you! I was just bringing him home! You were supposed to be my best friend, Leo’s
godmum—’
‘But it felt like a taunt. Everything did! Have you any idea, Chrissy? You being around, a constant reminder. You trying to excuse what he did …’
‘I didn’t!’ Chrissy cries. ‘Alice, I wasn’t trying to excuse it. I was just trying to understand.’
Alice shakes her head. ‘No, no, you were trying to … you implied that …’ She is choking with the effort of not crying; why can’t she just let it happen?
‘I’m sorry,’ Chrissy says. The first genuine, meaningful apology that’s passed between them. Alice closes her eyes, feeling a blast of shame. But then the fury rears back up, like a monster she can’t control, and she realises this isn’t what she wants the apology for.
She wants Chrissy to say sorry for Robbie’s death. Wants somebody to.
‘He’s my son,’ Chrissy says. ‘I have to defend him. Stick by him. He was tortured by what he did, Alice. Felt guilty every day. He needed me. You would do the same.’
‘But I can’t!’ Alice says, as the tears erupt. ‘I won’t ever get to!’
Chrissy starts crying, too. ‘I know.’ She steps closer and Alice steps away, scared of how hard she might sob if Chrissy touches her. ‘I’m sorry for that. I’m so, so sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ Alice chokes out, and the release of it is huge.
They cry for a few moments, standing near each other but not touching. It’s impossible to stay that way, though. It feels unnatural. Alice isn’t sure whose arms reach out first, but the brush of Chrissy’s curls against her face is achingly familiar. They are careful with each other, as though they’re both bruised, and the hug feels like a transgression, like lifting a ban that was in place for a reason.
Alice is the first to pull back. They wipe their faces, blinking as if they’ve just woken up.
‘I sent the first note,’ Alice says in a low voice, her heart skipping. ‘But … not the others.’
Chrissy looks at her for a long pause. A memory flickers anxiously at the back of Alice’s mind: the red marker pen in Peter’s glovebox.
‘I—’ she starts to say, but Chrissy walks away from her.
Alice falls silent, wondering if she’s blown it, whatever reconciliation they might’ve been edging towards. Chrissy opens a drawer, reaches right to the back, and pulls out a piece of paper.
‘This note?’ she says, walking back to Alice.
She unfolds it and thrusts it at her. Alice winces at her own spiky, livid writing in black pen.
EVERYBODY KNOWS WHAT YOUR SON DID. EVERYBODY SAW IT. HATES HIM FOR IT.
The writing gets messier, the sentences tapering down the page.
BUT WHO KNOWS THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU?
WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE
WHAT HAPPENED ABOVE
‘You can probably see why I held this one back from the police,’ Chrissy says.
Alice swallows and nods.
To her surprise, Chrissy shoves it into her hands. ‘Take it to them, if you want,’ she says, her eyes wide. ‘You must’ve thought about telling them?’
‘Lots of times,’ Alice says, remembering all those sleepless nights, rehearsing what she would say, fantasising about Chrissy’s arrest.
‘Well …’ Chrissy is trying to look stronger than she feels, Alice can tell. ‘Why don’t you?’
Alice looks down at the note. Sees the small hole where her pen went through the paper, she was pressing down so fiercely. Writing it was the only thing she could do, because she knew, really, that she would never tell the police Chrissy’s
secret. And she knows it now, too.
She tears the paper in half, then in half again.