‘It looks bad, I know it does.
‘I did go after her, yes, but I didn’t find her. I had nothing to do with it.
‘I didn’t smash her head in and throw her into the sea, like you two seem to be suggesting, not to say I wouldn’t have smacked her smug face if I had found her. But I didn’t.
‘Do I think someone did that? Throw her into the sea? How the hell would I know?
‘I couldn’t stand her. I’m sure people have told you that. It’s no secret.
‘She was all over my husband, that’s why – everyone saw that; everyone will tell you that. But I didn’t touch her.
‘I cycled up to where the path ends then climbed the rest of the way up the cliffs on the east side. I saw Maisie Willis from Sanderling up that way, a couple of other visitors I didn’t know, that’s all. I didn’t see the other two, the posh girl and Beatrice 304Wallace. I didn’t see Kit. And I didn’t see her, Hannah.
‘When it started raining I came back. It was bloody torrential. I didn’t want to stay out in that. I saw a few walkers hurrying away from the North End when it started to really chuck it down. I didn’t see who they were.
‘Yeah, I did say I hoped she’d bloody drowned. That was the next day in the shop. I wouldn’t have said it if I’d known she had – I mean, we assume she has, although some people think she’s on a boat somewhere living it up.
‘You’ll have to ask Sam what he was doing up there. I’m not his bloody keeper.’
The trouble was, there was an eyewitness who saw the barmaid up there with another woman. Fighting. Someone who might have it in for Christie, someone who told them about seeing a pink coat. Perhaps they’d heard her say she’d bought a new pink coat – well, new second-hand from eBay. Pink and fluffy on the inside. She felt like a giant teddy bear in it, and she bloody loved it. She’s guessing it’s waterproof, but she hasn’t even worn it once, so she doesn’t know for sure. She’s keeping it for best. That doesn’t mean someone didn’t remember her saying she’d bought it, though.
And what with Alison telling the police that she’d said ‘I’ll bloody kill the pair of them when I get my hands on them’, and a couple of customers corroborating that, well … even though she hadn’t been wearing it that day, she panicked.
Christie came home after the interview, and poured herself a drink and waited for Sam to come back. He’d been in to be questioned during his lunch break, but she didn’t know how it had gone because he hadn’t replied to her text. The twins and 305Finn were over at Emma’s again. Christie owed her friend a hell of a lot of babysitting to make up for it.
That day it all happened Christie remembers Sam coming home looking terrible. Soaked through, like a drowned rat, coughing up a lung. His eye was still puffy where Hannah had hit him. Christie had put on dry clothes by then, although her hair was still wet.
She could see why the police wondered if he’d had something to do with it. And he might have lashed out after Hannah provoked him, there was always that possibility. He might have snapped. But she’d told them she didn’t think so. She’d said that if he’d cycled all the way up to the North End to find Hannah, he would have calmed down by the time he got up there.
When he came in after his interview he didn’t tell Christie much, but he did say the police had asked him about a pink coat. Of course he’d remember that she’d said she was going to buy one because they’d had a row about it. He’d said she didn’t need another coat and they needed the money for Tommy’s birthday, and she’d said they’d have the money if he didn’t pour so much bloody alcohol down his throat and, well …
He swore he’d not mentioned to the police that Christie had a pink coat, but she doesn’t know if she believes him. Anyway, Sam wouldn’t know a pink coat if it bit him on the arse.
When Tommy got in from school Christie collected the kids from Emma, made the tea, watched some rubbish on the telly, and settled them down to bed. Sam switched on the news and helped himself to a beer from the fridge and she put the plates in the dishwasher and wiped the kitchen down and set out the kids’ stuff for the morning and started the ironing.
He went up to bed at some point. 306
When it was quiet, she snuck upstairs and took the pink coat out of the twins’ wardrobe where she’d hidden it at the back, because if Sam had seen it, that would have started another bloody argument about money. What she’d planned to do was wait a while and start wearing it in a few weeks when she could truthfully say, This? I’ve had it for ages!
She took the coat to the bottom of the garden and rammed it in the old oil drum Sam uses to get rid of garden waste, and she covered it with old wood and rubbish.
Two days later, when Sam was at work, and Tommy was at school, she left the kids in front of the telly, went out and doused it all with a little petrol and burnt it.
And even if someone was spying on her, no one would think anything of a small garden bonfire on a grey afternoon even though all the wood was still damp from the storm.