And it suddenly dawned on her what he was saying, and she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She told him to stay where he was. He’d driven to the Downs, where he’d stopped in the middle of nowhere. Then she called a taxi to drop her off just around the corner. When she eventually reached him, panting and soaked through by the rain, he was sobbing hysterically onto the steering wheel.
She got into the passenger seat. He reeked of alcohol. ‘What the fuck have you done?’ she snapped.
He told her, through sobs, that he’d taken her car for a spin. That one of his new ‘mates’ wanted a ride to score some drugs – she was amazed by how honest he was being about it – and he’d wanted to look ‘hard’ in front of this mate. So he’d stolen her car, thinking he could return it before she even noticed.
‘You stupid, stupid boy,’ she’d cried. ‘You don’t even know how to drive.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was raining. And I couldn’t see, and I’d had a few drinks. Then suddenly there was something in the road and I hit it. I –’
‘It was probably an animal,’ she said, hoping she was right.
That made him cry even harder as though that was the worst prospect.
He had to get out of the car to be sick then, and she waited for him, unable to work out if she felt more fury or pity. What if he had knocked someone over and left them for dead? When he eventually stopped throwing up, she made him lie down in the back seat while she drove slowly home. The roads were quiet, no sign of any accident. Maybe he was confused. She put him to bed with a bucket on the floor and prayed that nobody had been hurt. Then she’d gone back outside and checked over her car. It was hardly damaged, just a little dent to the front bumper. Surely there would have been more damage if he’d knocked over a person.
But just a few hours later she received the phone call from her mother to say that Matilde had been found dead in the middle of the road outside their house and that the police suspected a hit-and-run. And she knew. She knew Jacob had killed her.
She had two choices. To ring the police and confess all. Or cover it up. If she shopped Jacob to the police it would ruin his life. He’d go to a young offenders’ institute and, with his tendency towards drugs and crime, he might never recover. She had to protect her son.
So, Kathryn left the boys in their beds and drove the car to the compound they sometimes used to store paintings. When things died down she’d sell it. But until then, she’d keep it locked away. Out of sight. She’d invent some story for Ed about how it had broken down and she’d had to get rid of it.
Later that night she woke Jacob up and told him the truth. There was no way she’d be able to keep it from him.
‘You have to sort yourself out,’ she’d told him, sitting on the edge of his bed, like she used to do when he was little. ‘You can’t go on like this. Your reckless behaviour has cost a girl her life.’
‘I don’t think I can live with it,’ he’d sobbed. ‘What if there were witnesses? Or I was caught on CCTV?’
‘If you turn yourself in, you’ll go to prison. You can make amends, Jake. You can live a better life.’
And that was what he’d promised to do.
Every now and again he’d come to her, wide-eyed and panicking, worried that he’d be found out. And she lived in constant fear, too, that there would be a knock on the door from the police. But now that Arlo has been arrested and charged, they can rest easy. Arlo is wicked. He deliberately took the lives of those girls. Jacob made a mistake. It was an accident. He doesn’t deserve the same punishment as Arlo. She feels no guilt for letting everyone assume Arlo killed Matilde too.
Now, as she watches Jacob messing around with his brother, she hopes he can live with it, that he’s telling her the truth when he says he’s not touched drugs since. She has no choice but to believe him.
Ed would have made her turn him in. She knows that. He’s always said she panders to the boys. That’s why she has to keep it from him, too.
Her and Jacob’s secret. It binds them.
She just prays it doesn’t destroy them.
But she’d do anything for the people she loves. For her family.
Author’s Note
Although the setting for Just Like the Other Girls is Sion Hill in Clifton, Bristol, which is a real （and very lovely） place, Elspeth McKenzie’s house, The Cuckoo’s Nest, is just a figment of my imagination and is not based on any house in the street.