‘Yes. The part in your book where Daisy stays with Ash that Christmas, that’s what we did, except we were just friends. I don’t know if she had a crush on me – she makes it sound far more romantic than it actually was. As far as I was concerned, we were just really good, close mates. Intense, I suppose, for that short space of time. I was going through my Emo phase, trying to reinvent myself, you know how it is, and we had so much in common, we just hit it off. And that Christmas, Daisy did visit me at my dad’s home in Devon and that was when she recognized him. She confronted him, of course. Typical Daisy. And he denied it. He was on his second wife by then – her name was Stef – and I suppose he didn’t want to look bad in front of her. Anyway, as soon as my dad told me what she’d done I ended our friendship and left the university. I hated my course anyway and the only real friend I’d made there was Daisy.’
Something about all this doesn’t add up. Ottilie isn’t telling her the full story. ‘And you knew nothing of Louise’s vendetta? That she was writing about your father – until you read my book?’
‘No idea. The murderer had recently struck again after years and Daisy – Louise – was convinced it was my father. Unfortunately it coincided with my dad coming back to England last February. But he’s been away since. My dad isn’t a murderer.’
Emilia has only met Ottilie’s dad a handful of times. She tries to imagine him in her mind’s eye when he’d been younger. He had been handsome back then, with dark-blond hair, but whether or not he had a double crown, Emilia couldn’t be sure. She’d never really noticed. He was just her best friend’s dad. But now everything she knows shuffles in her mind. Could Louise have been right? Was Ottilie’s dad the serial killer? Is that why he’s been so hard to track down all these years, because he was living abroad? He was some kind of diplomat apparently who was once in the police force – which was when he must have worked with Trevor – but she doesn’t know more than that.
‘Daisy thought if everyone read the book someone would realize it was my dad they were looking for. My dad who was the killer. She was so convinced, but she was wrong. Like I say, when I grasped what was going on, I went to see her, to reason with her, to tell her she had to stop this obsession with my dad. To tell her to stop using you to get at me and my father. And it got out of hand. I didn’t mean to kill her.’
Emilia’s stomach falls. ‘Ottilie …’
‘I’ll deny it. If you tell the police, I’ll deny everything I’ve just told you.’
‘But Elliot? Because of you, they think it’s him!’
‘I’m sorry about those things, Mils, I really am. I like Elliot, believe it or not. But I thought if I planted the beanie among Elliot’s things …’ She shakes her head. ‘I just wanted it to take the spotlight away from me, that’s all. The same with the bike. I didn’t think they’d actually arrest him … Anyway, they’ll let Elliot go. They won’t have anything more on him.’
‘You say you don’t believe your father is the praying-mantis murderer – but do you think he might have killed Louise’s mum and made it look like she was another of the serial killer’s victims?’
‘Of course not. My dad was a policeman at the time. A commissioner. Very high up. He’d never do that. I think Louise’s mum was murdered by that serial killer. Daisy, as a kid, got confused. Thought the man she saw – my father – leaving the house that night came back and killed her mother. She’d put two and two together and come up with five. She was out to get my dad. And he’d done nothing wrong – except cheat on his wife.’
‘What about the marking on Louise’s ankle?’
Ottilie’s eyes narrow. ‘After I realized what I’d done, I had to make it look like it was just another incident from your books.’
‘But …’
‘Have you been fucking listening, Mils?’
Emilia flinches.
She’s still clasping Emilia’s hand and now she grips it a little bit tighter. ‘Like I said, I was so angry with her, involving you like she had. I knew what it could do to your reputation as a writer if it got out. You basically stole someone else’s story.’
‘But she gave it to me, willingly.’
‘She’s dead, though, isn’t she? So she can’t tell anyone that. Everyone will assume you’ve stolen it. Have you told your editor yet? I bet you haven’t. Always did like to stick your head in the sand, didn’t you? Like the way you refused to see what a bitch Kristin was and how she manipulated you. Or that Jonas is a cheating piece of shit. Or that Daisy was stalking you.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with trying to think the best of people,’ Emilia says quietly.
Ottilie’s face softens. ‘I know, darling Mils. And I love you for that.’ She sighs, still clutching Emilia’s hand, which has now started to sweat. ‘The problem is I’ve been fucked up since the age of fourteen.’ Ottilie is still talking in a calm voice but there is a manic edge to her tone now. ‘Remember when I had the breakdown and I was off school for half a term?’
‘Of course.’ Ottilie had gone home for the weekend to stay with her dad at his holiday home in Devon, and she’d seemed perfectly fine that Friday night. She’d been looking forward to seeing her dad because she hadn’t seen him since Christmas and by then it was February. She hadn’t returned on the Monday and was away for the rest of the term. Emilia had written to her, begging her to reply, but she never did. The only information the teachers would give her was that Ottilie wasn’t well.
‘I do remember. I’d been sick with worry about you.’
‘Ah, sweet.’
Emilia tries not to react to Ottilie’s obvious sarcasm.
Ottilie hadn’t returned to school until after the Easter holidays, acting as though nothing had happened. When Emilia had questioned her about it, she alluded to it as being delayed grief at her mother’s death the year before and Emilia had bought it. Had she only seen what she wanted to see?
‘I’ve never told you the truth about what really caused the breakdown.’
Emilia holds her breath.
‘That was the weekend I found out that my dad had been banging Daisy’s mum for years. While he’d been married to mine. That was the weekend I found all their sordid love letters and he’d admitted it all. It had pushed my amazing mum over the edge.’ She laughs bitterly. ‘Daisy’s mum, this Jennifer, she was our cleaner. Can you believe it? I suppose that day, when I confronted Daisy, well, I saw red because I remembered what her mother did. She was accusing my father of being a killer when he isn’t, yet her mother was. Her mother was responsible for my mother’s death.’
‘Ottilie, you need to go to the police. Tell them all this. It was manslaughter, really, if you think about it.’ Emilia isn’t quite sure if that’s true. She believes it was premeditated. For whatever reason, on that day when Ottilie had stolen Elliot’s bike, she’d had one thing on her mind, and that was to kill Louise. And then she’d tried to set up Elliot. How had she even got in that night? Emilia knows she didn’t leave the door unlocked. ‘Do you have a key?’ she asks. ‘To my house?’