Emilia’s heart twists. ‘What was wrong with her?’
‘She was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour, six months ago. She knew she didn’t have much time. Which might explain why she chose to harass you like she did, to escalate matters, to get your new book national press coverage, to try to discover her mother’s killer as soon as she could. I’m not saying it was an excuse for what she did, but her illness wouldn’t have helped her think rationally.’
Tears press against Emilia’s eyelids. She gathers the blanket in her hands. ‘I had no idea.’ She remembers the last time she saw Louise. How tired and pale she looked. How she said she was going to work but was wearing casual clothes.
‘Nobody did. Not even Saunders.’
‘And Ottilie? Will they catch her, do you think?’
DI Murray lets out a long sigh. ‘I don’t know. I hope so. But it depends where she’s gone. She had a whole ten hours’ head start to get away before you were discovered.’ She stands up. ‘Anyway, Emilia, I have to go, but keep writing, won’t you? I enjoy your books, but please be careful what you write about next time.’
Emilia can’t help but laugh. She’s got a lot of explaining to do to her editor and agent. But she can’t think about that now. She has to concentrate on getting better so she can return home and be with her family.
Epilogue
Three months later
It’s a Saturday morning at the beginning of September when a brown A5 envelope lands on the doormat. At first Emilia thinks it’s a bill of some kind. Or from HMRC, one of her bugbears. Elliot is in the kitchen, singing along to Radio X while making pancakes, Jasmine is lounging on the sofa with Hamish curled up in her lap, and Wilfie is kicking a ball about in the garden with their new puppy. It’s a typical Saturday, something Emilia appreciates more than ever after the turmoil of the last year.
After she was discharged from hospital it took a few weeks to get her health – mental and physical – back to where it had been. She was honest with her editor and Drummond about Her Last Chapter, and they have given her extra time to rewrite Daisy and Ash’s sub-plot and to change the specifics of the serial killer storyline so that it no longer resembles the praying-mantis murders. Martin Butterworth pleaded not guilty to all charges, and she didn’t want to do anything that could jeopardize the trial that was due early next year. It’s taken a while to get her relationship with Jonas and Kristin back on track. Kristin admitted that she’d suspected Louise was ill after seeing her nearly collapse when they were standing outside the bookshop on the night of her launch. That was what their heated discussion had been about. Kristin, in her tipsy state, had been trying to persuade Louise to tell Emilia, but Louise had denied she was unwell.
Emilia also had some serious making up to do with Trevor, but she feels now that they’re moving forward.
She is closer to Elliot than ever before. He was hurt that she hadn’t been honest with him about Louise and the story from the start, and she admitted that she felt she couldn’t be less than perfect in his eyes, or he might leave her. He assured her he didn’t care about that stuff. The kids’ drawings from the den had moved to the fridge, and she let herself relax for the first time since she’d met him. They even got a Golden Retriever puppy called Brambles, much to Wilfie’s delight, and Emilia appreciated how Elliot tried not to wince when the dog got muddy paw prints on their parquet floors or chewed up his favourite pair of trainers. Hamish is learning to love Brambles too.
Despite everything, she grieved for Ottilie after she did her moonlight flit. A large part of her hates her for what she has done, but it’s hard to forget all those years when she was the closest person to Emilia. She had loved her fiercely and she has mourned her as if she has died. And the Ottilie she thought she knew is dead.
During the last few months she has replayed their final conversation over and over in her mind, like a well-worn tape. Ottilie had told her she only sees what she wants to see, and she wonders if that’s true.
If only Emilia had seen what was really going on she might have been able to prevent it all. Louise was desperate, ill, wanting to do whatever she could to find out who had killed her mother before it was too late. Emilia can’t forgive Louise for what she did, but she can understand it, empathize even, now that it’s all behind her. Now that she’s safe.
Emilia picks up the envelope and rips it open without thinking, surprised when she sees a slip of A4 paper folded in two, typed out like a manuscript. And she realizes that it’s a story, not a letter, as she’d first thought. She slumps onto the bottom stair, still in her dressing-gown, and begins to read.
Let me tell you a story. Except this one is true. It’s about a woman who lied. And a woman who loved. It’s about betrayal and revenge. It’s about a young girl – let’s call her Liza – who went home for the weekend, aged just fourteen, and found out that the father she had adored had cheated on the mother she had adored. She found out that the mother was so distraught by this betrayal that she stood on a railway line and waited until a train came. She found out that everything she’d believed in, everything she had loved, had been destroyed and that one woman was to blame. A woman who came into the family home on the pretence of cleaning but really to steal another woman’s husband. So Liza took her own revenge. She walked the half-mile to the thieving woman’s home, that cold February night – Valentine’s Day, would you believe? – in the wind and rain and she confronted her. And then, in a fit of anger, she took a knife from the butcher’s block on the worktop and stabbed her, just once but in the wrong place. In a fatal place. Her father came and he helped the young Liza but he was conflicted because he loved his only child and he wanted to protect her. So he carefully carved the woman’s flesh to match that of a killer he knew was terrorizing the locals and everyone thought the thieving woman was just another victim. And Liza, poor Liza, was taken to an institution to get better. But she was never better because this massive secret, this ‘bad thing’， festered inside her until she met the daughter, years later, except they couldn’t be friends because of who their parents had been. So the resentment grew and grew, like a disease, making her even more rotten. But one thing made Liza less unhappy, less rotten and that was you. She loved you, you see. Like a sister. She’ll think of you often and hope that you’re happy. And she wants to say how sorry she is. For all of it. And that she will miss you for the rest of her life.
Some stories deserve to be told. Does this one?
A shiver runs down Emilia’s spine and she reads it through again. She checks the envelope for the postage. Somewhere in Central America by the look of it. Her hand trembles. This is basically a confession. She could take it to the police. Or she could destroy it.
She hears Elliot in the kitchen singing along to Oasis, every now and again breaking off from ‘Champagne Supernova’ to call a word of encouragement to Wilfie in the garden. Brambles barks playfully, and she imagines the puppy lolloping across the grass with his uncoordinated legs, joining in. She knows Jasmine is on the sofa with the cat on her lap, probably watching them with an amused expression while simultaneously texting Nancy, her best friend.