‘Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,’ cries Isobel, sobbing. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. It wasn’t Grace who killed her father. It was me.’

43

I stand there stunned, unable to move or speak. The room is silent save for Isobel’s low sobbing and the soft bleating of a sheep in a distant field.

‘It all happened so quickly. I didn’t know what to do.’

I look down at Isobel. She is staring up at me, her face pink and swollen from crying.

‘Grace was … Grace was going crazy,’ she says, her voice trembling. ‘She turned up with a gun and started waving it at Steve, telling him she was going to blow his brains out.’

I nod my head. Isobel’s story tallies with what Grace recounted in the diary.

‘Then her father came and he … he looked crazed too,’ she says, her eyes fixed on the ground now, as though seeing the events of that long-ago night laid out in front of her. ‘I was so scared. Steve was shaking. When Grace had waved that gun in his face we were both certain she was going to kill him. She had this strange look in her eyes, like she was possessed.’

I remember Grace’s words in the diary, how she wanted to kill Steve Markham, to get him away from Isobel for good.

‘Anyway, they started arguing,’ she continues. ‘Grace and her father. It was all getting so heated and … I knew that if I didn’t stop her then she would come after Steve. We had to get away. We had plans made. A hotel booked in Scotland. Steve’s car was back at the village. Oh God … this is … this is so hard. I was scared, don’t you see? I was just so scared.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you were,’ I say, crouching down next to her. ‘What happened then, Isobel? Tell me what you did.’

‘I … I knew I had to get that gun off her,’ she says, looking up at me warily. ‘I had to make sure she was disarmed otherwise Steve was in great danger. That’s what I thought. I just wanted to stop her. And I wanted Steve and me to get away. Like we’d planned. I didn’t mean to …’

She pauses to take a breath then continues.

‘Grace was so angry, so busy screaming at her dad, that she didn’t see me come up behind her,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I grabbed for the gun and as I did she swivelled round and …’

‘And what?’

‘She sort of staggered towards me but then she lost her footing and fell backwards, hitting her head on a tree stump,’ says Isobel, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘She’d dropped the gun as she fell. It was next to my foot. He was ranting and raving like a madman, screaming at me that I’d killed his daughter, that I was the enemy and he was going to get rid of me once and for all.’