Chapters (44)
Before Hannah could reply, Rose cried, ‘I had nothing to do with your mother’s death! She jumped!’
‘Bullshit.’ Hannah’s face was full of loathing. ‘She wouldn’t have left me. She wouldn’t. I was all she had. You were the last person to see her alive. You killed her.’
Rose stepped towards her. ‘Listen to me! Your mother was angry, she was out of control! She was extremely ill and she jumped.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Where’s my daughter?’ Rose asked desperately. ‘Do you know where she is, what happened to her? Tell me where Emily is, for God’s sake, tell me!’
‘She’s dead,’ was the triumphant reply. ‘That’s right! She died the same way my mother did, booted into the fucking sea.’
All the colour and light drained from Rose’s face. ‘No …’ she shook her head. ‘No … I don’t believe you. You’re lying, I know you are.’
Hannah laughed. ‘I said I’d meet her up on the cliffs at Dunwich. Told her I wanted to go and remember my mother.’ She smiled mockingly. ‘She thought she was so noble, going there with me, standing by the poor abandoned sister she never knew she had, cutting off her parents and striking out on her own to prove a point. My God, she was full of it – such a tedious sanctimonious bitch! I was doing the world a favour, to be honest. But anyway, now you know. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ She looked at Rose and Oliver. ‘Your daughter and my mother had the same resting place. Kind of poetic, don’t you think?’
Rose stared at her in horror. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not true.’
Oliver, who until then had been watching in stunned silence, suddenly cried, ‘There was no body! If you were telling the truth, her body would have washed up sooner or later.’
Rose looked round at him hopefully. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s right. There was no body. There would have been, wouldn’t there? There would have been a body!’
Hannah laughed. ‘Yeah well, maybe there’s a little pile of Emily bones on a faraway beach somewhere. Fuck knows, who cares?’
‘I don’t believe you!’ Rose shouted again. ‘You’re lying. There would have been a body. There would have!’
Hannah stared at her thoughtfully. ‘She cried out for you, you know. Just as she fell, just as she realized she was going to die. She cried out for her mummy, like a baby. Did I cry, Rose, when you killed my mother? Did I cry too?’
Oliver’s face was full of hatred and despair. ‘She jumped. Your mother jumped!’ He broke down in tears then, doubled over in pain, as Tom pulled out his phone and called the police.
32
The Lake District, 2017