I freeze-framed a picture of Rebecca which popped up on the screen. Her long blonde hair was blowing across her face as she smiled at the camera. I knew the smile was for me and that it was only a matter of time until we would be together again. There wasn’t much longer to wait.

74

Rebecca

I didn’t move for over a week. I ignored the endless calls from my mother, Jodi, and random acquaintances I’d met over the years.

I lay in bed, duvet pulled round my ears to block out the noise. When I finally dragged myself up, I moved my state of apathy to the sofa in the living room.

Oliver had been charged with murder. Intimate and graphic details of his life were plastered across the tabloids. Poignant but nauseating snaps of his kids were paraded alongside the accused and his wife; the latter, pathetically, was standing by her man. But I didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore.

Seven days after the murder there was an incessant hammering on my door. I hid in the bedroom, willing it to stop but it continued for over an hour. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I padded across the lounge and peeked through the spyhole. There was a mad-looking dishevelled woman pounding her fists against the frame.

I slid open the door a fraction, keeping the chain fastened, and waited for the woman to stop pummelling.

‘Yes,’ I said. Although I hadn’t faced a mirror in the last week, I reckoned that this woman must have looked worse than I did. Frizzy greying hair stuck out at weird angles from her scalp and broken angry veins criss-crossed her cheeks. The black rings round her eyes gave testimony to some inner hell.

‘Please let me in. I’m Yvonne Moreton, Oliver’s mother. I need to talk to you. Please.’ The temptation to quietly close the door in her face was overwhelming but something about her tortured countenance mirrored my own. A chink of empathy urged me to undo the chain.

Yvonne Moreton bent down and picked up some post, which had been pushed under the door by a tenant on the ground floor, and handed it to me. ‘Thank you,’ I said as she stepped inside. If Oliver’s mother was disgusted by the rancid array of takeaway cartons and pizza boxes, she didn’t show it. There was only one thing on her mind.

‘You need to tell them the truth,’ she began. Why, I wondered? Her son had ruined my life so why shouldn’t I ruin his?

‘What’s that? What truth are you talking about?’