White Lies: A gripping psychological thriller with an absolutely brilliant twist, page 25
My god.
I realised immediately she was right. If Jonathan was dead, Alex was unquestionably going to need an alibi from David, and from me, when they came looking for her.
* * *
It happened on Monday. The police car pulled up outside the gate just after Alex had got back from dropping the girls at school, which seemed a particularly cruel payback for her first solo act of bravery.
‘They’re here!’ she gasped, appearing in the kitchen, looking at me wide-eyed with panic as I got to my feet.
We were at least slightly prepared.
The day before, the first local news reports had emerged:
BODY OF EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD MAN FOUND
* * *
The discovery was made at Broadwater Woods in the early hours of Saturday morning by a member of the public. The police were called to the incident at 07.50 BST and an investigation is now under way with Kent Police treating the death as unexplained. A police cordon is in place at the location. Police are appealing for any witnesses or anyone who may have any information to assist the investigation to come forward.
‘You see?’ said Alex, shakily. ‘An eighteen-year-old man. It’s him. I told you.’
‘Should we “come forward” then?’ I said, looking up from the laptop screen as Maisie and Tilly played happily with their toy kitchen.
‘I’m making a salad for you, Mummy!’ called Tilly. ‘Get ready!’
‘Thank you, darling! I’m very hungry!’ She turned back to me. ‘But come forward with what? We don’t actually know anything. Wouldn’t that be even weirder? I think we just have to wait.’
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, reaching out and taking her hand.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Because I know I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t want to have to tell them David was here longer than he was, but there’s no other way. I can’t have an hour and a half unaccounted for.’
‘You’re absolutely certain David won’t change his mind and say you asked him to cover? I wish you’d just tell them the truth.’
‘He won’t do that, and I can’t. I can’t risk them thinking I was involved in whatever has happened. I’m telling a lie to protect the truth.’
‘Here you are, Mummy!’ Tilly appeared proudly and placed a plastic plate laden with green felt leaves and a carrot on the table between us. ‘It’s your breakfast!’
‘Thank you, Tilly. You’re such a kind girl.’ Alex kissed her.
‘And I made a chocolate cake.’ Maisie appeared behind Tilly, carrying a more elaborately laid tray, complete with napkin.
‘Well aren’t I a lucky Mummy!’ said Alex. ‘How delicious. Thank you, sweetheart.’
I watched as my wife hugged my daughters to her and they both relaxed into the embrace of the mother they adored more than anything in the world – their sun, moon and stars – and I thought, fuck it. She’s right. This is about protecting them. Whatever it takes. We’ll do it.
‘Deep breath,’ I said, taking her hand and remembering my determination to keep my family together. ‘They’re not here to arrest you, they’re just asking questions. That’s all. Remember everything we’ve both agreed to say and don’t say any more than that. You’ve done nothing wrong. Stay calm. I love you.’
Transcript
* * *
DC Teresa Hart: So Mr Inglis, outside his school you asked Jonathan Day to retract his allegations in return for payment?
Robert Inglis: ‘Yes. I was desperate. He seemed to be very motivated by money, what with the book deals and the paid public appearances he was undertaking, so I thought I would try and appeal to that side of his nature.’
* * *
TH: But he declined your offer?
RI: ‘Yes. He was quite agitated and verbally abusive – as you saw in the footage you’ve just watched, he spat at me as I was walking off. I called out ‘I’ll pay you’ and he replied: ‘I don’t need it where I’m going.’
* * *
TH: And after you left your parents’ house on the evening of 6 October, you drove straight home, arriving at nine p.m?
RI: ‘Yes. I came in, went upstairs to check on Alex. She told me Gary Day had been to the house. We talked about that and I said I wouldn’t go out again to get some food if she’d rather I didn’t. She said she was OK but not hungry, so I went back out, got a takeaway for myself, checked on Alex, who was reading in bed when I got back, ate my food, watched a movie and went to bed myself.’
* * *
Little white lies. One alibi – all for the greater good – because Alex was not involved in whatever happened at the woods that night.
* * *
A couple of days after our voluntarily helping the police with their questioning, a story appeared on the BBC news website.
NO OTHERS INVOLVED IN DEATH OF JONATHAN DAY
* * *
Kent Police are treating the death of eighteen-year-old Jonathan Day as ‘unexplained’ pending toxicology results from the post-mortem examination carried out after the teenager’s body was found on Saturday in woodland near his home.
Det Supt Greg King said: ‘The post-mortem examination has not identified any injuries to suggest any other person was involved in his death, but our investigation is ongoing at this time.’
Mr Day, a type 1 diabetic, was found by a member of the public in the early hours of Saturday morning. ‘The area where the body was located will remain cordoned off until forensic examinations have been concluded,’ confirmed Det Supt King.
Mr Day’s family has asked for privacy at this time. Mr Day’s sister Ruby posted on Facebook, ‘I cannot explain our loss. The ‘little’ brother who I always looked up to and loved with my whole heart has left us. We will miss you forever.’
Dr Alexandra Inglis (40) and her husband Robert Inglis (41) who were known to Mr Day were questioned by detectives and released under investigation.
We knew we had done nothing wrong, and eventually it seemed the police started to see that too – and the flipside of the situation. Whatever had happened to Jonathan that night – whether a tragic accident where he’d collapsed because of his diabetes or that he had taken his own life – he had still been in the woods alone, less than a mile away from my wife who was at the time lying asleep in her bed completely unprotected… I found that so scary a prospect I’d had to push it away from my mind the second I thought it.
We co-operated fully with the investigations and were not arrested, although we were told the police ‘had grounds for arresting us on suspicion of Jonathan Day’s murder’. I still don’t know what that means. We let them into the cottage all white-suited up and with dogs. It was several days before we were allowed back home, but we didn’t complain once, made no comment publicly about the stress it had caused us and our children. We didn’t want to give anyone any reason to feel aggrieved whatsoever.
JONATHAN DAY SUFFERED HEALTH CONCERNS PRIOR TO DEATH, PARENTS CONFIRM
* * *
The parents of Jonathan Day, whose body was found in woodland in Kent on Saturday, have said that their son had long-standing issues with his diabetes before his death. After paying tribute to his ‘bright and beautiful boy’ Gary Day said, ‘Jonny didn’t always find it easy to manage his illness and could really struggle with it at times’.
The police are treating the teenager’s death as ‘unexplained’ but have confirmed Robert Inglis (41) and his wife Dr Alexandra Inglis (40), who were questioned, have been released from the investigation without any further action. ‘Mr and Dr Inglis have remained appreciative that in any investigation like this the police are obliged to investigate every line of enquiry, and we thank them for their co-operation and understanding in a matter that must have caused them stress,’ said Det Supt Greg King of Kent Police. ‘We can confirm they will face no further action.’
Six months later
(present day)
19
Cherry
My Mum and Dad didn’t want me to come to this inquest today, but anyone can and I’m eighteen now. It’s totally weirding me out, though, that there are people sat in this room who never knew him at all. Even journalists. How messed up is that? One of them is staring at me. I look away. I know authentic voices are really hot right now – and I’m not telling him shit. Not after what happened when someone turned up on our doorstep and, still really upset, I somehow said enough to make it look like I’d given them a whole interview slagging off Jonny’s dad. I’m too scared to say anything at all now.
I’ve been working with a really nice therapist who reminds me all the time that you can’t be responsible for other people’s actions and that I can’t feel guilt for what I think I did or didn’t do. But I can’t help it.
Jonny is literally the only thing I can think about all the time. I keep seeing him walking in the forest. I have nightmares about it.
I feel like I’m going to cry again, so I try and blink the tears back and blow my nose. When I look up, the journalist across the way is still staring right at me – and also writing something.
I tense and instead look across at Christy and Ruby, tightly holding hands. They’ve moved to London now, away from Gary. We texted for a bit – me and Ruby – but then it got too painful, and we stopped.
I honestly don’t know what I would have done without Alice and the girls right now. They have been so amazingly supportive and understanding. They’ve kept my life feeling normal and grounded. They said today would be good closure, but it won’t be. No one understands. I can’t forget him. Everyone keeps telling me I’ll fall in love again and be happy one day, but there will always be a part of my heart that is just his, even though he lied to me.
I should have done more. If I could go back in time and do it differently, I would. I could have saved him from himself, because that’s what I know we’re all about to hear – that Jonny killed himself – and I feel so, so sad.
And so guilty.
20
Rob
‘I would like to remind everyone of what I said at the start – this is an inquest, not a trial. Its purpose is not to attribute blame, but rather use the evidence we have heard to confirm the identity of the deceased, where and when they died, and the cause of death.’
I watch the journalist preparing to take notes at the back of the room as the coroner starts her summary. He looks positively excited and I get why, the chance to rehash it all again; two very physically attractive people (nice big front-page sorted), an older woman – a family GP no less. A young, vulnerable, rising social media star, and a passionate night in Ibiza. Allegations of unethical conduct, marital strife, harassment, illicit sex trysts, messages, a pretty, wronged girlfriend, parents publicly gunning for the woman they’d apparently tried to employ… but this juicy bone has culminated in the tragic death of a young man, and those parents are sitting in this very room. This journalist isn’t even trying to hide that he’s licking his lips.
In return, I don’t make any effort to conceal my look of contempt. He doesn’t care about the people involved here, just the happy thought that Jonathan Day died less than a mile from his ex-lover’s home. Lovely detail. I hope he’s really disappointed that we’ve wound up here, and not in court, the parasitic worm.
After all, God knows Kent Police performed a very thorough investigation. As one of them said to me, they don’t actually get bodies in the woods that often. They’re excited when something like that happens, and they were all over it, given Day’s profile. But they found nothing; there was no criminal case to answer and everything was turned over to the coroner.
‘As we have heard,’ she continues, ‘at approximately seven thirty p.m. on 6 October 2017, Jonathan told his mother that he was going out to meet his girlfriend, Cherry, and would stay at her house – he’d let them know if his plans changed but otherwise he’d be back in the morning. He drove instead to Broadwater Woods – a twenty-minute journey – parking his car in a clearing.’
I watch Christy Day reach out, grip her daughter’s hand and close her eyes. The poor woman’s face is etched with agony and guilt. I glance over at Gary Day, sat on the opposite side of the room to his estranged wife. He stares at the floor, eyes wide, hands clasped tightly, and I shift uncomfortably. I am sorry for his loss, as any parent would be, but the man frightens me.
We all listen silently as the coroner determines that at approximately 8 p.m. Jonathan walked about a hundred metres into the forest and injected his whole insulin pen into his stomach before collapsing on the ground never to wake up. He had earlier taken his pre-meal insulin shot at the dinner table without then eating enough to balance its effects. He would have already been hypoglycaemic on arriving at the woods. It would have been enough for him to simply lie down and wait to fall unconscious – in the absence of immediate medical attention he would have died anyway. He wasn’t taking any chances, however, hence the sleeping tablets that were discovered in his system at the post-mortem – the same brand his mother takes – and the injecting of his whole pen. The forensic post-mortem also revealed extraordinarily high levels of insulin in his system. He meant business.
He was found, dead and soaked to the skin by the night’s heavy rain, by a man walking his dog early on Saturday morning. His wallet, keys and his switched-off phone were laid out neatly beside him. There was one typed note on the phone, which said:
Sorry for everything and what this will do.
‘Sorry’ to whom is not clear. Sorry to his poor parents and sister or sorry to my wife – obviously not present right now and not just because she’s back at work – for the damning lies he told about her? What comfort could any of them take from that apology in any case? A young man is still needlessly dead.
When we were first told how he’d died, I was appalled. He’d seemed so in control that afternoon when I’d confronted him, apart from when I’d nearly hit him. I remembered the fear on his face and felt ashamed of myself. What if telling him I had evidence that he was lying had pushed him over the edge? Had he believed me and panicked, having dug himself into his lies so deeply he was unable to climb out? But as Alex says, you cannot take responsibility for anyone else’s choices, only your own. It seems that in any case, the row he’d had with his father distressed him more than anything I might have said. God knows what was going on in his head to make him do what he did.
Not, of course, that his death has negated everything he did to Alex. It hasn’t. After his death, although the GMC continued their investigation into his complaint, they had no witness testimony other than his supplied statement, which made it difficult for them to take any action against Alex. They could find no evidence whatsoever that Alex had known who Day was when she met him in Ibiza. When we attended the MPTS hearing last month in Manchester, they mentioned that the speed and frequency with which Day had spoken to the media was of ‘concern’ to them, as was his girlfriend’s supplied statement in which she noted Day’s determination to become a social media star and provide the two of them with a ‘platform’. David also supplied evidence that he witnessed Day force his way into Alex’s car outside the surgery, before she pointed at him to get out, at which Day tried to kiss her. Everything Day said was at worst a deliberate lie, and at best a fantasy that existed only in his head. I can hear his voice calling out to me again: “I genuinely couldn’t give a shit about your wife.” Bollocks, given he chose to end his life so close to our house. I still think he was in love – if you can call it that – with Al. Obsessed would be a better word.
‘I don’t think anyone around Jonathan could have predicted what he did.’ The coroner’s clear and calm voice draws me back to the room. ‘It was not a preventable death. Jonathan had long-term experience of managing his diabetes and was well aware of the risks of his condition and medication. The pathologist has given his cause of death as drug misuse. I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Jonathan took steps to ensure he would not be disturbed and deliberately took his own life.’
I can’t look at his poor mother, I only hear her gasp with pain, and resolve to hug Maisie and Tilly more tightly tonight when I get home. His girlfriend stands up and walks out unsteadily, tears streaming down her face.
As the coroner records her conclusion of suicide, I swallow and stare down at the floor. I am so sorry for them but, thank God, it’s over. Thank God.
When I look up, I glance again at the journalist. He should thank his lucky stars that after he’s written this up, he gets to go home and forget about it tonight.
I walk back out into the bright spring sunshine and text the news to Alex. When it was first made public that it was a probable suicide, I was terrified that there would be a backlash against Alex, that people would think Jonathan must have been so ashamed by what had ‘happened’ that he’d killed himself, and because he’d chosen to do it near our house, it would only cement her culpability in people’s minds.
In fact, the reverse happened. A well-known tabloid ran an interview with his girlfriend that painted a picture of a vulnerable schoolboy who had never felt good enough for his domineering father, someone who might have easily developed an obsession with a strong adult figure who had shown him attention. I still struggle to align that profile with the boy I spoke to, who showed not a shred of remorse for the lies he had told and was obviously deftly manipulating the publicity and attention it was bringing him. But presumably if the thoughts of someone about to commit suicide were rational, they would be able to prevent themselves from doing it in the first place.
