The Woods, page 16
“I think they’re wrong,” Max says into the heavy silence. “How can they know this quickly?”
“They took DNA samples. Back then, when he went missing.” It’s Jack. I gasp—I didn’t hear him come back.
There’s a creak on the stairs and Sean comes in to join us, closing the kitchen door behind him.
“They asked so many questions about Dad—when he went missing, had anyone heard from him in the time he’d been gone.” He pauses and looks at Jack. “I thought they were asking about him as a suspect, because it was his property the body was found on.”
Jack is pacing around the room, red spots high on his cheeks, no sign of his fake smile.
“Jack…Sean…I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching out a hand toward Jack. I move back as Jack whirls around, looking like he wants to punch somebody.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Max is right—they’ve got it wrong. It can’t be Dad.”
Sean gets up and puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder but Jack shakes him off.
“Jesus,” Jack says, looking ill. “Did it happen right away? Did he ever go to Europe or were we all here for that fucking wedding, dressed up and getting drunk while our dad was rotting in the garden?”
“Maybe he came back,” Lena says. She’s white-faced, her arms wrapped around herself. “They can’t know yet when he…he could have come back anytime.”
“Did he?” Jack’s looking at me. “You were the only one still here after the wedding. Did he come back?”
I shake my head. “I never saw him, I swear.”
“Christ, I don’t even have those fucking texts he sent anymore. I lost that phone years ago.” Jack runs his hands through his hair and sinks into a chair.
“The police will be able to tell us when it happened, won’t they?” Sean says, sitting next to his brother. “Not exactly, but roughly? When and how…”
“Could it have been an accident?” Max says, and Jack and Sean both stare at him.
“An accident?” Jack says. “He buried himself in the fucking woods by accident?”
Max shakes his head. “Right. Yeah. Sorry, I’m not thinking straight.”
“I’m going up to ask Julia what she knows,” Jack says, getting up.
“No,” Sean says, grabbing his arm. “She’s dying up there—you can’t go barging in screaming accusations.”
“You think the police won’t have questions for her?” Jack looks like he’s going to hit his brother. “Why are you so defensive about her all of a sudden? Have you forgotten she left us? Dumped us for a new family?”
“She’s dying.”
“Yeah—and now we know our dad has been dead for years, buried on his own damned land.”
“It has nothing to do with her.”
“Doesn’t it? How do we know this whole new family of hers didn’t put him there?”
I take a breath and hold it. The very air feels violent and I daren’t move for fear of setting it off.
“We don’t know anything—that’s for the police to find out,” Sean says, his voice shaking, and it reminds me again that the police will have questions for all of us about our relationships with Greg Lewis.
I get up and walk out of the room. Lena follows me.
“Well,” Lena says, staring at me, “this is a turnup, isn’t it, Tess? Bet you weren’t really expecting it to be Greg…Or were you?” She leans in closer. “You have to tell them now, Tess. You have to.”
I glance past her and see Jack watching us. I have to resist the urge to run.
THEN
Chapter 18
From the Western Vale News, June 25, 2007:
SECOND BODY FOUND
The body of a second teenager has been found in a wooded area near Porthcawl, police confirmed last night. At this stage, there are no more details, but following so soon after the murder of Annie Weston in April, less than twenty miles away, this latest discovery has raised speculation that the deaths are related.
June 27, 2007:
NICOLE WALLACE MURDERED
Police have confirmed that they are treating the death of Nicole Wallace as a murder inquiry and the same team investigating Annie Weston’s murder are working on the case.
Two murders of two teenage girls in the same area have led to local concern that this could be the work of a serial killer. While the police will not confirm they are looking for the same person in connection with the cases, they are warning local teenagers to avoid going out alone after dark.
July 2007
I haven’t been back to the garden since the Lewises’ New Year’s party. I didn’t mind when the house was empty. Even if I’d been caught, all I was doing was making it nicer—weeding and pruning the overgrown plants. It wasn’t like I was one of the kids trashing the place and spray-painting the walls. But the boys are away, Sean off with some of his posh private school friends and Jack wherever he’s working and Ellie is…gone. Julia is living at our house and I guess Greg is at work. He’s away a lot, building his houses, growing his empire. I don’t know why they bothered moving here in the first place.
It’s not too bad, is my first thought when I step into the garden. The side gate is locked now, but the wall is low and easy to climb, even for me. I haven’t touched the place in nearly a year, but someone has. No new weeds and the roses look better than when I was looking after them, glossy leaves and massive blooms. There are even some new plants, gathered in pots by the back door, waiting to be planted. Did Sean do this? Greg said he was the gardener in the family. Or was it Julia who did it? Was she going to take over our garden now, erase any lingering trace of my mother from the overgrown mess our garden had become since Mum died?
I stroke one of the leaves on the climbing roses, careful not to touch the thorns.
“So you’re my phantom gardener.”
I spin round, ready to run when I hear the voice behind me. “I’m sorry—I thought you were away.” I stop. “Not that I come here when the house is empty. I’m not…”
“It’s okay. I’m not planning to call the police. Sean’s given up and God knows I could use the help.”
There’s laughter in his voice and I can feel my cheeks glowing as I look at him.
“Here,” Greg says, holding out some clippers and a pair of gardening gloves. “I’ve had them ready for when you returned.”
“I’m sorry about Julia,” I say as I pat compost around the newly planted rosebush. He’d left me alone for an hour but then came out with two mugs of tea, standing watching me so I felt an itch on the back of my neck from his presence.
“It’s fine, Tess,” he says, passing me a watering can. “I’m not going to pretend I’m happy about it, but her leaving was in the cards as soon as Ellie died.”
His eyes are bright with tears when I glance up. I don’t know what to say to him. His daughter died and now his wife has left him and come to live with us. It’s all so wrong. He should hate us; he should be chasing me away from his house with a pitchfork. Instead, he’s letting me help him garden and he’s made me a cup of tea. The sun shines down on him and the light makes him look younger and a million times better-looking than his sons.
“And honestly, I don’t know. We’d been having problems for a while.”
The moment grows more awkward. I don’t want to hear about his marital problems. I feel hot and uncomfortable as he sighs. He’s right behind me and I can feel the sigh on the back of my neck.
“You know we’re not actually married?”
I almost drop the clippers I’m holding.
“We got together so young—not much older than you. Julia fell pregnant with Jack and we moved in together. Never quite got around to the whole marriage thing. I suppose that made it easier for her to walk away. No messy divorce. The house is half hers but she hasn’t asked for anything.” He pauses. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Not necessarily a good thing,” I mutter. “That it was so easy for her to walk away. Not good for you or the boys, anyway.”
“I’m glad you came,” he says. “It’s good to have someone on my side.” Am I on his side? How can I be when the other side is my dad? “Most people have avoided me—no one seems to know what to say.” He touches my hand as he says it, the slightest brush of skin against skin, but it makes me shiver. He’s like his sons and nothing like Max—there’s that spark of danger that Bella and all her friends drool over, in his hand on mine, but it makes me want to run and hide.
“Come back anytime,” he says, and when I look down I see he’s not trying to hold my hand, or whatever ridiculous notion passed through my mind, he’s pressing a key into my palm.
I stop dead, key to the side gate in my hand, at the sound of female laughter. I frown at the thought of going into the garden and finding Greg with a new girlfriend. I’ve been coming around every afternoon for a month and sometimes he’s been there, sometimes not, but it’s always been just him. He’s so easy to talk to. I tell him about Bella, about school, and about Max. Not mentioning any names, but just talking about my feelings. And he listens and advises and…it feels like I’m talking to a friend. In fact, he’s easier to talk to than any of the girls in school. I never used to be bothered that I didn’t have a best friend because I had Bella, but recently…bloody hell, how sad is it that forty-year-old Greg is the nearest thing I have to a real friend?
I waver, thinking of running. But no, why should I? He gave me a key, told me to come anytime. I push the gate open and walk around the side of the house, faltering when I get to the garden and see Bella standing there with Greg. She’s wearing tight faded jeans and a T-shirt that barely skims her belly button. My face gets hotter as I tug my own baggy T-shirt down over my jeans.
“Hey, Tess,” Greg calls, and my sister turns and sees me, her eyebrows rising in surprise.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, like this is her place.
I lift the trowel and fork I’m carrying in response. “Helping in the garden,” I mutter.
“Look what Greg’s lending me,” she says, holding up an ancient-looking camera. “The boys told him I was into photography.”
“But you already have a camera.” Dad gave her one for Christmas, one that cost a fortune.
“I know,” she says, turning the camera in her hands. “But this is a classic. I can’t wait to use it.” She reaches up and kisses Greg on the cheek and I feel the kiss like a sting. “Thank you so much.”
Greg smiles and touches her hair. He did the same to me the other day—he rubbed my curls like I used to see him doing to Ellie, four-year-old Ellie. He rubbed my head like I was a toddler. He does the same to Bella, tousling her blond hair, but my stupid brain sees it more as a caress. My hand clenches on the trowel and fork in my hand, hard enough to make my palm ache.
September 2007
“So this will be your room while you’re here,” I hear Julia say. I press so hard on the paper, my pen goes through and ruins my essay. I clench my teeth. Bella’s standing at the door listening as Julia gives Jack and Sean a tour of the house. She’s so desperately eager. I’ve heard her on the phone loads of times, pleading with them to come visit, phone calls that have always ended abruptly with no goodbyes. Do they hang up on her? She’s been living here for nearly three months and today’s the first time she’s seen her sons in person since she left Greg. Bella has been moved in with me and they’ve given the boys her room.
Julia’s been rushing around, tidying and sorting, one minute singing, the next nervously pacing. I’m feeling much the same. Nothing to do with them—but Julia said she’d invited Max and Lena down for the weekend too. To make things easier for Jack and Sean, she said. I’ll put up with them for a week if it means seeing Max again. They weren’t even supposed to be staying originally. They were meant to be home at Dean House, but Greg announced he was going to be away working, so here they bloody are. I don’t even know why—Jack’s eighteen, so why can’t they bloody stay on their own over at Dean House?
“They’d better not touch any of my stuff,” Bella mutters, pulling the door a fraction wider.
“You haven’t left anything private in there, have you?”
She laughs. “Course not. I wouldn’t trust them.”
“You don’t fancy them anymore, then?”
She throws herself onto the bed. “Oh, I don’t know…when they moved here, they were like these shiny new things. I did fancy them—who wouldn’t? Jack at least, Sean’s a bit…” She pauses and pulls a face. “He’s a bit solemn and scowly, isn’t he? But Jack, God, he’s so funny and bloody gorgeous. I really thought he liked me back.”
“But?”
“But he got together with Nic,” she bursts out. “I was pissed off with both of them. But then Nic died and Jack didn’t even seem bothered. And that seems so wrong. God, I know it was just a sex thing with them, Nic told me that. He always talked to me more than her, about Ellie and other stuff. But he should have cared more. Or at least pretended he did—he knew she was my friend.”
Her voice breaks. It’s been horrible since Nic died. Bella’s been pestered by journalists and surrounded at school by people pretending to be all sympathetic but really just desperate for the gory details. She spent days shut away in her room after they found Nic’s body, refusing to go out with Caitlin, even avoiding Jack and Sean and Max and Lena.
“I’m sorry,” I say, going over and squeezing her hand. “You’ve had such a crap time. And Jack is a total…shit.”
She gives me a wobbly smile. “At least I’ve still got you, though, baby sis.”
“Always.”
She sighs. “I know you didn’t like her. I don’t blame you—she was a total cow to you. But she was my friend and I can’t get past how she died. I can’t…I knew she was seeing someone and I knew she was using me as an alibi when she met him. I thought it was Jack and it pissed me off because I liked him as well. So I can’t get past the knowledge that while she was being murdered, while she was lying dead in the woods, I was sulking. I was jealous because she was seeing the boy I liked.”
“Come on, big sis, you and Nic were arguing all the time. And you always liked the same boys. She didn’t tell you she was pretending she was with you when she went missing, did she? You couldn’t have done anything to prevent what happened.”
“Doesn’t stop me from thinking it, though. And I miss her. I keep catching myself going to text her to rant about the whole Julia and Dad thing, and then I remember.”
I chew on my lip. I should have tried harder to get Bella to talk to me about all of this, but she shut herself away and refused to open her door when I knocked. She never comes down to eat the dinners Julia cooks, she’s cold with Dad, downright rude to Julia, and snappy with me. But I should have tried harder. Maybe it would have been easier if Julia weren’t here, if it was just me and Bella and Dad.
“I wish…” My voice trails off.
“You wish what?”
“I wish Julia hadn’t come here,” I say, giving up on my essay. I shove my books back in my bag and lie back on the bed. “We were fine before, weren’t we? The three of us? I wish they’d never moved into the bloody village.” I feel a twinge of guilt as I say it. Julia’s impossible to hate, she’s so bloody sunny all the time. And her being here has made Dad really happy. But…
“I know,” Bella says, sitting next to me. “Every time I walk into a room and she’s there, I get a jolt of surprise. It’s not like our house anymore.” She sighs. “And now we’ve got Jack and Sean as well and that’s going to be just weird. Is this going to be a regular thing? Is she going to insist they spend Christmas here?”
I shudder at the thought.
“We have to do something about it,” she says.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Make their lives so miserable they all want to leave?”
“What about Dad? He likes her.” He loves her, I think, but I can’t say those words out loud.
There’s a knock on the door and Julia pokes her head round. “Hey, girls,” she says. “Are you going to come out and say hello to Jack and Sean?”
Bella ignores her, but I can’t, so I reluctantly get up and follow her out. They’re sitting on the twin beds Dad set up in Bella’s room, bags at their feet, still wearing their coats.
“Oh look, it’s our new sister,” Jack says in his drawling voice, and I feel myself blushing. Sean doesn’t say anything. He glances at me and away, a frown on his face.
Julia sighs. “Be nice, Jack.” She says this but she walks away, leaving me alone in the room with the boys.
Jack laughs and pats the space on the bed next to him. “Come and sit down, sister Tess,” he says. “Let’s get cozy. I’ll be nice, I promise.”
“Hey,” he calls as I back out of the room. “On second thought, send the hot sister in—I’ll be extra nice to her.”
Sean follows me as I escape downstairs, stopping me in the hall with a hand on my arm.
“What do you want?” I almost shout it. “Why are you even here? It’s not like you’re kids who need babysitting while your dad’s out of town.”
“I was going to explain about Jack,” he says stiffly in his posh private school accent. “He didn’t want to be here—I persuaded him because I thought it might be a good idea to mend some bridges, to actually be here full-time for a few days. Clearly, you’re not of the same opinion.”
“No, I’m not. And neither is Bella,” I say, shaking him off, my eyes hot with tears I’m determined not to shed. “We don’t want you here. None of you. I wish you and your bloody mother would fuck off and leave us alone. How do you think your poor dad’s going to feel when he gets back to find us all here playing happy families while he’s on his own? It’s sick. It’s wrong.”
