I Will Make You Pay (ARC) Page 16

  doesn’t yet know about my real name. About my link

  to Alex. There is a little beat when I wonder if I should

  tell him myself – get it over with. But I let it pass. I’m

  wondering how long before the tabloids start digging. It

  may come out very soon anyway.

  ‘OK. So let me update you on the demolition cam-

  paign. Like I say, Ted wants someone else to take the story

  over but I think, if it were me, I’d get in touch with the

  campaigners. I’ve brought their latest press release. It’s

  confirming the details on the last residents who moved

  out ahead of the demolition. They’ve got a meeting with

  the demolition company and the housing charity up in

  London about PR. You could get in touch directly, maybe?

  And let Ted know you’re handling the story from home.’

  ‘Good idea. Thank you, Jack.’ I glance at the press

  release and realise I should have given my key contact a

  call sooner. I’ve had so much on my mind. Just a little

  part of me wonders why Jack didn’t simply forward the

  press release, but then it occurs to me that he probably

  doesn’t have my private email. And I’m not supposed to be working.

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  ‘Look, I really appreciate this. In fact, can I text you

  my home email so that if anything else crops up, you can

  tip me off immediately?’

  ‘Sure. Good idea. If it were my story, I wouldn’t want

  to lose it after all this time.’

  I offer Jack a sandwich but he says he doesn’t want

  to intrude for too long, especially as my sister seems a

  bit touchy.

  Within half an hour, I am leading him to the door. I

  find myself staring at the back of his neck. Jack has this

  very distinct hairline which I often notice in the office. I

  find that I would very much like to touch his neck, which

  causes me immense embarrassment and I pull back, think-

  ing again of that disastrous meal in the Italian restaurant.

  Leanne has appeared in the hall to say goodbye, and

  we watch his car together as it sweeps towards the elec-

  tronic gates that open and close automatically.

  ‘Bit weird to come out all this way, don’t you think?’

  Leanne says.

  ‘Not really. We’re mates, Leanne. He’s looking out

  for me in the office. Making sure I don’t get passed over

  because of this wretched business.’

  She just looks at me.

  ‘What?’ I lean forward.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No. Spit it out.’

  ‘It’s like I said – you need to be careful, Alice.’

  ‘And you really think with this stalker out there and

  after all I went through over Alex, I don’t know that?’

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  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Alice – before

  The day the police came looking for Alex at the home

  we shared in Scotland, I thought at first that he was dead;

  that there had been some terrible accident.

  I was in the kitchen at the front of the house making

  toast and saw the marked car pull up outside. I watched

  the two police officers walk up to our front door and

  assumed the worst – or what I imagined at that point to

  be the worst. That Alex had been killed or badly hurt in

  some accident.

  At first, when they explained that they were merely

  looking for Alex – Do you know where he is or where he might have gone? – relief flooded through me. So – Alex was all right. Not hurt. But as their questions began to press

  me for information, a new panic bubbled up within me.

  Why such strange questions? Why were the police

  looking for Alex? I told them he was getting his car ser-

  viced and they said they would check that out but they

  didn’t seem to believe me.

  They seemed inexplicably to want to search our home.

  I was both shocked and at a loss to understand this. I

  pressed them to explain themselves. What on earth was

  this really about? The two officers kept exchanging odd

  glances which slowly morphed from suspicion to pity.

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  ‘Will you please just tell me what the hell this is about?’

  I could feel my heart beating fast in my chest.

  Finally they confided that one of Alex’s pupils had gone

  missing from home early that morning. She had taken

  a suitcase and clothes and her parents had since found

  ‘highly inappropriate references’ to Alex in her diary…

  ‘What do you mean, inappropriate?’

  Again they exchanged pitying glances.

  ‘Are you saying this girl has a crush on my fiancé?

  Because if that’s what you’re saying, it’s hardly his fault, is it? What’s her name? What’s this girl’s name?’ As I spoke

  my heart was beginning to double beat as if I had drunk

  too much coffee. I was wondering if it was the wretched

  girl who’d been self-harming and had phoned Alex that

  weird day we had the row. But the officers gave me a

  different name and I didn’t remember this pupil at all.

  I tried to phone Alex but his mobile was unreachable.

  One of the officers phoned the garage but would not tell

  me what they said. Then they asked to see Alex’s diary,

  detailing his lesson schedule. We could all see that Alex

  was due to give a lesson at home within half an hour, and

  three more later that day.

  ‘So where is he if he’s supposed to be teaching today?’

  The taller of the two officers seemed to be drawing a

  thick black line under my situation.

  ‘I told you. His car’s being serviced.’

  I was completely at a loss – shaken and confused by

  the whole thing. It was my day off and Alex had left

  very early, saying that the garage had promised to work

  on his car first. I had offered to drive him but he said

  he would do some shopping in town until the car was

  ready. This now made no sense at all, given he had les-

  sons in the diary. I’d assumed he would book the service

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  on a day he was free. It began as a puzzle which all too

  soon would spiral into a nightmare beyond my worst

  imagining.

  I was told the missing girl was just fifteen. Her diary

  suggested she’d been in a sexual relationship with Alex

  for at least six months. Fourteen years old when it started.

  She had drawn her savings out of the bank and taken all

  her favourite clothes.

  Once the police accepted that I knew absolutely noth-

  ing of what was going on, I was assigned a female officer

  who kept me up to date with each of the next steps.

  We believe your fiancé has been in a sexual relationship with at least one underage girl. Maybe more.

  It was like being in a film. Yes – like standing against

  the wall on a set of a film while everyone around me

  worked on this terrible, terrible story.

  As time passed and there was no word from the teen-

  ager, an appeal was put out on television with pictures of

  Alex and the girl. The public was urged to look out for
/>
  them and contact the incident room.

  My phone went bananas. Shocked reactions from my

  work colleagues. Friends. Family. My own paper ran the

  story, of course, and wanted an interview with me. An

  interview? Suddenly I was the story, not the journalist.

  Stepping away from the wall into the film. It was horrific.

  I drew the curtains. Stopped answering the phone.

  Leanne flew up to be with me and we moved out to a

  small hotel to avoid the press. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

  I genuinely had no clue where Alex might have gone

  with the girl. The garage very quickly confirmed there

  had never been a service booked. Alex had also taken all

  his favourite clothes. And his passport. So he had clearly

  been planning this for a while.

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  There were many more shocks to come. After a week

  with no progress in the police inquiry, I received a phone

  call from an estate agent, asking for a meeting ‘about the

  house’. It turned out Alex did not own the property at

  all. There was no inheritance from a grandparent. He

  had huge credit card debts, was in rent arrears, and had

  been fobbing the landlords off that some big new teaching

  contract was on the horizon. The agency now saw me as

  the ‘sitting tenant’ responsible for the mess. I explained

  that I’d been lied to but I didn’t have a leg to stand on.

  The agency said I could either take over the tenancy by

  meeting the arrears and monthly rent or I’d have to leave.

  Leanne offered to bail me out financially but I was

  too stubborn at first to accept help. It felt as if I needed

  to take my punishment for being so naive. The estate

  agent gave me two weeks’ grace. Leanne helped me pack.

  The police still had no strong leads. I told them about

  the row with the other teenager. She was traced and

  questioned, and eventually broke down and confessed to

  police that she too had been sleeping with Alex earlier in

  the year. I was beyond horrified…

  We all wondered if Alex and the second girl he’d

  groomed had gone abroad together. I told the police over

  and over again that I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what had

  been going on, but I started to feel that it was my fault

  because of my naivety; because I’d accepted his explanation

  about the telephone call. But there were no sightings of the

  couple, despite extensive checks of ferry and airport CCTV.

  Next, a van came to collect the grand piano, which

  we discovered was rented too. Leanne promptly put her

  foot down and insisted on taking me back to London.

  Stop being so stubborn, Jennifer. You need help. You need to leave Scotland. And you need to lie low.

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  Alex and his teenage runaway were eventually discov-

  ered on the Isle of Skye in a tiny holiday cottage. Their

  plan was to hole up secretly until she was sixteen and then

  marry at Gretna Green. But she fell ill with a bladder

  infection. The tabloids had a field day speculating where

  that came from. The infection travelled to her kidney and

  became so bad that she took an emergency appointment

  at a local GP surgery. The doctor recognised her from

  the media coverage and called the police.

  The media went nuts. It was all over the papers and local

  TV too. They were, of course, mostly interested in Alex and

  the girl, not me, so my picture was rarely used – thankfully

  – but I was still floored by the whole, terrible experience.

  I stopped eating and suffered from what I would realise

  later was depression.

  For all our sibling rivalry and constant niggling, it

  was Leanne who, in the end, saved me. She took me in.

  Fed me up. After three months rebuilding my strength,

  she was the one who suggested I start over. Clean page.

  So I wrote off the eight months of my journalism train-

  ing and applied to a new paper in the south of England

  using my second name and my mother’s maiden name.

  Alice Henderson. I cut my hair and changed the colour. I

  pretended I was a new trainee, looking for my first break.

  The paper was impressed with my performance during

  a trial period and took me on. Within eighteen months,

  I passed my exams. I felt very guilty deep down in my

  new clothes as ‘Alice’, but I worked incredibly hard to

  earn my second chance. I also got incredibly lucky that

  no one checked my records or my background.

  But my biggest mistake was not that I changed my

  name; it was thinking I could put Alex Sunningham

  behind me.

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  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Matthew

  Matthew is in charge of breakfast while Sal is in the shower.

  ‘It’s a Choco Pops day, Daddy.’ Amelie is sitting on

  her little booster seat, beaming at him. Butter wouldn’t

  melt. He tries to remind himself that she is a child and

  not an opponent.

  ‘No. It’s not, darling. It’s Friday. Choco Pops day

  is Saturday. Tomorrow. Treat day tomorrow.’ Matthew

  watches his daughter’s face darken and there is a creep-

  ing dread. How does Sally do this? How does she man-

  age so many hours of this? He starts mentally whizzing

  through the tip sheet he read just last night on how to

  head off the impending meltdown. He needs more coffee

  but remembers that he is not supposed to say ‘no’ unless

  absolutely necessary. He is supposed to be smarter than

  that. Distract. Distract. Distract.

  ‘We’ll have Choco Pops together tomorrow, sweetie.

  I’m looking forward to that. How about we do some

  colouring today while we have breakfast. Or would you

  like to do a puzzle?’ Give them a choice. Let them feel they have some control over their life. ‘You can choose.’

  Amelie looks suspicious. She frowns and narrows her

  eyes, as if evaluating what is really going on. ‘I choose

  a puzzle.’

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  ‘Right. Good.’ Matthew turns away quickly before

  she can clock his smile of surprise, and puts Weetabix and

  fruit into a bowl with warm milk from the microwave.

  He tops the breakfast off with more strawberries and grabs

  two wooden-block puzzles from the basket of toys in the

  corner of the kitchen.

  ‘Which one?’ More choice. Matthew is feeling

  borderline-smug.

  A few minutes later Sal appears in her dressing gown

  with her wet hair wrapped in a towel. She looks at the

  puzzle alongside Amelie’s healthy breakfast bowl and

  raises her eyebrows with apparent approval.

  ‘Thanks, Matt. You got to run, now?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’ He takes a final slurp of coffee and moves

  swiftly to kiss Amelie and then his wife. ‘Be good, both

  of you. Daddy loves you.’ Then he bolts quickly. Such a

  relief to leave the house after a small triumph instead of

  a row over shoes or a coat or the car seat…

  In the driver’s seat, still parked on t
he drive, he checks

  his watch to confirm that he has just about enough time

  to try his little experiment for Ian Ellis before he meets

  Melanie Sanders for another coffee. He double-checks

  his backpack for his iPad. Yes. Good…

  He finds himself thinking once more of the day –

  Friday, a Weetabix day in his household. But for Alice?

  He wonders what it must be like, waking every day to a

  countdown. How many days till the next Wednesday…

  * * *

  Forty minutes later and Ian Ellis is peeping through the

  curtains as Matthew pulls in. Poor guy, Matthew thinks.

  It’s wrong to patronise but the truth is Matthew would

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  dearly love to find a small step in the right direction for

  Ian; at least to stop him calling the emergency services so

  often. That large, overdue payment from the corporate

  client has really eased the financial pressure on the agency

  so he can spare the time.

  He has no idea if this is going to work but he’s de-

  termined to give it a try. He’s exchanged several emails

  with Ian’s daughter in Canada and has a hunch.

  ‘So I’ve been in touch with Jessie by email, and I

  wanted to run something past you,’ he says as Ian leads

  him into the sitting room.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ve just had breakfast and I don’t

  actually have much time this morning.’

  ‘Why have you been in touch with Jessie?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t mention the little people. I was

  just wondering about whether I can help to put you in

  touch with Jessie a bit more.’

  ‘I’ve told you. I’m not getting a mobile phone. They

  give you brain cancer. And the landline is too expensive.

  About a pound a minute, I reckon. Maybe more.’

  Matthew takes out his iPad from his rucksack, taps in his

  key code and sets it up in front of them on the coffee table.

  ‘It’s an iPad, Ian. Like a little telly – only skinnier. It

  does lots of things. Look. I found a short tourist film to

  show you the area your daughter lives in.’

  He turns the iPad at an angle and Ian watches the

  film of the Canadian landscape in utter amazement, as if

  magic is being performed.

  ‘It’s like Tomorrow’s World.’

  Matthew smiles at the mention of the long-forgotten

  programme highlighting developments in science and

  technology.

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