The Girl Who Came Back (32 page)

‘It’s me, Amelia. Can I come in?’

Shocked into silence, Jules stayed where she was.
Amelia Quentin was here, in the dead of night, asking to be let in? Was she completely out of her mind?

Didn’t she already know the answer to that?

‘Jules. I’m soaked right through and I need to talk to you.’

‘Go away,’ Jules shouted. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve …’

‘I promise I won’t stay long …’

‘Go right now or I’m calling the police.’

‘You don’t understand. I know you think I mean you harm, but I swear I don’t. I just want to talk.’

‘I’m not interested in anything you have to say …’

‘I know you hate me, and I don’t blame you, but if we could just talk … Five minutes, I promise I won’t stay any longer …’

‘You have to be crazy if you think …’

‘But you want to talk to me, I know you do.’

‘You don’t know anything.’

‘So why are you following me?’

Jules felt the air leave her lungs. The only answer she had for that was so complex and visceral that even she barely understood it.

‘I think it’s because you see me as a connection to Daisy,’ Amelia told her, still speaking through the letter box. ‘And I am, because no matter what she will always bind us together …’

‘Get out of here,’ Jules seethed, ‘or I swear you’ll regret you ever …’

‘I already regret everything, so you can’t make me regret any more.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Jules, I’m soaked and freezing, please let me in.’

Jules remained where she was.

More minutes ticked by. The letter box stayed open.

‘How did you get here?’ Jules shouted. ‘How do you even know where I live?’

‘My car’s at the end of the street. I thought you were still living at the Mermaid, it’s why I went there the other day. I expected you to follow me in …’

‘Answer the question,
how did you find out where I live
?’

‘One of my friends is from the Temple Fields estate. She asked around over there and in the end someone told her.’

‘Who told her?’

‘I don’t know, I didn’t ask.’

Having no choice but to let that go, Jules said, ‘Do you realise the trouble you could be in for coming here, not only with the authorities, but with Kian’s family?’

‘No one will know unless you tell them.’

Shocked, Jules said, ‘I have no intention of keeping your secrets. You need to leave this minute and don’t even think about coming back.’

Amelia said nothing.

Jules waited.

The letter box closed.

Time passed. It was impossible to know what was going on outside without opening the door.

‘Amelia?’ Jules called out.

Nothing.

‘Amelia, are you there?’

When there was still no response, Jules tiptoed into the sitting room to peer out of the window. No sign of anyone in the street, but the girl could have reached her car by now, or maybe she was still sheltering in the porch.

After waiting another few minutes Jules returned to the hall, checked that the chain was firmly in place and cracked open the door.

‘I’m still here,’ Amelia told her.

Jules stared at her wildly, hardly knowing what she was feeling beyond shock and an overwhelming urge to commit a brutally violent act.
How dare this girl come here? How did she have the nerve to stand there facing her victim’s mother as though she might actually be welcome?

Amelia shrugged, almost coyly. Her sodden hair was plastered to her skull, her face was streaked with mascara and her dress was like tissue stuck to her skin. Were it anyone else Jules would have hurried them inside to get dry; given who it was, all she could think about was the gun she should have allowed Danny to give her.

Amelia raised her hands to show they were empty. ‘No phone, no anything,’ she said calmly. ‘Definitely no knife,’ she added with a smile.

‘For God’s sake …’

‘Sorry, sorry, bad joke. I didn’t mean it.’

She really wasn’t like other people.

‘What exactly do you want?’ Jules demanded harshly.

‘Just to talk,’ Amelia replied. ‘I swear, nothing more than that.’

‘Why on earth do you think I’d want to talk to you?’

‘I guess because I was the last one to see her alive.’

Stunned, Jules cried, ‘Which is precisely why I don’t want you anywhere near me.’ As she tried to slam the door, Amelia quickly jammed a foot in the way.

‘Then why are you following me?’ she challenged. ‘You
do
want to talk to me …’

‘Get away from here,’ Jules cut in savagely.

‘I swear I’m not going to hurt you. If I did, I’d be straight back to prison, and I can promise you I have no intention of ever going back there.’

‘You should never have been allowed out. You murdered my daughter. Anyone else would be serving a life sentence …’

‘We don’t have to do this on the doorstep. If you’d just let me in …’

‘In the middle of the night? Do you think I’m crazy? You’ve seen me outside your house enough times, you could have spoken to me then …’

‘I wanted to, but Ollie kept saying you probably had a gun.’

Startled by that, Jules said, ‘Maybe he was right.’

Amelia let go of the door and it slammed hard. ‘I get that you’d probably like to kill me,’ she shouted.

‘There’s no probably involved,’ Jules shouted back, ‘which is why you should go, right now.’

Amelia was still speaking. ‘It’s just that someone like you … It’s not who you are.’

‘Don’t make assumptions, Amelia, we’re none of us who we used to be, thanks to you.’

‘Can you accept that I might have changed too?’

‘No, I can’t. I’ll never be able to do that.’

After a moment Amelia said, ‘If we’re going to carry on talking here, I think I’ll sit down.’

Flabbergasted, Jules waited before cracking open the door. To her amazement Amelia had dropped to the ground and crossed her legs.

‘I haven’t agreed to talk,’ Jules hissed. ‘There’s nothing you can say that will change anything …’

‘I know that, and it’s not what I’m trying to do. I just want to explain to you how it was for me …’

‘Do you seriously think I care how it was for you?’

Amelia’s head went down.

‘All I care about is that you get yourself as far away from here as you possibly can and don’t ever come back. And I don’t only mean my house, I mean Kesterly.’

Amelia’s head stayed down and moments later Jules realised she was crying. ‘No one ever wants to listen,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s like I don’t matter to anyone …’

‘Stop it!’ Jules seethed furiously. ‘Self-pity isn’t going to work on me.’

Amelia’s head snapped up, her teary eyes flashing with temper. ‘Why is Daisy the only one who ever counts?’ she cried. ‘I’ve got feelings too, but no one ever wants to think about that.’

‘After what you did …’

‘Let me tell you about it. Please. No one knows what it was really like, because no one else was there …’

‘What about Dean? Are you forgetting him? You tricked him into being there, just like you tricked Daisy, and now she’s dead and he’s in prison for something
you
did. That’s what happened to two innocent people who fell for your lies.’

‘But I’m not lying now, I swear it. I just want to talk to you.’

But I’m not lying now?
An admission that she had been before?

Jules slammed the door in her face.

‘Jules, please,’ Amelia begged. ‘It’s starting to rain again.’

Closing her eyes in frustration, Jules let her head fall back against the wall. She couldn’t let the girl in; it was crazy even to consider it, and yet they couldn’t stay here all night, talking through a closed door. She should just ignore her now, go back to bed and pretend she’d gone.

‘I know you’re still there,’ Amelia said softly.

Wondering if she was losing her mind, or even dreaming this madness, Jules stormed through to the kitchen, hid the knife block in a cupboard, and secreted the sharpest one in the table drawer. She thought of calling Andee. Even at this late hour Andee would want to know that Amelia had turned up. She’d tell her that under no circumstances should she let the girl in. She’d probably even send the police …

Was that what Jules wanted?

Danny would still be up, probably even out somewhere, but if she asked him to come …

Crazy as it was, she didn’t want Danny terrorising Amelia – that was her right and privilege.

Minutes later, still hardly able to believe she was doing it, she let Amelia walk ahead of her into the kitchen where she gave her towels and told her to sit down.

‘Not there,’ she barked, as Amelia went to sit in front of the table drawer. ‘Here.’ She was pointing to the other side of the table, and kept an eye on Amelia as she did as she was told.

‘You don’t have to be scared,’ Amelia said, dabbing her face with a towel.

‘Really? You’re a convicted killer,’ Jules reminded her.

Amelia simply looked at her.

Feeling suddenly weak, Jules sank down in a chair.

Amelia was glancing around the room, reminding Jules of the first time she’d come to the pub to meet Daisy, when she’d seemed to drink everything in as though … As though what? What had been in her mind then? ‘So this is where you live?’ she said.

Jules didn’t bother to answer.

‘It’s different to before.’

Still Jules only looked at her.

‘Where’s Kian? Someone said he left you.’

Jules tensed, ready to attack her with words, but before she could get them out Amelia was saying, ‘You didn’t understand what it was like for me when you shut me out. I didn’t have anyone to turn to. You and Daisy were my only friends. You meant everything to me. I was happy when I was with you, I felt as though I mattered to someone, then suddenly you didn’t want me any more and that was that. You had each other and I had no one.’

Jules stared at her, unmoved, and unable to credit the bid for sympathy. ‘No matter how badly your feelings were hurt,’ she retorted, ‘you surely can’t think it excuses what you did? You …’

‘I was angry, upset!’ Amelia cried. ‘I couldn’t think about anything else … I didn’t go out for months, I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to …’

‘You have a father …’

‘He doesn’t listen. No one does, not to me. I’ve always been on my own … I make friends, but then they end up pushing me away …’ Her head went down as tears, real or fake, fell on to the towel she was holding. ‘You and Daisy were always the nicest to me,’ she exclaimed. ‘I kept wishing I was a part of your family … Then suddenly one day, Daisy told me I wasn’t welcome any more.’ Her mouth twisted as she tried to stop herself crying. ‘You used to listen to me,’ she sobbed. ‘You were the only one who ever really did that. I kept wishing you were my mother, I even convinced myself sometimes that you were.’

‘But I hardly knew you …’

‘Yes you did. You understood me in a way no one else …’

‘No! That isn’t true. Whatever you were telling yourself, then or now, I wasn’t – I’m not – the person you seem to think …’

‘Yes you are. I know you care about me …’

‘For God’s sake! You know what you did to my daughter, so how on earth can you think I care about you? I despise you, I want to see you back in prison paying for your crime …’

‘So ring the police. Tell them I’m here.’

Jules met her steely gaze, knowing she should do exactly that, and not entirely sure why she wasn’t moving. ‘It’s time for you to go,’ she said bitterly.

‘But I want to stay here with you.’

Alarm raced across Jules’s heart. The girl sounded so pathetic, so convinced even that it might actually be possible …

‘Don’t worry, I know you don’t want me,’ Amelia ran on wretchedly, ‘and I understand that you’ll never be able to forgive me, but whether you like it or not you’re the mother I should have had, would have had, if things had been different.’

Wondering how on earth she’d come to that conclusion, Jules said, ‘You had a mother. I’m sorry that she died.’

Amelia turned her head away.

Cautiously, Jules said, ‘Did you know she was dead when you and Daisy first met?’

After a while Amelia said, ‘I kept telling myself it wasn’t true, but I knew it was really. Maybe she deserved to die.’ She turned to Jules, her eyes seeming to flash a challenge.

Jules blinked. ‘Why on earth would you say that?’ she asked, appalled.

Amelia shrugged. ‘Maybe some people do.’

Jules had no idea what to say.

‘Daddy told me once that she’d committed suicide. If she did, it just goes to show how much I meant to her. Nothing. She’d rather be dead than stay with me. Not that I care. She should have learned to swim.’

In spite of reminding herself that she wasn’t in any way equipped to deal with this, Jules said, ‘You must have had some counselling when you were young, or even when you were in prison.’

Amelia shrugged. ‘Some, not much. Anyway, I know I’m different, I don’t need anyone to tell me that.’

‘But a lot of people lose a parent when they’re young and it doesn’t turn them … Doesn’t make them do what you did.’

Amelia’s eyes narrowed. ‘It wasn’t my mother’s death that made me do it,’ she said, ‘it was
you
. You’re to blame for what happened to Daisy, not me. If you hadn’t made her push me away …’

Jules rose to her feet. ‘You need to go,
right
now,’ she seethed. ‘Get out of my house …’

‘But you need to take some responsibility,’ Amelia cried.

Snatching the knife from the drawer, Jules pointed it straight at her. ‘Get out now, or I swear to God I’ll use this.’

Amelia stared at the blade.

Jules stared at Amelia, shaking, breathing raggedly.

‘See, we’re not so very different, you and me,’ Amelia said drily. ‘You want to do the same to me as I did to Daisy, so how you’re feeling now, that’s how I felt …’ She jumped as Jules plunged the knife into the table so hard the force jarred her whole body.

Their eyes met, Jules’s glittering with hatred; Amelia’s showing only surprise.

In the end Amelia got slowly to her feet.

Watching her, Jules tried to pull the knife free.