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There’s so much to tell you, I don’t know where to start. The kite, maybe. It’s not the beginning exactly, but it’s as good a place as any. . .
Something shifts inside me as I reach the end. My breathing is easier, the cement on my chest breaks up.
This isn’t the end though, I think. It’s the beginning.
And as the thought forms, I’m filled with a surge of energy that literally blasts me off my feet. I get up, pace around the kitchen talking to myself like a mad thing, the idea I have growing along with my resolve.
‘This isn’t his story,’ Janice said one time. ‘It’s yours. You get to write your own ending, not him.’
All these years, I’ve resisted telling my version, felt I didn’t deserve to have a voice. But it’s not about what I do or don’t deserve. It’s about what I need to do.
Matty wanted to hurt me. That’s why he summoned me to Battlemouth, a final act of domination. Telling me about my mother was his last hurrah, one last way to wound.
But, in revealing her secret, he had to reveal his own– that he was guilty despite all his protestations of innocence. And that his murder spree began in 1977, four years earlier than anyone thought.
Now I know the truth, the rest of the world must know it too. If I’d gone to the police sooner, fewer lives may have been lost, but at least now I can finally bring some closure to the victims’ families and shine a torch on disappearances that have never been attributed to Matty. Or my mother.
A part of me is frightened how people will react. They’ll likely hate me, blame me for not coming forward sooner, just as I’ve blamed myself. I have to do it though, to make amends, to face what I’ve been running from. To move on.
And so, I sit back down in a sudden shaft of spring sunshine and begin to write the tale I’ve waited so long to tell—
You think you know this story. I think I do. But how much do any of us really know?
