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“And then what?” Margot whispered.
“And then fate ensured that my decision to accept what Ethan had done was right.”
“What do you mean?” Dylan frowned.
“I mean, Zara turned up later that week and mentioned the police had been round to talk to her boyfriend, Cooper.”
“Shit, wouldn’t he say that he hadn’t seen Ethan since the night of the party?” Margot gasped.
“You’d think that. But no.” I smiled and leaned back, hugging a lacy pillow to ward off the early evening chill. “I’ll tell you how serendipitous luck stepped in and everything that happened next, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the police station and the night where I shattered Ethan’s hold over me, once and for all. I grew stronger than I’d ever been, and I not only accepted what Ethan had done but I was also...strangely grateful.”
“Wait, what? You can’t be saying you’re grateful for what he did?” Dylan scoffed, his face twisting with disgust. “That’s just wrong on so many levels.”
“Oh no, sorry, that came out incorrectly. I didn’t mean to say I was grateful for the abuse. I meant I was grateful for the lesson of overcoming it. Grateful to learn, early on, that I was stronger than I thought. Thankful to learn how to find myself, to trust myself, to be ready to fight when it mattered, because when that last domino fell, I didn’t buckle and die. Even though I begged for death and fully believed I would die from a shattered, haemorrhaging heart, I survived. Barely.
“Without Ethan teaching me my own power, I would never have lived past the worst day of my life. I know that without a shadow of a doubt. That adversity gave me the strength to survive because no matter the pain Ethan gave me, it was nothing, absolutely nothing to what came next. He was a mere thorn, a sting, a silly little splinter.”
“Oh God.” Margot shook her head. “I don’t think I can take much more. You know...it’s getting late. I think. I think we should stop and—”
“I’m not stopping until it’s over.” I picked up my phone to text Tiffany to bring another tray of drinks and some food, along with a cosy blanket or two. Once I’d sent the request, I settled back and studied the faces of the reporters who were no longer strangers.
Their features blurred and blended, spinning with the dark, the beach, and the sky until the stark walls of an interrogation room and the detective I’d seen throughout my childhood filled my mind’s eye.
Chapter Three
*
Nerida
AGE: 17 YRS OLD
*
(Love in Finnish: Rakkaus)
“YOU’RE SURE THIS STATEMENT IS AS TRUE and as accurate as you can make it? I know you said you don’t know Ethan’s last name, but you made sure his description is as detailed as possible?” Wayne Gratt, my father’s friend and our next door neighbour four houses down, steepled his hands on the cold metal table and gave me a forlorn look.
“It’s true and accurate, and yes, I don’t know his last name.”
He rolled his shoulders. “As a cop, I shouldn’t say this, but as a friend of your father’s, I’m so sorry, Nerida. What he did to you. What you’ve told me here tonight.” He shook his head, his lips curling into a snarl. “I want to murder him myself.”
You’re too late.
I hung my head, clinging to the performance I’d given of a distraught, abused little girl who hadn’t watched her soulmate beat Ethan within an inch of his life and then toss that life overboard.
“Thank you, Detective Gratt.”
He shuddered and squeezed his nape. “You know, you should tell your parents everything he did. It might help. I know Jack will be going out of his mind. The ‘what ifs’ will drive him more mad than the actual knowing.”
His weathered face and salt-and-pepper hair made him look older than his sixty years. What a shame he was here, working on Christmas night, when his two older children were staying with their toddlers, filling his house with the newest generation. I knew he worked a lot because he’d lost his wife two years ago. I knew Dad went around to his place fairly often for a beer and to keep an eye on him. And I knew the way he watched me with a bone-deep pain and remorse wasn’t faked, it was genuine.
And that hurt because if he watched me in such a terrified, horrified way—a man who’d only existed on the outskirts of my childhood—how on earth would my own father look at me?
I stiffened. “Can I trust you not to tell him? It’s my choice to keep this from them. They know it happened. That’s enough. I did something I never thought I’d ever do by hitting Dad around the back of the head. I’ve already hurt him enough without making him hear what Ethan did as well.”
