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‘DAD?’ It’s Ash. The shouting is coming from the bathroom.
‘Stand back,’ Tristan barks, and then he hurls himself at the door, which splinters away from the frame, and falls in. There stand the twins: pale, shiny-cheeked but unharmed.
Behind them the bath brims with red.
And then I see that it’s everywhere: puddles on the floor, spatters on the sink and painted screaming in capital letters across the wall:
WHO KILLED JENNA BEAUFORT-BRADLEY?
73
BEFORE
‘Jenna?’ I called, running into the annexe. I tried to slow my heart but I knew something was wrong, really wrong, and it was my fault.
I saw her immediately, down the line of the corridor. She was standing up, half turned towards me, in the en suite of my dad’s bedroom.
Maybe this is why they tell you not to have favourites, I thought. You get too close. Lose perspective.
I ran in and found myself halting, pulling back.
A short line of blood dotted the floor and ended at Jenna’s feet. Jenna looked at me, hazy-eyed, and dropped a shard of broken mirror, her mouth opening, turning down.
Was this really down to me? My gut clenched. I remember thinking: No. No, it’s not. Look what you did, Frances. The blood dripping from your daughter’s wrists is your fault. As was my mother’s. As was mine.
‘Oh, Jenna.’ My voice wavered as I ran forward, looking for something clean to press against the dripping gash, but the towel was on the floor in a murky puddle, a flannel sat dried in a ball on the lip of the sink, an old shirt hanging on the back of the door had a dark stain on its elbow and a leaf clinging to its collar.
She crashed to the tiles and fell stretched out, her hair across her face, but as I stepped forward I saw her arm, leaking, a streak of red on the tiles beneath her.
Her white socks were still pulled up straight above her ankles. Her purple tie had been looped over the towel rail. Her school bag had spilled open next to her, her laptop, water bottle, journal, books, pencil case, headphones, harmonica, all scattered about.
‘Jenna?’ I dragged her up till she was sitting slumped in my arms and I felt my eyes begin to fill.
This poor little girl. This poor, beautiful, brilliant, talented little girl who no one ever saw because they were too busy pretending life was perfect.
Even me. I had wanted so much to be at the centre of things, to be the one to fix the work of the big bad Beaufort-Bradleys, that I had missed how close she was to breaking.
Was this my fault? Had I killed Jenna?
Of course I’d thought about it: the blood draining from Frances’s face as she learned of her daughter’s death. And I’d thought Jenna was suicidal, hadn’t I? But I’d thought: suicidal, but not today, not right this minute, and what a hero I will be if I’m the one to talk Jenna off the ledge. I can bond with her – save her, like I should have been saved. Make her talk about all her problems like my mother should have made me.
And what will the Beaufort-Bradleys owe me if I save their black sheep darling? How will they plead for my forgiveness if I’m the one who brings her back? Am I finally proving I’m better than them? Will it stick in Frances’s heart to learn I’m the one her daughter runs to for help? And how hard could it be to ensure Jenna and I grow ever closer and she and Frances grow further and further apart?
Because they hurt me. They destroyed my life and none of it was ever my fault.
Even if it might have been my mother’s.
74
NOW
Scrawled across the walls in smaller letters, surrounding that one central slash of a question, which is burnt onto the insides of my eyelids like the shock of a flare, are excerpts from Jenna’s journal, which is sitting on the counter by the sink.
She’s always leaving it in the living room, poking out between the arm of the sofa and the cushion, propped on the shelf by the light switch. As I hold the red book with spiders and coffins Biro-ed all over it, I realise that despite the ‘DO NOT READ’ message written all around the sides, Jenna had been leaving it out on purpose.
I had congratulated myself on feeling not even the faintest hint of temptation to read it, but now I recognise what that really was: a fear of learning the truth.
And maybe if I’d read it, my little girl would still be alive.
