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All those times, I had thought about killing him in increasingly realistic detail.
And yet I had forgiven him. I had told myself he wasn’t evil, just useless.
But how could someone be so weak that they would destroy their family day after day rather than be honest?
People need to take responsibility for their mistakes.
I stood in Dad’s Oakridge kitchen drinking a glass of water, wondering how far Theo would get, considering I’d slashed his tyres. And thinking just how much easier it would have been for me to refuse to delete the video, to keep my phone hidden, and test just how far he would have gone with his threat to kill my dad.
But where would have been the fun in that?
99
NOW
Bevan grabs a passing police officer, a young man with hollow cheeks. ‘Get them down to the station.’ She points at me and pushes Lydia, in cuffs, towards him. ‘Croft! Car,’ Bevan barks.
Croft, guiding Ava and Ash out of the house, looks up.
Bevan strides over to the officers guarding Tristan on the back of an ambulance and her lips move fast.
She’s going to Oakridge, I realise. She thinks there’s a chance Theo and the girls are still there. My legs buckle, and Bevan comes back and hauls me up. ‘Okay?’
I look at her.
‘No. Not okay,’ she says. Her mouth makes a flat line, but then she’s walking away again.
Lydia, being led towards a patrol car, mouths Go! at me, and I head for my Mini as Croft pulls his car round the harp sculpture and Bevan opens the passenger door. But she sees me and stalls. ‘Frances, where are you?—’
But I slide in. I press the ignition as Mina thuds into the seat beside me.
‘What are you doing?’ My phone is ringing. It must’ve fallen beneath my seat.
‘Coming with you.’ She slams the door shut.
‘Mina—’
‘Go!’
I push my foot on the accelerator as Bevan and Croft come level with us and we shoot down the rutted lane towards my daughter.
100
BEFORE
Maybe you’re wondering whose shoes I saw walking past the camera after not one but two Beaufort-Bradleys had tried to kill my mum. Maybe you know already.
It wasn’t Frances. She came later, knelt in front of the camera before the screen went black.
It was my dad.
He must’ve wondered why she was at school so late.
My dad walked in and stood, silent, not knowing he was being recorded. He put his hands on his hips. He paced in and out of view, a silhouette before the spectacle of my mother.
‘Arianne?’ he said, finally.
I’m sure I could hear her wheezing breath growing weaker.
