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She nods, still not looking at me.
‘You did it yourself.’
She doesn’t move.
My heart. My poor shattered heart.
I close my eyes. ‘This is all my fault.’
It stings, and then something fresh hits me: why did I leave the tape in the attic? I knew Jenna went up there sometimes. Had some part of me wanted her to find it?
Just like when I hid it in the vent at school. Every day I felt sick that Georgia might find it. But only after she left did I bring it home.
I’m disgusting. I clearly wanted someone to find it and turn it in. I just didn’t have the guts for it to be me.
The only thing that makes me think I should go on is that I have to make things right with Jenna. I have to be there for her, from now on, forever.
Croft drags Theo up by his wrists and pulls him across the stream.
Bevan answers her phone.
‘Mum?’ says Jenna.
‘Mmm?’
‘Have you thought about… I don’t know. Getting some therapy?’
I stare at her worried face and feel my self-regard drop another level. How is she worrying about me in this moment?
‘Let’s focus on you, my love. On what you need.’
She bites her lip. ‘I think, maybe, that is what I need?’
I want to sit down and cry, but I realise I mustn’t make her comfort me. ‘You’re probably right. Therapy all round.’
She smiles a little.
‘No thanks,’ says Dan, pulling a faux-horrified face. But then he looks sad and kisses my hand.
‘Jenna,’ I say, my heart still only fragments held together through sheer force. ‘You mustn’t… You can’t… I couldn’t…’ But I can’t get out what she mustn’t do, what I couldn’t take. I can’t speak those words when it came so close, and that’s wrong of me – because that’s how we got here, isn’t it? Me not being able to face the truth. But I can’t. I just can’t. And then my heart finally breaks and I sit down sobbing with Jenna and Dan clinging to me.
‘Come on,’ says Bevan.
We stand and follow her through the forest, and I’m vaguely aware of her answering her phone, swearing and pausing to arrest Georgia as we pass her. I thought Lydia said Georgia had nothing to do with this?
Jenna squeezes my arm and I lock gazes with her. I love you, I think at her. I love you, I love you, I love you. I want to say it, but I feel like I haven’t earned it.
And then she smiles. ‘I love you, Mum,’ she says.
My heart swells and fresh tears fall and I whisper it back into her hair.
Beside us, Bevan sighs. ‘You too, Frances,’ she says.
I don’t understand and I feel my brow crease.
She looks sad, tired, a little furious. ‘You’re under arrest, Ms Beaufort-Bradley. Obstruction of justice.’
Jenna cries out and Dan shouts and I feel their fingers grasping tight, but I just nod. I feel strangely light.
