Destroy Me by Karen Cole (red queen ebook .txt) 📕

away from him and I stood there, rooted to the spot, unable to look away.

‘Cat . . .’ Charlie said again, scrambling to get dressed.

‘What the fuck, Charlie?’ I blurted, having at last found my voice – and the use of my legs, as I turned and blundered away.

‘Wait, Cat!’ Charlie shouted, as I stumbled down the garden path. But I didn’t stop. I ran sobbing out of the garden gate, across the small footbridge towards the village. I ran and ran, not really thinking about where I was going. I just knew I had to get away from there – away from my best friend who’d betrayed me and the boy I’d liked ever since I was eleven. At that moment, it felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

I would never speak to Charlie again, I told myself. She was a bitch who didn’t deserve my friendship. She knew how much I liked James and she’d deliberately stolen him from me. For what? Just because she could? To prove she was better than me?

After a while, I ran out of breath and tears and I stopped running. I found I was heading along the lonely country road out of the village back towards Cirencester. The street lamps had petered out and now the only light came from periodic flashes of lightning and a faint glimmer of grey morning on the horizon. I carried on walking briskly, slowly becoming aware of how far I had to walk and of how chilly the morning air was in my sleeveless summer dress. Not only was it cold, but thunder was rumbling ominously, and it looked increasingly likely that it was going to rain. My anger was subsiding and slowly bleeding into fear as it dawned on me that I was in the middle of nowhere, all alone in the early hours. It didn’t matter, I told myself defiantly. I could get raped and murdered for all I cared. Then they’d be sorry. But as I walked further, and the alcohol began to wear off, the silence seemed to stalk me and small noises in the hedgerow set my imagination reeling. When I heard a car on the road behind me, my body went into fight-or-flight mode.

The car was driving unnaturally slowly. Every now and then it would stop and then start up again with a loud roar of the engine. It was weird and creepy. But I resisted the urge to escape by diving into the woods and instead carried on walking, my back rigid, heart pounding. Probably just a drunk driver, I told myself. It will just drive on past. But it didn’t. It swerved around me and stopped dead just ahead, lurching into the bushes, as if the driver had suddenly lost control. Then the car door flew open and I froze in terror. I wished I’d drunk more to dull the horror of whatever was going to happen next. This is it, I thought. This is how I die.

Twenty-two

Eileen Robinson is in her front garden watering the flowers in her hanging baskets when I arrive home.

‘Don’t know why I’m bothering. It looks like it’s going to rain,’ she comments, glancing up at the darkening sky.

‘Mm-hm,’ I mumble neutrally.

She leans on the wall as I’m opening my door, looking me up and down, taking in my messed-up hair and crumpled clothes.

‘There were a lot of reporters outside yesterday,’ she says with a spiteful gleam in her eyes.

‘Were there?’ I feign surprise, fumbling with the lock. Go to hell, you old bitch is what I want to say.

‘I thought they were here to see you,’ she begins. ‘Wasn’t it something about that murder in—’

‘Sorry, can’t talk now. I’m not feeling all that well,’ I interrupt and dive into the house, slamming the door behind me.

Inside I take some painkillers and down a couple of glasses of water in quick succession. My throat is so dry after all that red wine last night. My head is pounding and I want to just lie down in a darkened room. But that photo­graph is preying on my mind. I have to know. I have to be certain.

I make myself a coffee, sit at the kitchen table and switch on my laptop.

After a quick search, I find the Wilts and Gloucester Standard archives on my phone and quickly, before I have the chance to chicken out, I type in ‘hit and run 2002’ in the ‘search key words’ bar.

And there it is. The page appears straight away. I inhale sharply as I read the headline, 5 July 2002: Five-year-old girl killed in hit and run.

Underneath the headline there’s a photo of an empty stretch of road. And when I hold up the printout from my handbag with a trembling hand, I confirm what I knew already: they are practically identical. There’s the same oak tree with the twisted trunk, the same grass verge and wooden gate. But what really takes my breath away is the picture next to it. A head shot of a little blonde girl giving a shy, gap-toothed smile to the camera. Underneath it says Daisy Foster, five years old.

Bile rises in my gullet and my stomach roils, but I swallow the bitterness and force myself to read.

In the early hours of last Sunday morning, Daisy Foster was hit and killed by a car on the road between South Baunton and Cirencester. Five-year-old Daisy had wandered away from her home. It is believed she was looking for her dog.

I close the page. I can’t read any more. I can’t look at that picture – those innocent eyes boring into me, piercing my soul. She was five years old – the same age as Dylan. I close the window, my stomach heaving, a wave of dizziness and nausea washing over me, and I rush to the toilet and throw up.

I stand up shakily. A bit of vomit has got caught in a strand of my hair.

Daisy Foster. I never knew her name