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

me, Dylan is everything to him and I know he wants what’s best for him.

‘I won’t go to the police,’ he says at last. ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

I’ve never known Theo make false promises, apart from the obvious breaking of our marriage vows, but I’m still not reassured. ‘You can’t tell anyone. Not even Harper. Especially not Harper.’

He sighs. ‘There’s not much chance of that. I won’t be seeing her any more. We’ve separated.’

I stare at him. ‘But it’s just a temporary separation, right?’

He shakes his head. ‘No, it’s official this time. She’s moved out. She’s taken all her stuff.’

I absorb this, trying to work out how I feel about it.

‘But you could get back together.’

‘Nope. Not possible,’ he says firmly.

‘Why not?’

He looks at me directly with eloquent brown eyes. ‘Because I’m still in love with someone else. Always have been. I can’t help it.’

How many times have I fantasised about him saying exactly those words? Sometimes in my fantasies, after he’s confessed his undying love, we fall into each other’s arms and walk off into the sunset. Other times, I say something cutting and leave him to mull over his mistakes – to rue the day he treated me so badly. Right now, though, confronted with the reality, I don’t do either of those things. I am too tired and overwhelmed. Instead, I decide to completely ignore it and pretend I don’t understand what he means.

‘What do you think I should do about Delilah?’ I ask.

He sighs. ‘I really don’t know. Short of going to the police I don’t know what you can do. I’d put money on Delilah’s death being an accident. And as for the photos, if you’re right and they were sent by someone related to this girl who died, maybe they’ve made their point. Maybe they’ll leave you alone from now on.’

Theo’s wrong, I think as I drive home with Dylan in the back seat. I know this in my bones. But then Theo doesn’t really believe me about the photos. He thinks it’s in my imagination. Dylan falls asleep in the car and he’s a dead weight as I carry him in through the door and up the stairs. Still, I do feel better for talking to Theo – and maybe he’s right about Delilah (she was always eating crap). Even so, I double-check I’ve locked every door and window and I put Dylan to sleep in my bed where I can keep an eye on him. I’m not taking any chances, not where Dylan is concerned.

Twenty-nine

It rains solidly for days, a steady, dismal rain, and the temperature drops dramatically, heralding the arrival of autumn. Even though Dylan is better, I keep him off school for a couple more days and we barely leave the house. I put on the heating and we sit by the radiator, eating biscuits, doing jigsaw puzzles and watching old black and white clips of Laurel and Hardy on YouTube.

In the end I decide to tell Dylan the truth about Delilah, not the poison part, but the fact that she’s dead, and he takes it much better than I expected. He cries a little, but he seems to cheer up when I give him a packet of cheese and onion crisps and take him to the ballpark to play.

‘But won’t she be lonely without us?’ he asks, tucking into a burger in the café next door.

‘She has lots of doggie friends in dog heaven,’ I tell him.

‘What’s dog heaven?’ he asks, round-eyed.

‘There are bones and dog biscuits everywhere and lots of cats to chase, I expect.’

‘And everything smells like poo,’ he chuckles, wiping away tears and snot.

‘Oh yuck, trust you to think of that,’ I laugh.

For a few days it feels as if Dylan and I are living in a safe, little bubble and I barely think about Charlie or the photofit. Fake it ’til you make it. That’s what they say, isn’t it? Well, I spend so much time pretending to Dylan that everything is okay that I start to believe it too. I almost convince myself that Delilah’s death was just a sad accident and that Charlie’s killer has forgotten about me.

But once Dylan is back at school and I’m alone in the house again, reality comes crashing back. Whatever I’ve tried to tell myself, I know that it’s not realistic to hope that this will just blow over, that this person tormenting me is going to just give up and go away. I need to know who is doing this and to find that out I need to identify Daisy’s brother and sister, because even if one of them didn’t kill Charlie, they most likely know who did. Doug Foster told me that they live nearby, so I’m guessing it’s quite possible they still live in Cirencester. With that in mind, on the first morning Dylan is back in school, I scour the online BT phone directory for people with the surname Foster. There are only two in the area and I phone them both pretending to be conducting a survey, but neither of them is a likely candidate to be Daisy’s sibling. One is a lonely old woman in her eighties who wants to tell me at length about her family who have all emigrated to Australia and the other are a couple in their forties with three teenage children and no time to talk. They are the wrong age and have never heard of Daisy or Doug Foster.

Disappointed and frustrated, I decide to go back to Cecily House to talk to Adam again. He’s the key, I think. He must know something. If Charlie confided in anyone, it would have been him. I’m just about to leave the house when Littlewood pulls up outside in her panda car and trots briskly down the garden path. ‘Can I come in?’ she asks.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I was just going out but—’

‘This’ll only take a minute.’ She seems friendlier than before, maybe even a