Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (primary phonics .TXT) 📕

her phone, she’d sent herself the sound file. It was too late. There was nothing I could do.

She said I had three options. I could go to the police, tell them I lied and risk getting done for perverting the course of justice. I could let her take the recording she’d made to the police. Same outcome, maybe worse. Or, I could give her money. It didn’t feel like much of a choice. I didn’t know then that money was never going to be enough.

At first, I just took money from the company account. By now you’ll know, of course, that I’d moved the accounts offshore to make it harder for Rory to find out. Looking back, I can’t believe how naive I was. I’d meet her in the new development, hand her the cash in envelopes. But of course, it was never enough. She kept coming back.

But even as I was giving her the stacks of fifties from the company safe she was starting to worm her way into our life. Turning up at your antenatal class, making friends with you. I didn’t even know her name, so it meant nothing to me, all this talk of Rachel, your new friend. She was laughing at us, she must have been.

I only found out later that she was blackmailing your brother, too.

It was when she said she wanted the money from the house that I really lost it. She deserved it, she said. Her baby deserved the sort of life that we had. She called it justice. I went too far that night, I admit that. I hadn’t meant to grab her throat that hard. But it was like she wanted to destroy us.

I told her to forget it, to leave us alone, for good. She did the opposite. She turned up at our house, that very same night. Our anniversary. And you told me this was her – your new friend, Rachel. And that was when I saw that I couldn’t scare her. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Having her in the house was like being slowly suffocated. She wouldn’t rest until she’d taken our home, or put me in prison, or both. I’m sorry, Helen. I am. But in the end, it felt like the only way. She had to be stopped. She left me with no choice.

You know the rest. Charlie had left the cellar, gone outside to find Katie. I took a coat from the pile in the hallway, so I could hide the brick inside it. And then I found Rachel, wearing that velvet dress. I told her I’d made a decision, that I had worked out how to get her the money quickly. I pulled her down to the cellar, and I closed the door behind us. And then I did it.

I thought I could make it look like an accident. But every time I tried to leave the cellar, I could hear people on the other side of the door. And there was so much blood. On my hands, on the brick, on the coat. Spreading out behind her head, like I’d knocked over a tin of paint. And then when I looked closer, it wasn’t just blood. Something white and translucent. Something that told me there was no way back. In the end, I panicked. The concrete just seemed like the only way. I thought I could make it go away. For you, for us. I was wrong.

I’m so sorry about Rory, about what I put him through. I didn’t know it was his coat I’d taken. I hadn’t planned it like that. But when I realised – I suppose it just presented itself as an easy solution. I know how insane that sounds. I think I really did lose my mind, for a while.

I am sorry, Helen, about your beautiful house. I’m sorry about the dreams you must have now. I hope they are nothing like mine. I’m glad that, unlike me, you are still able to wake up from your nightmares.

My lawyer tells me that our son, our precious boy, is all right now, that you are both doing well. He told me the name you had chosen for him, Leo James. I say his name to myself before I go to sleep. I am sorry I was never more interested in your lists of names. I am sorry I could never think of ideas, of any names of my own. I wish I had, now. I wish a lot of things. I wish I had listened, that I had been a better husband to you, Helen. Leo James. I would never have thought of anything even half as beautiful.

I long to see him, Helen. I know I have no right to ask, but I am asking anyway. I would give anything to see my son. Even just a picture of his face. I dream of him. I dream of you both.

I am sorry, Helen. More sorry than you can ever know. Forgive me, Helen. Please, forgive me.

Daniel

HELEN

I push the playground gate with one hand, the pram with the other. Katie rushes to help me, while Charlie lifts Ruby down from the climbing frame. ‘I’m fine,’ I insist. I am learning to manage things myself.

The trees are shedding again, the golden leaves dusting the playground like confetti. There is a cool, watery sunlight, a smell of burning leaves, bonfires. I can hardly believe it’s been a year already.

Ruby wants to play with Leo, to push him on a swing. I haven’t tried him on a swing yet. I wonder whether he is still too little for it – he is still not sitting up fully yet, still toppling forward, a look of surprise in his huge blue eyes. He should be crawling by now, pulling himself up, starting to take his first steps. Every time I see him wobble over, it feels like a fish hook snagging at my heart.

Charlie says it doesn’t matter. They all do everything eventually,