When they sat him in the interview room at Beckford station, he thought at first that the humiliation was more than he could bear, but bear it he did. What made it easier, he found, was the surprising sensation of relief. He wanted to tell his story. If it was going to come out, then he should be the one to tell it, while he still had time, while his mind was still his own. More than just relief, there was pride. All his life, there had been a part of him that had wanted to tell what had happened the night Lauren died, but he hadn’t been able to. He had held back, out of love for his son.
He spoke in short, simple sentences. He was very clear. He expressed his intention to make a full confession to the murders of Lauren Slater in 1983 and Danielle Abbott in 2015.
Lauren was easier, of course. It was a straightforward tale. They had argued at the house. She had attacked him, and he had defended himself, and in the course of that defence she had been seriously wounded, too grievously to save. So, in an effort to spare his son the truth, and—he admitted—to spare himself a prison sentence, he drove her to the river, carried her body to the top of the cliff, and threw her, lifeless now, into the water.
DS Morgan listened politely, but she stopped him there. “Was your son with you at this time, Mr. Townsend?” she asked.
“He didn’t see anything,” Patrick replied. “He was too little and too frightened to understand what was happening. He didn’t see his mother get hurt, and he didn’t see her fall.”
“He didn’t watch you throw her from the cliff?”
It took every ounce of his strength not to leap across the table and smack her. “He didn’t see anything. I had to put him in the car because I couldn’t leave a six-year-old alone in the house during a thunderstorm. If you had children, you would understand that. He didn’t see anything. He was confused, and so I told him . . . a version of the truth that would make sense to him. That he could make sense of.”
“A version of the truth?”
“I told him a story—that’s what you do with children, with things they won’t be able to understand. I told him a story he could live with, one which would make his life liveable. Don’t you see that?” Try as he might, he couldn’t stop his voice from rising. “I wasn’t going to leave him alone, was I? His mother was gone, and if I went to prison, what would have happened to him then? What sort of life would he have had? He would have been put in care. I’ve seen what happens to kids who grow up in care, there’s not one of them who doesn’t come out damaged and perverted. I have protected him,” Patrick said, pride swelling his chest, “all his life.”
The story of Nel Abbott was, inevitably, less easy to recount. When he discovered that she had been speaking to Nickie Sage and taking her allegations about Lauren seriously, he became concerned. Not that she would go to the police, no. She wasn’t interested in justice or anything like that, she was only interested in sensationalizing her worthless art. What concerned him was that she might say something upsetting to Sean. Once again, he was protecting his son. “It’s what fathers do,” he pointed out. “Though you might not be aware of that. I’m told yours was a boozer.” He smiled at Erin Morgan, watching her flinch as that punch landed. “I’m told he had a temper.”
He said that he arranged to meet Nel Abbott late one evening to speak about the allegations.
“And she went to meet you at the cliff?” DS Morgan was incredulous.
Patrick smiled. “You never met her. You have no idea of the extent of her vanity, her self-importance. All I had to do was suggest to her that I would take her through exactly what happened between Lauren and me. I would show her how the terrible events of that night unfolded right there, on the spot where they took place. I would tell her the story as it had never been told before; she would be the first to hear it. Then, once I had her up there, it was easy. She’d been drinking, she was unsteady on her feet.”
“And the bracelet?”
Patrick shifted in his seat and forced himself to look DS Morgan directly in the eye. “There was a bit of a struggle, and I grabbed her arm as she was trying to pull away from me. Her bracelet came off her wrist.”
“You ripped it off—that’s what you told me earlier, isn’t it?” She looked down at her notes. “You ‘ripped it off that whore’s wrist’?”
Patrick nodded. “Yes. I was angry, I’ll admit. I was angry that she had been carrying on with my son, threatening his marriage. She seduced him. Even the strongest and most moral of men can find themselves in thrall to a woman who offers herself in that way.”
“In what way?”
Patrick ground his teeth. “Offering a sort of sexual abandon he might not find at home. It’s sad, I know. It happens. I was angry about it. My son’s marriage is very strong.” Patrick saw DS Morgan’s eyebrows shoot up, and again he had to steel himself. “I was angry about that. I ripped the bracelet from her wrist. I pushed her.”
PART FOUR
September
LENA
I thought I wouldn’t want to leave, but I can’t look at the river every day, cross it on my way to school. I don’t even want to swim in it anymore. It’s too cold now, in any case. We’re going to London tomorrow, I’m almost all packed.
The house will be rented out. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want people living in our rooms and filling up our spaces, but Jules said that if we didn’t we might get squatters, or things might start to fall apart and there would be no one there to pick up the pieces, and I didn’t like that idea either. So I agreed.
It’ll still be mine. Mum left it to me, so when I’m eighteen (or twenty-one, or something like that) it’ll be mine properly. And I will live here again. I know I will. I’ll come back when it doesn’t hurt so much and I don’t see her everywhere I look.
I’m scared about going to London, but I feel better about it than I did. Jules (not Julia) is really odd, she’s always going to be odd, she’s fucked up. But I’m a bit weird and fucked up, too, so maybe we’ll be fine. There are things I like about her. She cooks and fusses around me, she tells me off for smoking, she makes me tell her where I’m going and when I’ll be back. Like other people’s mums do.
In any case, I’m glad it’ll just be the two of us, no husband and I’m guessing no boyfriends or anything like that, and at least when I go to my new school no one will know who I am or anything about me. You can remake yourself, Jules said, which I thought was a bit off because, like, what’s wrong with me? But I know what she meant. I cut all my hair off and I look different now, and when I go to the new school in London, I won’t be the pretty girl that no one likes, I’ll just be ordinary.
JOSH
Lena came over to say goodbye. She’s cut all her hair off. She’s still pretty, but not as pretty as she used to be. I said I liked it more when it was longer, and she laughed and said it’ll grow back. She said it’ll be long again next time you see me, and that made me feel better because at least she thinks we’ll see each other again, which I wasn’t sure about, because she’ll be in London now and we’re going to Devon, which is not exactly close by. But she said it wasn’t that far, only five hours or something, and in a few years she would have her driver’s licence and she’d come and get me and see what trouble we could get into.
We sat in my room for a bit. It was kind of awkward because we didn’t know what to say to each other. I asked if she’d had any more news and she sort of looked blank and I said, about Mr. Henderson, and she shook her head. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. There’s been lots of rumours—people at school are saying that she killed him and pushed him into the sea. I think it’s rubbish, but even if it isn’t, I wouldn’t blame her.