Page 99 of I Would Die for You

The metal ladder grinds against itself as I pull it down and lock it into place. I force a deep breath in and out of my lungs but feel momentarily suffocated as they struggle to inflate.

“Hello?” I offer pathetically, my voice not sounding like my own, as I stare up into the void.

My legs feel like jelly as they attempt to lift themselves up onto each rung, and I grip with whitened knuckles to keep myself balanced.

I stop, the top of my head level with the opening, knowing that the next step will either expose or assuage my darkest fears.

My eyes blink as they adjust to the cavernous space, delving into the pitch-black corners, searching for life. I sense it before I see it; the heat of an uninvited presence—the sickening realization that I’m not alone.

“Do you remember when we used to make a camp in the loft?” asks a voice, its sinister tone at odds with the childlike question. My chest tightens, restricting the rise and fall of my breath. “We’d smuggle all the treats up there and pretend we’d left home.”

There’s a flicker of light as a match is struck, and the wick of an oil lantern ignites. The burning flame sets Cassie’s face aglow with an amber hue.

“What do you want?” I croak, desperately willing my voice not to reveal my terror. “Where’s Hannah?”

My eyes follow the light as Cassie wordlessly moves to the far corner of the attic, where it settles upon a makeshift tent made out of bedsheets and broomsticks.

“I thought I’d show her what me and Mummy used to do for fun,” she says.

My legs buckle beneath me as my feet blindly move across the uneven floorboards toward Hannah. I picture her in there, surrounded by the soft toys she calls friends, offering them imaginary tea and cakes from the play set Brad’s mother bought her.

I want to claw at the linen, tear down this wolf in sheep’s clothing, expose the malevolence that’s being sickeningly disguised as an innocent adventure. But I stop myself, not wanting to impart my abject terror to a little girl who will wonder why I ruined her game.

“Hannah?” I choke, peering in. The muted light casts long shadows, but I can immediately tell she’s not in there.

“Where is she?” I demand. “What have you done with her?”

Cassie lets out a hollow laugh. “What makes you think I would?A guilty conscience?”

“She’s just a child,” I say, appealing for mercy.

“Weren’t we all?” comes the bitter reply. “Once upon a time.”

“Whatever this is, whatever you want, keep her out of it. No good can come from involving her.”

A barbed sneer of contempt rattles at the back of Cassie’s throat. “How did you think you were any more deserving of Dad’s estate than me?”

“I didn’t,” I say. “I always believed I was as much at fault as anyone—thatIwas responsible for what happened to Michael, to Ben… toyou. For years, I’ve thought that if I hadn’t got the drugs, you wouldn’t have found them, Ben wouldn’t have given them to Michael and he wouldn’t be dead. That cycle of events has been on repeat in my head every second of every day since—as much as I’ve tried to forget it.”

I fight to stop my jaw from spasming, my pent-up fury at what she had led me to believe at odds with needing to keep Hannah safe at all costs.

“But to find out that Ben had nothing to do with it…”

“You’ll never be able to prove that he didn’t give Michael the drugs,” says Cassie, her tone brimming with gauche joviality.

I grit my teeth as I remember Ben’s desperate pleas to the jury, willing them to believe that he hadn’t been in Michael’s room, that he didn’t know how his jacket had got there, that he would never have given him drugs, that he hadn’t touched them himself in over a year…

“I may not be able to prove that you gave Michael the drugs,” I say. “But Dad’s letter proves thatyouwere there, that you watched Michael die, that both of you allowed Ben to take the blame.”

“I think you’ve forgotten what you stand to lose,” hisses Cassie. “Not just here and now, but in a court of law. Whichever way you try to spin it, it wasyourdrugs that killed a man.”

I chastise myself for my weakness, for not doing the right thing back when I had the chance to change the course of events. WhenI should have owned up to what I’d done, instead of seeing the man that I loved go to prison for something I suspected, deep down, he was innocent of. Ben didn’t take drugs. He would never have fed Michael’s addiction. So how had I allowed myself to believe he would? Because otherwise I would have been forced to acknowledge that Cassie had lied—and that she was capable of so much more than I was prepared to accept.

“I’m not afraid to tell the truth anymore,” I say to her. “I’m tired of running away from it. And if I have to pay my dues for Ben to be vindicated, then so be it. But know that I’ll be taking you down with me.”

55

LONDON, 1986

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