Page 84 of The Last One to See Him

‘I’m sorry,’ Mona whimpers. ‘It just got out of hand.’ She falls silent.

‘Talk, damn it! Why did you tell me he raped you?’

‘Because I…I was obsessed with him.’ Briefly Mona looks up before hanging her head again. ‘We did meet in that park. And I saw him there a few times. We’d chat. He was really kind to me. Friendly. No one had ever been like that to me before.’

‘Iwas!’ Kate screams.

‘I mean no boys. Ever. They just used me and threw me away.’

‘Because youletthem!’

‘I don’t need a lecture from you!’

Kate resists the urge to grab Mona and shake some sense into her. ‘You owe me! My whole life changed because of you! I could have gone to prison! Everything I’ve ever done has been tainted by Graham White’s death, by people thinking I killed him, when you’re the one who did that to him!’ Kate presses her palms against her temples. ‘Did you kill him on purpose? You told me he’d tried to kill you and it was self-defence. Was that a lie, too?’

‘Itwasself defence! I didn’t want him dead – I loved him!’ Mona shakes her head. ‘I tried to make him like me, but he wasn’t having any of it. He told me to stop and then he stopped going to the park except to play football with his mates. I was jealous and rejected and I couldn’t handle it.’ She looks up at Kate. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Kate edges back. ‘He abducted us because we broke into his house,’ she says, her voice quiet now.

‘I think he just wanted to stop me doing anything else. I…I sent his girlfriend a letter. The day before. It must have tipped him over the edge and he wanted to shut me up.’

‘You told me you weren’t going to do that. What did you say to her? More lies!’

Mona hangs her head. ‘I told her I’d been seeing him, and that I was fifteen.’

‘Why wouldn’t he just go to the police?’ Kate asks. ‘And tell them what you’d done?’

Mona shrugs. ‘He was probably terrified they wouldn’t believe him. Accusations like that don’t wash off easily. His life would have been ruined even if it never went to court. He had a business to protect. And once people get a whiff of a child abuser, they make their lives hell, don’t they?’

‘Jesus, Mona! That’s so screwed up! You ruined his life, and then you killed him.’

‘It was an accident!’

‘Do you expect me to believe that when you’ve lied about everything else?’ Kate’s chest tightens. All these years she’s taken the blame for her friend, protected her because she’d thought Mona was the victim of a paedophile. ‘You forced me to cover for you,’ Kate snaps. ‘Remember? I was only fifteen – I wasn’t thinking straight. You told me your life wouldn’t be worth living if people thought you were responsible for someone’s death and I let you talk me into it. You made me feel bad because you’d had such a troubled life and mine had been happy up to that point. I felt awful that you hadn’t had a break in life.’ Kate shakes her head. ‘But what you did to me after all that was even worse.’

2006

Kate hasn’t seen Mona since the night she killed Graham White, but every day regret has seeped into her body, spreading like cancer. She should never have gone along with Mona’s suggestion for Kate to take the blame – she didn’t want to, but she’d been too numb with shock to think rationally. And it was the flood of guilt Mona unleashed on her that cemented her decision.

Now, though, it’s time to put things right. Kate can’t do this to her mum any more – can’t let her go on thinking her daughter is capable of taking someone’s life, even in self-defence.

Her mum’s at work this morning, meaning Kate doesn’t have to lie about where she’s going. She’s already warned Kate to stay away from Mona after what she did with Kian; her mum knows nothing of Mona’s involvement in what followed.

It’s not even nine a.m., so Kate’s sure Mona will be at home, still in bed. She was never good at waking up before lunchtime. And Mona’s mum will have left for work hours ago.

Kate rings the doorbell, then stands back to look up at Mona’s window, the blackout blind shutting out daylight.

Four times she has to buzz. Then six, seven, eight. Finally, Mona’s face appears at the window, scowling. It’s a shock seeing her again after three years. A painful eternity.

Mona pulls open the window. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘We need to talk. Now.’

‘I’m sleeping. And there’s nothing to say. We agreed not to contact each other.’

Wrong. It was Mona who dictated that’s what should happen. Kate naively went along with it, no questions asked, no time to consider what she was agreeing to.

‘Let me in, Mona – or I’m going straight to the police.’

---