Page 96 of The Last One to See Him

Harper can tell Ellis is distraught, but still she corrects him. ‘She’s not your wife any more, Ellis. You need to accept that.’

Ellis shifts his feet. ‘I know! But that doesn’t mean I don’t still love her. She’s the mother of my son. We’ll always be family. And that’s why—’ He stops short and stares at Harper. ‘Why are you so concerned about Kate all of a sudden? You wanted to destroy her life! How do I knowyoudidn’t arrange for someone to attack her?’

‘Because that fire changed everything,’ Harper says. ‘It’s not likely that a woman who could rush back into a burning house to save a child could also be a cold-blooded killer.’

Ellis fixes his eyes on the floor. ‘I know the truth, Harper. Finally, after all these years Iknow.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The truth about Kate. And I think you need to know it too. Everyone does.’

For a moment, Harper falters. Has she been wrong to trust Kate? Or is Ellis gaslighting her? ‘What are you saying, Ellis?’

He takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve just been with Jennifer Seagrove. She was Graham White’s ex-girlfriend.’

‘I know who she is. Go on.’

‘I’ve been in contact with her. For months now. Because I know Kate’s been lying about what happened back then.’

Harper swallows the lump in her throat and waits for Ellis to continue.

‘I first reached out to Jennifer about a year ago. Something was bothering me about Kate’s story and I wanted to find out the truth. I…I think I suspected that she might have…known Graham White.’

‘What do you meanexactly?’

Ellis takes a deep breath. ‘I mean – I wondered if he’d done something to her. You know – groomed her into having some kind of relationship with him. Child abuse. That’s what I mean.’

Harper stares at him, numb with shock.

‘So I managed to track down Jennifer and we struck up a kind of friendship. I suppose she found it okay talking to me as I had nothing to do with the past. I didn’t know Kate then. I think maybe she saw me as another innocent victim in all the lies.’

‘What lies?’ Harper holds her breath; she doesn’t want to hear thatKate killed Graham White deliberately. She’s been so sure that she could trust Kate after all.

‘Jennifer admitted she had a letter that was sent to her the day before Graham died,’ Ellis continues. ‘It was from a schoolgirl, claiming she was in a relationship with Graham. It had so many details that Jennifer couldn’t ignore it. Times and places they’d meet, that sort of thing. And all of it tied in with when Jennifer wasn’t with Graham. But it’s been years and Jennifer couldn’t find the letter to show me.’

Harper considers this. ‘Jennifer could be lying about it, then. Where’s the proof?’

‘What would be the point?’

Harper’s not sure – all she knows is that everybody lies.

‘And I believed her,’ Ellis says. ‘Now even more.’ He sighs. ‘I went round there tonight because after she emailed me, she’d called me and told me she’d finally found it. She’d put it inside an old notebook and had only just come across it when she was packing to move house.’

‘Just tell me,’ Harper says. She will face whatever it is she needs to.

‘The letter was exactly as Jennifer had said. A confession from a fifteen-year-old girl. Explaining she didn’t want the affair on her conscience, and she wanted Jennifer to know what kind of man she was with. But the thing is – it wasn’t Kate’s handwriting.’

Harper’s eyes widen. ‘What? How can you tell? She was fifteen when she wrote it.’

‘Handwriting doesn’t change that much. This girl’s writing was completely different to Kate’s. The shape of the letterY. It wasn’t Kate’s writing at all. Nothing about it was similar.’

‘So who wrote it, then?’

‘I managed to track down some old school friends of Kate’s on Facebook. And they all kept coming up with the same name. Kate had a best friend called Mona Shaw. I found her on LinkedIn and messaged her. She didn’t want to talk to me at first but I told her I had the letter she wrote, and that handwriting experts would be able to determine that it was hers. But she never got back to me. What if she’s the one who attacked Kate? I think Kate might have threatened to finally tell the truth, and that’s what this is all about. Maybe Jamie too.’

Harper can’t see how. ‘But Kate said it was a man.’

‘She could have been mistaken. Or Mona could have got someone to do it for her.’ The urgency is back in his voice. ‘We need to find Kate now. Are you sure you don’t know where she could have gone?’

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