Page 102 of The Last One to See Him

Daniella nods. ‘Stay here.’

Alone in the kitchen, Kate pulls herself up, slowly making her way to the door. She can hear familiar voices. Urgent and questioning. Then Harper is rushing towards her, grabbing Kate’s arms to steady her.

Behind Harper, Ellis runs to Kate. ‘Jesus! What did that monster do to you?’ He glances at the trail of blood on the floor.

Kate can barely stand, but this is nothing compared to what Rowan would have done if Daniella hadn’t come back. ‘I’m okay,’ she says. She falls into Ellis, and he manages to grab her before she falls to the floor.

Kate opens her eyes, disorientated until she focuses on the square tiles on the bright white ceiling, then the crisp white hospital sheets covering her body. It all floods back to her: Rowan. Daniella coming back to their house. Saving her life. Harper and Ellis turning up – how did they know where she was?

‘Hey, you’re awake.’

She turns to see Ellis sitting on the chair by her bed. ‘Where’s Thomas?’ she asks. Right now, she wants nothing more than to see her son.

‘Don’t worry – he’s fine. He’s with Harper.’ Ellis offers a faint smile. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like I’ve been stabbed in the stomach.’ Kate tries to laugh but intense shooting pains fire through her body and instead she groans.

‘It’s not something to joke about, Kate,’ Ellis says, reaching for her arm. ‘You could have been killed.’

Kate tries to pull herself up. ‘Where’s Rowan? He killed Jamie. He might try to come here and?—’

‘He can’t hurt you now.’ Ellis gently squeezes her arm. ‘After he ran from his house, he jumped off Chelsea Bridge. He’s dead, Kate.’

Kate should be relieved to hear this, but she’s not. Now Rowan will never have to face the consequences of what he’s done. Death was the easier option. And now she’ll never have the answers she needs about Jamie.

‘Why did he do that to you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kate says. ‘We’ll never know. But… I need to tell you something about Rowan.’ Sick of all the lies, it’s time for Kate to tell Ellis the truth about her affair.

He listens silently and then takes her hand. ‘Is that why he killed Jamie?’

‘Maybe.’

Ellis shakes his head. ‘Let’s only look forward now. You’re free, Kate.’ He takes her cannula-free hand. ‘Harper told me you thought I was the one who killed Jamie. And that I attacked you. I can’t bear the thought of you thinking that, even for a second. All I’ve ever done is try to protect you.’

Kate pulls her hand away. ‘It was all those lies you told.’

Ellis buries his head in his hands. ‘A while ago, I started looking into what happened with Graham White. It was after you said something weird in your sleep one night.’

Kate frowns. ‘What?’

‘You don’t normally talk in your sleep, but this one night you were mumbling something about how Graham White had got away with what he’d done. Something like that. It was a bit garbled but that was the gist.’ He looks at Kate again. ‘It scared me, Kate. I…I thought you must have been lying to me about not knowing him and him just attacking you randomly.’ He hangs his head. ‘I needed to know. I thought you must have had some kind of relationship with him, and that maybe you’d killed him out of revenge for…for grooming you. I just needed to know the truth. And you’d never talk about it. I wanted to help you.’

‘I was never seeing him,’ Kate says. ‘It was nothing like that.’

‘I know that now,’ Ellis says. ‘But remember you’d never talk about it? It was eating away at me. But now I know it wasn’t you who was seeing him.’

Kate stares at him. ‘How?’

Ellis explains that Jennifer Seagrove showed him the letter from the girl Graham was supposedly sleeping with. ‘It wasn’t your writing, Kate. Do you know who wrote that letter?’

She nods. It’s time Ellis knew the truth. ‘I’m sick of all the lies. My whole life since I was fifteen has been a lie.’ She hesitates. ‘Apart from you and Thomas.’ Kate tells him the truth about what happened that day, when Graham White threw her and Mona in his van. And how Kate has kept Mona’s secret until now.

He listens, open-mouthed, until she’s finished. ‘Why would you protect her all these years? Everyone in your life believed you’d killed someone!’

‘Because she blackmailed me. And threatened me. Plus I didn’t know the truth. Initially I thought I was protecting her – she needed a break in life. She’d had a rough childhood, and then I thought she’d been raped by him. But I just found out that was all lies – he hadn’t laid a finger on her. Mona had met him in the park and become obsessed with him, but he was having no part of it. It made her angry and she waged a hate campaign against him.’ Tears slide down her cheeks. ‘And I helped her, because I thought he was a paedophile.’ Kate swipes at her tears.

‘But he did kidnap you,’ Ellis says. ‘He hit you. Why did he do that? Maybe he did want to?—’

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