Page 77 of The Tapes
‘Are youstillpretending you don’t need me?’ Nicola says, and then: ‘I was in the next room. All those times listening to you whine about your mum… you don’t know how often I almost told you, just to shut you up.’
I stare. ‘Youkilled her?’
‘She was threatening my dad with a gun. She was extorting my family. What do you expect? I slit her throat the same way I slit that bitch Eleanor’s.’
Her words are ice. I finally know what happened to my mother. I’d largely figured it out anyway – but it’s still shocking to hear.
Kieron at least sounds somewhat regretful about things but not his daughter. Not my supposed friend.
Nicola and I have never been truly close. But she’s still the person I talked to when I thought I might lose custody of Faith; when I thought I was going to prison.
And the whole time, she knew what she’d done.
But there’s something else going on here. A seething annoyance in Kieron’s tone. ‘How were you so careless?’ he hisses.
‘When?’ Nicola replies.
‘With the gun. How?!’
‘It was buried! I couldn’t leave it in the house, could I? You told me to get rid of it after the cinema.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘I did! I buried it at the back of the house – but a fox or something must have dug it up.’
‘You should never have had it outside in the first place. There are so many times you’ve almost ruined everything.’
‘I told you, I was carrying the gun because it made me feel safe!’
This is a conversation that has probably raged between them many times, likely in hushed, hissed whispers with nobody else around.
‘You shot the guy at the cinema?’ I ask.
‘I was having a smoke and saw some weirdo stab someone. My daughter was inside and he was heading for the lobby. What was I supposed to do?!’
‘Let someone else deal with it!’ Kieron shouts now and his voice booms around the tight space. Despite Nicola’s assertions that he needs her, he wants to be in charge.
Nicola waits a moment for the quiet to settle. ‘I ran back through the fire escape. I was so sure someone would’ve seen and it’d all be over. I thought we’d be evacuated – but nothing happened. We all just sat there watching the film as if nothing happened.’
I know the rest, because we left the cinema as a group that day, to find police tape around the lobby and a bloodstain on the ground. My surprise was genuine but Nicola already knew.
‘You should never have been carrying it,’ Kieron hisses.
‘Did you say that when I saved you?’
‘You left it to be foundby my granddaughter.’
‘Shannon’smydaughter.’
‘And you let her find a gun. Anything could’ve happened.’
Nicola huffs with annoyance. ‘Don’t talk to me like that. None of this would have happened if you didn’t feel the need to steal earrings and keep themat your house.’
They’re both somehow breathless but perhaps it’s their mutual anger. Both seemingly want to be in control; neither seems to be.
‘I guess we’re lucky thefoxesdidn’t dig up Angela’s body,’ Kieron says – although he sounds cynical about the fox part. ‘I did tell you fingerprints can stay on something for a long time. Nobody was more shocked than us when the police came back with your mother’s prints on it.’
I only realise part-way through the sentence that he’s talking to me.
