Robert Goddard - Sight Unseen

'I spent that night at a hotel opposite Euston station. Early next morning, I went back to Wimbledon. It was risky, of course. I knew that. But I had to see Sally again. I had to tell her I believed her and ask her… what the fuck I was supposed to do next. I waited for her in the park for hours. Hours and hours. She never turned up, obviously. She was already dead by then. I didn't find that out till I read it in the paper next morning, though. I was checking through it to see if I'd been reported missing. It looked like I hadn't. Then I saw Sally's photograph and the words in the headline: FOUND DEAD.

'They'd killed her. I was certain of that. Not Roy and Jean. But whoever they'd told about her. Whoever was behind the whole crazy fucking thing. They'd ordered her death like they'd ordered Tamsin's abduction – my abduction. Eddie Waldron might have carried out the order. If not him, then someone like him. But who actually did it doesn't matter. What matters is who gave the order. And why.

'I still don't know the answer. And back then I didn't even want to find out. I was so frightened. So alone and so frightened. There was no-one I could trust. Sally had said my real parents had been suspiciously eager to believe Radd's confession and that's how it looked to me too. Like they might be in on it as well, whatever it was. I couldn't fit all the possibilities inside my head. I was just… running scared.

'So that's what I did… I ran. For a long time. For years. India. Hawaii. South America. All over. I went wherever I wouldn't be known. A guy I met in Nepal fixed me up with a fake French passport and I became Chantelle Fontanet. I'll always be Chantelle now, Shadow Man. Never Cherie. Never even Tamsin. Chantelle is them added together. Them transcended.

'But not forgotten. You can only run for so long. Sooner or later, pretending you don't care what the truth is about your life doesn't cut it any more. Last summer, or winter where I was, in Brazil, I came face to face with the realization that I couldn't leave the mystery alone any longer. That I had to try… to find the real me… and the answers to all those questions.

'Sally had told me Oliver and Jane were divorced. She'd also told me Jeremy was living with his father here in Jersey. Whatever was behind my abduction, however much my real parents knew, I felt sure Jeremy had to be innocent. He was only ten years old at the time, after all. I reckoned he was the one member of the family I might be able to trust. Might. I had to check him out first. I came to Jersey and tracked him down to St Aubin. I watched him going out with his sailing classes. I spied on him at the flat. I hung around, trying to work up the courage to approach him.

'As it turned out, I didn't have to. He approached me. He'd noticed the attention I was paying him and one day he surprised me on the steps up to Market Hill. Demanded to know what I was up to. I ummed and ahhed a bit. And then… then he said he recognized me. What would you call it? Sibling instinct? I don't know. But it was true. I saw it in his eyes. Just as he saw something in mine. "It's you, isn't it?" he said. "You've come back." And I had.

'Jem was on pretty poor terms with Oliver by then. He didn't quite trust him any more. Or Marilyn. Things had never been the same since Radd's confession, he said. There was no good reason to believe Radd was telling the truth. But they did. That left Jem out in the cold. The way he saw it, my turning up was his reward for keeping the faith. He was… exultant. High on the joy of it. So was I. Those first few months, last summer and autumn… were the best. Just the absolute best.

'We rented a flat in St Malo. It seemed safer to spend most of our time together in France. Once the sailing season was over, Jem was hardly ever here. I had him all to myself. We were careful. I dyed my hair. And we never used mobiles. Too easy to trace, Jem said. He came up with the idea of coloured contact lenses as well. And he taught me to stop doing that thing with my lower lip that had caught Sally's eye in Hello! People must have taken us for boyfriend and girlfriend. I suppose that's how it felt to us too, in a way. It was a kind of romance. A voyage of rediscovery, Jem called it.

'But there were still those questions, niggling away at us, itching to be asked… and answered. It seemed worse for Jem than for me. Our parents were two people I'd never known. But he'd loved and trusted them implicitly. He needed to know the truth more than I did. He couldn't let it go.

'It was Marilyn he was most suspicious of. She was spending more and more time in London. Oliver and her were virtually separated. When I described Eddie Waldron to Jem, he thought it sounded like a man he'd once seen Marilyn with, at the marina in St Helier. She came over for Christmas. Jem was expected to spend the holiday at Eden Holt and it would have looked odd if he'd refused, so off he went. He got into a row with them about Radd, he told me afterwards. And he asked Marilyn a lot of pointed questions about how she and Oliver had met.

'He got more of a reaction then he'd bargained for. He was due to join me in St Malo on New Year's Eve. The day before that, when he was shopping in St Helier, he spotted Marilyn on the other side of the road, hurrying out of a bank, with a brown-paper parcel in her hand, looking… furtive, he reckoned. She didn't notice him and he followed her into Royal Square, where he hung back and watched as she sat down on a bench and unwrapped the parcel. Inside were two small antique books. Well, Marilyn's no book collector, is she? Jem didn't know what to make of it. But he was more than curious. He was suspicious. Specially when she tore the front page out of each of the books and folded them away in her handbag. Then she put the books into a carrier-bag, chucked the wrapping paper in a bin and headed off.

'Jem followed. And you can guess where he followed her to. Quires, in Halkett Place. He watched her through the window from behind a delivery van on the other side of the street and saw her slip the books out of the bag and onto the shelf. Then she left.

'Jem let her go, then went into the shop and took a look at the books. When he saw what they were, he knew he had to buy them. They were evidence. Evidence Marilyn had been eager to get off her hands. He'd got hold of a transcript of the original inquest at the time of Radd's confession to check for contradictions. So, he knew what you'd told the coroner about Griffin and the special edition of the Junius letters. And there they were. Minus the flyleaves. The fact that Marilyn had torn them out clinched it for him. His probing over Christmas had panicked her. She'd decided to cover her tracks. Maybe she'd meant to get rid of the books for years but hadn't bothered to. Maybe the distance opening up between Oliver and her was a factor. Maybe she didn't expect to be back in Jersey that often. It doesn't matter why she made her move that day. What matters is that Jem caught her in the act.

'I wish to Christ now he hadn't. He'd still be alive. We'd still…' She swallowed hard. 'Sorry. Can't stop now, can I? Can't go all weepy on you.

'The Junius letters were clearly the key to it all, but Jem didn't really understand why. He couldn't get the idea out of his head of using them in some way to expose the truth – and to punish Marilyn for her part in it. Eventually, he decided to construct a message out of words and phrases in the letters and send it to three people outside the family he hoped could be goaded into going back into the case. Sharp. Wisby. And Hollins – the policeman who put Radd away. Looks like Hollins ignored the letter. But Sharp and Wisby didn't. They rose to the bait.

'Jem didn't kill himself because he was afraid you'd expose his campaign to his parents, y'know. He did it to shield me. To draw a line, with me on the safe side of it. He was spooked by the ruthlessness of whoever's behind all this. He felt guilty for stirring up trouble for me. He didn't quite believe they'd killed Sally, y'see. But when they killed Radd? Then he believed. He didn't know where they'd stop. He wanted the truth to come out. All he got for his pains was unwelcome attention from you and Wisby. And he was worried who might follow after you. You meeting me was the last straw, I reckon. He was determined no-one else would get the chance. So, he sent me to St Malo, knowing he never would meet up with me there. And then he went to finish it with you and Wisby the only way he could.