Mary-Jane Riley - After She Fell - A haunting psychological thriller with a shocking twist

‘Asthma attack. Elena found him. Her illnesses were a way of controlling her grief, they told us. But she beat it. She’s – she was – strong. I know she was strong. She told me she never wanted to go back to that dark place. Never ever. She started making plans. She wanted to go to Art college, you know.’ She smiled. ‘She was good enough, too. She wanted to paint. She wanted to sculpt. She wanted to design. She could have had the world at her feet.’ She put her head in her hands and began to weep. After a few moments she lifted her head up. Her face was crumpled with grief. ‘She was doing well at school – and then I married Mark.’

‘Did she like Mark?’

She frowned. ‘Not much. I was hoping the Christmas skiing holiday would be a chance to bond. He’d been the one to persuade me to send her away to school, said it would be better for her and for my career.’

‘And what did Elena think about that?’

‘She seemed okay, at first. But I knew she hated it. I would have tense calls or abrupt texts. Then, in the summer term, the term before she died, she sounded, I don’t know, happier I guess. More settled.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘I don’t know. I was so pleased she seemed to be settling in that I simply accepted it. I didn’t bother to find out. I didn’t bother to try and get to know my daughter.’ She looked around the room. ‘And now, this is all I know of her. Cuddly toys, boy bands she’d grown out of, and a dubious taste in literature.’

‘Cat,’ said Alex, ‘I will find out what happened. I will get to the truth, though you may find you won’t like it.’

Cat grabbed her hand. ‘The truth. That’s all I want.’

Alex hoped to God it was. She knew how much the truth could hurt.

Putting the photo frame down, she crossed to the window and looked out over the sea to the endless horizon, suddenly realizing what it was she was feeling. Lonely, that’s what it was. Her son was halfway across the world, okay, maybe an exaggeration, but that’s what it felt like; her sister was in a mental institution; her parents were old and frail and didn’t want to know: there was no one in the world who cared where she was or what she was doing. Except Bud, maybe. He had always looked out for her and took her on as a freelancer at The Post when she’d fled Suffolk for London two years ago. She’d gone from writing profiles about the good, the bad, and the dangerous, to more investigative stuff: she had that instinct; the ability to nibble away at a story looking at all the angles: digging into its core. She hadn’t had time to feel lonely, to seek out companionship, someone she could talk over the day with.

Not to say she hadn’t had offers, but sharing a bed with another journalist was not for her: too much shop talk. No, she preferred brief encounters, a bit of fun, bit of a laugh then goodbye before anybody got hurt. At least, that was the theory. Didn’t always work. One brief encounter had produced Gus, so that was a bonus. But two not-so-brief encounters had brought her nothing but heartache. The most recent had been with someone she thought she could love, and had even begun to trust: he’d moved in, got to know her son. But he had betrayed her. Since then, she had kept dalliances short and sweet.

Moved in. Getting to know her son. And the two of them had got on. Very well. What had Gus said about finding his father? That a friend was helping.

A friend.

Bloody buggering hell. Malone. Her erstwhile lover. The undercover police officer who had almost – not quite – broken her heart after she had allowed herself to fall in love with him. Scratch that. He had broken her heart. Malone had wormed his way into her life and into Gus’s life. Then she found out, quite by chance, he was married. And what was worse, had got married as part of an investigation he was running. What did that say about his attitude to women? She hadn’t spoken to or heard from Malone since she’d found out that special little nugget of information and had thrown him out of her life.

Her hand shook as she thumbed through her contacts on her phone. There it was. His mobile number. She wondered if it still worked or if he’d had to change it because of being chased by women. She stabbed the button.

It rang.

‘Hallo?’

It was his voice: she would know it anywhere.

‘Malone.’

‘Who is this?’

‘You bloody well know who this is, Malone. Alex.’

‘Well, it’s been some time; you can forgive a man for not recognizing your voice.’ He sounded amused. ‘How are you doing?’

She felt irrationally upset to realize that her name had not come up on his phone. She pushed the feeling aside. ‘Have you been talking to Gus about his father?’ The silence at the other end of the phone told her everything. ‘Malone, what the fuck do you think you’re doing interfering? How dare you? How dare you?’ She found she was shaking. ‘It’s up to me to tell him about his dad, not you. I will tell him about his father when I see fit. Is that clear?’

‘But you don’t know much about him, do you? You told me that. Gus came to me and asked for help. Look, I’m fond of the boy and I’ve got the contacts.’

‘So …’ she spluttered, ‘so frigging what? I should never have said anything about him to you.’

‘You didn’t tell me much.’

‘I don’t know much, that’s why,’ she shouted down the phone, his calm voice making her even angrier.

‘I know. But his first name and where he worked at the time was a good start.’

‘Malone. It still has nothing to do with you. Nothing. Do you understand? You are Out. Of. My. Life.’

‘Well, I have been for the last couple of years. Tell me, how are you keeping?’

‘Nothing to do with you.’

‘Work?’

His quiet tone – as if nothing had happened between them, as if he hadn’t broken her heart, as if she hadn’t kicked him out – made her see bright, bright, angry red. ‘Work is fine, thank you. Absolutely fine.’

‘What are you doing, Alex? Writing about pop stars? Reality TV? Fashion features?’

She heard the sneer in his voice and the mist became even redder. ‘I’m looking into a possible murder, actually. The daughter of an MEP.’ The words were out before she could stop them. Why did she respond to his goading so?

‘Just be careful, Alex.’

‘Oh … just fuck off. And leave my son alone. I forbid you to have any more to do with him.’

She stabbed the off button.

God but she needed a drink.

Snatching up a cardigan, she had just reached the front door when she heard a ringing from inside the house. A landline. Ignore it, she told herself, it wouldn’t be for her. But the ringing continued: insistent, compelling.

Bugger. It was like a Pavlovian reflex: the need to answer, just in case there was a story at the end of it.

She went back into the house towards the sound of the ringing and found the phone in the corner of a windowsill in the dining room.

‘Hello?’

There was silence at the other end.

‘Hello? Who’s there?’

Still silence, though she thought she could hear the soft sound of breathing.

‘Look, I know there’s someone there. Do you have something to say?’

There was a click as whoever was on the other end of the line put the phone down.

She looked at the receiver in her hand. What was that all about?

On the piece of well-kept grass outside the Green Man, people were sitting at picnic tables with pints of beer and glasses of wine. A lighthouse painted with red and white bands dominated the skyline a couple of hundred metres from the pub. A couple stood outside smoking. The place looked welcoming: an open door and buzz of voices spilling out onto the street, hanging baskets and tubs of tumbling early summer flowers – petunias, geraniums, busy lizzies – Alex’s horticultural knowledge stopped there. Honeysuckle scrambling over a fence scented the late evening air.