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

Alex tried to smile. ‘Darling, you are a wonderful person and—’

‘Mum. Who is he?’

‘Gus.’ How she so didn’t want to do this. ‘What’s brought this on?’

‘Tell me. You see, when I was younger I figured he was probably a Premiership footballer, or an actor, or a rock star.’ He laughed. ‘But then as I got older I thought maybe he was a murderer or a kiddie fiddler.’

‘His name was Steve,’ she said, smoothing the tee-shirt flat.

‘Steve who?’

‘I don’t know.’

He turned to look at her. ‘You must.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. I was in Ibiza on a newspaper jolly. We went to a club. He was the DJ there. I was young; it was my first taste of freedom; I didn’t know what I was doing – there was free alcohol, some drugs – and I ended up going back to Steve’s place.’ Every word made her feel ashamed.

‘And you never wanted to find him?’

‘No.’

‘Not even for my sake?’

‘No.’

‘That’s so selfish, Mum, so bloody selfish.’ She could see tears in his eyes.

‘I’m sorry Gus; I never wanted to hurt you. I thought it was best left alone.’ She wanted to cry too.

‘And you wouldn’t have said anything, even now, would you? Even now that I’m eighteen and about to go off travelling. Unless I’d asked.’

‘Gus—’

‘Well, I’ve got news for you. I’m going to find him.’

‘How?’

‘With the help of a friend,’ he said coldly, before turning away from her.

She left his room.

Now she turned up the volume on the CD player, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel in time to Bowie, singing along with him, loudly and tunelessly: determined not to worry about Gus. He was a grown-up now.

Merging onto the A11 she began to feel she was in East Anglia proper, for the first time in two years. She thought about Cat, about Mark, and about Elena. At first sight, Elena’s death seemed such an open-and-shut case. The coroner had thought so, too. A teenager for whom everything had got too much. A teenager with problems. Was that what had made her take her own life? But why so close to Christmas? And what about the text that had been found on her phone?

Mum, I don’t think I can do this any more.

On her phone but not sent. Why?

She’d been depressed in the past. Had suffered from anorexia. Alex drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Christmas – the lead up, the day itself – was always stressful, always the time when domestic violence increased, marriages broke up, people killed themselves; why shouldn’t it be the season when Elena felt she couldn’t go on? She’d crept out of school in the middle of the night (how easy was that these days? In all honesty, Alex’s experience of boarding schools was Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers books with their jolly midnight feasts and Harry Potter and magic goings-on – not exactly an in-depth knowledge), found her way to the end of the road that ended abruptly, falling away to the beach. Then she’d apparently thrown herself off the cliff road and down onto the rocks below before the tide had come in and dragged her poor broken body out, then in again; leaving it on the shoreline waiting to be found. What a waste.

According to the newspaper article about the inquest, it was an open-and-shut case. And, of course, her mother couldn’t believe her beloved daughter would do such a thing, would reach such a deep and dark place that she could see no other way out.

Yet Cat’s absolute conviction that it wasn’t so open-and-shut had begun to chip away at Alex. Who had Elena spoken to in those last days, hours? Had the school noticed anything amiss? Had she become depressed and anorexic again, or was that just a convenient excuse trotted out by the school, the police, the authorities? The inquest seemed to exonerate the school of all blame. But still. Wouldn’t they have noticed something about her behaviour in the days leading up to her death? Shouldn’t they have noticed? Would you pay the thirty-odd thousand pounds to the school if you didn’t expect some modicum of pastoral care? And she knew how much Cat regretted sending Elena to the boarding school. ‘It was because I was away so much,’ she’d told Alex, as if wanting Alex to absolve her from some mortal sin. ‘I – we – thought it was best. And I had just got married.’ She’d looked shamefaced. ‘So selfish. Now I wish I could have all that time back with her, all the growing up I missed. All the worries she must have had going to a new school. And what did I do? Texted her. Some mother I am.’

Through Thetford and after – the tall conifers at either side of the road reaching up to the sky, and David Bowie changed for Lou Reed. She ought to try and get into some of the new music, but she liked the old rockers. Always had since hearing them on her father’s old record player as a child.

The road stretched on as the sun became even higher in the sky. Skirting round Norwich – a city she loved and had missed – then up to the flat of The Broads, passing farm shops, bed and breakfast places, garden centres, a huge solar farm that went on for miles, and churches, always churches, some with the unusual round tower. Then on to the busy town of Wroxham, teeming with early summer visitors who spilled from the paths onto the narrow roads. As she went over the little bridge she glanced at where the boats were moored and thought about how she had never taken a boat out on The Broads. Maybe, she mused, she would rectify that this summer. Perhaps take … who? With a lurch she realized there was no one she could take. Gus would be away for the whole summer, and Sasha? Well, Sasha wasn’t likely to be out on day release or whatever they called it anytime soon.

Her mind drifted back to her friend.

‘Would you like to see Elena’s bedroom?’ Cat had asked.

Alex nodded. Of course she would; it might give her a bit of an insight into the teenager she had never known.

She followed Cat upstairs, and stood for a moment on the threshold of the room. She wanted to get a sense of her daughter, a feel for her. What sort of girl had she been? She knew how difficult it was being a teenager in this day and age – Gus proved it – so she had sympathy with both Elena and Cat as far as that was concerned. It was hard growing up in a world that expected you to be perfect, expected you to either succeed well or fail badly; there seemed to be no middle ground.

It was obvious Cat had changed nothing since Elena had left for the start of the Christmas term the year before. Alex had a sudden flashback to Sasha who hadn’t been able to give away Harry and Millie’s clothes and toys for years. Eventually Alex had stepped in and taken all the stuff to the Red Cross shop in Sole Bay. It had broken Sasha even more.

Elena’s room was that of a typical teenager, though maybe less messy, as she hadn’t been there the whole time. Posters of bands Alex hadn’t heard of were Blu-tacked on the walls. A flowery vintage cover on her bed. Poetry books, Harry Potter, The Twilight series, Judy Blume books were lined up on the shelves. Adult books too: Belinda Bauer, Lee Child, Antonia Honeywell, Jojo Moyes. An expensive iPod dock and computer sat on a sleek glass desk. A laptop made up the triumvirate.

‘I presume she had a computer at school? And phone?’ asked Alex.

‘Oh yes,’ said Cat, sitting on the bed, her hands absent-mindedly brushing the duvet cover, tears not far from her eyes. ‘The laptop on her desk there, that’s what she used. The police took it away but couldn’t find anything. The phone’s in her drawer. I didn’t want to look through it.’ She swallowed. ‘It seemed too much like prying.’

‘Hmm.’ Alex knew that if there was no suspicion of foul play the police would have had only a cursory look at Elena’s electronic stuff; they didn’t have the resources to do a thorough job unless it was absolutely necessary.