C.L. Taylor - The Accident - The bestselling psychological thriller

I said nothing. I was still trying to make sense of what he was trying to say. I think he was finding fault with Steve rather than me so why did I feel bad, like I’d done something to encourage him by wearing the wrong thing or being overly friendly.

‘Suzy?’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Suzy?’ James said again. ‘Please don’t be angry. Please don’t hate me.’

‘I don’t hate you. I just don’t understand you sometimes.’

‘Let me rectify that.’

‘How?’

‘Let me take you home. Let me show you where I live.’

‘They’re teenagers, Sue. What did you expect?’

‘I know.’ I dip a piece of cotton wool into the bowl of warm water next to the bed then wring it out and dab it gently across Charlotte’s forehead. Three days have passed since I went to speak to Liam and Ella and I’m still smarting from Judy’s parting remark.

‘Show me a teenager that opens up to adults and I’ll introduce you to Santa,’ Brian adds. ‘Honestly Sue, would you have spilled your secrets to some middle-aged woman when you were in your teens? I know I wouldn’t.’

‘No.’ I meet my husband’s concerned gaze and shake my head. ‘I wouldn’t. I just thought they might open up to me because Charlotte …’ I tail off. Neither of them showed the least interest in helping our daughter.

Brian shrugs. ‘I don’t know why you’re surprised, Sue. Kids fall in and out of love all the time and they switch their friends like they’re going out of fashion. Teenagers are fickle, darling. Surely you know that?’

‘I do but …’ I place the cotton back in the bowl of water and pick up Charlotte’s hairbrush. ‘… she’d been friends with Ella since primary school and they’ve had their spats but they always made up before. And as for Liam,’ I tease the brush through Charlotte’s long dark hair, ‘she’d have done anything for him. She adored him. And I’m supposed to believe she dumped him because she’s a fickle teen? It doesn’t make sense.’

Brian turns another page of his newspaper then shuts it, folds it in two and rests it on his lap.

‘Sue …’

I continue brushing Charlotte’s hair, smoothing it down with my hands so the ends lie flat over her shoulders.

‘Sue, look at me.’

‘What?’ I don’t look up.

‘You don’t think you’re getting a bit …’ he pauses. ‘… obsessed, do you?’

‘Obsessed?’

‘With Charlotte’s accident, acting like there’s some big conspiracy when the truth is …’ he pauses again. ‘… it was just an accident. A terrible, unpreventable accident. I understand how helpless and powerless you feel – I feel exactly the same way – but giving her friends the third degree isn’t going to make her magically wake up.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I start, then fall silent. I still haven’t told him what she wrote in her diary. I nearly told him about it a couple of days ago but then he snuck out of bed at six o’clock in the morning. At first I thought he was in the toilet but when he hadn’t reappeared after half an hour I got up to look for him. He wasn’t anywhere in the house, neither was Milly. It was the second time in as many years that he’d taken her out for a walk.

Something’s going on and there’s only one person I can talk to about it.

Mum’s sitting in her favourite place, by the window in the hard-backed armchair I covered with a lovely Laura Ashley print a few years ago. She doesn’t look up when I walk into the room.

‘Hello Mum.’ I move a pile of towels and laundry onto the floor and perch on the edge of her single bed. There’s nowhere else to sit.

My mother doesn’t acknowledge me so I try a different tack. ‘Hello Elsie. How are you today?’

This time she turns around. Her forehead creases with confusion. ‘Who are you?’

My heart sinks. She doesn’t recognize me. Mum has good days and bad days. Today, it seems, is not a good day.

‘I’m Sue,’ I say. ‘Your daughter. I bought you a present.’

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