After She Fell: A haunting psychological thriller with a shocking twist

How could the man be so cruel? thought Alex. Did he realize what he was doing to his wife?

‘The migrant crisis. All those displaced people. That’s what it was. I wanted to help. But I—’ Cat looked bewildered. ‘If she’d left a message or something I’d’ve got back to her. She knew that. I always did.’

‘But she phoned me instead,’ said Mark.

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

‘We thought it best not to. You were busy, had a lot on your plate; we thought it was best you weren’t worried.’

‘My daughter was feeling suicidal and you thought it was best not to worry me?’ The fury was etched deep on Cat’s face.

Mark shook his head. ‘No, no, you’re not listening.’ He kept calm. ‘She never said she was suicidal, only that things weren’t going well and she wasn’t eating properly.’

‘But—’

‘Mark, Cat.’ Alex knew if she didn’t bring the conversation back to the point the two of them would be going round and round in circles and they wouldn’t get anywhere. ‘We can look into Elena’s state of mind just before she died. What I want to know is why you, Cat, think Elena was murdered?’

Cat let out a deep breath and leaned back into the cushions. ‘You will help, then? You are interested?’ She reached out and took Alex’s hands, squeezing them tightly. ‘I knew you would understand. That I could trust you. We still have it, don’t we? That tie, that closeness?’

Alex nodded. It was true. It was as if they had spoken only yesterday.

‘And you know what it’s like to lose people close to you. You know how I feel.’

‘For God’s sake.’ Mark’s calm veneer suddenly cracked. ‘I know how you feel. Don’t leave me out of this.’

‘I’m not leaving you out of this, Mark, but you still think she killed herself. I don’t.’ She looked at Alex. ‘The inquest was last week.’ She visibly winced. ‘It was horrible. Having to relive it all, listen to the lies about Elena. The details. The pitying look from the coroner as she told everyone Elena had thrown herself from the cliff. The reporter scribbling down the details in his notebook so they could fill a page of their grubby little paper.’ Cat’s eyes were glistening. ‘And that text. The one they found on her phone. I never got it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. I’d have remembered if I’d got a text like that. We were always texting, you see. The last time I heard from her was about ten days before she died. But I deleted it.’ She began to cry and rock herself backwards and forwards. ‘I deleted it because the storage on my phone was almost full. I deleted it. I keep texts from my secretary, but I deleted my daughter’s texts.’

Alex put a hand on her arm. ‘Cat, it’s all right.’

‘No it’s not all right.’ Gulping sobs escaped her.

‘Tell me what the texts said.’

‘Do we have to drag all this up?’

Cat jerked her head up. ‘Yes we do, Mark.’ She looked at Alex. ‘She said she was looking forward to coming home. Said there were things going on at the school that she had to tell me about, worrying things, she said. She said …’ Cat gulped back tears, ‘she said she had to talk to me. I asked her to tell me there and then but she wouldn’t.’ She looked at Mark. ‘But nothing about not eating or being depressed.’

Out of the corner of her eye Alex could see Mark trying to catch her eye as if to say, ‘See, no definite proof.’

‘And you don’t know what she was referring to?’

‘No. But then I got this.’

Suddenly she had her mobile phone in her hand and she turned the screen towards Alex. ‘Here. Look.’

Alex looked. It was a Facebook tribute page – she had seen quite a few of them in her time when she’d written stories on young people who had died – a special page dedicated to that person. She took the phone from Cat and scrolled through the page. It was full of the usual: ‘I love you hun RIP; You’re the best, we’ll miss ya; You’ll be an angel in heaven now.’

She looked up at Cat. ‘It’s great your daughter’s friends cared, but—’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’ Cat snatched the phone back and scrolled down, her finger moving at a frantic pace. ‘There. See.’ She thrust the phone at Alex.

Elena did not kill herself

The comment was prefaced by a picture of a silhouette – standard practice when people didn’t want a profile photo – and the name ‘Kiki Godwin’.

‘And again. Look, underneath that message.’ Cat’s eyes were bright, feverish, her hands shaking. ‘Another one.’

It’s true. Elena did not kill herself.

Again, the same silhouette picture, the same name: ‘Kiki Godwin’.

‘And if you look, everybody else posted their messages just after Elena died and in the following few weeks. These two were posted four days ago, after the inquest.’ Her excitement was palpable.

Alex clicked on Kiki Godwin’s name. It took her to a Facebook page that echoed the silhouette but had no details about Kiki Godwin. She took her own phone out of her bag, opened the Facebook app and found Kiki’s name herself. Then she sent her a friend request. Let’s see if we get any reply to that, she thought.

‘I’m guessing’, said Alex, putting her phone away, ‘you don’t know who Kiki is?’

‘No. Not at all. I presume it’s one of her friends, but then, why doesn’t she have a profile?’

‘And have you shown this to the police?’

Cat met her eyes. ‘No. Not yet. I don’t trust them like I trust you. Them and their great size thirteen boots. No finesse, no subtlety. All they’d do is scare everyone off. Nobody would talk to them, least of all Kiki Godwin, whoever she – or possibly he – might be. Anyway, they wouldn’t believe me. Even my own husband doesn’t believe me. No, I want you to look into it, Alex. Please.’

‘But Cat, the police have resources, know-how, manpower and all that.’

‘That’s what I keep telling her,’ said Mark, now onto his third – or was it fourth? – whisky. ‘Let the coppers handle it. Show them that message. Though personally I think it’s one of those trolls. You get them all the time on these sorts of pages. We’re lucky it hasn’t been worse. Sometimes there’s all sorts of filth there too. You can’t believe what people can be like.’

‘Mark, please.’

‘I’m sorry Cat, but it’s true. It should be in the hands of the police.’

‘Who think she killed herself.’

‘But you won’t have it.’ Mark tossed more whisky down his throat.

Alex thought of the articles she should be pitching, the money she should be earning. How Mark could well be right and it was a troll. It did happen; not so long ago some inadequate youth had been jailed for mocking the death of a teenager who’d thrown herself in front of a train.

She tried again. ‘Cat, you should tell the police. That’s the best. Let them deal with it. You’re a politician; it’ll go to the top of the pile.’

Cat gave a deep sigh and sat back on the settee, a steely look in her eyes. ‘They have closed the case and they won’t want to reopen it. Look, go and take a look around for me. Spend a couple of days up there, spy out the ground. Please. You can ask the right questions; I know you can. That’s all I’m asking. A few questions. You’re good at that.’

Alex looked at her helplessly. ‘Cat, I don’t know …’

All at once Cat smiled gleefully, like a little child, her eyes feverishly bright. ‘But I do. I know you can help. And your editor – Bud, isn’t it? – he thought there could be a good story in it. He was interested.’

Of course he was. He’d said as much to her. But he didn’t have to come and see the raw emotions on Cat’s face, the amount of hope she had.

‘Look,’ her friend continued, ‘we’ve even got a little cottage up there where you can stay; it’s one we use when we go – used to go – to see Elena on her free weekends. We rent it out, but the couple who were supposed to be staying there at the moment cancelled. Wedding or something. Please, Alex. I’m begging you. Two weeks – one week – and if you’re getting nowhere then call it a day. I’ll try and accept it … Elena’s death. I’ll show the Facebook thing to the police and see if they’ll do anything. Though I know they won’t.’

‘An offer you can barely refuse, hmm? Free accommodation and story you could sell anywhere,’ said Mark, looking at Alex with a barely concealed sneer.

Alex bridled.

‘Mark, stop it. Please, Alex, say you’ll do it?’

‘I’ll have to think about it, Cat.’ Did she, though? Here was a chance to help her friend – her oldest friend – find out the truth about her daughter’s death, even if that truth were unpalatable. And if she found out that Elena did throw herself off the cliff then at least Cat would know for sure. She wouldn’t live a half-life like she, Alex, had done. And she hated seeing the pain Cat was in. Perhaps she could do something to make that a little better. Then there was Elena. A beautiful girl who’d had a bright future in front of her. A girl similar in age to Gus. A girl who had grit and determination and who’d coped with the death of her father and a debilitating eating disorder. Elena deserved her help too. And she knew if it had been the other way round, if she was asking Cat for help with Gus, Cat wouldn’t hesitate.

And what about the mysterious message? The reclusive Kiki Godwin? Alex’s fingers started tingling, a surge of adrenaline in her gut: sure signs she was getting excited about a story. What if Cat was right? What if Elena’s death wasn’t suicide and this Kiki Godwin had some information?

‘It could be a good story, Alex. And I know you’ll be truthful, not sensationalist. It’ll be an exclusive. And you can have an interview with me and Mark, whatever you find out.’

‘Oh, count me out, Cat,’ said Mark, anger evident in his voice. ‘I can go so far but not that far, thank you. I’m not subscribing to this charade any longer.’ He took a few breaths, which seemed to calm him. ‘Please, Cat, let it go. You’ll make yourself ill.’

Cat stood and walked purposefully across to her husband. She took his hands in hers. ‘I have to do this, please Mark, please. I need your support.’ She leaned into his body.

Alex watched as Mark’s anger subsided. Tenderly he tucked a lock of Cat’s hair behind her ear and planted a kiss on her forehead. ‘For you, Cat. For you.’

Cat turned to Alex. ‘One other thing that makes me think – no, know – that Elena didn’t throw herself off that cliff. She was scared of heights. Terrified. She wouldn’t even go to the top of the slide on Brighton beach last year, that’s how terrified she was. She wouldn’t have gone anywhere near that edge.’

CHAPTER 5

It was no wonder Cat Devonshire was described by the broadsheets as an ‘up and coming’ Member of the European Parliament with a sharp brain and incisive mind, thought Alex, as she drove along the M11 towards East Anglia. Once Alex had agreed she would go and look into Elena’s death, Cat had gone into overdrive: organizing the house in Hallow’s Edge for her, making sure she had enough cash, promising to email over any documents that could be useful. And the last few days had been a whirlwind, what with preparing to leave her tiny ground floor flat (with garden) in West Dulwich (Tulse Hill, if she were honest), making sure the cat would be fed for however long she was to be away, telling Bud she was going up to North Norfolk and, yes, there could be a story in it, and managing to get custody of a company credit card. Bud had been rather begrudging about that, it had to be said. She did have to come back with a story of some sort now.

The only downside was that it had been difficult to explain to Sasha that she didn’t know when she was going to be able to visit again. But tell her she had, and she even thought she had seen tears in Sasha’s eyes as she left.

The heat was building, layer upon layer, the sky a pale blue as if the sun had bleached the colour out of it. The air vents were blowing warm air around the car and for the umpteenth time she wished she’d had the air-conditioning seen to. The motorway was long and boring and she still had a way to go.

She pressed the CD button and David Bowie’s voice filled the car. That was better. Now she wouldn’t think about Sasha, or about her own 18-year-old son who was somewhere in Europe trying to find himself. She hadn’t heard from him since he’d got the ferry to France two weeks earlier.

‘I’ll be fine Mum,’ he’d said as he heaved his rucksack onto his back ready to catch the bus to Dover. ‘I need to get away, you know that. Exams can wait. And I’ll FaceTime you.’ Then he gave her a kiss on her cheek and went out of the house – whistling. Whistling! As if last night’s quarrel had never happened.

It had started after supper when she took his clean washing into his bedroom for him to stuff into his rucksack.

‘Mum,’ he said, ‘I know you don’t like talking about my dad, which is why I hardly ever ask about him, but—’ He stopped and began to chew his lip.

‘It’s okay,’ Alex said, unnecessarily refolding a tee-shirt and admiring the way she spoke so calmly. ‘I understand. I just thought we had each other all these years and we were a unit. A family.’ And she had never wanted to go into details about how Gus had been conceived during a drunken, drug-fuelled one-night stand in Ibiza.

‘We are. A unit, I mean. You are my family, Mum, and you’ve been bloody brilliant. It’s just that I want to know where I come from. Who I am.’ He didn’t look at her as he carried on packing.

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.

‘I come and sleep in here sometimes,’ Cat’s voice was faint. Unbearably sad. ‘To be near her. I won’t let anyone wash the sheets. I can still smell her, just. I don’t want to lose that smell. Sometimes, if I don’t look at a photograph of her I feel as though I might lose what she looked like. Forget her face. The scar on her knee from where she fell off her bike trying to ride it without stabilizers for the first time. The birthmark on the inside of her wrist. The way one ear sticks out more than the other. Stuck out more than the other. Then I can’t stop crying.’ She looked up at Alex. ‘That’s the trouble. I can’t stop crying.’

‘I know. I understand.’ Alex nodded.

‘I know you do. You had to help Sasha through everything, despite what happened at the end. And you’ve got Gus. I know you would do anything to keep him safe. I couldn’t keep Elena safe, that’s why I’m begging you to help me. Please.’

There was no way, Alex knew, she was not going to help Cat now.

‘Would you mind if I took the laptop and phone away with me? To have a look, see what she was doing at school?’

For a moment her friend looked panicked. ‘I don’t know … I’m not sure …’

‘It might help me get a picture of her life, that’s all,’ said Alex gently, knowing the tremor in Cat’s voice was, after all she had said, due to the possibility of losing something of her daughter’s. ‘I won’t do any harm, or destroy anything, I promise.’

‘But her passwords?’

‘Leave that to me,’ said Alex.

‘She wanted to be an artist, you know. She was good enough too,’ said Cat, her face sad. ‘That’s one of hers. It’s Hallow’s Edge.’

She pointed to a painting on the wall. Oil. A landscape. A beach, the sea, white horses, groynes, all painted as if the artist was sitting on the beach. And in the corner, on the edge of the cliff … was that a tiny figure? Alex moved nearer to peer at it, but the picture dissolved into a mass of paint blobs. She moved away, further across the room, and the blobs morphed into a figure that seemed to be wearing a long coat and scarf. It could have been anybody.

‘She painted that in her last term; it was part of her Art A level. They let me bring it home. It’s lovely, isn’t it? I think it’s somewhere near the school, but—’ Catriona looked as though she was about to cry.

‘Who’s the figure in the top corner?’

Cat shook her head. ‘No idea.’ She got up and stood next to Alex. ‘I hadn’t noticed it. I didn’t look closely enough. I didn’t take enough interest. Not then.’ She gulped back a sob.

‘Cat …’ Alex hesitated, not wanting to appear intrusive. ‘Would you mind if I took a photograph of the painting?’

‘No. If you think it’ll help in some way, any way, then please do.’

Alex snapped the painting. ‘And do you have a recent picture of Elena? I’ll give it back to you, I promise.’