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‘What are you talking about?’ asked Jack gently.
Alyssa continued as though she hadn’t heard him. ‘I’ve been running for so long. Trying to be completely different from how I was back then. But the irony is, I’ve ended up just like him, wrongly thinking I know what’s best.’
‘Just like Ben?’
That stopped Alyssa in her tracks. She paused and he felt her hand slide from his. ‘You saw the letters and the note in my caravan, then? I wasn’t sure that you had.’
‘They were on the table as I left, so I couldn’t help seeing them. “I miss you, Baby. Love Ben”,’ Jack recited from memory. ‘Is Ben your husband?’
Alyssa gave a hollow laugh into the darkness. ‘No, I’ve never been married.’
‘Is he your partner then?’
‘No. Ben’s my brother. It’s just me and him.’
‘But he calls you “Baby”?’
‘It’s an in-joke. He sends on any letters that have arrived for me, and he calls me Baby in his notes because he’s ten years older than I am. I was always the baby of the family.’
Jack frowned. ‘Then I still don’t have a clue who or what you’re running from.’
A thick, soupy silence filled the cold storeroom. Then Alyssa said quietly: ‘I killed someone.’
As her words hung in the air, Jack felt a shiver run down his spine. He was trapped in the dark with two ancient skeletons and a woman who’d just confessed to a deadly crime. He should be scared and appalled, horrified even – but he couldn’t quite believe it of the cheerful woman who fed tall tales to tourists.
‘Who did you kill?’ he asked, switching his torch back on. Ghostly shadows danced in the corners of the room.
‘A man, younger than you,’ said Alyssa, her face and voice strangely emotionless. ‘I am called Alyssa, but Jones isn’t my surname. If you search online with my real name, you’ll find that I worked as a nurse and that I was implicated in the death of a patient.’
‘What happened?’ Jack asked, exhaling slowly.
‘I haven’t talked about it for so long.’ Alyssa sighed. ‘I worked with young adults who were seriously ill, and I was good at it. My work was sad sometimes because not everyone survived – just like John. But we had our fair share of triumphs. People got better and went on to have good lives. But then there was Ollie.’
She took a deep breath. ‘He was very ill but he could have got better. At least, he might have got better, if I hadn’t been too scared to stand up to him.’
‘Stand up to who? To Ollie?’
‘No, to the consultant who prescribed double the dose of drug that Ollie should have received.’
Jack paused, trying to get his head around what Alyssa was telling him. ‘But if it was the consultant who prescribed the drug, surely it wasn’t your fault that—’
‘But it was.’ Alyssa’s voice rang out around the ancient, shadowy storeroom.
‘How could it be when it wasn’t you who got the prescription wrong? Wasn’t there an inquest or enquiry or something?’
‘Yes, and the consultant was sanctioned.’
‘Were you?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well, then—’ began Jack, but Alyssa cut him off.
‘But it wasn’t the consultant who actually gave Ollie the drug that killed him, was it?’ Her voice was almost a whisper now and flooded with emotion. ‘It was me. I had misgivings about the dose he’d prescribed. I thought it was a high dosage for a man of Ollie’s build and I tried to say that, but the consultant didn’t listen. He told me that I was only a nurse whereas he had far more training and experience, so I should just do my job.’
‘He sounds like an arrogant piece of work.’
‘He was, and when I tried again to voice my concerns, he warned me that if I didn’t give Ollie his medication at once he would report me. He said’ – Alyssa’s voice wobbled but didn’t break – ‘“I’m right and you’re wrong,” and I believed him.’ The anguish in Alyssa’s voice was unmistakable. ‘Even though my instincts were telling me that I was right, I ignored them and believed him and gave Ollie the medicine. I could tell almost straight away that I’d made the most disastrous mistake.’
