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‘For God’s sake, Lottie, just admit what you did,’ screams Simon, his voice raw with emotion. ‘Hasn’t this gone on long enough?’
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Lottie yells at Simon, the tears starting to fall again. She turns, pointing at Jennie. ‘It was yours.’
What the hell …?
‘I didn’t kill Hannah,’ says Jennie, feeling as if a knife is twisting in her heart. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘You might not have done it, but you caused it,’ Lottie says between sobs. Her mascara-smudged eyes are teary and bloodshot. ‘We’d planned to have a party, but when Hannah arrived, she was carrying a rucksack. She said she wasn’t staying and was only there to say goodbye.’ Lottie glares at Jennie, her hatred clear in her eyes. ‘She said she was leaving White Cross and starting a new life in London with you.’
She was coming. She didn’t abandon me.
Tears prick Jennie’s eyes but she blinks them away. She has to get the truth. ‘Why didn’t you let her go?’
Lottie sighs. ‘I was afraid. I begged her not to go. Honestly, I literally got on my knees and begged. But she didn’t care. She said she was sick of me clinging to her and she wasn’t going to let me hold her back – she was going to be a supermodel.’ Lottie’s voice breaks into a sob. ‘She told me to buy some other friends because paying someone was the only way I’d get them to hang out with me.’
‘What happened next?’ asks Jennie, fighting the urge to shake Lottie or worse. The woman has lied for thirty years about Hannah’s death. They all have.
‘It was my worst nightmare,’ says Lottie, her voice getting louder and higher-pitched. ‘I was already drunk, and her words tipped me over the edge. I said maybe I could be a model too and we could go on jobs together, but she told me I wasn’t model material. I felt utterly crushed. I mean, how could she say something so cruel? She only seemed to care about modelling and you.’ Lottie takes a breath. ‘She wouldn’t shut up about how her face was her ticket out of White Cross and I … I just couldn’t take it any more. I was desperate for her to stay. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just grabbed the nearest thing to me and I threw it right in her face.’
‘The hydrochloric acid?’ says Jennie, her voice a whisper.
Lottie nods. The tears cascade down her face. ‘I was so angry at her. I thought maybe if her face was messed up then it’d ruin her chances of being a model. Then she’d have to stay here, with me. I never meant for it to do that to her.’
Horrified, Jennie reluctantly imagines the scene. Hannah screaming blue murder from the agonising burns, the others in shock at what Lottie had just done. Then all of them panicking that someone would hear – afraid to be exposed for their drug-taking, their drinking and now this horrific violence.
That wouldn’t have killed her, though, and the acid certainly couldn’t have broken her hyoid bone. As she looks from Lottie to Simon and then Elliott, she realises what happened next.
Elliott must have stepped in and strangled Hannah – that’s why only he has acid burns on his palms. But Jennie doesn’t believe it was an altruistic act. She holds his gaze. ‘It was you?’
Elliott doesn’t deny it. He stays silent as he wrestles with his conscience, with the knowledge that his life is about to implode.
Then the tension goes out of his shoulders, as if he’s finally freed from carrying the burden of what he did thirty years ago. His expression is earnest. His tone sincere. ‘She was screeching in pain; I’ve never heard anyone scream like that before. It was awful; I can still hear it in my nightmares. The logical, most humane thing to do was to stop her pain. No one should ever have to endure that.’
Devastated, Jennie fights to keep her emotions in check. Elliott – her friend, a man she’d always thought of as kind and honest, someone she felt love for – had calmly snapped Hannah’s neck because it was the ‘logical’ thing to do. ‘Why didn’t you call an ambulance? Why didn’t you get her help?’
Elliott closes his eyes a moment as if reliving the horror of the past. ‘Hannah wouldn’t, couldn’t, stop screaming. Her face was a mess, she didn’t look like herself any more. She was in agony, and it was sickening to watch. We were all afraid the janitor would hear and come to investigate.’ His tone hardens. ‘I did what had to be done.’
What had to be done?
Jennie swallows down her rising nausea. Murder is never an act of kindness. Elliott was meant to be Hannah’s friend. He should have called an ambulance, they all should. But instead they only thought of themselves, fearing the repercussions of their lawbreaking just as they were about to take flight as young adults. Awfully, selfishly, they snuffed out Hannah’s life and buried her. It wasn’t ‘what had to be done’. It was a heartless, grim act of betrayal.
She bites her tongue, too afraid her anger would be obvious in her voice, in her words, and would stop his confession. Nodding, Jennie waits for Elliott to continue.
‘It was Simon who buried her.’ Elliott looks over at Simon. ‘He got down into the trench the construction workers had laid the pipes in and dug a section of it deeper. He put Hannah’s body in the hole he’d made, then covered her up. With the pipe on top, no one was any the wiser.’
‘If Rob hadn’t insisted we have another big-bang party that night, things wouldn’t have kicked off,’ says Simon, bitterly. ‘He was to blame. Rob caused Hannah’s death.’
‘No,’ says Lottie, shaking her head. She glares at Jennie again. ‘It was your fault. If you hadn’t filled Hannah’s head with dreams of running off to London, none of it would’ve happened. We wouldn’t have argued, and Hannah would still be alive.’
Jennie stares at her, unable to comprehend how Lottie can be so utterly delusional as to blame her for Hannah’s death. She loved Hannah like a sister. They had a future all planned out: how they’d escape White Cross and their shitty family lives. But Lottie’s actions destroyed that. Elliott killed that life dead the moment he choked the breath from Hannah.
‘Like hell it is.’ Fighting back emotion, Jennie tries to keep her voice calm. ‘You’re all responsible for what happened. You have to take responsibility.’
‘But it was an accident,’ says Lottie, tearfully. ‘I never meant to hurt her. You have to believe me.’
‘I had no choice,’ says Elliott, wringing his hands. ‘She was in agony. I had to act.’
‘We were just kids, and we panicked,’ says Simon. ‘We were high and drunk. Everyone does stupid shit when they’re young.’
