Page 33 of The Girlfriend’s Secret

HAVEN

It’s time this family saw things from my point of view.

It’s time they heard the truth.

‘I really didn’t want to have to do this,’ I say as my boyfriend and his parents stare back at me. ‘I hoped there was another way. I hoped I was wrong. But I don’t think I am.’

I take a deep breath and begin.

‘When I was messaging Valerie, she told me her grandson was coming to visit her,’ I say. ‘She was talking about Scott.’

‘I know,’ Liane says. ‘I saw the message on her phone.’

Of course she did.

‘Well, then you’ll also know that Scott’s visit was the day Valerie died.’

‘And you think that means our son killed her?’ Frederik says, looking at me like I’m deluded, which is weird because he has always been so welcoming to me since I got here. More than welcoming, in fact, and I think I know why. I’m not blind. I’ve caught his eyes lingering on me a second or two longer than they should sometimes. He’s attracted to me. That’s okay, he’s just a man and I’m just a woman, though there has been no suggestion he will do anything to take things further. He loves his son and from what I can tell, he loves his wife too.

‘What I’m saying is, Valerie told me Scott was going to her house,’ I explain. ‘Then she died. Coincidence?’

‘She fell down the stairs,’ Liane repeats because she said this earlier in the conversation. ‘And I visited her that day too. I was the one who found her. Scott wasn’t there.’

‘But that doesn’t mean he hadn’t been,’ I say. ‘He could have left before you got there.’

‘Why would he push her?’ Joel asks me.

‘I don’t know, maybe because of the inheritance he knew he would get when she died. The same inheritance you told me about when we were on the plane home after we heard Valerie had died.’

I know Joel will recall the conversation we had at 38,000 feet in which he mentioned to me that his grandmother had told him several times over the years that, when she was gone, she would leave her family with a significant sum to help them all with whatever they chose to do in life.

‘I didn’t think much of it at the time,’ I go on before Liane interrupts me.

‘Really?’ she scoffs. ‘Your ears didn’t prick up at the sound of an inheritance coming Joel’s way, considering both of you had spent all your money travelling around Australia?’

‘No, not at all,’ I insist, and I’m telling the truth, not that Liane knows me well enough to know that. ‘I just wanted to make sure Joel was okay because he was really upset about his grandmother. But I started to think about it a lot more when I heard what Scott said at the wake.’

Liane goes quiet again.

‘When we got here, I was suspicious of Scott, having known he had been due to visit Valerie on the day she died,’ I say. ‘I got even more suspicious when I overheard him talking to someone at the wake about his mechanic business.’

‘What about it?’ Joel asks me, and if it feels weird to have my own boyfriend form part of this disbelieving audience, I remind myself it only makes sense that he would be unsure about this too, because this is his brother I am talking about.

‘I heard him say that business hadn’t been going great lately, but he had a feeling it was going to pick up soon,’ I say, which is the truth. That’s exactly what I heard Scott say to somebody who was asking him about his work at the wake.

‘Life as a mechanic is always up and down, Scott knows that better than anyone,’ Frederik says. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

‘Because he was downplaying how bad things had really been,’ I say then.

‘How would you know that?’ Liane asks.

‘The same way you could have known if you had only looked,’ I say, which might sound a little harsh, but it is true. ‘You could have looked online at his business accounts. They are right there on Companies House, just like any other UK company that is legally required to publish their profits.’

Liane doesn’t respond to that, presumably because she knows what I have just said is right and it’s not my fault she never bothered to look. But why would she? Unless she had good reason to and maybe she never did. I didn’t either until I was worried Scott might have something to hide. Like the famous saying goes, there’s no smoke without fire, and just because no one else in this family noticed the signs that something was wrong in Scott’s life, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t.

‘After hearing what he said at the wake, and also having been aware he had been due to visit Valerie on the day she died, the possibility occurred to me that he might have really needed some money for his business,’ I go on. ‘And that was confirmed when I saw his latest set of accounts online and how he had an outstanding loan that was overdue, as well as the fact that he had very little in savings in his company account. He was still operating, but he was in debt and it couldn’t last forever.’

‘So from all that detective work, you think Scott killed his grandmother for her money,’ Frederik says, and the way he used ‘detective’ tells me that he thinks I’m just some silly person who has watched one too many crime shows.