Page 17 of Twisted Lies
All she knew was that she hadn’t wanted to leave earlier. She had wanted to spend more time with Penny, listen to what she had to say. Let her talk about her dead sister.
She put her own feelings aside, got out the car and knocked the door.
Penny opened it and didn’t even try to contain her look of surprise.
‘I’m not here in any official capacity, Penny. Trisha’s story struck a chord with me, and I’d like to hear more about her.’
‘Mum’s still at the park,’ she said, stepping aside.
‘I’m sorry we had to rush off,’ Frost said, taking a seat.
‘It’s okay. I know there’s nothing any of you can do. We think he’s going to get away with it and, despite her assurances, I know that police officer thinks so too.’
‘To be fair, they’ve done as much as they can do against Nick Morley’s propaganda machine,’ Frost said, feeling a strange need to defend the police on this occasion.
‘I know and we’re powerless to do anything about it. Somehow this thing has become all about him. I read every single article and Trisha’s name barely gets a mention. She’s the victim. He systematically broke her down physically and mentally and then murdered her, and right now no one is hearing about how special she was before she met him, or the shit she went through while she was with him.’
‘Tell me about her,’ Tracy invited.
‘Oh God, where to start? She was the reason for the cliché, and she truly did light up a room. I was five when she was born, and from the second her pudgy little hand grabbed my thumb, I was sold. I enjoyed every part of her childhood. She just loved everything. She saw the positive in everything.’
A smile turned up her lips as she remembered something. ‘When Trisha was about five or six, our mum was pulling up weeds in the garden. Trisha was horrified, cried, saying they were living things and that Mum was killing them. She gently took out the last weed from between the slabs and put it in a plant pot. She watered that bloody weed until it grew way too big for the pot. She insisted that we take it to the park and plant it so it could grow freely. And that’s what we did,’ she said, as though she could hardly believe herself what they’d done. ‘I’m not sure if that’s one of the memories that drives Mum to the park every day. We used to go there a lot.’
‘Did she rebel at all?’ Tracy asked.
‘Nope. She stayed out late one time, saw how it worried Mum and she didn’t do it again,’ Penny said, glancing at the photo. ‘She was beautiful both inside and out.’
‘How did she meet Nick Morley?’
‘Human League said it best. She really was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, or more accurately, the casino next to the zoo. She worked there three nights a week to pay for university. She was nineteen; he was ten years older. He asked her for her number, and three weeks later they were inseparable. He tried to get her to leave university, but she wasn’t having it. She got her degree, and they were married six months later. None of us were comfortable with the marriage, but though we wanted to support her and stay in her life, it became increasingly hard to do.’
‘How so?’
‘They moved to the rural part of Romsley, which doesn’t sound like miles away, but Trisha hadn’t learned to drive. She was out in the middle of nowhere, not a neighbour for miles and one bus daily, which was three miles from her door.’
‘Was he controlling before they married?’ Frost asked.
‘In subtle ways, yes. He offered her advice but didn’t push it. If he suggested a different outfit and she refused, he let it pass. He showed his disapproval but didn’t force it. She used to laugh about it, only with me. I questioned her, but she said he’d met his match with her and she loved him.’
‘And that changed?’
‘On the wedding night. He pushed her to the floor because she refused to pick up his suit and fold it. Obviously, she thought he’d had too much to drink, that it was a one-off and she forgave him. Not because he bought her a huge bouquet of flowers the next day, but because she truly believed he was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again.’
Frost felt a shiver run through her. She knew this story as well as if she’d written it herself and, in some ways, she had.
She’d had her own brush with domestic violence nine years earlier. A guy she’d been seeing for a couple of months had pushed her to the ground during a heated argument. He had been apologetic and remorseful afterwards. She had forgiven him but had been ever aware afterwards that he had introduced something new into the relationship. He had introduced fear. Any cross word after that she’d found herself backing down, agreeing with him to prevent an escalation. She’d toned herself down to please him, to avoid a repeat of the violence, until one night she’d exploded and fought back in an argument. Maybe she had wanted to know how far she could push him. Perhaps she’d been trying to force him to go against his promise. And he had. His right fist had met with her jaw. She had ended it that night and threatened him with the police if he ever contacted her again.
Maybe that’s why she’d felt compelled to return to Penny to hear more about Trisha. The reason for the shudder was that she could have been the woman they were talking about.
She tuned back in to what Penny was saying.
‘… obviously it didn’t stop there. The violence got worse and worse. She lied, of course, explained away the injuries by accidents and clumsiness.
‘We begged her to go to the police, but the more we got on her, the more she retreated. Seeing the bruises was bad enough, but for the last couple of months it was like she’d changed into a whole other person. Especially after my accident, she stopped—’
‘Accident?’
‘Yeah, I was rear-ended. Had whiplash, nothing too serious. The guy coughed to it and I was compensated, but it was like she stopped talking to me, stopped sharing because I had problems of my own. But I still saw the weight loss, the nervousness, the light disappearing from her eyes, the anxiety if her phone rang.’ Penny blinked back the tears. ‘She was missing for seven days before the police investigated, and three more days before they found her remains.’
