Page 80 of Perfect Wives
Beth shakes her head, hands cradling her bump protectively. ‘It makes me feel sick. She wasn’t coping. We both saw it, but that doesn’t excuse what she did. She blamed Jonny for everything. She saw him as the one thing standing in the way of a life she could actually deal with.
‘She used us,’ I reply. The words taste bitter in my mouth as fresh hurt cuts through me. ‘She made us be her alibi without us even knowing, and when it seemed like that wasn’t enough and it looked like the police investigation was closing in, she pretended to be Keira. She made us confess to a murder she committed.’
Beth is quiet for a moment before she next speaks. ‘I’m trying to work out how she did it all.’
‘Like what?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. It was just so…premeditated. Her phone was on the table the night in the pub. She must have been recording us. She was the one who brought up how much she hates Jonny first. But we heard Keira’s voice on those voice notes. How did she do that?’ I close my eyes for a moment. There is so much I can’t wrap my head around. I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand what Tasha has done.
‘It must have been fake,’ Beth says. ‘You saw what Keira was like just now. I don’t like the woman, but there’s no way she was lying.’
‘So how did Tasha do it?’ I ask.
‘She must have used one of those AI voice copiers. She had a recording of Keira’s voice from the night in the pub. She probably used that. Then made sure the messages disappeared so we couldn’t listen too closely.’
‘She always had a phone in her hands too,’ I say. ‘I thought it was her normal phone, but it must’ve been the one she was sending the messages on pretending to be Keira.’
Beth nods. ‘We thought she was just looking at the messages the same as we were, but she must’ve been deleting them right in front of us.’
‘But the man…the runner?’ I ask.
Beth’s body tenses. Her face pales. I don’t need to ask to know she’s thinking how close she came to killing that man. ‘She must have made it all up,’ Beth says. ‘A way to keep us scared and desperate. She shouted stop, remember? She probably never meant for it to get that far. Maybe she thought we’d never go through with it. The ultimate bluff.’
We’re silent as we step through the gates. The twelve grand, red-brick houses glow with the autumn sunlight streaming into the close. The hedges are neatly trimmed, the hanging baskets filled with bright flowers. It looks beautiful. Perfect even. But it’s not. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.
The children race ahead and begin a game of stuck in the mud in the middle of the close.
‘I’m sorry about you and Nate,’ Beth says, voice tentative. I can feel her watching me, searching my face for answers.
I nod but say nothing. Even now, even after all this, I’m struggling to tell her I’m leaving.
‘I don’t know what to do now,’ I say.
Beth looks tired. ‘I guess we go home. Try to carry on with our lives.’
I don’t know what that looks like. I’ve been pretending for so long. Holding it together, painting on bright smiles and saying my mantras, and suddenly I’m tired of it all. I have Oscar. That’s all that matters. I know we’ll be OK.
I glance at Jonny’s house. A shiver races down my spine. I think about what he knew. About how many times he threatened to expose me to Nate.
He was scum. A predator. You reap what you sow. And he deserved to get what was coming to him.
I hated Jonny.
I wanted him dead. But I didn’t kill him.
I didn’t do it.
FORTY-TWO
TASHA
The cell door shuts with a clang that feels like it rattles my bones. Panic climbs up my throat – a scream fighting to get out. I blink, taking in the space. I thought the interview room was bad, but this…this is worse.
The cell is barely bigger than a cupboard. Pale-blue walls, cold concrete floor. A raised slab of the same, topped with a plastic-covered mat that reminds me of the gym mats Sofia uses at school. There’s a stainless-steel toilet in the corner and a sink, and nothing else. The fluorescent light overhead hums with an incessant pulse that adds to the pounding in my head. What the hell just happened?
Everything moved so fast. The rush to Keira’s house. Seeing the girls safe. The flood of relief. For one moment, it had felt like everything might be OK again. We’d done it. We’d found them. They were laughing. Happy.
Accusing Keira. Laying it all out. Everything she’d done. And then…bam! It was me. The phone ringing in my bag. The look on their faces – Georgie’s shock, Beth’s horror. The betrayal I saw in their eyes. I tried to explain, to tell them they were wrong, but the words wouldn’t come fast enough. I saw the wall go up between us, and I knew, in that moment, I’d already lost them.Even Sató’s expression was hard, like she was convinced of my guilt too.
