Her Last Tomorrow by Adam Croft Read Free Book Online Page A

comes down to your word against his, doesn’t it? You say you put Ellie in the car and went back inside. Derek Francis says he didn’t see you do anything of the sort. He also says he knocked on your door earlier that morning to give you the letter he’d had delivered to his house by mistake and got no answer.’
    ‘I’ve already told you all this,’ I say, frustrated. ‘I didn’t answer because I was getting Ellie dressed. And I doubt very much it was him knocking at the door seeing as he doesn’t communicate with anyone.’
    ‘Was the letter on your mat when you came downstairs?’ McKenna asks.
    ‘Well, yes.’
    She just looks at me. ‘So it would seem that that part of his story is true. Why not the rest?’
    ‘Because he’s lying. I know exactly what happened that morning. I was there. I’m not some senile old pensioner who doesn’t know what he sees and doesn’t see.’
    ‘So he’s an unreliable witness but you still want us to question him and find out what he really saw? That doesn’t make much sense to me, Nick.’
    I can feel the weight of McKenna’s comments pressing down on me. Tasha’s face is a composition of confusion, frustration and hurt.
    ‘Why would you believe him over me? I’m the one whose daughter has gone missing. Look into his record, alright? Just look into him and then tell me you believe his word over mine.’
    ‘We have,’ McKenna says, adding another layer of atmosphere to the room. ‘We’ve looked into his record and we’ve looked into yours. His is clean.’ She leaves it hanging in the air for a few seconds before speaking again. ‘Now do you want to tell me everything?’

13

    ‘It was years ago,’ I say, closing my eyes and wishing this whole situation would go away. ‘It’s not even relevant. I was a different person back then.’
    ‘It’s very relevant, Nick,’ McKenna says. ‘And I want to hear it from your point of view.’
    Why? I want to say. So you can tell me which aspects of that don’t match what you’ve been told by other people?
    This is something I’ve never told Tasha. I’ve never kept it from her, exactly, but it’s just not something that’s ever come up in conversation. It was a dark period in my life and it’s not something I’ve been keen to talk about at any point.
    ‘What is she talking about, Nick?’ Tasha asks. This is what I really don’t need. I wonder whether this is a deliberate ploy from McKenna, asking me in front of Tasha, trying to find out if I’m the sort of guy who’d keep something like this from his wife. She’s just found out that I am.
    ‘I had a girlfriend. Angela. It was a years ago. I’d totally forgotten about it,’ I lie. ‘It was a stupid, immature relationship that should have ended long before it did. We both drank too much and smoked too much shit and one night things got too heavy. I did something stupid and that’s the end of it.’
    ‘What did you do?’ Tasha says, quietly.
    I swallow and shake my head. ‘I waited until she’d drunk so much she passed out, drove her out to the woods and tied her to a tree and left her there.’
    Tasha’s mouth hangs open as she blinks at me.
    ‘I know. It was fucking stupid. I got pulled over on the way back home. Obviously I blew over the limit so I was taken in. When they asked me where I’d been, I told them. Apparently that’s the only reason I got a suspended sentence instead of time inside. I was banned and fined for the drink driving.’
    Tasha makes a small choking noise. ‘Oh my god. That’s why you didn’t want to go to America, isn’t it? You wouldn’t have got in.’
    I nod without looking at her. ‘I was young and stupid. And I was bloody lucky, too. Another judge might have sent me down. But believe me,’ I say, holding eye contact with Tasha for as long as I can, seeing the tears misting her eyes, ‘I have never done anything like that before or since. That was the last time I got drunk.’ I look at McKenna. ‘Other than