I Could Be You Read online

  I Could Be You

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  A Note on Sovereign Harbour

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Part Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  To Sheila Gleeson, Clodagh Curran, Alex Gander and Fiona Walker. You women have got me through a rough few years. I love you all.

  A Note on Sovereign Harbour

  In this book, Dee doesn’t like Sovereign Harbour. In fact, the harbour is a vibrant, bustling marina with lots of bars and restaurants. It’s well worth a visit if you’re ever in Eastbourne!

  Part One

  One

  Dee

  The dead woman lay across the narrow road, speckles of sunlight spotted across her head and shoulders. The lower half of the body was twisted away from the upper half, as if someone had deliberately tried to split her in two. Her dark hair, glossy and shiny in the afternoon sunshine, spread out like an oil slick across the dust track and the sun-scorched tufts of yellow grass beneath her.

  Her legs were destroyed. A mess of dirty denim, torn flesh and blood. Lots of blood. A single indented tyre mark where her thighs had once been. A pale blue sandal, the same colour as her T-shirt, lay on the ground beside her. There was no sign of the other sandal.

  The position of the body, face down in the dirt, made it impossible for Dee Doran to see her face. She didn’t need to. She’d recognised the woman immediately. Katie Hope, her neighbour and friend, and single mother to two-year-old Jake.

  She couldn’t tell how long Katie had been lying here. A combination of heat and hangover meant Dee hadn’t left her house all morning. She tried to remember if she’d heard a car, but her sitting room was at the back of the house, facing the beach. And she’d been listening to music. Leonard Cohen’s final album blasting through her speakers, blocking out whatever had been happening out there.

  Three words skittered around her head. Hit and run. Someone had driven into Katie, mowed her down and left her to die. Here on this empty stretch of shingle coast on the outskirts of Eastbourne, where days passed without Dee ever seeing a car or another human being.

  Her stomach contracted, and she swung away from the body as a stream of puke shot up her throat and out of her mouth. Memories of the dead woman fast-forwarded through her head. Katie heavily pregnant in the weeks leading up to the birth of her son. Pushing the buggy along the bumpy track in winter, the baby bundled up so that all Dee could see of him was a pair of pale brown eyes and a cold-reddened nose. Katie’s smile, pure and perfect, when Dee said what a beautiful baby he was.

  What’s his name? she had asked, not interested but not knowing what else to say. Jake, Katie had told her. His name is Jake.

  Dee spat the last bit of vomit out, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up. She’d tried so hard not to get close to them. Cocooned in her own bubble of self-pity and grief, she hadn’t wanted to let anyone into her life. In the end, keeping her distance hadn’t been an option. It was obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes that Katie was lonely. And Dee had always been a sucker for a lost soul.

  Her chest ached thinking of Jake. Wondering where he was right now, and who would have the terrible task of telling him his mummy wouldn’t be coming to collect him.

  That was when she saw the buggy. A few feet further along the road, folded in on itself. Its metal frame twisted into awkward angles, reminding her of the dead woman. Two wheels missing. She could see one of them in the ditch. Beside the buggy was a shopping bag, which Dee guessed had been hanging on the handles of the buggy. Its contents were scattered across the path. A bunch of burst bananas; a carton of milk, split open, its contents soaked into the dusty surface of the road; a book, lying open, face down, the title in blue writing across the cover – What Every Parent Needs to Know.

  At the side of the road, something white, blinding under the cloudless blue sky. One of those parasols you attach onto a buggy to protect your child from the sun. Except the buggy was empty.

  Dee ran to the beach, slipping and skidding over the shingle, eyes scanning every inch of stone and sea and sky, her heart pounding so loud and fast it drowned out the sound of the waves rolling over the stones. Nothing. Midweek, not many people came out here, so far away from shops and other amenities.

  He was only two years old. He never went anywhere on his own. Either Dee or Katie was always with him. Over the last two months, Dee had taken him swimming two or three times a week. The thought that he might have gone into the sea alone, without an adult to stop him falling face first into the waves, was unbearable.

  She clambered back up the stones to the road, thinking she must have missed him. But like the beach, there was no one here. She held her breath, believing in some deep part of her that if she stayed completely still and silent, she would be able to hear him. She imagined him hiding behind the wall of her house, crouched down out of sight, too scared to come out.

  But nothing moved, and when she finally released her breath and checked behind the wall, he wasn’t there either. She walked back to Katie, calling Jake’s name over and over.

  But there was no child. Jake was gone.

  * * *

  Heat rose in waves from the dusty road, blurring the body and the white-coated men and women milling around it. Dee sat sideways in the back of a navy-blue car. Feet and legs outside the car, arms clasped tight around herself in a useless attempt to stall the violent shivers shaking her body. The car was parked across the lane, giving her an unobstructed view of everything happening a few feet further along.

  She had no idea how long she’d been sitting here. Hours, minutes meant nothing. She tried to make sense of what had happened, but the facts kept slipping and sliding around her head. Some part of her brain recognised that she was in shock, and she hated herself for it. She should be stronger than this. Better able to separate herself from the tragedy unfolding in front of her. She’d always been disdainful of people who hung onto someone else’s misfortune and used it to bring drama into their own empty lives.

  And let’s face it, Dee’s life was pretty empty right now. Divorced, unemployed and living alone in the house that
had belonged to her parents. If you’d told her twenty-five years ago, as a young, ambitious journalist living in London, that she’d end up back here in Eastbourne one day, washed up, worn out and jaded, she would have laughed. Her growing friendship with Katie and Jake had been the only thing that made her want to get up in the mornings. Now Katie was dead and Jake had disappeared.

  ‘Ms Doran?’

  A pair of feet on the ground in front of her own. Brown brogues, mud-coloured chinos. Dee lifted her eyes, up and up, all the way to his face. Eyes the same colour as his shoes, and a crooked nose.

  ‘Dee,’ she said. ‘My name’s Dee.’

  He smiled and held his hand out.

  ‘Detective Inspector Ed Mitchell. Ed.’

  ‘Have you found him?’ Dee asked.

  ‘You got time to answer a few questions?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you anything you want,’ Dee said, standing up so she didn’t have to crane her neck to look at him. ‘But I truthfully don’t know what happened here, and you need to understand that, because you shouldn’t be wasting time with me. You need to be doing all you can to find Jake.’

  She had a hard lump in her chest that made it difficult to breathe. Jake was so little. It was late afternoon already. He wouldn’t survive a night outside by himself.

  ‘It must have been a shock,’ Ed said. ‘Finding her like that. How are you holding up?’

  ‘I’m fine. Completely fine. Please. Tell me about Jake. What are you doing to find him?’

  ‘We’re coordinating the search right now. If Jake is out here somewhere, we’ll find him. I promise. Right now, the best way you can help is by telling me everything you know about the victim. Do you think you can do that, Dee?’

  Dee took a deep, shuddering breath. The lump in her chest shifted but didn’t disappear.

  ‘Katie’s my neighbour,’ she said. ‘Was my neighbour. She lived in the mobile home a little further along the beach from my house.’

  ‘Anyone else live there with her?’ Ed asked.

  A rush of memories. Jake and Katie playing on the beach outside Dee’s house. Dee and Jake holding hands as they braced themselves against the icy shock of waves splashing against their ankles. Jake playing with his plastic trains. Fast asleep in his bed, lying on his side with his thumb in his mouth. Running along the shingle on a sunny spring morning, slipping and sliding on the stones. Jake. Jake. Jake.

  ‘It was just the two of them,’ she said, forcing herself to focus on the detective’s questions. ‘No partner or anything like that. Her parents are both dead, and she doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. They were always together. He must have been with her when she was run over. He had to have been with her because you’ve seen the buggy and she would never leave him on his own. Sometimes, if she was going to the shops, I’d look after him for her. But he wasn’t with me today, which means he was with Katie. He was in the buggy and…’ Her voice trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. She looked at Ed. ‘Where could he be?’

  ‘What time was it when you first saw her?’ Ed asked.

  Dee paused before answering, wanting to be as exact as possible.

  ‘Three? Ten past, maybe? I remember checking the clock in the kitchen before I left. It was just after three then. I was on my way to Asda at the harbour and she was… well, like she is now. I saw the buggy and I realised Jake was missing. I went down to the sea. I thought maybe he’d run off, you know? Do you think that’s what happened? I looked but I couldn’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t go down there, right? And then I ran back to her house. It was locked, but I banged on all the doors and looked through the windows. I could see into his bedroom but there was no sign of Jake.’

  Ed had an A5 spiral-bound notebook and was taking notes with a silver fountain pen while Dee spoke.

  ‘You didn’t call the emergency services until three thirty-five,’ he said. ‘Why the long delay?’

  ‘I told you. I was looking for Jake.’

  A white tent had been constructed around Katie’s body. Dee wanted to ask how they’d got it up so quickly, but was afraid of sounding flippant, so she shut up and waited for the next question.

  ‘You were at home beforehand?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said.

  The physical effects of drinking two bottles of wine the previous night meant she’d spent the morning in bed. When she finally dragged herself up, a peek through the curtains confirmed the worst. Another blisteringly hot summer’s day. The hottest summer since God only knew when. Even without a hangover, Dee had struggled to cope with the sweltering heat of the past two months. Day after endless day of sunshine that bleached all colour from the grey and white shingle coast and turned the sea so blue it hurt her eyes to look at it.

  ‘You don’t work?’ Ed asked.

  ‘No.’

  Along with the house, Dee had inherited enough money from her parents to live comfortably for the next two years at least. She was still paying the mortgage on the London home she’d shared with her ex-husband, but hopefully those payments wouldn’t continue for much longer. The house was on the market; once it sold, her finances would improve even further.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ she said. ‘No car. No screeching brakes, nothing.’

  Ed raised his eyebrows. ‘What makes you think it was a car?’

  ‘Tyre mark across her leg. More tyre marks on the ground beside her. What else could it be?’

  ‘You drive?’

  She nodded. ‘My car’s parked around the side of my house. Battered old Volvo. It used to belong to my mother and I haven’t got around to replacing it yet.’

  She didn’t tell him she hadn’t replaced it because the Volvo, like so much else, held precious memories of her mother, and she was scared to change anything in case the memories changed too.

  ‘We’ll need to take a look at it at some point,’ Ed said. ‘You okay with that?’

  ‘Of course. How long had Katie been there before I found her?’

  ‘We’re not sure yet. Does it matter?’

  Dee said no, but she was lying. She couldn’t stop thinking how different things might have been if she’d exercised a bit of self-control last night. She wouldn’t be hung-over, for starters. And she wouldn’t have to endure the repeated flashes of excruciating shame every time she remembered what she’d done. Worst of all, though, was the knowledge that if she’d left the house earlier today, Katie might still be alive and Jake would be safe.

  ‘What can you tell me about her?’ Ed asked.

  ‘She’d been living here about two and a half years,’ Dee said. ‘She was in Bristol before that. She told me she’d always wanted to live by the sea, so when she fell pregnant, she decided it was now or never. She’s a single mum. I don’t know who Jake’s father is. Katie never mentioned him, and I never asked her about him.’

  She paused, distracted by the things she wasn’t telling Ed Mitchell. Like how pretty Katie was, especially when she smiled. How brave she was to have had a baby alone. The rush of love each time Dee saw that little boy with his hazel eyes and a smile that could cut you in two.

  ‘You were friends?’ Ed said.

  ‘I’m her landlady. The mobile home belongs to my family. And yes, she was my friend. We’re the only two households out this way; it made sense that we tried to get along as best we could. She was on her own with Jake and I felt sorry for her. So I helped out sometimes.’

  It was more than helping out, but there was no need to tell him that. Spending time with Jake had become a central part of Dee’s life. She adored him and felt privileged to share the experience of watching him grow up.

  ‘You’re her landlady but you don’t have a key to her house?’ Ed said. Then, when Dee frowned to show she didn’t understand the question: ‘You told me you couldn’t get into her house because the front door was locked.’

  ‘It never occurred to me. I’ve never had to use the key since Katie’s been living here.’

&n
bsp; ‘What about other friends, visitors, that sort of thing?’

  ‘I never noticed anyone. Apart from her students. She taught the piano. But I didn’t see anyone else call to see her.’

  ‘You sure?’ Ed said. ‘Seems strange, don’t you think?’

  Dee thought of her own life, hiding out here on the edge of nowhere, not speaking to anyone for days at a time.

  ‘Not really. She chose to move here. She must have done that for a reason.’

  ‘What sort of reason?’

  ‘Maybe she wanted to be alone,’ Dee said. ‘Some people do, you know. It doesn’t make them weird or strange.’

  Ed smiled. ‘I never said it did. One more question, and then I think we’re done for now. Can you tell me exactly what went through your mind when you first saw the body?’

  She didn’t answer immediately. Closed her eyes, breathed in and out, trying to slow the racing images. Katie’s body. The waves of heat rising around it. Damp patches of sweat gathering in Dee’s armpits. The physical and mental pain from her hangover making it difficult to concentrate on anything else. The stomach-churning shock as she realised who it was.

  ‘Her T-shirt,’ she said. ‘I recognised her T-shirt. I gave it to her, you see.’

  That was the start of their friendship. Dee had been sorting through her clothes, because she’d put on some weight since moving back and nothing fitted her any longer. She’d gathered up all the things that were too small, throwing everything into a black refuse bag that she planned to bring to the charity shop. Getting rid of her previous life, item by item.

  Pausing when she picked up the blue T-shirt, because she’d loved that top so much. Thinking – out of nowhere – how it would suit the young woman down the road because it was the same colour as her eyes. Seeing Katie and her boy playing down by the water later that evening and wandering out to them. Asking Katie if she’d like the top but not to worry if she didn’t, because the charity shop would love it. Vivienne Westwood, you see. And Katie had smiled and said wow, thanks so much.

  Ed asked when Dee had given Katie the T-shirt, but she couldn’t answer him, because she was remembering how Katie had asked her if she’d like to come over for dinner sometime, and Dee had said yes, thanks, that would be lovely.