The Darkest Summer Read online

  ‘Good idea,’ Hazel agreed. ‘I’m going to find something for us to dig with. They must have a gardener’s shed where we’ll find spades.’

  Hazel had run off into the darkness before I had time to stop her. Pushing away my squeamishness, I stripped Vinnie. I kicked his once beautiful bespoke grey suit out of the way, and stood up. This was a living nightmare. I noticed Hazel coming back. She was holding up a huge shovel that looked as if it was used for coal rather than soil.

  ‘I also found this smaller spade.’ She handed the larger one to me. ‘Quick, we don’t have much time.’

  We dug for what seemed like hours. We needed to hide all traces of him. Even though he was dead, he still had the power to hurt us. The thought was terrifying.

  Then his head moved.

  I dropped the spade and covered my mouth to stop from screaming. ‘He’s still alive,’ I grimaced, swallowing bile rising in my throat.

  ‘Shush.’ Hazel’s controlled tone was chilling. ‘We have no choice. We must get rid of him. Now, dig.’

  I slammed the blade of the shovel down into the hard earth with as much force as my exhausted arms could muster. ‘Surely this is deep enough now?’ I whispered a few minutes later, my body trembling with the effort of trying to remain calm.

  Vinnie groaned. The sound seemed to echo through the night air.

  I was too scared to look at him, even though I could hear him battling to breathe inches from my feet. ‘He’s still alive.’ I shuddered.

  ‘I can see that,’ Hazel spat. ‘Keep going. We’ll soon be finished and then we can forget about everything that’s happened tonight.’

  You might be able to, I thought. My shoulders were agony and my blistered hands stung. My heart almost stopped in my chest when Vinnie opened his swollen eyes and slowly drew his gaze up from my feet to stare at my face. I could barely breathe.

  ‘Mimi, for fuck’s sake stop staring at him. Dig. We’re nearly done.’

  Yearning for the nightmare to end, I frantically continued digging.

  ‘That should do it,’ Hazel said, eventually. ‘Right, I’ll grab him under his armpits. You take his ankles.’

  I reached down, recoiling when my palms connected with his hairy flesh. ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘After what’s happened; what do you think? Right, one, two, three…’

  His warm blood made his ankles slippery and difficult to hold. We hoisted him barely an inch from the ground, dragging him the few feet towards his makeshift grave. Straining with his weight, we then released our grip on him, dropping him into the muddy hole. He landed with a sickening thud.

  ‘It’s not big enough,’ I panicked, barely able to breathe, my heart was pounding so hard. By the look of the stunned expression on Vinnie’s battered face, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t believe this was happening.

  ‘Shut up,’ Hazel snapped, jumping into the hole next to him.

  I grimaced as her feet landed heavily next to his tanned stomach, and watched as Hazel’s muddied hands grabbed behind his knees. She pulled them up with difficulty until his feet fitted into the shallow grave. ‘There, now help me out.’

  Terrified that he might grab Hazel’s ankles, I didn’t hesitate. I took Hazel’s outstretched hand and pulled. Standing upright next to me, she withdrew her hand from mine and wiped my hands vigorously against the skirt of my ruined cocktail dress.

  He whimpered quietly. I saw him staring at me, as if he was imprinting the image of our murderous faces to savour for eternity. We stared in petrified silence as bloody bubbles dribbled from his bruised mouth. I turned away and vomited.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ Hazel said, elbowing me. I winced from the force of the nudge to my ribs. ‘We need to cover him up.’

  I noticed the sky had lightened to a salmon pink. Soon dog walkers could come through the woods for their early morning stroll. It wouldn’t do for one of them to sniff our handiwork. I shovelled the heavy soil over his body as quickly as I could manage. Closing my eyes, I willed the image of his final silent plea to disappear from the back of my sore eyelids. The muscles in my neck and back ached. I straightened up with a little difficulty and took a deep breath of the fresh morning air, relieved that we had almost completed our gruesome task.

  I opened my mouth to speak, when the earth shifted near my left foot, revealing Vinnie’s hands and face. I squealed and dropped the spade.

  ‘Keep going; hurry,’ Hazel cried.

  Picking up my spade, I frantically shovelled soil until he was hidden once more. We needed to disguise the freshly dug soil, so Hazel and I dragged a heavy, rotting branch, resting it over Vinnie’s grave.

  ‘We need leaves, lots of them,’ Hazel said knowingly, as if she did this sort of thing often.

  Sobbing from the trauma of what we were doing, I wiped my eyes with the back of my dirty hands. Then I searched for more camouflage to conceal our handiwork.

  Finally, we were done. Hazel and I studied the area, to see if anyone could tell what was there under the branch and leaves. We had done a good job. No one passing by would ever suspect that there was a body buried here.

  ‘We must make a pact never to speak about this to anyone,’ Hazel said.

  I willingly agreed. Who would I tell and why would I tell them?

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘Of course I bloody do.’

  We stared at each other. I wondered if my face had hardened as much as Hazel’s appeared to have done since the beginning of our trip to Scotland.

  ‘Where to now?’ I asked, glancing across the lawn at the rear of the imposing building.

  ‘I’ve no idea, but we need to go inside and get our things,’ Hazel said. ‘And remember, if you hear anyone coming, run for the shadows.’

  We took a deep breath and ran out of the darkness of the wood, across the dimly lit backyard, and into the servants’ entrance at the back of the building.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  2018 – Oakwold, New Forest

  Sera

  ‘You and Hazel killed a man?’ I still couldn’t take in what she was telling me. I stared at her, trying to focus on the fact that this was my mother talking. All these years I’d suspected she wasn’t telling me everything about her past, after all, as far as she was concerned she didn’t really have one to share with me. It never dawned on me she could be capable of something like this. How could I have missed this other side to her character that had remained hidden from me until now?

  ‘What?’ Dee looked at my mother then me, open-mouthed. ‘Are you insane?’

  My mother looked anything but insane to me. I thought of the many times she’d become absorbed by a character she was playing in a film. ‘You are serious, I suppose?’

  She nodded. ‘Who would lie about something like this?’

  I realised I didn’t know her at all. I took a deep breath to try and calm down, pressing the heel of my palms against my eyes to relieve the throbbing headache I could feel stirring. This couldn’t be happening.

  She moved over to sit next to me and rested her hand on my back. I looked sideways at her. She looked the same and sounded the same. I opened my mouth to ask the identity of the man she and Hazel had murdered, gasping when an answer occurred to me that was so horrendous I had to close my eyes to speak.

  ‘Please,’ I whispered, my voice barely audible even to me. ‘Tell me you didn’t kill Jack.’

  She frowned. ‘Who?’

  ‘Mum’s boyfriend,’ Leo said, his face pale and tense.

  She gazed at me, her mouth open in confusion. ‘Hazel’s—? No, of course I didn’t kill Hazel’s boyfriend. What do you take me for?’

  After what she had just dropped on us, the irony of her question wasn’t lost on me. I shrugged her hand off me and stood, glaring at her. How could she retain that cool veneer of control at a time like this? The nerve of her being angry with my reply made me want to shake her.

  ‘Mum, you’ve just announced you killed a man. If he wasn’t Henri
’s father, then who the hell was he?’

  She stared at me as if the name of her mysterious victim refused to part from her lips.

  ‘Vincent Black?’ Leo murmured eventually, nervously looking from me to Dee. ‘Was that the man?’

  Where had I heard that name before? I realised Mum was crying. ‘Was it him?’

  She closed her eyes. Incredible that with these revelations being thrown about her only reaction was to allow a few tears to fall. She nodded.

  ‘I once stupidly thought I was in love with him,’ she said, her voice quiet as if it was the first time she was allowing herself to hear this nugget of information.

  I walked away from the three of them, desperate for enough space to be able to think clearly. My world was falling apart and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. I bent to pick a head of lavender, lifting it up to my nose to breathe in the familiar, calming scent. She was my mother and the only other person I’d trusted since Marcus’ death. She might be able to convincingly play the part of a killer in a television movie, but for her to be able to end another person’s life in real life—

  ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, walking back to join them. ‘You must have been terrified of him to kill him.’ I looked at her tall, fine frame. She didn’t have the strength to fight a man, so this can’t have been something she had chosen to do lightly.

  ‘I need a moment to think.’ She leant her head back and stared up at the blue sky. ‘I never meant tell you.’ She gave Dee a pointed glare. ‘I’d give anything to have kept this from you.’

  She recounted her story, her usually loud voice quiet and the look in her eyes haunted. I watched her pick away the skin from around her perfectly manicured nails and wished I could put my arm around her to comfort her a little, but any interruption could cause her to stop speaking. I daren’t move until she finished explaining what had happened.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Dee shouted, standing up and knocking over my glass.

  I bent to pick it up before she stood on it. The idea of broken glass in the grass under the children’s bare feet wasn’t something I needed to deal with on top of everything else. ‘You knew?’ I asked, irritated she was overreacting yet again.

  Dee shook her head frantically. ‘No. I didn’t know anything about this man, or his murder.’ She almost spat the last word as she jerked her head around to glare at my mother. ‘You’re trying to tell me that my crazy, pisshead of a mother helped you bury a man you were both in love with?’ She sat down heavily, burying her face in her hands. ‘You’re completely mad.’

  ‘Dee, that’s enough.’ My mother’s booming voice shocked us all. Dee looked across at her, hate filling her eyes.

  I willed someone to tell me it was a sick joke. I recalled what Dee had said to start off this whole sorry confession and realised there was more to come. ‘If you weren’t going to tell me about the murder, what was the big secret you were so determined to share?’

  Mum grabbed hold of my hand and squeezed, patting it with the other hand. I could feel her trembling. ‘Dee was going to tell you that Vinnie was your father.’

  My mouth dropped open. ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘And mine,’ Dee said, her mouth slowly drawing back into a sardonic smile.

  ‘What?’ I repeated, unable to force my brain into a cohesive thought.

  ‘I asked you a question earlier,’ Dee smirked. ‘Would you care for me like a sister?’

  My mind raced. Nothing made sense.

  Mum nodded. ‘She’s right,’ she said quietly. When I didn’t move, she turned her attention to Dee. ‘When did Hazel tell you?’

  My new-found sister and I stared at each other. All these years, I’d had a sibling, and no one had thought to tell me. No wonder I had felt a part of Hazel’s family, I almost was. ‘Why didn’t you tell us we were sisters when we were little?’ I asked, my words sounding as if they were muffled behind a cushion. ‘We’d have been delighted back then.’

  ‘It might have changed many things, don’t you think?’ Dee asked.

  I agreed. ‘Mum? Why didn’t you, or Hazel, tell us this before now?’

  Sadness seemed etched in my mother’s face. ‘Because we knew you’d probably ask awkward questions.’ When we didn’t say anything to this, she continued. ‘You were both such inquisitive children, you would have wanted to go and look for him.’

  She was right, we would have done. Both of us loved any excuse for an adventure and those were sorely lacking when we were younger. This news would have come as an exciting change in our mostly uneventful lives.

  ‘We were trying to hide the fact that we’d killed a man,’ she continued. ‘Don’t forget we had to be as inconspicuous as possible.’

  I needed to glean as much information from her as I could while she was opening up to us. ‘But you lived so near to each other, yet let us believe you weren’t friends, why?’

  ‘We didn’t want anyone to see us together. We were scared Vinnie’s cronies were looking for the two of us, and—’ She hesitated. ‘It was complicated between Hazel and me. That night scarred us both. Every time I saw her I was reminded about what we’d done. It was easier to keep away from her.’

  It sounded plausible. ‘But why end up in Oakwold?’ I asked.

  ‘We didn’t plan it this way,’ she admitted. ‘We just wanted to get away from that place and took several trains until we ran out of money.’ She closed her eyes wearily, looking her age for once. ‘It’s hard knowing that at any moment your secret could be discovered. Neither of us had any other family we trusted enough to care for our children if one of us ever did have to go away.’

  Leo cleared his throat. He’d been very quiet. I’d almost forgotten he was there. ‘Obviously he couldn’t have been my father?’

  Mum shook her head. ‘No, he died four years before you were born, Leo. Sorry. I’ve no idea who your father is. You’ll have to ask your mother that.’

  ‘This is madness,’ Dee interrupted. ‘How can you expect us to believe that you, an actress who’s spent decades on television, has been hiding from anyone who might have known you back then? Didn’t you think someone would recognise you?’

  Mum nodded. ‘There was a possibility, but I was very young when this happened, my make-up was different. It was easy enough to change how I looked.’ She seemed almost proud of her achievement. ‘Even subtle changes to your appearance with colours, contouring and hairstyles can make a difference.’

  ‘Do you think the police looked for him?’

  ‘Would you waste resources on a villain you were delighted to see the back of? I wouldn’t.’ She crossed her arms. ‘I suppose they might have made perfunctory enquiries, but the people we were worried about were his cronies. Except no one came to find us. Hazel and I assumed that someone was ready to step into Vinnie’s shoes and take over where he’d left off. We probably inadvertently did them a favour.’

  ‘But your acting parts?’ I asked, wondering why she’d continue in a job that could put her in front of those looking for her.

  ‘As far as my publicity people and the papers were concerned, I was a mid-list actress, no one made too much fuss of. I reverted to being called Maureen. It was relatively simple, but it worked. Hazel and I took false surnames and came to live here.’ She paused, as if reliving it all. ‘It’s easier to hide in plain sight sometimes, you know. People tend to look hardest at a distant point and fail to see what’s right under their noses.’

  ‘Well, none of us had a clue this had happened, so you must be right,’ Dee said sarcastically. She hesitated for a moment. ‘I’d like to know, which one of you killed our father?’

  ‘Yes,’ interrupted Leo. ‘Are you, or is Mum, Vincent Black’s murderer?’

  Her face contorted with what I assumed must be revulsion at the memory of what they had done. I recalled her wearing a similar expression in a television movie a couple of years before when she had played a murderer then. Was she acting this part too?

  ‘As I sa
id, I was the one to hit Vinnie over the head,’ Mum said quietly. ‘But Hazel insisted we bury him and that’s ultimately what must have killed him.’

  The three of us sat in stunned silence taking in what she had just told us.

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ Dee snapped. ‘Are you saying he was still alive when you buried him?’

  Mum shifted in her seat and cleared her throat.

  ‘Mum?’ An icy shiver ran down my back. I willed her to reassure us that was not the case. Every part of me was trying to push this experience away.

  Eventually she nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ I shrieked in disbelief. ‘How could you do such a thing?’

  Discovering my father was some low-life creep who beat up women was one thing, but finding out that my mother had buried him alive was another entirely. I went to speak again, but could see she was flagging. Something else troubled her. What now? My head ached. She seemed to have aged ten years in as many minutes.

  Each of us stared at her, lost in our own troubled thoughts. Something niggled in my mind. I recalled the burnt piece of her letter she had made me deliver to Hazel all those years ago.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘The message I took to Hazel the day before she disappeared, what did it say?’

  She turned the dress ring on her right index finger round and round. ‘I’d discovered they were digging up the woods near the country house where we’d buried Vinnie. We were both always frightened they might find his body, but as the years went by and nothing happened, I began to relax. Then, when I read in the newspapers that the house was empty and the area was being turned a housing estate, I knew I had to tip her off. I wanted her to be careful and keep her mouth shut.’

  Leo stood up and walked around to the back of Mum’s chair. ‘Instead, Mum panicked and ran away with us.’

  I could understand Hazel wanting to take her children away from the threat of her crime being discovered. ‘But what’s that got to do with Jack?’ I still couldn’t believe the fun-loving, occasionally possessive Frenchman had been Henri’s dad.