Page 144 of Maybe Tomorrow

Jennifer found her voice. ‘You raped and killed an innocent woman. You allowed Anthony to go through so much unnecessary pain and suffering. You allowed me to fight for a truth that I couldn’t quite get hold of. And all the time, you knew. You knew absolutely everything that had happened. You could have stopped all the horror Alice’s family and Anthony’s family were going through. And you just sat back and did nothing.’

‘The longer it went on, the harder it was to say anything. There was more and more to lose with each passing day.’

‘You have caused so much agony to so many people, including me, and our unborn children,’ Jennifer started crying again.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I don’t think you are. I think you’re sorry you’ve been caught. If you were genuinely sorry, you would have admitted it a long time ago and faced the consequences, because the truth would have meant more to you than anything else. But it didn’t. Did it?’

‘I never meant to hurt you,’ he cried.

‘Another lie.’ She turned to Freya. ‘I need to leave.’

‘OK.’ Freya helped her up.

‘No. Jennifer. Please don’t go.’

‘I can’t stay here.’

‘Please. Don’t.’ Malcolm jumped up from his chair and ran to her. ‘Jennifer. Please, I can’t do this on my own. I need you. I love you. I’m sorry.’ He grabbed her.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she screamed, shaking him off.

‘Constable,’ Freya instructed the PC to grab Malcolm and pull him off Jennifer.

She held Jennifer by the shoulders and took her out into the corridor where Chris was still waiting.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked when he saw Jennifer in floods of tears.

Jennifer was cradling her stomach and sobbing uncontrollably.

‘We need to get her to calm down,’ Freya said.

Jennifer’s cries were loud and echoing off the walls.

‘What did he say to her?’

‘I’ll tell you later. Help me get her somewhere she can be more comfortable.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t…’ Freya stopped and looked down as Jennifer screamed.

Her waters had broken.

ChapterSixty-Seven

Jennifer was taken by ambulance to Whitby Community Hospital. Chris and Freya went with her and sat outside the operating theatre where she was to give birth to the twins by emergency caesarean section. Once delivered, they were sent straight to neonatal intensive care and Jennifer was sent to recovery.

In the waiting room, Freya sat in silence, a look of pure shock on her face. Chris entered with two plastic cups of orange tea from the machine in the corridor. He handed one to her. She looked at it and placed it on the table. She doubted she’d drink it.

‘I can’t believe how everything has turned so quickly,’ she said. ‘This morning, we were having our breakfast and you said you’d go to Leeds, and I’d meet you there. It was going to be a good day. Who’d have thought it would end like this?’

‘I had a feeling something like this was going to happen,’ Chris said. He took a sip of the tea and recoiled at how hot it was. ‘Bloody hell, that nearly burned my lips off.’

‘How could you possibly have known something like this was going to happen?’

‘I don’t mean exactly this. I never suspected Malcolm once. Idid think that we would know who the killer was. To be honest, I often thought it was someone on the original team; one of Bishop’s cronies. I never fitted in. I was never one of them. It was far too cliquey. As soon as I found out about Bishop paying those prostitutes to lie, I thought he knew all along who the killer was and was covering up for them.’