The Bad Things: A gripping crime thriller full of twists and turns

She slipped her key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open all in one movement, almost falling into the hallway.

Sasha was in what passed for the sitting room; a room that had once been light and full of laughter, but with its faded blue and white striped wallpaper and cream carpet that had seen better days, was now oppressive. A two-bar electric fire in the fireplace pumped out a desultory amount of heat. There was a television in one corner, and a sofa pulled up in front of it. The curtains were half drawn and the place smelled fetid and unkempt: all a sure sign that Sasha was in one of her downward spirals. Some thirty pictures of the twins, in various stages of development, right up to the day they went missing, were arranged on every surface. One photograph had been taken in the clearing in the woods, the tartan blanket laid out, picnic basket ready to disgorge its lunch of dainty crustless ham sandwiches, slices of banana, apple, segments of tangerine. And the treat of lemonade to drink, with iced biscuits and little strawberry yoghurts to finish. A perfect day out. A few days later they were gone.

The television was tuned to BBC News, its red logo adding a bit of colour to the room. The breaking news strapline screamed out at Alex from the crawler across the bottom: Jackie Wood wins High Court appeal – conviction quashed. Pictures flashed up: Jackie Wood on the steps of the High Court smiling and waving, her solicitor by her side about to read out a statement. The words washed over her and around her.

‘Held for fifteen years…an innocent woman…rebuild my life…’

She heard the viper’s tongue in every word.

And the shouted questions from reporters: ‘How did you cope with life inside?’

‘What will you do now?’

‘Are you going to try and get some compensation?’

The sound of the traffic and blaring horns obliterating some of the syllables.

Wood smiled, and Alex saw the smug look in her eyes. She could imagine the triumph the woman was feeling and she wanted to reach into the box and grab her round her scrawny neck. At least she didn’t look great on prison life or food – she was alabaster pale and thinner than Alex remembered. Her skirt and jacket looked chain-shop cheap. She quite fancied strangling the solicitor too, though his neck was much less scrawny. In fact, the feeling was so visceral she could almost taste the air being squeezed from the man’s body. How much of any compensation was the woman going to get? Alex looked at Wood again. Three appeals and finally she’d managed to get off. Three appeals, a campaigning television producer, and a discredited expert witness and there was finally enough evidence to make two out of three High Court judges feel her conviction for the abduction and murder of Alex’s niece and nephew was unsafe. She was a free woman. At least, Martin Jessop, her accomplice, was dead and gone. Hanged himself in the first three months of his sentence.

‘I have nothing more to say, thank you.’ Wood turned and went back into the building. The newsreader moved on, unaware of the effect the news was having on both her and Sasha.

The telephone started to ring, making both of them jump.

Alex thought quickly, then picked it up.

‘’Allo?’ she said in a bad imitation of a French accent.

‘Is that Sasha Clements?’ The slightly breathless, high-pitched voice of a journalist hoping to get the first interview.

‘Non.’

‘Is Sasha Clements there, please?’

‘Non. She moved from ’ere three years ago.’ She winced, unsure her days of am-dram had stood her in good stead after all.

‘Oh.’ Disappointment in the voice. ‘I don’t suppose you have a number for her, do you?’

‘Non, sorry.’

‘Do you know where she went?’

‘I think she went to Spain.’

‘Spain?’

‘Spain.’

‘Oh. I see. Well thank you for your time.’

‘Plaisir.’

Alex cut the call and then put the receiver down on the table, wanting to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all, and wondering if she’d done enough to delay the feeding frenzy. Only time would tell.

She turned off the television and looked at her sister properly. Sasha hadn’t noticed her, hadn’t realized there was no sound or picture coming from the television. She was sitting staring at the now blank screen, tears rolling down her cheeks and her arms hugged around her body, hands tucked in the sleeves of her shirt. The material was stained red. Alex wanted to cry.

She sat beside her sister and put her arm around her, trying to ignore the fact that she flinched. Alex didn’t say anything for a moment, attempting to breathe evenly to get some saliva into her dry mouth. Then Sasha leaned her head on her shoulder and let out a shuddering sigh.

‘Alex.’ She said her name softly, like a small puff of wind. ‘I didn’t think they’d let her out. They told me the appeal would fail. They told me.’

Alex kissed the top of her head. ‘I know, my love, I know.’

‘I thought I was dealing with it, you know; living with the fact that Millie was gone, buried somewhere and we’d never find out where.’

Alex tightened her arm around Sasha. And me, and me, she thought.

‘But now—’

‘We will find Millie, you know, one day. I promise.’ And she felt the burden of that promise settle on her shoulders.

‘I don’t want you here,’ Sasha said suddenly. ‘Not you.’

Alex closed her eyes, briefly, trying not to be hurt, telling herself that her sister was like that, had been for the past fifteen years; that Sasha couldn’t hate her any more than Alex hated herself. That Sasha didn’t mean what she was saying. She didn’t answer.

They sat quietly for some minutes. ‘Sash?’ Alex said. ‘Can I look at your arm?’

A shrug.

Gently, Alex lifted Sasha’s head off her shoulder and took her arm, pushing up the sleeve of her sister’s shirt. The gash down the side of her forearm glistened wetly, but she judged it didn’t need stitches this time. She got up and went into the kitchen, finding a bowl and some kitchen roll. She filled the bowl with warm water, poured in some salt and went back to sit beside Sasha. She wiped the cut, thankful to see it had stopped oozing blood. Her movements were mechanical – if she thought too hard about what she was doing, about what Sasha had done, she wouldn’t have been able to clean up the wound.

‘Don’t take me to hospital, Alex. Please. Otherwise, I won’t be able to feel.’ She rubbed her face with her other sleeve. ‘I need to feel.’

Alex nodded. ‘Okay, but you must take care of yourself.’ She bit her lip. What she was saying was nonsense. She could never stop Sasha from self-harming. God knows, she’d tried. Their parents wouldn’t believe it was going on, not even when Sasha had to stay in hospital because she’d cut herself so badly, and not even when the local doctor had her sectioned after she’d cut her wrists – not self-harming, not a cry for help, but a real suicide attempt. But she hadn’t hurt herself this badly for months and Alex had been beginning to hope she might be on some sort of road to recovery.

Sasha looked at her with dead eyes. ‘How can I take care of myself,’ she whispered, ‘when I couldn’t take care of my children? When the woman who murdered my babies is out there again?’

There was nothing Alex could say to that.

4 (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)

It was mid afternoon and the light was already leaching out of the day when Alex left Sasha, having bandaged her arm and made her lunch, which she picked at. Alex also tried to persuade Jez to go round and stay, at least for one night. That was hard work. She knew that statistics for a couple splitting up after the death of a child were higher than average – she wasn’t sure what they were when two children were dead. But Sasha and Jez had disintegrated pretty quickly after Harry was buried, and not even the thought that Millie might come home one day was enough to keep them together. Anyway, Alex had always thought he ought to give his ex-wife more support, so she steeled herself and rang him.

‘Yes,’ he said to her, whispering fiercely down his phone, ‘I do know about the court’s decision. I am in the right place, you know.’

‘And you hadn’t thought to go round to Sasha’s?’

There was silence. ‘I couldn’t, Alex. I thought you—’

‘Yes, well, I’d been told nothing would happen before midday, but they were wrong there, weren’t they? So you can imagine what she was like when I got to the flat and she’d been watching it over and over again on bloody 24-hour news.’ She found she was whispering, too.