After She Died Read online

  AFTER SHE DIED

  A PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

  BY

  COLLETTE HEATHER

  AFTER SHE DIED

  A psychological Thriller

  by

  Collette Heather

  Copyright Collette Heather 2018

  All Rights Reserved: This book may not be reproduced or used in any way without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews. The characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  CHAPTER ONE

  TWO WEEKS EARLIER

  “Cassie? Cassie Brown? Is it really you?”

  Cassie almost dropped the book she was holding in her black-gloved hand – the latest chick-lit thriller – and swivelled around on the spot to face the man whom was addressing her.

  At first, she didn’t recognise him. Not even a glimmer of recognition stirred in her mind.

  “I’m sorry, have we met?”

  In a heartbeat she took him in. He was a few inches taller than her five feet eight and was considerably overweight. Not fat, exactly, but his stomach was solid, straining against the dark pullover that he wore. It was hard to put an age on him, but she guessed him to be at least ten years older than her, judging from his receding hairline and glasses.

  “It’s Jon. Jon Anderson.”

  For a moment, the name meant nothing to her and she just looked at him blankly.

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t recognise you,” she said in a rush.

  She told herself that it wasn’t her fault, that his face had filled out a lot with age. Weight gain, hair loss and the addition of glasses aside, it was amazing how much the average guy’s face changed between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-six. How the hell was she supposed to know that this was Jon, as in, her-boyfriend-from-back-at-University Jon?

  “It’s been a while, I guess,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I know I look a lot older than twenty-six,” he said with a small laugh.

  “No, not at all,” she lied. “What are you doing here?”

  She was aware that her question had come out a little shriller than anticipated but seeing him here like this had put her into a tailspin.

  “I’m here on holiday, would you believe? A stag weekend, of all things.”

  “A stag-do, in Whitstable? Aren’t they normally in places like Blackpool? And what the hell are you doing in a public library on a stag weekend?”

  He laughed slightly, a little nervously.

  “I’m only here to get on the net, my phone is just about driving me crazy.”

  She licked her dry lips, her heart pounding uncomfortably hard against her sternum. This was the last thing that she had been expecting today. She had only popped to the library because her kindle had broken, this was just such an outrageous coincidence.

  “Do you live in Whitstable?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’ve been here ever since… Well, you know.”

  “Yeah. I tried to find you, you know, after what happened, but you’d just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  The silence hung heavy between them and a trickle of sweat ran down her spine. If only her stupid kindle hadn’t refused to charge, then this meeting would never have taken place.

  Don’t have a panic attack, for God’s sake. Not now. Not here.

  “I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “I guess I just wanted a fresh start. The police thought it best I disappeared too, you know, to avoid a media circus.”

  “I missed you. It broke my heart when you disappeared like that.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  She looked down at her black-gloved hands – gloves she nearly always wore because of the second and third degree burns that mainly marred her palms and the inside of her fingers.

  The scars she bore from where she had swatted at the naked flames that had consumed her mother.

  “How are you, you know, physically? I heard you were shot. And burned.”

  Cassie’s heart started to beat that much harder; this was just so painful to get into.

  “I took a bullet in the thigh, but you know this already, don’t you? I’m sure the police filled you in. And this,” she said holding up her gloved hands. “You want to talk about my burns, too?”

  She was upset, a little angry, but mainly, when she looked at him she felt sadness; sadness because she felt exactly nothing for him. Nothing except alarm that by some fluke she had managed to bump into her ex in the public library in Whitstable.

  “I’m sorry, Cassie, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just want to know, that’s all. I just want to know how you are. I wish you’d stayed in touch at least.”

  “It was a long time ago. I’d gone through hell, I didn’t want any reminders of the past.”

  And I still don’t.

  “I do get that, Cassie, really I do. But it would’ve been nice, you know, even if you just said goodbye. You broke my heart.”

  Shit. She really didn’t need this.

  “I’m sorry, Jon…” she said, her voice trailing off into nothingness.

  Her gaze darted from one end of the thriller aisle to the other, searching for an escape. But Jon didn’t want her to escape, damn it, he wanted to talk. And he wanted some answers.

  “So, you live here now,” he said, stating the obvious. “Are you working?”

  “No.”

  “No? But what about your degree in Journalism? You graduated with a first.”

  “Yeah.”

  And two weeks after I took my final exam, my twin sister flipped her lid and shot my parents in cold blood…

  It beggared belief that her ex-boyfriend was standing before her, apparently thinking that it was perfectly fine and acceptable for them to make small talk. That he wanted to discuss the moment that her life had swerved off-course and almost irreversibly derailed for good. She fought down the urge to throw up and she closed her eyes for a second as the book-lined aisle tipped around her, the council-issue, grey carpeted floor lurching under her feet like she was on the deck of a ferry.

  “I wasn’t up to holding down a career,” she said, concentrating on pushing back the panic attack and sounding normal.

  “I suppose that’s understandable, and Whitstable is a lovely town to be in. I never left Bristol, when I graduated. I got a job as a Maths teacher there, and that was that.”

  “Oh,” she said, not caring one way or the other what he had done over the past six years. “Well, it was lovely to see you again, Jon. Enjoy your stag weekend.”

  She turned away from him, desperate to be away from his watchful gaze. Jesus Christ, this was the absolute last thing she needed right now.

  “I loved you, Cassie. I loved you so much. When we were together, I felt so sure that you were the woman that I was going to end up with. You could’ve talked to me about it. I mean, I could’ve helped you, supported you. You hurt me so much, they way you just cut me out like that.”

  His words stopped her in her tracks, as surely as if he had physically pinned her against the row of books. She clutched her chest. She so did not want this conversation, it was just too much. How in God’s name could he possibly think that it was okay to talk about this? That she should be held accountable for his feelings?

  In that moment, she hated him with a passion that was absolute. Her twin was gone now, and there was nothing she could do to bring her back. It was so much easier, so much less painful to pretend that her psychotic sibling had never existed, and now this fucking idiot was doing his best to tear down the walls of her life that she had so carefully built up around herself. Her very existence felt like such a fragile thing, and in her heart she knew that it wouldn’t ta
ke much for her carefully-stacked, house of cards to come tumbling down around her.

  “Sorry, Jon, but I really am busy,” she said, refusing to meet his eye and scurrying away from him like a frightened rat.

  “Do you fancy grabbing a coffee sometime this weekend?”

  Surely he’s not serious?

  Her heart pounded all the harder in indignation. Couldn’t he take a hint?

  “I’m married,” she said, turning around to face him. “It’s Cassie Yates now.”

  “You’re not wearing a ring.”

  “I don’t like jewellery,” she said, just about managing to stop herself from adding, and it’s none of your damn business.

  “Sorry,” Jon said, “I hope you don’t think I was coming onto you, it’s just such a surprise to run into you like this. And maybe I shouldn’t have said what I just said, it was just such a surprise seeing you, you know? I didn’t mean to be so full on.”

  “I really do have to go,” she insisted again. “It was lovely seeing you again.”

  She could feel his eyes boring into her back as she all but ran from the library.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My name is Cassie Yates and I am not a victim, I am a survivor. I will not let my past define me. I have a future. I am a good person.

  She stared at her reflection in the three-way, dressing-table mirror until her familiar features blurred into meaninglessness, much like the words that she recited in her head.

  My name is Cassie Yates and I am a survivor. I am strong.

  Hollow words. Empty words. She scrabbled for them to mean something to her as she squinted at her face.

  The harder she looked, the stranger her face became. She stared into her eyes, forcing them to make sense, forcing them to look like eyes once more instead of two, bottomless pits of blue. She concentrated on the scattering of gold flecks in the pale blue irises which were ringed with the deepest navy. Her husband Hugh had once said that their unusual colour made him think of a star-flecked outer-space, of infinity.

  She glanced down at the silky black gloves on the top of the dressing-table, then at her badly scarred hands. She had many pairs of gloves. Thoughtfully, she flexed them. Five years had passed, but the skin still felt tight, a funny mix of numb yet sometimes painful. It took a conscious effort on her part not to form claws, to keep her fingers straight. The skin on the outside of her hands wasn’t too badly marked. Not as much as the inside anyway. The inside of her hands made her think of Freddy Krueger.

  Movement above the dark-blonde head of her reflection made her start and her gaze snapped upwards, snapping her out of her reverie, the sleeping form of her husband snoring in their marital bed coming sharply into focus. She watched him in the mirror. He had flipped onto his back, one arm flung over his head and his mouth hanging open in a rattling snore. Apparently, the snore must have been loud even by his own standards, for he groaned softly, smacked his lips together and proceeded to make sounds much like a snuffling pig. His eyelids fluttered open and his vacant gaze locked with hers in the mirror.

  “Baby, what you doing? Come back to bed,” he slurred, rubbing his eyes with the flats of his palm.

  She turned around to face him on her cute little stool, the stool which matched the vintage style dressing table which was painted a distressed white.

  “I was just about to pop to the corner shop, I was going to make us breakfast.”

  “Bacon sandwiches?” he asked hopefully, dropping his hands from his face and struggling into a sitting position.

  Not for the first time it struck her that for a forty-year-old man he could be incredibly childlike at times, in the most endearing way. He gazed at her with big brown eyes still glazed from sleep and his thick, dark hair with the trace of grey at the temples stuck up every which way in spiky tufts.

  “Yes, I was going out to get bacon.”

  He sighed heavily, yanking the white duvet to one side and patting the empty space next to him on the bed.

  “As much as I love bacon, I’d rather have a cuddle.”

  For a moment she admired the sheer solidity of him, the muscular, big-boned body covered with perhaps a half-inch-thick layer of fat that he could comfortably lose. His chest hair was thick and dark, further enhancing his similarity to that of a grizzly bear.

  But she loved him deeply because he was less grizzly and more teddy. For such a strong, competent man in every area of his life, he was remarkably tender with her. He was her rock. At forty to her twenty-six, he wasn’t quite old enough to take on the role of ‘father figure’, yet neither was he quite young enough to act as her best friend and equal. There was a power imbalance between them that she relished. She wanted to feel protected and cared for, she liked him to assert himself over her. She couldn’t even begin to imagine being with someone her own age – that would be weird – she hated the thought of bossing a guy around, or a guy expecting her to sort out all their finances without lending a helping hand. Cassie craved to be told what to do, for the weight of responsibility to be lifted from her shoulders wherever possible and Hugh provided her with just that.

  Mostly.

  Lately, if she was honest with herself, she could find him a little domineering.

  She climbed into bed beside him, snuggling into the crook of his arm, relishing the familiar, warm comfort of him. His springy chest hairs prickled her cheek and she wrapped her arm around his wide torso.

  He kissed the top of her head.

  “So many clothes,” he mumbled, tugging at the waistband of her jeans under the thin-knit pullover. “I’m going to cook us a special dinner tonight, I missed you last week.”

  Hugh worked long hours, and quite often on Saturdays too. He was partner at a law firm in the financial district of London, commuting the fifty miles daily from Whitstable to London. This fact often meant that they didn’t get to spend much time together.

  “And do we have the ingredients for your special dinner?” she asked lightly, even though she knew what the answer to that would be.

  “I don’t believe we do. I can pop to the supermarket, after I’ve done a bit of work. I have a mountain of paperwork to do and a few phone calls to make.”

  Cassie sighed, because she knew exactly what that meant. While he never actually went and said it aloud, she knew that he secretly considered shopping to be ‘women’s work’. Cassie didn’t have a job – thanks to her inheritance and Hugh’s high wage, there was no need for her to work. But the main reason for her not working was because she wasn’t all that good around people. The truth was, she was still horribly scarred from that night, five years ago, both physically and mentally.

  The night that her identical twin sister – a girl with severe mental problems – slaughtered their parents, tried to kill Cassie, then perished in the fire along with their parents in their family home.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll pick up whatever you need while you work,” she said.

  “Would you?” Hugh said, sounding relieved. “I stuck a list to the fridge door last night while you were getting ready for bed.”

  Playfully, she elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Oh, you did, did you?”

  Laughing, he squeezed her tight, kissing the top of her head.

  But she didn’t mind really. Secretly, she quite liked shopping. In fact, she liked their division of labour. She thrived on it. If she didn’t have the excuse of grocery shopping to get her out of the house, then she might never leave the house at all. The chances were that she would just sit at home and fester and never see another living soul apart from Hugh. Hugh was a pure homebody, a fact that she had initially loved about him. He had always disliked eating out, deeming it frivolous, preferring to stay in on the scant weekend nights that they spent together. This never used to bother Cassie, but just lately, it was beginning to.

  Because the truth was, Cassie was lonely. It might be nice to go out for a meal once in a while, or even just a stroll in the park.

  “Why don’t you come shopp
ing with me?” she mumbled into his chest hair. “Maybe we could for a walk or something after?”

  For a second, she was sure that she felt him tense, but she told herself that she had imagined it.

  “If you really want me to. But it’s a bit cold, don’t you think, and I really do have a mountain of paperwork to be getting on with.”

  “Sure,” she said brightly. “It was just a thought.”

  Hugh disentangled himself from her and swung his long, solid legs over the side of the bed.

  “I’m going to grab a shower,” he said, striding over to the en-suite bathroom in just his undershorts. He stopped halfway across the vast room, twisting his head over his shoulder to throw her a cheeky grin. “Didn’t you say you were going out for bacon?”

  Cassie picked up a pillow and lobbed it at him. It fell short by a good way. Hugh laughed and disappeared into the bathroom.

  CHAPTER THREE

  An hour later, after Hugh’s shower and Cassie’s short walk to the corner shop at the end of the street, the bacon sandwiches had been consumed. Hugh leaned back on the kitchen chair, patting his stomach beneath the white shirt he wore loose over a pair of jeans. Hugh always wore shirts, even if it was a non-office day – she couldn’t remember ever seeing him in a t-shirt.

  “Well, I’d best get on with that paperwork,” he said, scraping back the chair over the slate floor and getting to his feet. “It’s not gonna do itself.”

  “Why don’t you take the day off?” she found herself asking, even though she knew that it would fall on deaf ears.

  “Sorry, baby, I can’t. I’m working on a big case, I can’t afford to slack off, there’s too much riding on it.”

  Hugh never went into much detail about his work as a lawyer – all she knew about his current project was that he was defending some Scottish guy on a murder charge. He had supposedly murdered his wife, but Hugh said that he had been framed. Cassie preferred not to think about it, preferred not to even go there with the idea that her husband might be defending a guilty man. Because if he was, then what kind of a man did that make him, exactly?