“When?” I sneered.
“That’s why I asked if you wanted to get away from Cliff View for a day,” he reminded me. “I was going to tell you then, when we were on our own and we could really talk. I had no idea...” he trailed off.
“What?” I barked.
“I had no idea that I wouldn’t be able to get you out my head,” he said, staring at me. “Like I’ve already said, I honestly thought we would fuck once or twice – have some fun – and that would be it. So why would I tell you about my past? Have you told me all about yours?”
“I haven’t tried to kill someone,” I shot back at him.
“The guy was a jerk,” Michael said, standing up. Don’t stand there and judge me. You don’t know what happened, you weren’t there.”
“No one deserves to be thrown down a set of stairs and have their back broken.”
“Maybe not,” Michael said, “But the young girl he wouldn’t leave alone didn’t deserve to have that filthy animal stick his hand up her skirt all night long. I’d been sitting there drinking and watching him as he kept coming on to this young girl. She kept telling him to piss off, but he wouldn’t, and his mates were jeering him on. He started to get nasty with her. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. I left my seat and asked him nicely to leave the young woman alone. We got into a fight and I lost my temper. Yes, I did push him off me, but I didn’t know the staircase was there. He fell, and you know the rest.”
“So why didn’t this damsel in distress give evidence for you?” I cut in.
“She didn’t want to get involved,” he sighed. “That’s all the thanks I got for helping her out. I should’ve just sat there, sipped my beer, and watched just like everybody else. I spent ten years in prison.”
“And the other guy gets to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair,” I snapped. I didn’t want to see Michael’s side of the story. I didn’t want to feel sorry for him.
“Don’t you think I haven’t thought about that every waking hour for the last ten years?” he growled. “I’ve paid my dues and I can’t take back what I did. We all make mistakes. I thought you would understand that more than most.”
“And what is that s’posed to mean?” I spat.
“You shouldn’t have been spread across this here kitchen table the other day, should you?” he said. “You shouldn’t have been drinking whiskey. You’re a law-abiding citizen – you’re a cop. A cop who dropped her knickers while on duty to have a quick fumble with a convict.”
“You bastard,” I hissed, slapping Michael hard across the face. His head rocked backwards. The sound of my hand connecting with his face sounded like gunfire in the poky kitchen.
Michael shot forward, grabbing my by the shoulders. The left side of his face looked red and sore. His eyes had clouded over, and the green had been replaced with a dull grey. I looked into them and could see his anger and pain. Is this how he had looked just before he had pushed that man down the stairs? Is this how he had looked when he pushed...
“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “It was you...wasn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?” he barked.
“It was you who pushed Molly Smith into the well,” I whispered, shrugging his hands from my shoulders and stepping away from him. “You pushed her into that well just like you pushed that man down the stairs. It was you she was coming to meet that night...”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, taking a deep breath as if to calm himself. “I didn’t even know that girl.”
“Yes, you did,” I said, “You knew her name. You knew her father. You told me he spoke kinda strange. Pronounced his words kinda funny.”
“I said I knew of them,” Michael said. “I didn’t say I knew them.”
“That’s why you and Molly kept your relationship a secret, because of your father,” I gasped.
“What has he got to do with any of this?” Michael asked.
“Your father hated that family,” I reminded him. “He called them witches. He told me that they were nothing but vermin – that they were thieves who kept breaking into his farm. Your father wouldn’t have been able to deal with the fact that his son had gone and fallen in love with one of them.”
“Okay, so he didn’t like that family, but...” Michael started.
“It wasn’t the Smiths who were the criminals. It was you and your father,” I whispered as everything seemed to slot into place.