1.
The good china comes out once a year. Boxing Day stays casual—paper plates, cold cuts, everyone in pyjamas until noon. But Christmas Day means the Royal Doulton with the gold trim, the ones Mum inherited from Nan, the ones that live in tissue paper eleven months out of twelve.
I lift each plate from its wrapping. The pattern hasn’t changed since I was small. Pale roses, delicate stems, a border that catches the light. Mum says they’re worth something. I’ve never checked.
Five places around the table. Four of us left to fill them.
The fifth setting goes down anyway. Mum insists. “She might come home,” she said last week. “Stranger things have happened at Christmas.”
Stranger things. My sister vanished eleven months ago and we’re still laying her a place at the table.
Dad appears in the doorway, tea towel draped over his shoulder. He’s been “helping” in the kitchen for the last hour, which means staying out of Mum’s way while she orchestrates the turkey.
“Looking good, Han.” He nods at the table. “Very festive.”
“Festive.” The word tastes wrong.
“Your mum’s outdone herself with the sprouts this year. Secret ingredient, apparently.”
“Nutmeg?”
“She won’t say. National security level, this recipe.”
He’s trying. The effort shows in every forced syllable, every joke that lands flat against the silence. His eyes drift to the empty chair before snapping back to me.
The menu hasn’t changed in fifteen years. Turkey, roast potatoes, honey-glazed parsnips, Brussels sprouts with the secret ingredient everyone knows is nutmeg. Pigs in blankets. Bread sauce from a packet because Mum gave up on homemade after the Great Lumpy Disaster of 2019.
Same menu. Same crackers from Marks and Spencer, the ones with the decent jokes. Same chair sitting empty at the head of the table where Lucy used to hold court, telling stories about her life in Manchester, her flatmates, her job at the gallery that never quite paid enough.
Lucy. Even thinking her name tightens something in my chest.
“Crackers.” Dad points at the sideboard. “Don’t forget the crackers.”
“I won’t.”
“And the napkins need folding. Your mum likes them in triangles.”
“I know, Dad.”
He hovers. The tea towel twists between his fingers.
“Right. Good. I’ll just—” He gestures vaguely towards the kitchen, where Mum’s voice rises over clattering pans. “Better check on the gravy situation.”
He retreats. The floorboards creak under his weight, the same boards that have announced every arrival and departure in this house for thirty years. Victorian terrace, bay windows, the kind of place estate agents call “characterful” when they mean draughty.
I fold napkins into triangles. The fabric’s stiff, barely used. Everything in this house preserves itself, waiting for occasions that feel increasingly hollow.
A knock at the front door. Three sharp raps.
I freeze, napkin half-folded. Mum appears from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. Dad emerges behind her. We stand in the hallway, none of us moving towards the door.
“Probably carol singers,” Dad says.
“Bit early for carols.”
“Or the neighbours. Dropping off a card.”
Three pairs of eyes fix on the frosted glass panel. No shadow moves behind it. No second knock comes.
Dad reaches for the handle.
The step stands empty. Grey stone, swept clean this morning. The holly wreath Mum hung last week sways slightly in the wind off the bay.
Nothing. No one.
Then Dad looks down.
A single envelope lies on the mat. Red, Christmas-card shaped, propped against the doorframe. No stamp. No postmark. Hand-delivered.
Mum makes a sound. Not quite a gasp, not quite a word.
The handwriting loops across the front. Elegant, distinctive, the capital H on “Hannah” curling back on itself in that particular way.
Lucy’s handwriting.
I’d know it anywhere. Every birthday card, every note left on the fridge, every passive-aggressive Post-it about washing up. That handwriting belongs to my sister.
My sister who vanished. My sister whose face stares out from the missing person poster still taped to the lamp post at the end of our road. My sister whose room upstairs sits exactly as she left it, bed made, curtains drawn, because Mum can’t bear to change anything.
Dad bends, picks up the envelope. His fingers tremble.
“It’s addressed to you, Hannah.”
The card passes into my hands. The paper feels expensive, thick and slightly textured. Lucy always spent too much on stationery. Said cheap cards were depressing.
Mum sits down heavily on the bottom stair. Her hand grips the banister, knuckles white. She stares at the envelope as if expecting Lucy to materialise behind it, keys in hand, explanation ready.
“Open it.” Her voice comes out rough. “Please.”
I slide my thumb under the flap. The glue gives way easily, barely sealed. Inside, a simple card. White background, single gold star, the kind you’d find in any supermarket.
One line of text. Lucy’s loops, Lucy’s pressure, Lucy’s distinctive slant.
I thought you’d forgotten.
The words blur, sharpen, blur again.
“What does it say?” Mum’s halfway off the stair, reaching. “Hannah, what does it—”
I close the card. Slide it into my back pocket before her fingers can close around it.
“Nothing useful. Just…season’s greetings.”
The lie scrapes my throat.
Dad’s watching me. That look he gets when he knows I’m not telling the whole truth but won’t push in front of Mum. His jaw tightens. His eyes flick to my pocket, then away.
“Right.” He clears his throat. “Well. Turkey won’t carve itself. Shall we?”
Mum doesn’t move. Her gaze stays fixed on my hands, on the space where the card was.
“She’s alive.” The words fall out of her, flat and certain. “That proves it. She’s alive and she’s coming back.”
“We don’t know that, love.”
“It’s her writing, Martin. I’d know it anywhere.”
“Anyone could copy—”
“Don’t.” Her voice cracks. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know my own daughter’s hand.”
The hallway shrinks around us. Cold air seeps through the gap under the door, carrying the smell of frost and exhaust from passing cars.
I thought you’d forgotten.
Forgotten what? Forgotten her? Forgotten something specific? The words twist in my mind, refusing to settle into meaning.
Lucy vanished on January twenty-third. Police searched for weeks. Posters went up, appeals went out, the local paper ran her photo until a different tragedy pushed her off the front page.
No body. No evidence. No explanation.
Just absence. The kind that grows heavier with every passing month.
And now a card. Her handwriting. A message that sounds like accusation.
“I’ll check the gravy.” Mum stands slowly, using the banister for support. Her movements have aged since January. Everything about her has aged. “Don’t let it burn, Martin. Not this year.”
She disappears into the kitchen. The door swings shut behind her.
Dad turns to me. “What did it really say?”
“I told you—”
“Hannah.”
I pull the card from my pocket. Hand it over. Watch his face as he reads.
The colour drains from his cheeks. He reads it twice, three times, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less unsettling.
“I thought you’d forgotten.” He says it aloud, testing the shape of it. “Forgotten what?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you last speak to her? Before she—”
“Christmas Eve. Same as everyone else.”
He nods slowly. The card shakes in his grip.
“Don’t tell your mother. Not the exact words. She’ll spiral.”
“I know.”
“We’ll figure it out. After lunch. Once Tom gets here.”
Tom. My brother. Always late, always apologetic, always somewhere else when things fall apart.
Dad tucks the card into his own pocket. Pats it twice, as if to keep it contained.
“Best get on with things. She’ll want everything perfect.”
He heads for the kitchen. I stay in the hallway, listening to the muffled sounds of preparation, the clink of serving dishes, the murmur of my parents coordinating around each other.
The cold from outside settles into my bones.
I thought you’d forgotten.
But I haven’t forgotten anything. That’s the problem.
2.
Tom’s car pulls up twenty minutes late. The engine idles too long before cutting out, and through the bay window, I watch him sit behind the wheel, staring at nothing.
Mum’s already called twice. Dad’s stopped making excuses.
The gravy sits in its boat, skin forming. The turkey rests under foil, temperature dropping by the minute. Brussels sprouts cool in their dish, nutmeg scent fading.
Finally, the car door opens. Tom emerges, pale and jittery, moving with the careful precision of someone holding themselves together through sheer will. His coat hangs open despite the cold. His tie’s crooked.
“Traffic on Marine Road.” He shrugs off the explanation before anyone asks. “Nightmare.”
Mum hugs him too long. Dad claps his shoulder with forced heartiness.
“Good to see you, son. Let’s eat before everything goes cold.”
We take our places. The same seats we’ve claimed since childhood—Dad at the head nearest the kitchen, Mum opposite, me and Tom facing each other across the width of the table.
Lucy’s chair sits between Mum and me. Empty. Set with the good china, napkin folded into its perfect triangle, wine glass catching the light from the overhead fixture.
Tom stares at it. His jaw works.
“We don’t have to—” he starts.
“Yes, we do.” Mum’s voice brooks no argument. “She’s still family.”
“She’s not here, Mum.”
“She might be.”
The silence stretches. Cutlery clinks against china. Dad serves turkey.
“Looks wonderful, love.” He addresses Mum without looking up. “Really outdone yourself this year.”
“The potatoes are too soft.”
“They’re perfect.”
“They’re not. The oven’s been playing up again. I told you to look at it.”
“I’ll call someone in the new year.”
“You said that last January.”
The familiar rhythm of their bickering fills the space where conversation should be. Safe territory, well-mapped, requiring nothing from the rest of us.
Tom pushes food around his plate. He hasn’t touched the turkey. His fork traces patterns through the gravy, building walls between the parsnips and the sprouts.
Every few seconds, his eyes slide to the empty chair.
“So.” Dad clears his throat. “Tom. How’s the new flat working out?”
“Fine.”
“Settling in alright? Getting to know the neighbours?”
“It’s fine, Dad.”
“And work? Still enjoying the—”
“Can we not?” Tom’s fork clatters against his plate. “Can we just…not?”
The air tightens.
Mum reaches for the gravy boat. Her hand shakes. The spout catches the edge of her plate, tips, and brown liquid spills across the white tablecloth.
“Oh, for—” She’s up immediately, dabbing with her napkin. “I’ve ruined it. The whole— I’ve ruined everything.”
“It’s fine, love. Sit down.”
“It’s not fine. Nothing’s fine.” Her voice cracks. “She should be here. Lucy should be here and instead we’re pretending this is normal, pretending we can just—”
She breaks off. Tears spill down her cheeks, silent and steady.
Dad guides her back into her chair. Murmurs something low and soothing. His hand rubs circles on her back while she cries.
Tom watches, face blank. His fingers grip the table edge.
I stand. “I’ll get a cloth from the kitchen.”
The kitchen door swings shut behind me, muffling the sound of Mum’s quiet sobs. The extractor fan hums overhead, drowning out everything but my own breathing.
The sink’s full of prep dishes. Potato peelings clog the drain. The window above shows darkness, our reflections ghosted against the glass.
Footsteps behind me.
Tom appears in the doorway. He doesn’t come in, just hovers at the threshold, arms crossed, shoulders hunched.
“We need to talk.” His voice barely rises above the fan.
“Not now.”
“Yes. Now.”
He steps inside. The door swings shut behind him.
“The card.” He moves closer. “Dad showed me. Lucy’s handwriting.”
“How do you know about—”
“He caught me outside. Wanted to warn me before I went in.”
My hands find the counter edge. The granite feels cold through my palms.
“So?”
“So I saw her.” The words come out rushed, tangled. “The night she disappeared. I was there.”
The extractor fan fills the silence. Its hum seems louder now, more insistent.
“What do you mean, you were there?”
“I came by that night. Late. After everyone else had gone to bed.”
“Why?”
“She called me. Asked me to pick her up. Said she’d had a row with you and needed to get out.”
My chest tightens. “You never said anything.”
“I thought she’d come back.”
“She didn’t come back, Tom. She vanished. The police searched for—”
“I know.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I know, alright? I’ve been living with this for eleven months.”
“What exactly did you see?”
He won’t meet my eyes. His gaze fixes on the floor, the sink, the window—anywhere but my face.
“She was upset. Crying. Told me something had happened, something bad, and she needed to leave.”
“Something bad?”
“She wouldn’t say what. Just that she couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t face—” He stops. Swallows. “Couldn’t face you.”
The words land heavy.
“Why me?”
“I don’t know. She just kept saying your name. Saying she couldn’t believe what you’d done.”
“What I’d done? I didn’t do anything. We argued about the stupidest thing—whether she was actually going to stay for Christmas or disappear to Manchester like she always—”
“Hannah.” He looks at me finally. His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot. “She was scared. Actually scared. Of you.”
The floor tilts beneath me.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m telling you what I saw.”
“You’re telling me my sister was scared of me, and you just—what? Drove off? Left her?”
“She wouldn’t get in the car.” His voice cracks. “I tried. I begged her to let me take her somewhere safe. She said she needed to walk. Clear her head. I thought she’d calm down and come home in the morning.”
“And when she didn’t?”
“I was terrified. I kept waiting for them to find—” He stops. Breathes. “I kept waiting for news. And when none came, I convinced myself she’d run away. Started over somewhere. That she was okay, just…done with all of us.”
“So you said nothing.”
“What was I supposed to say? That I was the last person to see her and I let her walk off into the dark?”
Raised voices. Not ours—our parents’, drifting through from the dining room. Mum’s high and strained, Dad’s low and urgent.
Tom steps back towards the door.
“They heard us.”
“Then let them hear.” I move towards him. “You should have told someone. The police. Anyone.”
“And said what? That my sister was scared of my other sister for reasons she wouldn’t explain? That she ran off crying and I let her go?”
“Yes. Exactly that.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me understand.”
The kitchen door swings open. Dad stands in the frame, face grey.
“What’s going on in here?”
Neither of us answers.
“Your mother’s in pieces. On Christmas Day. And you two are hiding in here?”
“Dad—” Tom starts.
“I don’t want to hear it. Both of you. Back to the table. Now.”
He holds the door open. Waits.
Tom moves first, sliding past Dad with his head down. I follow, the card’s message burning in my mind.
I thought you’d forgotten.
The dining room feels smaller now. The empty chair seems closer to the table, angled towards us as if leaning in to listen.
Mum sits with her head bowed, hands clasped in her lap. She doesn’t look up as we return.
Dad takes his seat. Reaches for his wine glass.
“A toast.” His voice strains for normalcy. “To family. Whatever shape it takes this year.”
I don’t lift my glass.
3.
The plates sit half-cleared. No one’s eating anymore. Mum stares at the tablecloth, at the brown stain spreading through the fabric. Dad’s refilled his wine twice without drinking.
Tom hasn’t spoken since we came back from the kitchen. He sits rigid, shoulders pressed against his chair, eyes fixed on something none of us can see.
The empty chair fills my peripheral vision. Every time I turn my head, it’s there. Waiting.
“Perhaps we should skip pudding.” Mum’s voice comes out hoarse. “I’m not really hungry.”
“The trifle will keep.” Dad reaches for her hand. “We can have it tomorrow.”
“I made it for today.”
“I know, love.”
“Lucy’s favourite.” She squeezes his fingers. “She always had seconds. Remember? Even when she claimed to be on some diet.”
The memory surfaces—Lucy at this table, spoon scraping the bottom of her bowl, swearing this was the last time before going back for more. Her laugh filling the room.
A knock at the front door.
Sharp. Urgent. Three raps that jolt through the silence.
Everyone freezes.
“Who—” Mum half-rises from her chair.
“I’ll get it.” Dad’s already moving, napkin falling from his lap. “Probably just the neighbours.”
He disappears into the hallway. We sit in silence, straining to hear. The front door opens. Muffled voices carry through—Dad’s low rumble, then someone else. A woman.
Footsteps return. Dad appears in the doorway, Margaret from number fifteen close behind.
Margaret’s lived across the road since before I was born. She brings in parcels when we’re out, feeds the cat when we’re away, knows everyone’s business without ever seeming nosy.
A cardboard parcel sits tucked under her arm.
“Sorry to interrupt your dinner.” She glances at the table, at the barely touched food, at the empty chair. Her expression flickers. “Only this was left on my step this morning. Addressed to your Hannah.”
She holds out the parcel. Brown cardboard, no distinguishing marks, my name written across the front in black marker.
Different handwriting. Not Lucy’s loops this time. Block capitals, anonymous and deliberate.
“Must have been delivered to the wrong house.” Margaret smiles apologetically. “These couriers, honestly. They’ll leave things anywhere.”
“Thank you, Margaret.” Dad takes the parcel. “Very kind of you to bring it over.”
“No trouble. I hope you’re all having a lovely—” She stops. Takes in Mum’s red eyes, Tom’s rigid posture, the tension crackling through the room. “Well. I’ll let you get back to it.”
Dad walks her out. The front door clicks shut.
The parcel sits on the table, innocent and unremarkable.
“What is it?” Mum reaches for it. “Who sent you something?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, open it.”
I should take it upstairs. Open it alone, away from their watching eyes. But the weight of it draws my hands forward, and before I can think better of it, I’m tearing at the tape.
The cardboard falls away.
Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, a mobile phone.
Lucy’s phone.
The same rose-gold case she bought herself for her birthday. The same crack across the bottom left corner from when she dropped it outside the pub last summer. The same sticker on the back—a cartoon cat she found hilarious and I always thought was stupid.
Mum’s hand flies to her mouth.
“That’s—” Tom stands so fast his chair scrapes against the floor. “Is that—”
“It’s hers.” I turn it over in my hands. The weight feels wrong. Foreign. Like holding something that belongs to the dead.
Dad returns from seeing Margaret out. He stops in the doorway, colour draining from his face.
“Is that Lucy’s?”
“Yes.”
“How is that possible? The police searched everywhere. Her flat, her office—”
“Someone had it.” My thumb finds the power button. “Someone’s had it all this time.”
The screen lights up. Battery at eighty-three percent. Someone’s been charging it.
The home screen shows Lucy’s face—a selfie from the beach, wind catching her hair, eyes squinted against the sun. Her smile wide and easy, the way it used to be.
“What’s on it?” Mum’s voice trembles. “Are there messages? Clues?”
I swipe through. The phone feels heavier with every tap.
Contacts: deleted. Messages: deleted. Photos: deleted. Email accounts: logged out. Every trace of Lucy’s digital life, methodically erased.
Except one thing.
A single video file sits in the camera roll. Dated January twenty-third. The night she vanished.
“There’s a video.” My throat tightens around the words.
“Play it.” Mum’s already moving, coming around the table to stand behind me. “Hannah, play it.”
The lights flicker. A bulb dying in the overhead fixture, sending shadows dancing across the walls.
My thumb hovers over the play button.
“Maybe we should watch this privately first.” Dad steps closer. “Just in case—”
“In case what?” Mum’s voice rises. “She’s my daughter, Martin. Whatever’s on there, I have a right to see it.”
The room waits.
I press play.
The screen fills with our dining room. This room, filmed from somewhere near the door. The angle’s low, phone propped against something.
Night-time darkness beyond the windows. The overhead light on. The table pushed against the wall, chairs scattered.
And voices. Raised, angry, unmistakable.
Mine.
Lucy’s.
On screen, I storm into frame. My face twisted with fury. My hands gesturing wildly, pointing at something off-camera.
“—don’t get to just leave!” My recorded voice cracks. “Every single time, Lucy. Every single time something gets hard, you run.”
Lucy enters the frame. Her back to the camera, shoulders hunched. “You don’t understand—”
“Then explain it to me! For once in your life, explain instead of disappearing!”
“I can’t.” She turns. Her face catches the light—tears streaming, mascara smeared. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
“You’ll hate me.”
“I already—”
The words cut off. I watch myself lunge forward. Not to hit—to grab, to stop her from leaving again.
Lucy steps back. Her foot catches on something. The rug, maybe, or a displaced chair.
She falls.
The sound of her head hitting the radiator is small and precise. A wet crack that doesn’t match the violence of it.
Mum screams. Not on the video—here, now, standing behind me with her hand over her mouth.
On screen, Lucy lies still. Her hair fans across the floor. A dark stain begins to spread beneath her skull.
The recorded me stands frozen. Hands still raised. Face blank with shock.
Then Mum rushes into frame. Dad behind her. Their voices overlapping, panicked and high.
“We need to call an ambulance—”
“Wait. Wait.” Mum kneels beside the body. Presses fingers to Lucy’s neck. Her face crumples. “She’s— Martin, she’s—”
“No.” Dad’s voice breaks. “No, that’s not—”
“What do we do?” The recorded me backs away, hands shaking. “What did I— I didn’t mean to—”
“It was an accident.” Mum looks up, straight at me. Her eyes hold something fierce and terrible. “Listen to me, Hannah. It was an accident. We’ll fix this. We’ll protect you.”
“How can we—”
“We’ll figure it out. No one needs to know.”
The video cuts to black.
4.
The phone slips from my fingers. It hits the table with a clatter, screen still glowing.
The room has shrunk to nothing. Just this table, these faces, this impossible weight pressing down on my chest.
“Hannah.” Mum’s voice comes from somewhere far away. “Sweetheart—”
I can’t answer. My throat’s closed. My lungs won’t fill.
The video sits there, frozen on its final frame. Darkness. Silence. The moment before everything changed.
“We need to talk about this.” Dad moves towards me, hands raised. “There are things you don’t remember—”
“Remember?” The word tears out of me. “I killed her. That video shows me killing my sister, and you’re talking about what I remember?”
“It was an accident.” Mum reaches for my arm. I pull away. “Hannah, please. You have to understand—”
“Understand what? That you covered up a death? That you’ve been lying to the police for eleven months?”
“We were protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From yourself.” Dad’s voice goes hard. “From what it would do to you if you knew.”
My legs won’t hold me. I sink into the nearest chair—Lucy’s chair, the empty one, the one no one was supposed to sit in. The fabric feels cold through my clothes.
“You hid her body.”
Neither of them denies it.
“Where?”
Silence.
“Where did you put my sister?”
“That doesn’t matter now.” Mum kneels beside me, tears cutting tracks through her makeup. “What matters is that we kept you safe. You didn’t mean to hurt her. The guilt would have destroyed you.”
“So you took it away? Just—erased it?”
“You were in shock.” Dad stands over us, arms crossed, jaw tight. “You didn’t speak for three days. When you finally came out of it, you didn’t remember anything after the argument. The doctors said trauma does that sometimes. The mind protects itself.”
The floor pitches beneath me. Eleven months of grief, of searching, of hoping Lucy might walk through the door. All of it built on lies.
“The card.” I force the words out. “Lucy’s handwriting.”
They look at each other.
“We don’t know who sent that.” Mum’s voice wavers. “We didn’t— we wouldn’t—”
“Someone knows.” Tom hasn’t moved from his spot by the wall. His face is grey, hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Someone’s been watching this whole time.”
“You knew.” I turn on him. “That night. You came for her, and she was scared. What did she tell you?”
“Nothing. I swear—”
“Don’t lie to me. Not anymore. Not after this.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them, something has broken behind them.
“She said you’d hurt her. That you’d grabbed her during the argument, shoved her against the wall. She was terrified.”
“That’s not—” I stop. The video plays in my mind, my hands reaching, Lucy falling.
Maybe it is what happened. Maybe this is who I am.
“She wanted to go to the police.” Tom’s voice drops. “Said she had proof. That she’d recorded everything.”
The phone on the table. Lucy’s phone, filming from its hidden spot.
“I convinced her to wait until morning.” Tom’s face twists. “Told her everyone would be calmer after they’d slept. I thought—”
“You thought you could fix it.” Dad’s tone hardens. “Control the situation. Keep everything tidy.”
“I thought she’d be alive in the morning.” Tom’s voice breaks. “How was I supposed to know—”
“Know what?” Mum stands slowly, using my chair for support. “That she’d fall? That it was an accident?”
“That Hannah would—”
“Don’t.” Dad cuts him off. “Don’t put this on her. She doesn’t remember. She’s been grieving for her sister for almost a year, and you kept this from us?”
“You kept it from her too.” Tom gestures at the phone, at the video frozen on its screen. “You buried the body. You destroyed evidence. You turned our family into a crime scene and expected everyone to just—what? Move on?”
“We protected her.” Mum’s voice rises. “What were we supposed to do? Let our daughter go to prison for an accident?”
“She killed someone, Mum.”
“Her sister slipped and hit her head. It could have happened to anyone.”
“But it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to Lucy. Our Lucy.”
The name hangs in the air between us.
Lucy. Gone. Dead. Hidden somewhere I’ll probably never know.
I stand. The chair scrapes back, loud in the sudden quiet.
“I need to see it.”
Three faces turn towards me.
“See what?”
“Where you put her. Where Lucy is.”
Mum’s face crumbles. “You don’t want to—”
“I need to know. After everything, I need to see for myself.”
Dad steps forward. His hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and certain.
“That’s not possible, sweetheart. Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
The understanding settles through me, cold and absolute. Whatever they did with Lucy’s body, it’s gone now. Cremated, buried, scattered. The evidence erased along with the truth.
Mum takes my hands. Her grip trembles but her eyes hold steady.
“We can move past this. As a family. It was an accident, and it’s done, and no good comes from—”
“From what? Justice? The truth?”
“From destroying your own life over something you can’t change.”
“Lucy’s life is already destroyed.”
“And yours doesn’t have to be.” She squeezes tighter. “You have a future, Hannah. A career, prospects, everything ahead of you. Lucy—” Her voice catches. “Lucy would want you to live it.”
“You don’t know what she’d want. None of us do. Not anymore.”
I pull my hands free. Step back until the table blocks my path.
The three of them watch me. Dad rigid with control, Mum liquid with grief, Tom somewhere between fury and despair.
A family bound by secrets. By lies. By the weight of what we’ve done and what we’ve hidden.
“If I go to the police—”
“You won’t.” Dad’s voice doesn’t waver. “You’d be confessing to manslaughter at best. Your mother and I would face charges for obstruction, for concealing a body. Tom for withholding evidence. This family would be destroyed.”
“It’s already destroyed.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” He moves closer, lowering his voice. “The phone. The video. We can get rid of it. No one else knows.”
“Someone sent that parcel. Someone knows enough to—”
“We’ll deal with that. Together. As a family.”
Family. What family survives this?
Mum reaches for me again. Her touch is soft, desperate.
“Please, Hannah. We did this for you. Every lie, every cover-up—it was all to protect you. To give you the chance Lucy would have wanted you to have.”
I look at her. Really look. At the shadows under her eyes, the new lines carved around her mouth, the grey threading through her hair. Eleven months of carrying this secret, and it’s aged her a decade.
“You should have let me face it.” My voice sounds strange. Hollow. “Whatever happened that night, I should have known.”
“You know now.”
“Only because someone forced it out.” I gesture at the phone, the parcel, the card that started everything. “Whoever sent this—they wanted the truth to come out. They want me to know.”
“Then don’t give them what they want.” Dad’s jaw tightens. “Don’t let some anonymous troublemaker tear apart everything we’ve built.”
“What we’ve built?” The laugh escapes before I can stop it. “We’ve built nothing. Just a house full of lies where we pretend my sister ran away instead of—”
I can’t finish. The words stick in my throat.
Tom moves towards the door. His hand finds the frame, steadies him.
“I can’t do this anymore.” He doesn’t look back. “I can’t sit here and talk about protecting the family when we all know what happened. What we did.”
“Tom—” Mum starts.
“Don’t.” He turns. His face has hardened into something I don’t recognise. “Don’t ask me to keep pretending. I’ve been doing it for eleven months, and I’m done.”
He walks out. The front door opens, closes. His car starts in the driveway, engine coughing in the cold.
Then silence.
Mum sinks into her chair. Dad stands with his hands braced against the table, head bowed.
The video plays again in my mind. My hands reaching. Lucy falling. That awful crack of skull against metal.
I did that. Whether I remember it or not, I did that.
“The choice is yours.” Dad’s voice drops low. “We’ve done everything we can to protect you. Now you have to decide what you want your life to be.”
The phone glows on the table. Lucy’s face smiles up from the lock screen, frozen in summer sunlight.
I pick it up. Feel the weight of it. The crack under my thumb, the stupid cat sticker.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“You’re our daughter.” Mum’s voice breaks. “You’re Hannah. That hasn’t changed.”
But it has. Everything has.
I look at the empty chair. Lucy’s chair, where she used to sit and laugh and steal seconds of trifle and drive us all crazy with her chaos.
She’ll never sit there again. And I’m the reason why.
Tom’s car turns at the end of the road and disappears.
My parents watch me with the same desperate hope I’ve seen a hundred times—in photos of missing children, in appeals from broken families, in every face that waits for news that never comes.
They need me to keep the secret. To bury the truth alongside my sister and move forward into a future built on silence.
The phone feels heavier than it should.
I could delete the video. Destroy the evidence. Let the lies calcify into something solid enough to walk on.
Or I could tell the truth. Finally. About what happened, what we did, what we’ve become.
Lucy’s eyes meet mine from the screen. That same summer smile, unchanged, unchangeable.
I thought you’d forgotten.
I haven’t. Not anymore.
THE END.
Out Now: Gone By Christmas
Her daughter vanished after the Christmas market.
Her husband insists he knows nothing.
The evidence says otherwise.
Fifteen-year-old Courtney Matthews should have come home after her choir performance.
Instead, her mother finds a single blue mitten on the frost-covered doorstep—and a photograph that freezes her blood.
As the police close in on Courtney’s father, Sian starts receiving messages that can only mean one thing: someone inside her family has been lying for years.
With Christmas Day approaching and the investigation tightening around her home, Sian races through the winter streets of Lancaster in a desperate search for the truth.
But every clue pulls her deeper into a nightmare she never imagined—and closer to a danger she never saw coming.
Some secrets destroy a family long before they’re exposed.
A tense, chilling domestic thriller—perfect for readers wanting a gripping, fast novella they can finish in a single evening.
Start reading tonight!
