LISA
I’m going too fast and she can’t keep up. She looks so tired, and she glances back, confused. I see them in the doorway. Alison and Bray. Vultures waiting for me to spit out something from my rotten insides for them to hungrily gobble up. They see me see them and the terrible pretence that this is a secret meeting is over and they step inside the room.
‘Katie’s dead.’ Alison looks at me, not Marilyn, as she speaks, slowly, as if I am simple. ‘She drowned in Ibiza in 2004. We’ve been through all this.’
I shake my head. ‘No. It’s Katie. She didn’t die.’ I grab Marilyn’s hand. I need her to hear me even if she won’t believe me. I know her. She takes time, she thinks things over. Maybe, just maybe, something I say will lodge in her clever head. ‘It’s not Jon. It’s Katie. And she knows me. She knows me now.’ She frowns and tugs her hand away but I don’t stop. ‘Someone isn’t who they say they are. Someone I know. She’s found me and she’s got Ava.’
Marilyn’s looking at me like I’m a dangerous mad stranger which tears at my broken heart. She’s my best friend. I’m her best friend. I’m both her friend and the evil killer she’s read about. Charlotte is my shadow, my curse, my anchor in the black. She’ll always be part of me.
‘I still don’t know who you’re all talking about,’ Marilyn says. ‘Who’s Katie?’
‘Child B,’ I say softly. ‘They could only call her Child B.’
I see a hint of recognition in her eyes. A vague memory of another girl briefly mentioned in the recent spate of newspaper reports. But Child B was acquitted. No one cares about Katie, not then, not now. Katie didn’t kill anyone. Katie wasn’t the monster.
‘Cross your heart and hope to die,’ I whisper.
‘We’re not getting anywhere here. Sorry,’ Bray cuts in. ‘I’ll take you back to your hotel.’
‘Hotel?’ I ask, and suddenly I see the details so much more clearly. The dark circles around the eyes. Imperfect make-up, so not like Marilyn. Clothes not quite what she’d normally wear. ‘Why are you at a hotel?’
‘Nothing,’ she answers. A pause. ‘Trouble with Richard.’ Perhaps she feels there have been too many lies between us already, or maybe there’s no point in lying to someone who you no longer consider a friend. She can’t meet my eyes. This isn’t my Marilyn, confident in her charmed life. ‘Is it my fault?’ I ask quietly. She looks for a moment as if she might say yes, as if she wants to say yes, but then she shakes her head.
‘No. This is all his fault.’
‘Come on,’ Bray says, and all three of them turn away. I follow them to the corridor. Bray is talking about how they’re searching Jon’s house for clues, and our old house, and they’ll find Ava, but I’m not listening. I want to grab Marilyn and make her stay. Something is very wrong in her world and who can she talk to? Is it something new, and if not, why didn’t I notice it? You did. The migraines. The drinking. You were just too wrapped up in yourself. I was a terrible friend even before she knew I was a monster. She’s walking differently – details, always details in my head – carefully. Is she hurt? Oh, Marilyn, my Marilyn, what is going on with you? Ava gone, and you in trouble. What has Richard done?
‘Who was Child B? This Katie?’ I hear Marilyn ask as they reach the front door.
‘Her name was Katie Batten. She was a sweet kid, by all accounts. Charlotte’s best friend.’
41
BEFORE
1989
‘You come back here, Charlotte Nevill, you thieving little bitch!’
‘You fuck off, you old bag!’ Charlotte laughs as she calls back over her shoulder, her feet confident on the wasteland littered with bricks and building debris as she runs across it.
‘You’re banned, you hear! Banned!’
Old Mrs Jackson still has one foot in the shop doorway. She can’t chase after Charlotte, not with the Taylor boys over there on the wall, watching. They’d be in there and away with all they could carry before the shopkeeper had got halfway to the demolition site. Charlotte pauses, enjoying the rush of air burning in her lungs.
‘See if I care! I’ll burn your stupid shop down! Brick your windows in!’ She reaches down and grabs one to illustrate her point, throwing it half-heartedly. She laughs again, and turns to run. It’s the third week of March but the bitter wind that’s owned February shows no sign of letting go. Charlotte doesn’t care. She loves the way it blasts her skin and makes her eyes and nose run. It’s wild. She feels free. She’ll be in trouble again later but right now she doesn’t care. She refuses to care. Nothing matters.
Katie is crouching behind the remains of a wall. She joins Charlotte as she comes by, and hand in hand they run laughing across the rough ground where houses have been knocked down but none yet rebuilt. Charlotte hopes that when they get moved out, they’ll get a place near Katie. She knows it’s a dream though. There aren’t any shite council houses where Katie lives.
They run past the playground with the rusty slides, crappy seesaw and old climbing frames, and turn the corner. The bus shelter is there and they flop, as one, on to the worn seat inside, panting and giggling.
‘That will never not be funny,’ Katie says, and her eyes shine as she looks at Charlotte. ‘I wish I could steal like you do.’ Charlotte thinks her heart will burst with pride. Sometimes Charlotte thinks Katie is a living breathing doll. She’s three inches shorter than Charlotte and a proper girly girl because her ma dresses her like that, but under the skin they’re both the same. They both hate their lives, even though sometimes Charlotte doesn’t understand quite what Katie has to hate. Katie appeared like a dream, just there one day on the wasteland, and her life is like a dream too. Proper house. Posh car. Both parents. Music lessons, like the one she’s supposed to be at now. Holidays.
Charlotte pulls the sweets she’s stolen from the shop from one pocket and the sippy cup full of Thunderbird Red she’s stolen from home from the other, and she takes a long swallow before handing it to Katie, who takes a smaller one. It tastes horrible but she likes the numbing heat of it. They eat the Caramacs and Discos and lean into each other, but that word sits between them today. Holiday.
‘Where are you going again?’ Charlotte asks, lighting a crumpled cigarette and blowing out the smoke. She doesn’t like the taste but she’s determined to get used to it. One of her ma’s fags. It’s stolen too. Not that her ma will notice. Or if she does she’ll think Tony’s been at the packet.
‘You know full well,’ Katie elbows her. ‘The seaside. My grandfather’s house in Skegness. Will be my mum’s house soon. He’s got the big C. He’ll die soon. Not soon enough. He needs to get on with it. Sickness is so dull.’ She pauses. ‘Did I tell you he designed tricks for famous magicians? That was his job. You’d think someone who did that for a living would be fun, but no. He’s as dull as my mother.’ Charlotte could listen to Katie talk all day. It’s like music, all posh and polite. Sometimes they try to talk like each other and it’s the funniest thing.