MARILYN
I bang hard on the door, the muggy heat fuelling my irritation. There’s probably a bell but I can’t be bothered to look. I don’t care what she said in the office, I’m damned well going to have it out with her now. Apologise? Penny can go swivel. I’ve been quietly raging all day about her smug little face, and I’m going to get it out of her about the money even if no one will believe me. I want to know for me.
No one answers and I bang again.
‘I know you’re in there, Julia!’ She doesn’t get off so easily. There are lights on, I can see them behind the awful net curtains – she must surely be renting – so someone’s home. The door opens as thunder rumbles overhead and the first drops of rain fall. She stares at me and neither of us speak.
‘Who is it?’ a voice calls from inside. A voice that grates with bitterness and cigarettes. ‘Whatever they’re selling, we’re not buying anything!’
‘What are you doing here?’ None of Julia’s usual cockiness. She looks tired, shoes kicked off on the thin carpet but still in her office clothes. Her blouse is untucked, the edges creased and her sleeves are rolled up.
‘We need to talk.’
She glances behind her, up a flight of stairs. A chairlift is at the top and I can also see a pile of creased clothes on the landing. There’s a wheelchair in the hall. ‘It’s for me!’ she calls back. ‘Someone from work to talk about the promotion I might be getting.’
‘Promotion? What prom—’
She puts one finger to her lips, and I find myself falling silent as she nods me inside. I’m thrown by all this. I expected a sleek single girl’s apartment. Small but blandly stylish. I come in from the rain and she closes the door behind me, signalling me into a downstairs room.
‘Why would you come here?’ she says quietly. Her cockiness is gone, it’s all defensive aggressive now.
‘You live here?’ I ask. The room is too hot, central-heating-on-in-summer hot and there’s a sharp tang in the air it takes me a moment to identify. Stale urine.
‘My mother’s house. Yes, I live here. What do you want, Marilyn?’
I’m so confused that for a moment I don’t know why I am here. ‘The money,’ I say eventually. ‘You’re the thief. Lisa wouldn’t lie about that. I just want to hear it from you.’ I look around. ‘I don’t understand you. The veneers on your teeth. The fillers? You have them, don’t bullshit me. But you live like this.’ I wave my hand around. ‘Why spend money on shit like that? Why steal money to spend on shit like that? Why steal money from Penny only to buy her something with it? I don’t get it!’
It seems that there are many types of crazy in the world. Richard crazy, Lisa crazy – even though I can’t quite bring myself to believe that – and now Julia crazy.
‘Yes, I have veneers. Yes, I have fillers. And before you ask, yes, I have credit-card debts up to my eyes because of it.’ She’s angry. ‘But what do you know about my life? So your husband beats you up and we should all feel sorry for you? More fool you for staying when you could have got out!’
Her words are barbed and they sting more for the truth in them. I was a fool to stay. To waste so much of my time.
‘At least you could get out,’ she continues. ‘Have you tried getting care for someone on the NHS? I’ve been looking after her’ – she stabs a finger up at the ceiling – ‘for pretty much all my adult life. She’s not bad enough for a full-time care home but bad enough to fuck up my life. I pay for someone to come in so I can go to work. I don’t have a car. I don’t have holidays. And it’s hard to get a job when you’re forty and tired and every minute of your sorry life shows on your face.’ Now she’s started she can’t stop. All her containment gone.
‘But now she’s dying!’ Her face shines with glee. ‘A year at the most. And then I’ll finally be fucking free. So yes, I’ve spent money trying to look younger. I have a whole youth to reclaim. And yes, I stole the money, and I used it to buy drinks in the pub and cakes for the office. Because I am going to have a better life and I’m going to have friends and people are going to think I’m smart and clever and important. And I’m not going to let you stop me. So fucking sue me or report me or whatever, but it will be your word against mine! And right now, your word means shit!’
She’s breathing heavily, exhausted with the emotional effort, and I almost laugh because for the last few seconds I’ve barely heard a word she’s said. Her diva moment, the confession I came here for, and it’s like I’m hearing her under water.
‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter. ‘I’m going to have to go.’
‘What?’ She looks like she’s been slapped.
‘I’m sorry I came. You’ve got enough going on. I won’t say a word.’
‘That’s it?’ Julia says. ‘You don’t want anything?’
‘I really have to go.’
I leave her standing there, dumbfounded, and as soon as I turn away she dissolves into nothing in my head. My hands tremble as I drag the front door open and suck in rainy air that thankfully doesn’t stink of stale piss. I don’t care about Julia. I care about the person I just saw. I look to my left. She’s hiding but I can see her.
The net curtains in Julia’s sitting room didn’t quite reach the sides of the windows and somewhere in the middle of Julia’s rant, I’d seen a face, a clown face of running make-up in the rain, under blue hair shaved at the sides, pressed up to the glass. Our eyes met and it vanished. But I’d know her face anywhere.
Lisa.
‘Get in the car,’ I mutter, as I pull up by the tree and lower the window. ‘Now.’
53
LISA
‘It’s not her.’
‘What?’ I can’t focus. I’m trembling. I have been since I got into the car. Marilyn. She’s holding the steering wheel so tightly as she drives, her knuckles are white.
‘Julia.’ She glances over at me. ‘She’s not Katie.’
‘That’s what you were doing there?’ I stare at her. I can’t stop staring at her as I try to process what she’s saying.
‘No, I was there about the money, but I’m presuming it’s what you were doing there.’
‘I was … I …’ I don’t know what to say. ‘How do you know?’ I ask.
‘It’s definitely not her. Trust me.’
And I do. I do trust her completely. But inside I crumple. Here, with Marilyn, I’m Lisa again. Tough Lily is only a mask, and Charlotte is so long in the past she’s a stranger. Ava, my beautiful Ava. I was so sure, so sure Julia had her, and now my hope slips like sand between my fingers and I can’t grasp it. I’ve let her down. She hates me. She’s going to die hating me and it’s all my fault.
‘Are you taking me to the police?’ I ask.
It’s her turn to stare at me. ‘Given that they think you killed your ex and kidnapped your own daughter, I’m not sure exactly what that would achieve. So no. Fuck knows where we are going, and fuck knows what is going on in my head, let alone yours, but no, I’m not taking you to the police.’
‘You believe me about Katie?’
She looks over at me, for so long I think we might crash. ‘This probably makes me crazy, but maybe I do. I wasn’t sure, but it goes around and around in my head and nothing else makes any sense to me. You wouldn’t do that to Ava. I know you wouldn’t. But we need to find Katie. We need proof of Katie. Then we go to the police and get Ava back.’
My throat is so tight with a rush of affection for her I can’t say a word as the indicator ticks loud and she pulls off the main road on to quieter streets, heading out to the countryside. I think about Ava coming out here all full of love for a man who didn’t exist. She was going to meet him down some lane. My baby alone in the middle of the night. What happened? What did you do to her, Katie?