I can hear Crazy Katie talking to her. She’s talking about the day Daniel died. She doesn’t care about me now Mum’s here. It was all about Mum. I’m nothing to her. Worse than nothing. I was a pawn and now she’s going to knock me off the board. All that time at swim club, MyBitches, the Fabulous Four, all the shit she gave me about weird mums club, how I looked up to her, how we all kind of looked up to her – none of it was real. A bubble of anger bursts through my self-pity. How fucking dare she do that to us?
She doesn’t care about me now Mum’s here. The thought repeats itself in my hazy brain. She can’t even see me. I’m under a blanket. When did she last re-tie my hands? A day ago? More? Less? Time has lost all meaning. It wasn’t recently anyway. I wriggle my fingers to see if there’s any give. It’s hot under here and I’m sweating. Sweat is good. Sweat is a lubricant.
75
MARILYN
My mind is too distracted with what Simon’s told me to have any fear of the cellar. I shine the torch on the stairs and creep down. Jodie Cousins never attended Allerton University. She registered, went through the process to get all her documents and her student card etc., but never showed up to any courses. By the time Ava went missing it was the summer holidays, and so the police never went there to ask her any questions. They probably just got her number from one of Ava’s school friends or the swim club. Jodie would have given them her mother’s number – always away working or with her boyfriend – and that was that. After all, the girls weren’t suspects.
Katie was both Jodie and Amelia Cousins. Mother for buying the house and setting up the bills and then vanishing off to an imaginary life in Paris and becoming the daughter for insinuating herself into Lisa’s life via Ava. No one ever met Amelia, only Jodie. I think about Jodie. Slight, never in any make-up, a hard trim boyish body. Short. Quiet. In the background. You see what you want to see. You believe what’s in front of you. Another thought strikes me. Katie supposedly died by drowning. A strong swimmer. She must have thought her luck was in when she found out Ava was a swimmer too. Fate.
The basement is quite cluttered and dusty. Old furniture stacked up against a wall. A dresser, probably worth a fair bit, covered with a sheet. Boxes of knick-knacks. Scraps of a life with no one left to remember it. If there’s a clue in here it will take me a while to find it.
Still, something feels odd. I sweep the torch around, looking into the corners and nooks and crannies. The plaster of one wall is damp and cracked. That’ll need looking at, I can hear Richard saying. I look at the wall on the other side, furthest from the stairs. The plaster matches. I move closer and shove some of the boxes that are up against it out of the way, not caring as their contents spill. It almost matches. There are no cracks though and the surface is slightly smoother. I spin round and look at the space again, fresh eyes this time. It’s not big enough. It should be far bigger than this. An illusionist’s house.
I run up the stairs and back to the scullery. As soon as my phone shows service, I’m dialling Simon.
‘You need to get the police here. Now.’ I cut short his protests and questions. ‘There’s another room. A secret room. Underground somewhere.’ I’m breathless with the realisation. They’re here. So close to me. ‘That’s where they are. I need to find it. Get the police here now. I don’t care how, say I’m here with Lisa or whatever. Just get them here!’
I hang up and my face burns as I look around me. A house of tricks. There’s a doorway here somewhere. And I can’t wait for the police to arrive to find it.
76
LISA
I’m drunk and there’s some shite drug in my system slowing everything down, but I’m not as wasted as Katie thinks I am. I’ve been on a lot of pills over the years. Anti-anxiety meds, anti-depressants, Valium, sleeping pills – you name it, I’ve had it. And it’s paying off now. In all her planning, Katie thinks I need the same dosage as I did when I was eleven. Not so perfect Katie. I slump slightly in the chair and let my eyes drift in and out of focus. Here but not here.
‘You think you betrayed me by calling the police?’ She looks at me wide-eyed. ‘Oh yes, that was part of it. But you’d done the damage before then. I tried to make it better, but you wrecked it.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I ask.
‘You changed your mind.’ She spits the words out, disgusted. Her tone constantly changes on a whim, light and entertained becoming hard and bitter between breaths.
‘I know. I’m sorry. But that’s not Ava’s—’
‘No you don’t know! You don’t know at all!’ I flinch as she barks the words out, and her face draws close to mine and she whispers, ‘All the things they did to you and you still couldn’t do it.’ She sees my confusion. ‘You didn’t change your mind after. You changed your mind before. You didn’t kill Daniel.’ She smiles but her eyes are cold. ‘I did. I did it for you.’
For a moment, everything is frozen. What is she talking about?
‘No,’ I say, my heart racing. She can’t be right. I murdered my little brother. It’s a fact. It’s the bedrock truth of my whole sorry life. ‘No,’ I say again. ‘I remember my hands round his throat. All my angry thoughts.’ I pause. ‘And Mrs Jackson from the shop. She saw me. She saw what I did while you were asleep.’
She snorts. ‘Oh come on. Mrs Jackson hated you. And there was no way my parents were going to let there be even the slightest chance that I could get dragged down with you. Not their little angel. Mummy made Daddy talk to her. They came to an arrangement. Mrs Jackson was more than happy to make sure you went to prison.’
‘No.’ My head is spinning. ‘No, that can’t be. It can’t …’ Nothing is making sense. The Battens paid the shopkeeper to lie in court? ‘But I remember … I …’
‘He’s only a bairn, Katie. We didn’t mean it, Katie, did we? We can’t really kill anyone.’ Her voice is a mocking whine. ‘Ring any bells?’
The words echo somewhere deep in my subconscious. There’s a weight of real about them. ‘But,’ I say, as my whole existence, everyone I’ve been, shimmers and cracks. ‘I was so angry with him. I remember my hands on his throat.’
‘You remember what I made you remember. Gullible Charlotte. Always a victim. You were so out of it. You think I was too, but I wasn’t. I’ve never liked being out of control. Anyone can do anything to you when you’re out of control, Charlotte.’
‘No,’ I mutter. ‘I killed him. I know I did. There were all those thoughts in my head …’
‘I was the voice in your head, Charlotte. Those words were mine. You put your hands on his throat for barely a second before laughing it off as a joke even though we’d sworn to do it, and you’d brought him along. You were all We didn’t mean it, did we Katie? He’s only a bairn. We can’t really kill anyone. Can you imagine how you made me feel? You were weak. But it wasn’t what was best for you. It wasn’t what was best for us. I forgave you, Charlotte, but I had to put it right. We had a plan. We’d made a deal.’
She’s pacing now, the memory or whatever this is either irritating or enlivening her, I can’t decide which. I don’t care much either. I can barely think straight with what she’s saying. My whole life is unravelling and somehow it terrifies me.
‘You changed your mind and I played along until you were out of it,’ she continues. ‘I pretended to pass out while you were still aware of what was around you, and then as you slumped into your stupor, when I knew you couldn’t tell real from false, I was the voice in your head. Prompting, cajoling. But still, you wouldn’t do it. You chose him over me. Do you know how much that hurt? How much pride I had to swallow to overlook it? After everything you’d said, everything we’d planned, and suddenly you didn’t want to go through with it?’