She stares at me. Mad. Quite, quite mad. ‘I knew you couldn’t mean it.’ She shrugs. ‘So I did it for you. He was sleepy and scared. He didn’t like the drink. He was worried about you. It was easy to get him to come to me. And that was that. Afterwards, I squeezed your hands around his throat again, and then I picked up the brick and made sure it was done. I whispered some more into your ear, planted all those seeds of what you’d done, made sure you’d gripped the brick hard enough to leave marks, and then faked being asleep until you woke up.’
All the threads of who I am, unravelling. I didn’t kill Daniel. Can it be true? Can I dare to think it? Is this just some drunken, drugged-up hallucination? Am I more out of it than I realise?
‘And after all that,’ she snarls through gritted teeth, ‘you still let me down.’
I didn’t kill Daniel. I didn’t. I don’t know how to process this. I don’t know if I can.
‘Let Ava go,’ I say. ‘You don’t need her.’
‘Ah, but I do!’ Her face lights up again and my stomach sinks. What game now, Katie, you crazy cunt? What have you planned now?
‘You’re going to do it again, Charlotte.’ She smiles at me as she grabs my hair and tips another slug of vodka into me. ‘Just like before. Poor Charlotte Nevill, cracked and killed her ex then killed her daughter exactly as she did her little brother all those years ago. It’ll be Broadmoor for you, forever. You can say whatever you like about me, no one will believe you. Katie Batten is dead. You’re the crazed child-killer. I think it’s the justice you deserve for what you did to me, don’t you? Left me with my mother. All those fucking years.’
My eyes are blurring now and the world spins and it panics me. I may be used to the pills, but my alcohol tolerance is non-existent. I can’t pass out. I can’t.
‘And you know the best bit?’ she whispers. ‘Ava’s pregnant. And you do, after all, owe me a mother. I get to kill two birds with one stone.’
My eyes close and my mouth drops open slightly. ‘Are you still with me, Charlotte?’ she asks. ‘You go to sleep if you need to. I can take it from here. It’s time to get started. We’re going to need your fingerprints on her neck, of course. The devil is in the detail.’ She digs a key out of her pocket and starts to unlock one of my cuffs.
I didn’t kill Daniel. I didn’t kill Daniel. Slowly, slowly the truth of it is sinking in. My whole sorry life has been wrapped around a lie. Oh yes, Katie, I think, as my anger tightens into a ball of fire in my gut, but I force myself to go limp. It’s time to get started.
77
MARILYN
Think, think, think. I’m running from room to room, looking for anything I may have missed. I find what looks like a trapdoor in the hallway floor, but there’s no leverage for opening it and it feels solid under my feet. Does it lead to the secret room? Is it part of another trick? How the fuck am I supposed to open it? I try every light switch to see if one of those is a hidden lever, but nothing happens. No electricity. No lights, no opening door.
It opens from the inside, is the only conclusion I can draw. This isn’t the way down. I try the cellar again, but that’s too obvious. Time is ticking away. Lisa and Ava’s time. Maybe they’re dead already. I don’t entertain the thought. I don’t think it’s true, just my panicking mind leading me to the darkest of places. If they were dead, Katie would be out of here, cleaning the place up and gone. And if they were dead, she’d want their bodies found. Displayed. She’s set a stage and this is the big performance. She’s an illusionist of a different, deadlier kind than her grandfather, but this is a set piece all the same. She wouldn’t want them somewhere hard to find. She wants the world to see whatever fucked-up shit she has planned.
I still have time. I take a breath. Think, think, think. Use your brain. The torch streaming light ahead of me, I go back to the pantry and stare down at the tiny cellar. It’s a wide staircase though, which implies to me a big basement. Space. I’ve always been good with spaces. Look at the space. What ground-floor rooms should the basement run under? Not going to be the kitchen. When the house was occupied, it would have been too cluttered and busy for secret doorways. Especially if there was a cook or housekeeper or whatever the fuck those old posh families had. Somewhere else.
‘I’m coming, Lisa, I’m coming,’ I mutter as I follow the walls and corridors, tracing my fingers on them and tapping, listening for anything that might not be right. Nothing. I go into a sitting room, and there it strikes me. I almost smile.
The bookshelf. Those old books haven’t been left there for no reason. If you were going to design a house with trickery at its core, a secret doorway would have to be in a bookshelf.
Heart racing, I pull the various books free, throwing them to the ground, clearing the ledges. One refuses to budge as if it’s glued in place. Part of the shelf. I pause, breathing heavily, and shine the torch on it. Very carefully, I push it forward. Something clicks and the whole shelf swings inwards. My mouth drops open as the cool rush of air hits me.
I’ve found it.
I think I Marilyn a distant wail of sirens. The sound is barely more than the hum of a mosquito. If it’s the police, they’re still some distance away. My feet are hot in my shoes. My whole body itches with impatience. All I have as a weapon is my torch. I should wait for the police. I know I should wait for the police. To go down there unarmed is fucking madness.
But as a shriek from below carries up the stairs, I find myself doing it anyway.
78
LISA
She wanted me to be Charlotte again. But I’m not. I was Charlotte. Now I’m Lisa. I have my own rage but I have Charlotte’s too, and as the second cuff comes off I channel all of it, shaking my faux sluggishness off in an instant and shrieking as I lunge at her.
‘You fucking bitch!’ My words spray in her face as I shove her backwards. ‘You fucking shite bitch!’ There’s so much I want to say, to scream at her, all that grief, all those years of guilt, what she did to me, what she did to Daniel, but these are the only words I can find.
She thuds heavily into the table, and I reel sideways, more unsteady on my feet than I was expecting. I stop moving but the world doesn’t. Shit. Katie’s surprise and shock turns to a sneer, and as nausea threatens to drop me, I see why. The knife. My knife. She grabs for it and I lunge to stop her but she’s not drunk and drugged and she lithely turns and then it’s in her hand. She smiles, triumphant, as I sway, trying to focus.
‘Never could keep up,’ she says.
‘Fuck you.’ Behind her, I can see movement under the blanket. Not panicked wriggling but more focused. I need to keep Katie distracted. I need to stay alive long enough for my baby to get away. ‘So you’re going to stab me? That screws your perfect plan, doesn’t it?’
‘I’ll improvise something,’ she says, but I see the irritation. More movement under the blanket. Does Ava have one wrist free? ‘I’d rather you went to prison, but if you’re both dead I can live with that.’
She lunges towards me and I manage to stumble out of the way. She laughs and I realise with a sudden despair that she’s playing with me. I can barely stay on my feet.
‘Lisa?’
The voice is so unexpected, I turn automatically. She’s standing in a doorway behind us, her eyes wide, shocked, a torch limp in her hand by her side. Marilyn. Marilyn found us. I let out a small sob at the sight of my best friend, my true best friend, but she’s suddenly leaping towards me, the torch dropping useless to the ground as she shoves me sideways, hard.
I spin, falling backwards to the ground, in time to see Katie, her face ugly with all her crazed bitterness, slice the knife down into the space where a second ago I had been standing. The space Marilyn now occupies.
I hear Marilyn gasp. It’s not pain but utter surprise. She looks down. The handle is embedded in her chest. For a moment, there’s a perfect stillness, and then her head turns to face me. She’s trying to smile. Her mouth moves, attempting to form a word, and from where I am on the floor I can hear the liquid rattle of her breath.