Cross Her Heart: A Novel

by Sarah Pinborough

  * * *

  “So there you are! Finally decided to show your face, did you? About bloody time.”

  The party’s in full swing when Charlotte gets home, and her ma is drunk and out of it on those pills she gets from the doctor for her back pain or whatever excuse she comes up with for the scrip. She glares at her from the doorway to the sitting room, and Charlotte barges through her, saying nothing. There’re no bairns there but every seat is taken by someone off the estate. Jack from number 5 who spends all his time with those stupid pigeons, Mary who hasn’t had a job in a year and got no fella so will go the way of Ma soon enough and be in one of the rooms over the chippy opening up her legs, and a few others all clutching cans or paper cups of booze. No cups of tea. That’s what Katie’s ma would have, Charlotte reckons, for a birthday party. Cups of tea and jelly and ice cream. She doesn’t look at Tony, holding forth from his armchair. He calls himself her dad. He’s not her dad. He’s part of the black angry storm clouds in her head.

  Daniel sits in the middle of the carpet, and there’s obviously been some cake because he’s got a plate in front of him with icing and some crisps still on it, and as he looks up at her she can see chocolate crumbs around his mouth. He smiles and holds something up. “Charrot!” he says, unable yet to pronounce her name properly. “A rabbit, Charrot! Charrot!”

  “It’s Peter Rabbit, isn’t it?” Tony’s sister, Jean, is crouched on the floor beside him. “Like from those books.” The rabbit’s got dungarees on, and Charlotte knows right there that Jean made them. It’s what she’s like. She should probably live a life like Katie’s. Probably would if she wasn’t on the estate. But her husband is the foreman down at the factory and they’re doing all right. Jean doesn’t like Ma, that much is obvious, and she doesn’t much like Tony, but she loves Daniel, just like everyone else.

  “Charrot!” he says again, and his high-pitched voice, all sugar and innocence, makes her teeth grit.

  “What’s that you got?” Tony asks. He leans forward. “You been on the rob again?” His eyes have narrowed. Tony’s not clever, not like school clever, or Katie clever, but there’s something feral about him. He’s clever like a hyena. He can sniff stuff out of you. She’s still holding the Walkman, and her grip tightens on it.

  “Found it,” she mumbles.

  “You can give it to your brother then, for a present.”

  “He’s bloody two years old, what does he need a Walkman for?” She goes from a mumble to a raging shout, and anywhere else the room would fall quiet, but Charlotte’s anger is nothing new. Letters from school, concern from the social worker, her mother swearing at her, they’re all tired of Charlotte and her outbursts.

  “Give it here,” her ma says, eyes blurred. “You can have it back later,” she adds feebly, and Charlotte knows she’ll be lucky to ever see it again unless Tony gets smashed and forgets about it. Otherwise it’ll be sold on the estate somewhere when they realize Daniel’s too young to care about it. She yanks the tape out and throws it at her ma. “Take it then, you bitch!” She turns to go to her room, and Daniel is still calling after her, not so confident now. “Charrot?”

  He sounds like a fucking Chinky, she thinks, her anger coming out unpleasantly as she slams her door and throws herself down on the mattress. All she really hears is rot. Like her life. Rotten before it’s begun. Her stomach rumbles. Apart from the Caramac and crisps, she’s eaten nothing today, but she won’t go back out there for shite sandwiches and cake. Instead she finishes the rest of the Thunderbird, sucking it out of Daniel’s dinosaur sippy cup, until her head spins and she feels sick. She falls asleep for a bit, or at least drifts into some drunken haze, because the next time she focuses, the house is quiet, and her ma is in the doorway.

  “I’m going to work,” she says, her eyes defiant. “Tony’s going to the shop. Keep an eye on Daniel.” She doesn’t wait for Charlotte to answer but calls out down the stairs that she’s coming and to wait a fucking minute, and then the door slams behind them and Charlotte can let out a long breath. She gives it a moment to be sure they’re gone before storming across the landing to grab her Walkman back.

  “That’s mine.” She snatches it from where it’s sitting, untouched at the bottom of Daniel’s cot, and although all his focus is on the soft bunny rabbit he’s holding tight she makes him jump and the smile he had for her turns into a shocked frown and tears and the start of a quiet wail.

  “Fucking shut up,” she mutters. The room stinks of dirty nappies and she can see one rolled up in the corner of the room where Ma obviously had thrown it and forgotten to bin it. At least he has clean nappies. He sobs and reaches one hand out for her.

  “I said shut up!” She turns and leaves him clinging to his stupid rabbit, and by the time she gets back to her room, his sobs slow down to nothing. He’s learning too, that there’s no point if no one comes. Or maybe her ma’s right. Maybe he’s just better than Charlotte. A happy baby. Not like Charlotte was. She was always a little bitch. Fucking hell, she was hard work. Full of trouble from day one. Daniel’s always smiling. She knows what her ma means though. Daniel’s dad didn’t leave.

  She carefully puts the tape back in and with a cautious glance at the door presses play, filling her head with Katie’s songs. She knows most of them from Top of the Pops even though she’s not as into music as Katie is and her ma never buys her any tapes or records. She hums along, imagining the seaside and being with Katie and their families disappearing in a puff of smoke. Then comes one song, “Drive Away, Baby” by Frankie Vein, and she listens to the words, properly listens to them, before rewinding it and listening again. It’s all about getting away. Going somewhere else. Leaving all the shit behind. It’s their song, she knows that straightaway. All their make-believe, their fantasies, their thoughts of their families being murdered by an unknown assailant in their beds, everyone who’s ever pissed them off disappearing, Katie’s suffocating ma and stinky little Daniel pulverized to dust like the old houses on Spring Street, everything is wrapped up in this song. It’s why Katie’s put it on there. She feels the same. They always feel the same. That must be what love is.

  Play. Rewind. Play. Time slides. Tony doesn’t come back for over an hour, the pub being too close to the shop to resist, and anyway it’s Daniel’s birthday and she luckily hears him coming up the stairs between plays, and quickly tucks the Walkman under her pillow.

  He doesn’t knock but pulls open her door and stands there, drunk and angry. It’s a house full of simmering anger.

  “You were supposed to watch the bairn! He’s fell out of his cot. He’s hurt his head.”

  Charlotte says nothing. There’s no point. From across the corridor, Daniel calls out for Ma. His voice sounds tired. How long has he been crying?

  “You want to bring the social down on us? On your ma?”

  He’s pulling his belt off as he talks and his face is blotchy and she knows that’s always when he’s at his worst. It’s all Daniel’s fault, is all she can think as the first blow lands. Everything’s worse since the perfect child came along. No one ever hits Daniel. Why can’t they love her like they love him? What’s so fucking special about him? She focuses on her anger and bites down on her cheek. It stops her crying. Tony’s worse when she cries. It feeds the monster inside him. All his resentment at another man’s kid taking food from his table.

  * * *

  She wakes up in the night, sore and bruised and her bed is soaking under her, and the familiar tang fills the room. She’s wet herself again. She quietly strips the sheet off and scrunches it into a ball, stuffing it under the mattress. She’ll have to wash it when everyone is out or when Tony and Ma are in bed in the afternoon. Ma said she’d get a plastic sheet if she kept doing it. She doesn’t want that. Everyone will laugh at her if they hear about it, and everyone will because Tony’s a big gobshite at the pub and all the parents from the estate drink in there. All the kids would know. No one would be scared of Charlotte Nevill if they knew she wet the bed,
and the little uns being scared of her is all she has. And what would Katie say if she found out? What would she think of her?

  The welts on the back of her legs sting and it’s a cold night, but she hobbles to the window and opens it, hoping to blow the smell away by morning. She peels off her soaked underwear and wraps herself in the old parka jacket that’s too big for her but she loves anyway, and lies on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. She thinks about Katie until she falls asleep. In her dream they’re driving, fast and far, in a big pink convertible and laughing as they go. And in her dream they have blood on their hands.

  42

  Marilyn

  Now

  It’s nearly midnight and I’m wide awake, staring at the ceiling and trying to get my thoughts and feelings into some kind of order. Whenever I close my eyes, all I see is the flash of worry on Lisa’s face when I told her I was having problems with Richard. As if she cared about me. As if we were still best friends. Ava’s missing and she was concerned because I was unhappy. How am I supposed to feel about that?

  Someone isn’t who they say they are. Someone I know.

  How crazy has Lisa become? Could she still be in love with Jon maybe, to come up with something that wild rather than think he took Ava? What sort of man is he anyway? Who would send those kind of messages to his daughter?

  Too much thinking time, that’s my problem. It’s making the whole world murky and if I’m not careful I’ll start to see conspiracy theories everywhere. I’m too tired for this. I need to go back to work. Penny texted earlier to say Richard had called a couple of times but hadn’t caused any drama, and that there was some work to do on the Wharton account but if I wasn’t up to it then one of the others could manage. My teeth clench at the thought. No one’s stealing my client list.

  Anyway, where else can I go? I can’t hide forever. That’s simply delaying the inevitable. If Richard shows up, I’ll call the police. I’m tired of living a pretense. That thought leads me straight back to Lisa/Charlotte. Did she ever get tired of living a lie? Had she ever been tempted to tell me about her past? I’m glad she didn’t. I wouldn’t have wanted to carry that. Even if I was her best friend.

  Her name was Katie Batten. She was Charlotte’s best friend.

  I give up on sleep and get up. I’ve got too many questions whirring around in my head to doze, and my broken ribs are throbbing, so I pull on some clothes, make a coffee in a takeaway cup in the machine, and pad downstairs. There’s a business center on the ground floor near reception and I head there, wanting a computer. The lights buzz brightly against the night outside and the man at reception gives me a perfunctory smile as I pass by. This is the best thing about hotels. There is always someone awake. You’re never quite alone and it’s all so comfortingly sterile and impersonal.

  I settle down at one of the desks, not too close to the window, although the chances of Richard being out looking for me at this time of night are remote, and turn on the computer. There are things I need to know, and thinking about Lisa’s life is preferable to thinking about my own.

  I search Charlotte Nevill and Jon John Jonathan lover and an archived tabloid comes straight up from early 2004. There’s no picture of Lisa, but one of Jon, Jon Roper, sitting in a garden. He’s thin and he’s got an earring in, and he’s scowling at the camera, no doubt as instructed, under the headline “I Fell in Love with Child Murderer Charlotte and It Nearly Killed Me . . .” He looks so young and there are dark circles around his eyes and his skin is unhealthy. It’s a salacious piece, as I expected, but between the details of their life together, it feels like he’s crying out for some kind of absolution. A lot of what he says is about Crystal—that must be Ava—and how when she was born the reality of Charlotte’s crime hit him and he couldn’t forgive her, and now he’s lost his daughter too, all because he took up drinking too much to cope. According to the article, he’d moved back in with his mum to try and clean up his life and start afresh.

  I know how you feel, I think. If only it was so easy in your forties. I read the article again, where he makes a big deal about their sex life and their drinking, and I wonder how much of it is true and how much he’s embellished to make himself sound better. It all sounds so tragic and sordid. I almost feel sorry for him but for the fact he’s taken Ava.

  I flick through a few more results, but they’re mainly different versions of the same article, and there’s just a couple of other pictures. I can’t find a Facebook account for him so I presume the police have shut it down already or whatever it is they do in these situations. Or maybe Jon himself deactivated it when he took Ava.

  I start my next search. Katie Batten. Charlotte’s best friend. Katie Batten drowned Ibiza 2004 takes me straight to the story. God bless Google in all but medical situations. My coffee is growing cold but I take a sip anyway.

  The search has been called off for Katie Batten, a British woman missing in the Balearic party island of Ibiza. Ms. Batten, twenty-six, was last seen going for a dawn swim on the beach near the bar where she’d been working since May. She had been traveling in Spain for most of the year after the death of her mother in 2002 in a car accident. Friends say she was coming to terms with her mother’s sudden loss, but still had bouts of grief and has been described as nervous and fragile. Her colleagues stated that she spent much of her time alone.

  On the night of her death, she was seen going into the sea, and two witnesses, a young German couple on holiday who had been watching the sun come up in the secluded spot, say they tried to call her back as she was weaving, and they thought she might be drunk. Ms. Batten responded that she was fine. The young couple watched her swim out, but when they looked toward the rocks a while later, there was no sign of her. Despite the best efforts of search teams, Katie Batten’s body has not been recovered. A verdict of accidental death by drowning is expected from the inquest.

  There were a few other small news items but nothing with much more detail. Father had died of a heart attack several years earlier, after which Katie had cared for her mother, who had struggled to cope with widowhood. Against another report of Katie’s drowning, there’s a picture, grainy, of a woman on the beach, long dark hair and sunglasses, tanned. Nondescript and taken from a distance. Was this the best they had?

  Katie Batten’s body has not been recovered. I reread the line, over and over. Did she ever wash up? Is this why Lisa is so convinced Katie took Ava? Does she really believe she’s not dead? Could it be her? But why? There’s no reason. Surely she wouldn’t want anything to do with Charlotte Nevill again even if she did find her? The newspapers have made it clear over the past few days that Charlotte’s guilt wasn’t in doubt. She was seen killing Daniel and she admitted it. Why would Katie want to come back into Charlotte’s life now?

  I have another sip of my coffee. It’s Jon. Jon sent the messages from his Facebook. Jon is the one who’s vanished with Ava. The police know what they’re talking about. Trust them, not your crazy ex–best friend.

  I close the computer down. Enough is enough. I’ve got my own problems. The police will find Jon and Ava. They will. I don’t want to think about the nature of the messages he was sending her. Even the bright lights of the hotel can’t dispel their darkness.

  43

  Lisa

  It’s the sudden stiffness in Alison’s spine that alerts me. She presses the mobile phone a little too close to her ear. It must be Bray and my head spins and darkness threatens the corners of my vision. God, no. Please, not Ava. Please, not Ava. The fear is about to overwhelm me when Alison glances back over her shoulder to where I sit on the edge of my chair, gripping my mug of tea. She’s furtive, not sympathetic, a wariness in her expression. A wariness of me. My fear for Ava’s immediate safety is replaced by my own survival instinct kicking in. Something is wrong.

  Alison gives me a tight half smile and tries to look casual as she goes to her bedroom to continue the call. As the door clicks shut I dart from my chair and press my ear against the wood. For the first
time since they moved me from our house to this awful flat, I’m happy about its cheap manufacture. The door is thin, and although I can’t make out every word—she’s speaking quietly—I catch some phrases . . . will do . . . I’ll be fine . . . No, she’s the same as she has been. I’ll lock the door . . . act normal until you get here.

  Shit, shit, shit. My face burns as my hands cool. I’m all animal instinct now, and my instinct is telling me I have to get out of here at whatever cost. Something’s happened and they’re coming for me. What happens to Ava then? Will that be game over? I can’t risk it, and I can’t risk being arrested. I am still Charlotte Nevill. They won’t see a victim.

  There’s movement on the other side of the door and I am suddenly terrifyingly calm. I run to the kitchen and grab the kettle, the water inside sloshing heavy as I run back. The bedroom door is opening as I reach it, and Alison steps back a little, surprised to see me so close. Fear. I see fear.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quietly. She barely has time to look confused before I swing the kettle around and hit her on the side of the head. The thump makes my stomach clench and she reels backward, crumpling onto the carpet, dazed and hurt, a gasp of air whoomping from her chest. I don’t hesitate but snatch the mobile phone and run to the front door, grabbing my old handbag and the keys from the table in the hall.

  “Lisa, Lisa, don’t . . .” Her voice is quiet, an effort.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. My shaking hands pull the front door open before double-locking it from the outside, the key almost dropping from my fingers as I hear her banging against the other side. Too late, Alison, too late. She’s trapped inside with no phone. I still don’t have much time. Bray is on her way here, I know it.