Beautiful Liars_a gripping thriller about friendship, dark secrets and bitter betrayal

by Isabel Ashdown

  ‘I heard it was a historic murder,’ I tell them, shocked at my own audacity. ‘Hence the tent and the men in overalls. They’re digging it up.’

  Several members of the public make moves to take a better look at me, and I like the way it makes me feel. Authoritative. Visible. That’s the way Martha makes me feel too.

  I spot her over at the edge of the playground. She’s alone and she appears to be surveying the dig scene from a distance, scanning the area as though trying to solve a puzzle. She looks lonely, and again I feel the strongest bond between us, the kind of connection only shared by the best of friends. I long to call out to her, to say, ‘Martha, it’s me! I came!’ But, of course, I won’t do that. The timing is all wrong, and it’s Liv who she expects to see, not some stranger with wonky hair and a coat that won’t do up over her stomach. Her eyes rest on the bike shelter near to me, and when she starts to cross the lawn in my direction, I feel certain that she’s worked it all out, because her face is set hard with purpose. Is it anger, or concentration? It’s hard to tell, but as she draws closer I see her scrutinising each one of the faces in the small crowd that has gathered on this side of the fence and her lips part, as though she’s preparing to speak. My heart is in my mouth! I’m still feeling unwell, the cold sweats having returned as I rushed here from home, and I almost turn on my heel and flee, but then her phone rings and she takes the call, sidetracking her. I hear her say the name ‘Liv’ and then ‘Tom’. Aha, I think, it’s Juliet’s brother! And then, to my crushing disappointment, she moves away so I can’t hear any more.

  I’m so thrilled to be this close to Martha that I forget for a moment why we’re really here.

  ‘Did you know them?’ the woman beside me asks, noticing my tears as I wipe them away on the back of my hand. ‘The person they’re digging up?’

  ‘We were very close,’ I reply.

  She touches my arm with a mottled pink hand. The skin on the back of her knuckles looks chapped and raw, and her proximity makes me feel giddy, but the gesture is a kind one. ‘You poor love. Family? Friend?’

  I simply nod, enjoying the woman’s sympathy. The tears continue to flow, streaming down my hot cheeks and under my chin. ‘Yes,’ I sob, and I move away from her, to reposition myself further along the wire fencing and closer to where Martha now stands.

  I raise my mobile phone and take photographs, unnoticed among so many others doing the same thing, and manage to capture both Martha and the scene beyond. As her phone call comes to an end, she turns her head in my direction and, click, I get her, clear as day: a perfect portrait of Martha Benn looking directly at me. When I look up from the screen, I’m alarmed to see that Martha is sprinting across the grassed area towards a young man who I now recognise as Toby. There seems to be an increase in activity around the tent, an excitement of sorts as the men and women in white congregate at the entrance, pointing beyond the canvas screen and jotting notes on clipboards. One of them is making a phone call; another talks with a uniformed officer and indicates in our direction with a sweeping motion. Martha and Toby stand just outside the police tape, their heads close in discussion. Toby does most of the talking as Martha nods, listening intently, bringing her hand to her mouth as she absorbs whatever it is he’s telling her. I’m mesmerised by the sight of her, so close, Martha Benn in action. And then she’s running back in my direction, tugging at her jacket collar and calling something back to him as she comes. There are tears in her eyes, and as she nears me I clearly hear her words.

  ‘She doesn’t get off so lightly. I don’t care how upsetting this is; Liv needs to be here.’

  My stomach twists viciously, and again I feel the threat of my bowels loosening. She’s got to go around the long way, I think, to make her exit out through the school gates at the front. My mind is racing: if I hurry, I could just about reach home before she does. I can’t let her see me entering the house, can’t let her know that I’m not Liv, that this whole past fortnight everything I’ve said to her has been a lie. That I’m not who I say I am.

  Pushing past the woman with the red knuckles, I run as fast as my tensed muscles will allow, icy sweat breaking out over my face and chest. Just a few streets, I tell myself, that’s all it is. You can do it.

  At the corner of my street my vision swims, my consciousness threatening to peter out altogether. I remember a time, so many years ago, when I was pursued by the police through these very streets during that bother with Mark Lynton. There were two of them, and they chased me in the darkness, calling to me as I darted from one street to the next, much lighter on my feet back then, and desperate not to be caught. ‘Stalker,’ they called me when they gave me a formal caution. But how can it be stalking, I wanted to know, when it comes from a place of love? How can admiration be misconstrued as threat? Even now I can recall the pounding sense of fear I felt as those police officers closed in on me, the sound of their footsteps growing nearer, their voices stronger. ‘Miss!’ they shouted. ‘Miss!’ In my mind’s eye I’m there again, the darkness gaining on me despite the early hour of the day, and I daren’t look over my shoulder, daren’t pause for a moment, though I’m aware that now my footsteps are no longer pounding the streets but staggering the last few hundred yards as I hold on to everything I’ve got to prevent my bowels from releasing right here on the street.

  With a cry I force my key into the front door and turn it, dark dots pricking my vision, the relief of home enveloping me as I step inside. But my relief is short-lived. I hear Martha’s voice before I feel her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Hey!’ she calls out, and it’s over, I think.

  It’s all over.

  23. Martha

  The woman standing in Liv’s doorway is panting and sweat-drenched, and from the terrified expression on her face, Martha has the strongest feeling she’s about to slam the door closed. Martha catches the edge of the door frame with her hand, leaning back to double-check the house number on the brick wall outside. Definitely Liv’s house. Definitely not Liv.

  ‘Um,’ the woman stutters, her eyes darting nervously from Martha’s steadfast hand to the street beyond. She can’t meet Martha’s gaze.

  She’s very short and heavy-set, with dark bobbed hair, and for a crazy moment back there, before the woman had turned and Martha had seen that the colour of her skin was all wrong, she had actually wondered if it could be Liv. As she’d watched her stop outside the door, fumbling with her keys, it had flashed through Martha’s mind that perhaps this was why Liv was avoiding her: that she’d been hiding away, self-conscious of her dramatically altered shape. But this person couldn’t be more different from the Liv Martha recalls, the small, dark pixie of a girl who had barely reached her shoulders.

  ‘I’m looking for Olivia Heathcote,’ Martha says, her hand remaining hooked on the frame.

  The woman nods, almost imperceptibly, and Martha notices the slick of sweat along her hairline. Her face is red and puffy, her breathing laboured. She doesn’t look like the kind of person who ought to be running; she doesn’t look well.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Martha asks, as the woman’s eyes roll upwards as though she might pass out. ‘Here, let me help you inside.’

  Steering her over the threshold, Martha guides her straight through to the small kitchen at the back, instinctively knowing the way. To her surprise, very little has changed. The wall units are the same dark veneer cabinets that she remembers so well, sucking the light out of the room, and the big butler sink is the one Martha recalls the twins being bathed in when they were newly home from the hospital.

  ‘I’m Martha,’ she tells the woman as she pulls out an upright chair and helps her into it. When the woman only stares back, she begins to wonder if she has learning difficulties, or has trouble speaking. Could she be deaf? She hunches down, so that the movement of her lips might be seen, and asks slowly, ‘What’s – your – name?’

  ‘Casey,’ the woman replies, locking her fingers together across her lap. There’s something off abo
ut her, but Martha can’t quite fathom what it is. When she raises her eyes briefly, shyly, Martha has a sharp sense of recognition, though she’s certain she’s never met this woman before in her life. She’s so distinctively odd – in both manner and appearance – that she wouldn’t easily have forgotten her.

  ‘Casey.’ There’s a three-legged stool beside the sink. Martha pulls it over and sits facing her. ‘Do you need a drink of water? No? Now, Casey, I’m looking for my friend Liv Heathcote. I was expecting to find her here. Do you know who I mean?’

  Casey tenses her arms about her midriff, her face creasing with pain. ‘Yes,’ she replies with a grimace. She relaxes her hands as though a spasm has passed. ‘I bought the house from her.’

  Martha’s eyes widen, and she looks about the room, confused. ‘But …’ she starts, and then everything begins to fall into place. You stupid woman, Martha Benn. She’s barely able to believe her error. Idiot! Just because she sent the initial letter here, it doesn’t mean that Liv has been emailing from here. ‘Have you received any mail for Olivia over the past fortnight or so?’

  Casey nods vigorously, and reaches out for a tea towel, wiping it across her face to mop up the rivulets of sweat that pour from her. ‘Yes! A handwritten letter. I didn’t open it!’

  ‘What did you do with it?’ Martha asks softly. She notices that Casey’s hair is a good half-inch shorter on the left side than the right. There’s an unpleasant odour about her, like laundry that’s been left to get mildewed in the washing machine.

  ‘I took it to the post office and they told me they had a forwarding address and I handed it over to them and they sent it on to her.’

  She says this all in such a rush that it reminds Martha of a child telling a big fib. ‘Did they say where that forwarding address was, Casey?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They didn’t say whether it was in London or elsewhere? Did you meet Liv during the house sale? Liv didn’t mention where she was moving to when she sold you the house?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, she did say, but I can’t … Oh, dear. I’m such a useless lump, aren’t I?’ She looks as though she might cry, and Martha feels bullish for bombarding her with so many questions. Then, quite unexpectedly, the woman says, ‘You’re Martha Benn, from the television, aren’t you?’ And her face brightens. ‘I watch you all the time. My mum and I – we used to watch you together, when you were on breakfast TV. I don’t watch it now you’re not on it. It really went downhill after you left. Really.’

  Martha smiles awkwardly at this sudden outpouring of admiration. ‘Yes, yes, I am Martha. Actually, that’s why I’m here – it’s for a documentary I’m working on. I was hoping Liv would be able to help me with a few questions I’ve got.’

  Casey’s full attention is on her now, rapt, her focus fixed on Martha’s face.

  ‘You’d be really helping me if you had any information about where I can find—’

  The woman suddenly leaps from her chair, clutching at her abdomen and rushing from the room. Martha rises from her own seat in surprise.

  ‘Sorry! Sorry, I won’t be two ticks!’ Casey dashes into the narrow hallway towards the cramped toilet room that Martha knows is under the stairs, slamming the door behind her with an urgent clatter.

  Standing alone in the kitchen, Martha stares at the empty space before her, wondering how she could have messed this up so badly. Why hadn’t Liv put her right when she’d first got back in touch, and why hadn’t she mentioned she no longer lived in Stack Street? Even when Martha had suggested meeting places that were close to this address, Liv had said nothing. Why not?

  Sensing that Casey could be some time, Martha quietly steps out into the hallway and across to the small reception room at the front, where a small, neat window table is laid out with an embroidered tablecloth, held down by a large crystal ashtray and a Royal Doulton tea service. On the dark wood sideboard is a laser-jet printer, a pile of paperwork and an open laptop, its idle screen in sleep mode. Curious as to what this woman’s line of work is, Martha leans in to peer at the top page. ‘Chemicals and Allergy in the Twenty-First Century’, the A4 sheet reads, with a few red pen scrawls along the edges, along with the initials KC. A scientist, perhaps? Or maybe some kind of editor? As Martha turns away, her coat catches the edge of the printer and a sheet of paper floats to the floor. She snatches it up, anxious not to get caught snooping in this strange woman’s front room, but as she flips it over to return it, something familiar catches her eye. The Square Wheels logo. She steps into the light of the window and her breath stops in her chest. This picture, printed off here, in Liv’s old front room, is the same image that Martha had sent to Liv’s email address earlier this week – the newspaper cutting of David Crown and the Square Wheels volunteers.

  On hearing the toilet flushing along the hall, Martha runs her finger across the touchpad of the laptop, and to her dismay Olivia Heathcote’s inbox appears on the screen, open at Martha’s latest message, entitled: Meet me at school. Was that where this woman had been rushing back from? Had she been among the onlookers at the school gates, craning to get a look at the police action? Sickeningly, it dawns on Martha that she’s been the victim of an elaborate hoax.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The woman, Casey, is now standing in the doorway, holding on to the wall with one hand, the crumpled tea towel gripped tightly in the other. Again, she mops her brow. ‘What are you doing in my front room? This is my office. This is my house,’ she says, her voice rising tremulously. ‘What do you want from me, Martha Benn?’

  Martha holds up the printed image. ‘Casey, if you passed my letter on to Liv, how did you come to get hold of this?’

  Casey reaches out and snatches the paper from her. ‘It’s a project I’m working on. Quite separate!’ Her mouth continues to move, but no words come, and she looks so much like a chastised child that Martha knows she’s not quite right. She’s vulnerable. This woman can’t possibly live here alone.

  ‘Does anyone else live here with you, Casey? Do you have a carer?’

  ‘A carer! What for? Why would I have a carer?’

  ‘I don’t mean—’ Martha begins, but her sentence is interrupted by the ringing of the front doorbell. When Casey doesn’t move, Martha calmly asks her, ‘Would you like me to get it?’

  ‘No!’ she hisses, her fingers rising to straighten and primp at her hair. ‘It’s just Carl. It’s Carl. Carl. He’ll come back later. Yes.’

  ‘But surely—’ Martha tries again, now beginning to feel uneasy about the woman’s erratic behaviour. She needs to get out of here. She needs to call Toby and let him know that half of what they thought they knew is in fact useless. There’s no time to lose. They need to find the real Liv.

  The doorbell rings again, and Casey lets out a whimper, cautiously peering around the doorway and into the hall. At that moment a text message vibrates silently on Martha’s phone, and she glances at it as the woman’s back is turned, to find an update from Toby.

  Tracked down Jo Clement – one of the girls in the Square Wheels photo. Says she only volunteered a couple of times, but remembers the girl standing by DC is called Katherine (not Karen) and – get this – she’s pretty sure she was DC’s daughter.

  Daughter? No, they’ve got it wrong. Janet Crown said their only child had died years ago and the police records don’t mention a daughter, do they? Martha has to get out of here, to speak to Toby, to find out what this is all about.

  ‘Casey,’ Martha says, sliding her mobile back into her pocket, but Casey turns sharply, looking up at her through warning eyes.

  ‘Shh!’ she says, a fierce little finger flying to her mouth.

  Martha’s lips open to speak, but then the visitor calls out, sounding so close as to be almost in the same room.

  ‘Miss Crown?’ he calls against the tinny squeak of the letterbox rising. ‘Are you there, Miss Crown? It’s Carl from Sainsbury’s! I’ve got your delivery!’

  Now Casey’s eyes fall squarely on Martha’s, and t
hey are the eyes of a cornered woman.

  ‘Miss Crown?’ Martha’s mind can’t work fast enough. ‘Miss Crown – as in Katherine Crown?’

  Casey shakes her head vigorously, reaching out grasping hands to stop Martha from retreating, but Martha snatches her arm away, taking a stride towards the hallway. But adrenaline is on Casey’s side, and, in the afternoon gloom of that small front room, the sparkling reflected light of the raised crystal ashtray is the last thing Martha sees.

  PART THREE

  A Death

  When my hand came down on the back of her head, I wondered for a moment where the rock had come from. A rock in my fist, slick with warm blood. The noise of it was sickening; a solid clunk that quickly gave way to moisture, but that one powerful blow was all it took and she hit the woodland floor as gracefully as a felled sapling. For a heartbeat all sound ceased, as though life itself was paused. No longer the chatter of finches soaring between branches, no coo of the wood pigeons in the canopy above, no creak and snap of squirrel or hare. Gone the peaceful sigh of late summer breeze. Just me, and the steady thud of my pulse, and the silent girl, face down in the moss bed at my feet.

  From where I stood, her home was in view, not three hundred yards from the clearing, a large stone farmhouse set against the backdrop of the mountains and dales beyond. Out in the open air, the sun was still warm and bright in the sky, and it would be several hours more before darkness descended. I gazed down at the girl, taking in the way her slender arms trailed at her sides, palms upturned, fingers curled as though in restful slumber. One of her yellow clogs had tumbled away to reveal the soft pink underside of her small foot; the other remained in place, incongruous and ugly. I removed it, placed it with its partner neatly at the foot of the nearest birch. It struck me how young the girl suddenly appeared in death, how the absence of life lifted years from her, and how, lying there in her pastel summer dress, her skin sun-kissed and downy with fair hair, she seemed no threat at all. Where was her power now? In life she was bewitching, I knew that much just from watching the way she was with him. A coy flick of her hair, a come-hither glance from beneath lowered lashes; she could inspire jealousy in the purest of hearts. But now, what? Nothing. Her gold-tipped tresses fanned about her head, as though arranged that way to hide the broken skull, or as though she were a mermaid, drifting underwater, weightless.