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

by Isabel Ashdown

  ‘I can’t believe—’ they both start to say, clasping one another’s hands as they laugh.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Martha says, and she doesn’t know why she feels so strongly that this is her responsibility, but somehow she does. ‘I can’t really remember how or when we stopped seeing each other, Liv – but I’m sorry I didn’t make more of an effort to stay in touch.’

  Liv shakes her head vehemently. ‘You’ve got nothing to apologise for, Mart. None of us planned it this way, did we? After Juliet, how could we ever have thought things would just go on like before?’ She brings her hand to her mouth, this time breaking down in grief, not joy, and it’s clear to Martha that Liv’s pain is as real today as it was eighteen years ago. ‘I miss her so much,’ she goes on. ‘I still have days when I wake up and can’t believe that she just disappeared like that. I ask myself, could I have done things differently? Was there anything I could have changed – to have prevented her going like that?’

  ‘You can’t think like that,’ Martha tells her, knowing her words are false, hypocritical. Hasn’t she had the same thoughts and feelings herself, a thousand times before? ‘It’ll drive you insane. What we have to focus on now is finding out who was responsible for taking her away. That’s why I was so desperate to contact you, Liv, to see if we could work together to put things right, once and for all.’

  For the next few minutes Martha gives Liv a potted update on the investigation, filling her in on the details of the TV show, about the unsolved murder of Tilly Jones and the recent postcards supposedly sent from David Crown; about the mad woman living in Liv’s old house.

  ‘Christ,’ Liv says with a shudder. ‘She sounds like a complete psycho. What kind of weird coincidence is it that she would end up buying my house? I’ve got no memory of her from Square Wheels at all – but I certainly noticed she was a bit, well, strange, I suppose, when she came to look at the house.’

  ‘When I spoke with Finn Palin last night, he told me they’re now beginning to think that it wasn’t a coincidence at all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Liv looks alarmed. ‘You mean she targeted me?’

  ‘Not specifically you, but us, yes. When the police spoke with the estate agent you dealt with during the sale, she told them that Katherine was the first prospective buyer for your house, and that she requested a viewing the day it went on the market. You might recall, two other buyers put in later offers, but Katherine increased hers to get the sale through.’

  ‘Fuck me.’ And there she is: the old Liv, potty mouth and all. ‘Yes, I remember. My solicitor said this buyer was offering way over the odds, and that we should push the sale through as quickly as possible in case she changed her mind. But how would she have known where I lived, let alone that I was selling?’

  Martha takes a deep breath. ‘Finn thinks she’s been stalking us on social media. Have you ever had a Facebook account?’

  ‘Yes.’ Liv looks thoughtful. ‘I deleted it right before the house sale completed. I, well, my partner and I were separating, and I was moving to Guildford, and I just figured it was time for a fresh start.’

  ‘But up until then, could Katherine have learned much about you?’

  ‘Shit,’ Liv replies after a moment’s thought. ‘Yeah. What an idiot. I definitely put up a post about having had enough of London. I think I said I was considering putting the house on the market and moving out. I even mentioned that I lived in Hackney, in case any friends knew people looking for a property in the area.’

  ‘Well, there you go. It’s either that, or perhaps Katherine put a call out to all the local estate agents, asking them to alert her to any houses coming up for sale in your street.’

  ‘But why would she want to live in my old house in the first place?’

  ‘We haven’t quite worked that bit out. But my bet is it’s a case of good old-fashioned obsession. Katherine Crown is definitely not a balanced person, and for some reason she’s become fixated on us – it’s certainly something to do with the connection between her father and Juliet’s disappearance. I think she wants to clear his name.’

  ‘Terrifying,’ Liv replies. ‘That’s it. I’m off social media for good. It’s bloody dangerous.’

  Martha laughs, pulling her bag on to her lap, hearing the rustle of the unopened morning post she collected on the way out of her apartment. One of the packets, judging by the postmark, is the bundle of Juliet’s letters that Tom promised to send from France, and Martha wonders if now is the time to share them with Liv. But she’s just stalling, she knows. She has to break the devastating news about the police discovery of bones, to tell Liv that at last they might be getting close to putting Juliet to rest. On the footpath ahead of them a pair of joggers runs by, a couple in their early forties, the woman athletic and glowing, the paunchy man looking as though he’d rather be doing anything else. The things we do for love, Martha thinks.

  ‘So, Mart,’ Liv asks haltingly, ‘with all this research you’ve been doing – are the police any closer to finding out what happened to Juliet?’

  Again, Martha reaches for her friend’s hand. ‘Liv,’ she begins. How did you ever deliver this kind of news? Deciding there is no easy way, no right way to do this, Martha forges on. ‘Liv, we think we’ve found her. Skeletal remains have been found buried beneath the foundations of the old school swimming pool – where David Crown was building the Garden of Reflection.’

  ‘The garden we helped him to dig,’ Liv says, quietly now, her eyes fixed at middle distance, moving slowly left to right as she recalls the scene. She turns to look at Martha. ‘That’s where she’s been all this time?’ she asks, and her face is stricken. ‘We were there with him just months earlier, clearing rubble from the old pool. Juliet was helping him to measure the patio out, for fuck’s sake! Could we have stopped this happening, Mart?’

  Martha pulls Liv against her and kisses the top of her head, drawing her back so she can look into her eyes. ‘Nobody could have stopped this happening but him, Liv, do you understand? David Crown. He’s the one to blame, not us. We were just kids – ordinary kids, making ordinary mistakes – and Juliet got tangled up with the wrong person.’

  ‘Tangled up?’ Liv says. ‘Juliet wasn’t “tangled up” with David Crown. Is that what everyone thinks?’

  Martha can see she’s upset, that Liv can’t bear the thought of her best friend being involved in anything so sordid. ‘Well, yes I mean, until recently I never thought it was possible …’ she says, taking the letters from her bag, holding them up for Liv to see. ‘But these might tell us something different. I haven’t opened them yet,’ she says. ‘Tom – Juliet’s Tom – sent them to me from Paris. Maybe these will give us a bit more of an idea where Juliet’s head was at back then? Tom says they’re from that time. He reckoned they look like love letters.’

  All the colour has drained from Liv’s skin. ‘Is this why you asked me to meet you?’ she asks, her posture stiffening, her tone firmly defensive now.

  ‘Why I asked you?’ Martha replies, dropping the letters to her lap, pulling back to see Liv’s expression more clearly. ‘I didn’t ask you, Liv – you contacted me.’

  Before Liv has the chance to answer her, a shadow crosses over them and hovers, causing the friends to look up. It’s not the camera guys arriving early, as Martha suspected it might be, nor a cloud passing across the winter sky. The person standing over them is Katherine Crown.

  30. Katherine

  Here I am again, the Little Spy, peeking through the cracks in the curtains, watching and waiting for my friends to arrive. The minutes and hours have moved so slowly, sleepily tick-tick-ticking away, every second broadcast from the old wooden clock that John had mounted on the panelled wall above the bench. I finished my coffee and doughnuts hours ago, and I hate myself for not planning this more carefully, for not having stopped off at the shops to pick up provisions before the police started searching for me. But how could I have planned it? When I left home two days ago, after that terrible acci
dent with Martha, I was in a panic so crippling that I wasn’t even thinking straight. I wish John were here now, so I could thank him for the gift of this boat. I’ll never forget the day when I received the solicitor’s letter, and eventually the keys, and I thought that I must be dreaming for such a thing to happen to me. There was a short note too, informing me of the details of his gift. It was brief, so I was able to memorise the whole thing:

  To KC,

  It wouldn’t hurt for you to have a little space of your own, so I’m leaving you Dovedale, which would have gone to your dad if he was still around. I took it with 80 years left on the lease back in 1967, so the moorings are good to run for a little while yet. Keep the windows clean like I showed you and ask Terry at Rivermates to give it the once-over – I’ve been a bit lax with the maintenance in recent years, not been feeling as good as I used to. I’ve left you a few bob to draw on too – it’s well overdue for a visit to the dry dock, but Terry will tell you what wants doing.

  Be good.

  John

  I feel guilty now that two years have passed and I never did any of those things he asked me to, never sought out Terry at Rivermates, never cleaned the windows. The money wasn’t a huge amount – just three and half thousand pounds – and apart from the direct debit for mooring fees, I’ve never touched it, as it was meant specifically for the boat. And I never told Mum about John’s gift. It was my secret, something I needed more than ever since John was no longer around for me to call in on when life at home got a bit much. Once I had the boat, I could leave Mum for a few days at a time when she was in one of her lows, instead of hiding out in my room and wishing the time away. No wonder I’m such an avid reader; I’ve had hours to fill like that, alone and lonely. The boat was a godsend, though of course, since moving into Liv’s house, I haven’t been back here at all. Looking around at the grimy varnished surfaces and flaking windows, I feel ashamed to have let John down so badly. Dovedale was his pride and joy, and somehow I’ve even managed to ruin that.

  A flash of colour catches my attention, and I peer through the crack in the drapes to scrutinise the lone figure that now stands at the wooden bench beyond the path. Can she see me? Impossible, I hope, given that I’m concealed inside the unlit gloom of the cabin, the curtains parted only enough for me to watch through, unseen. She’s side-on, her face averted as she looks further along the path, over the roofs of the houseboats and dinghies moored along the way. ‘Turn around!’ I want to shout. ‘Let me get a good look at you!’ It’s certainly not Martha, so it has to be Liv, but she’s so wrapped up in her coat and scarf, her face obscured by dark glasses, that without her turning in my direction, it’s impossible to tell. Over here! I scream inside my head. Liv! Over here!

  As though in answer to my silent cries, she now turns face-on, lifting her sunglasses and perching them on her head, narrowing her eyes as she studies the boat. And there’s no doubt in my mind.

  That clear brown skin, that sleek, straight hair, those eyes so blue: it’s Liv.

  Despite what I led my dad to believe, that initial meeting at the Square Wheels cabin was not the first time that I’d met the three friends, and their lack of recognition was confirmation to me, if any was needed, that I was in fact invisible. I had met them almost a year earlier when, under the enthusiastic encouragement of my father, I attempted to enter the wider world one more time. Between them, my parents had done a good job with my schooling and by the start of that summer I was on track to pass ten GCSEs with A and B grades. My mum was proud of my progress, delighted to have to played such a role in my success, until Dad suggested that as I was such a bright cookie, I should consider studying at the local school’s sixth form, with a view to attending university, just as they had. Well, I thought my mother might have a seizure when he first raised the subject! She sent me from the room, hissing at my dad that he was reckless and irresponsible – even going as far as to say that the experience would be the ‘undoing’ of me, whatever that was supposed to mean! I sat at the foot of the stairs, listening in, fascinated by the war of words that went on beyond the wall, with Mum insisting I was still fragile, and Dad arguing that I was ‘over all that’. By ‘over all that’, he meant that my weight had stabilised in recent months, following a three-week stay in hospital, during which time I was tube-fed until the doctors deemed me well enough to return home. I’d gained a stone in weight during my stay, most of which (unbeknownst to Dad) my mother had managed to get off again through a careful regime of rationing and portion control. The baggy clothes were Mum’s idea, I recall. ‘You know how Dad fusses,’ she’d said. ‘Best not to draw attention to yourself when he’s around. He’ll only march you down to the doctor’s again. And you don’t want to find yourself back in hospital, Katherine, do you?’

  She was right: I didn’t. The abdominal scar from my feeding tube continued to bother me at night-time, when I’d scratch away at it in my sleep, causing it to get unbearably inflamed. It upset me, keeping secrets like my eating plan from Dad, but at the same time the secret-keeping paid off, because over the space of a few weeks Dad became more adamant that I was fit enough to enrol for sixth form, no matter what my mother said. This battle, at least, was his to win.

  Before long, we’d taken a tour of the school, met with the head teacher and I accepted a place, conditional on my achieving certain GCSE grades. Their conditional grades were a lot lower than those predicted for me, and so throughout the summer Dad and I went ahead with preparations for my start in the coming September. Mum stayed conspicuously outside of the arrangements, and we were careful not to discuss my new school, or anything related to it, in front of her. We’d passed the first hurdle of getting offered a place in the school; the second hurdle, it seemed to me, was getting through the Sixth Form Welcome Ball. The ball was scheduled to take place at the end of the summer holidays, before the start of the new term, and attending it was a prospect so daunting and thrilling that it’s a wonder I didn’t die of heart failure first. I am aware that under normal circumstances a daughter might go shopping with her mother in anticipation of such an event, but it was my father who accompanied me to John Lewis to choose my dress; it was my father who sat patiently outside the changing rooms, remarking on my various outfits as I twirled and curtsied, seeking his approval. Careful not to show myself looking so thin, I eventually chose a blue strapless fifties dress, under-netted to disguise my shapeless hips, with a neat red bolero cardigan to cover my arms and shoulders.

  ‘You look like a princess,’ Dad told me when he dropped me at the school gates beneath a hazy August sky. And for the first time in my life I felt like a princess. Despite my galloping nerves (settled only very slightly by a good dose of Fluoxetine) I walked into the school hall to find it already alive with the sights and sounds of what seemed like hundreds of young, smartly dressed teenagers. In that first glimpse, I experienced the sense that maybe I did deserve a place there, that perhaps this was somewhere I could belong. I was determined to make this work, as much to please Dad as to prove Mum wrong. I wasn’t the fragile creature she described me as; I was a princess. I was bright. I was beautiful. I was strong. Inside, I shook like a jelly.

  Luckily for me, one of the teachers I had met on my previous visit was at the door to the hall, and she remembered that I was new and beckoned to the refreshments table for one of the girls to come over. I cringed inside, my shoulders hunching instinctively at the burden I was about to become. But all such thoughts evaporated when I saw the girl who responded, smiling and hurrying across in our direction. This girl was, without a word of a lie, everything that I dreamed of being: graceful, bright-eyed and at ease in the world. Her name was Juliet, she told me, and, far from complaining about me being foisted on her, she welcomed me to the school and walked me about the bunting-festooned hall, introducing me to every new face we encountered. The majority of the students already attended the school, having just completed their GCSEs there, and everyone, except me it seemed, knew each other well. I was met
with a comforting level of indifference, the boys tending to bob their heads in bland acknowledgement, the girls with a sweeping once-over smile and a ‘hi’. There were girls and boys of every height, colour and size; their differences were so strikingly apparent to me that it seemed I had nothing to fear, no need to feel anxious over my own differences at all.

  Having done the rounds with me, Juliet left me sitting on a chair at the edge of the hall, while she returned to continue her rota duties behind the drinks table, along with two other girls whom I would later come to know as Martha Benn and Olivia Heathcote. Well, if I had seemed like a princess to Dad on that evening, Juliet and her friends seemed to me like Titania and her fairies, as ethereal and captivating as Shakespeare’s own exquisite creations. As the light outside dimmed and the disco-lit room filled up, I revelled in the sensation of disappearing behind a wall of people, but not before I spied Martha, a slightly shorter but no less radiant version of Juliet, sliding a half-bottle of vodka from her shoulder bag and slopping a glug into each of their three beakers. She spotted me watching and pulled a funny face, raising a friendly finger to her lips. Oh, to be in on the secret!

  Two hours later I was still in that same seat, cradling the same plastic cup of lemonade, happy just to observe, untroubled by conversation. Juliet and her friends were not the only ones drinking, judging by the shift in mood and decorum as the night went on, and before long ties were loosened and couples were smooching on the dance floor or disappearing through the fire doors out into the warm darkness of the playing field beyond. My eyes followed Juliet wherever I could find her, and when she vanished from view they sought out Martha or Liv. I made it a game of sorts, challenging myself to have one of them in my sights at any given time, quickly locating one of the others when that one disappeared. I watched Martha dancing out through the exit with a pale-skinned boy in a dark suit and bright trainers, and quickly shifted my attention to Juliet and Liv, who were dancing together at the edge of the dance floor, their fingers meshed together above their heads, Liv having to stretch her hands so much higher to reach Juliet’s. The music was alien to me, my mother having been someone who only entertained listening to the sounds from her own youth, but these two knew all the words, throwing their heads back every time the chorus rang out ‘C’est la vie’, collapsing into fits of laughter as the song came to an end. At the start of the next song, they grimaced and shook their heads, and I watched them as they linked arms, drifting out through the fire exit doors and into the darkness as Martha had done before them.