On that day, Mrs Danning had looked troubled, the shadows under her eyes darker than usual. Casey wasn’t at all well, she’d told Evie. Evie had asked her what was wrong. She’d hesitated, then told her that Casey had attacked her. Evie had been shocked, even more so when Mrs Danning told her about Casey’s venomous outburst, her hatred, her jealousy of her sister. Casey had gone to stay with an old friend for a while. Mrs Danning had been unable to hide her worry. Evie could remember the forced smile that had been too bright when Leah came in. But Casey had been there that day. Evie had glimpsed her face, framed in an upstairs window; their eyes meeting for a moment. All this time, the memory had been blocked out, but Evie knew, with certainty, it was true.
‘It was you.’ Evie didn’t know where her courage had come from, but suddenly she wasn’t frightened. ‘You were jealous of Leah. So jealous you wanted to kill her, and you’ve convinced yourself it’s my fault.’
If she didn’t know first-hand how malleable the human mind was, Evie would never have believed it was possible. Now, as she watched the expression on Casey’s face, she knew it was true. She was so disturbed, her mind so twisted, she was completely convinced of her own lies.
‘Or did Xander do it? How did you bribe him, Casey?’ Evie watched the fear in Casey’s eyes when she mentioned Xander. ‘What about Tamsyn? Did you kill her too?’ As Casey’s eyes flickered, Evie took a shot in the dark. ‘Or was that Xander, too? Picking off the unloved, the unnoticed, thinking he’d get away with it . . . Aren’t you worried he’ll take you, too?’
‘It’s lies.’ Casey tried to compose herself, but her voice gave her away, each word pitched higher than the previous one. ‘You’re a liar.’
‘You got Xander to attack me.’ Evie stared at Casey. ‘Where’s Angel? Where’s my daughter?’
She’d pushed Casey too far. Screaming, Casey ran at her, the knife raised. Suddenly Evie was frozen, riveted to the floor, seconds from death, when Jack burst in through the open door. In two strides he reached Casey, catching her, bringing her crashing to the floor.
‘Evie, are you all right?’
But Evie was screaming at Casey. ‘Why? Why did you take her?’
A horrible laugh came from Casey. ‘Stupid fucking bitch . . . You should have died, Jen. Why should you live? But you ruined it, like you ruin everything. Poor little Jen, always the victim . . .’ she mocked, as Jack pulled her to her feet, then wrenched the knife from her hand and threw it out of reach.
‘Can you call Abbie?’ Evie’s voice was shaking, her body trembling, as she watched him twist one of Casey’s arms firmly behind her back.
‘I already have. In fact, that’s probably her, right now.’ There was the sound of cars pulling up outside.
Evie was shaking. ‘Tell her you’ve found Casey Danning.’
Casey
Nothing is ever by chance. When you came back, the future shifted. But I’d known it would. My bones held the knowledge of what no one else would ever know; secrets to take to my watery grave. Even when my flesh rotted away and left them exposed on the floor of the seabed, they would never tell my story. The only person who can do that is you.
It’s in your bones, too.
I remember you at school, the essence of an unfair universe, because you had it all – grades, looks, friends, clothes, talent. A career mapped out – I heard you tell one of your friends you were going to work in television. As if you had no doubt – for girls like you, there was only certainty.
You didn’t know who I was, beyond the dimmest kind of recognition. Not at first. I was someone you’d seen around. One of the invisible, who blend into the background of other people’s lives. They’re the most dangerous. Did you know that? Always hovering close by, but you never see them.
Your life was full of promise. Not mine, though. Promise implies the prospect of a positive, exciting future. It wasn’t everyone’s right, though. How could it be? I knew the universe was fucked up when it contrived to give my cheating father a roof over his head, when so many innocent people had nothing. The suffering of the innocent, of the millions, for the security of the few.
But nothing in life is fair. There is no justice, only a construct manipulated by people with letters after their names. The rest of us make it up, under the guise of so-called morality; the most meaningless word, as subjective and malleable as we want it to be.
Human beings are good at that, though. Twisting words to mean what they want, dressing up unpalatable truths into something more wholesome. What happened to honesty? Does it, like justice, depend on where you look at it from? One man’s truth is another man’s lie, just as one man’s victory is another man’s failure. Think about it. A killer succeeds, their victim dies. A court case is won, a murderer walks free. That’s justice for you.
You were the brightest summer day with cornfield hair and eyes the colour of the cloudless skies, while I was the deepest, blackest night. That was before, of course. Before your summer turned to autumn overnight, making you a dark, tormented shadow of yourself. Ghosts sucking the happiness out of you; your prettiness, your laughter, even your friends, devoured by guilt. Oh, you knew who I was by then. Your guilt and misery and ugliness were a just punishment – or so it seemed at the time. They weren’t, though. Not if you knew what I’d gone through. Not when, much later, you managed to shake them off and be so happy.
It isn’t right. And I’ve waited, always wanting to believe the moment would come when our paths would cross. It seemed inevitable, that the past would be redressed, injustice rectified. A matter of balance, that at last would make sense of it all.
They’re fleeting, those moments. Easily missed, like that one a few years ago. I was ready to seize it, but you were too busy talking to the man you were with. A few seconds either way would have changed the course of the future – for both of us. I glanced away and when I looked back, you’d gone. I knew then that it wasn’t the right time. There was so much more that fate had in store for you.
You are the last person in the world to deserve happiness, though you’re probably one of those people who think it’s your right. How can you, of all people, believe that? When you alone are responsible for so much misery. When there are innocent, tortured souls in the world, what right have you not to join them?
I came here to hide from a world that judged so harshly; cruelly. I thought this place had saved me. A year ago, when I arrived, I was dying, but you don’t know how it feels to drown in blackness. To exist in a place where there’s no sunrise, just a perpetual night filled with hatred and jeering voices. You don’t know what it’s like, to fight each day, for every breath, when it would be so much easier not to. Seeing you, now, brings it all back, hypodermic-sharp. You were too fragile, even in your new-found happiness, to put yourself through what haunts me every day.
There’s no love – not for people like me. Not everyone is loved – you don’t know that, do you? But in the long run, it makes it easier, because from the outset, when you know it isn’t a caring world, there is no harsh awakening to reality.
The police weren’t interested in what you’d done. Didn’t look past your pretty hair and your tears. Nobody could. Even you didn’t know you’d killed my family. You didn’t see the rift you’d caused, which became a chasm, into which each of us fell, spinning, deeper and deeper until we’d gone. You fooled everyone. In a world that favours beauty, each and every one of them was taken in.
Not me, though. My razor-sharp eyes saw straight through you. It’s why I’ve kept breathing. There was a moment, out in the future, spiralling towards us, when the truth would be exposed and everyone would know.
Rick hadn’t needed to teach me to surf. Or about swell and rips and storm surges. The universe brings us what we need. The day I stood on the beach as the waves powered in, the rain lashing the shore, I saw the telltale signs of the rip.
It had always been there when I needed it. The knowledge that I could disappear for good. I was calm, resolute, ready to die, if
it was my time, throwing myself at the mercy of the elements. Their choice if I lived or not. The prospect of death didn’t frighten me. After years of pain, I envisaged uncomfortable minutes in cold water, as it filled my lungs, stopped me breathing. Minutes that after a lifetime of hurting, would seem like nothing. Then, blessed, eternal release.
As I waded out, I didn’t falter. The storm had given the rip a force I hadn’t felt before, that sent a strange euphoria coursing through me as it swept me out to sea. It was the ride of my life, one that there was no turning back from, as I was lost amongst the might of the waves.
It’s life’s greatest certainty – death. Our strongest instinct is to keep it at bay, so that it takes inhuman strength to invite it in – or maybe desperation. I’d known today would come. Counted down as the blackness grew more dense, more suffocating. No one would miss me. In a matter of minutes, Casey Danning would be gone forever.
I was ready. I let my board go. Felt myself choking on the sea-water, then the sudden quiet as I submerged myself, then felt the current dragging me down; panic building as my lungs wanted to explode, my last thoughts about how long it would take to stop breathing, how long until I drowned.
Does the manner of your death define your arrival in the next life? I hadn’t expected to come round on a small sandy beach, blinded by sunlight. Was this death? Thrown up on a shoreline? The most gentle rebirth into whatever came next?
Aching as I tried to move, flashes of the storm came back to me; the height of the waves, watching my surfboard blown away as if made of paper. Disappointed, all of a sudden, because after a life in which I’d achieved nothing, I’d failed in death too.
As I lay there, I waited for the darkness to return, but I could only feel the sun warm my skin. For the first time I could remember, I felt peaceful. The universe had granted me a second chance: it must believe I was worth something.
Above the beach, I glimpsed a single, white-painted house and the brilliant, hopeful beginning that follows the darkest, most bitter end.
‘You OK?’ The voice startled me. ‘You must be crazy to have been out there. You could have killed yourself.’
Dragging myself up so that I was leaning on my elbows, I saw a guy in a wetsuit.
‘I’m Rick.’
‘Hi.’ I stared at him, at his friendly eyes, as I realized. I’d been granted a fresh start. ‘I’m Charlotte.’
The easiest place to hide – behind a name.
I was only borrowing the name. I saw it as repayment of a karmic debt. After betraying me and moving with her parents to California, Charlotte Harrison owed me.
‘Whatever happened to you, Charlotte?’ Rick sounded bemused.
‘A narrow escape,’ I told him. ‘In more ways than you’ll ever know.’
As he helped me climb the rocks, then showed me along the path towards his garden, suddenly I knew there was a reason I’d been spared. One I could see, that was crystal clear. In the bright sunlight after the violent storm, everything was falling into place.
I’d thought it was my time, but it wasn’t. I could see that, from the way Rick ran me a bath, then after cooking breakfast, told me to stay as long as I wanted to. The darkness was nowhere to be seen. It had been laid to rest with Casey Danning.
Later that day, I sat in the garden, looking out across the bay. What a difference a day could make. How much life could change. It didn’t matter how much you tried to control things. Sometimes the universe had its own ideas.
You thought you were hidden, didn’t you? But no one can hide forever, can they, Jen? When I saw you a few weeks ago, I knew that finally it had come. The moment our eyes would meet. When you remembered what you’d done. The first time in all these years you actually saw me.
People, cats, children . . . everyone dies. Does it matter when? You were lucky, weren’t you? You weren’t supposed to be found. Xander laughed when he heard you’d been taken to hospital. You weren’t supposed to survive his attack.
Some things just are – like Einstein’s laws, or Newton’s, or the regularity of the tides, or the predetermined length of a lifespan. Wrongs be put right. Karmic debts repaid. Balance redressed.
An eye for an eye; a life for a life.
46
Evie
As Jack led Casey out of the barn, Evie’s heart was thudding. As she reached the door in the makeshift wall, she turned the handle, expecting to find the door locked, gasping as it came open and she saw what was behind it. This couldn’t be right. She was hallucinating. Angel’s things were piled up against the far wall. Her little bed with the pink duvet. Her wall-hanging, crumpled on the floor. All her clothes; shades of pink piled messily in a corner. Crying out, Evie’s hands went to her mouth. Even one-eared Pony was here on the floor in front of her. Her mind was playing the ultimate, cruellest trick.
Suddenly she was light-headed, the room spinning round, her legs feeling as though they couldn’t take her weight. Jack was right. She needed to go home.
She called out to him. But before they left, she wanted him to see this. ‘Jack . . .’ A plaintive, desperate cry for help.
A voice answered. It was a voice she’d know anywhere; a husky, gravelly voice, from a little girl with tangled hair and chameleon eyes who she knew from the depths of her soul, emerging, terrified, from the shadows.
‘Mummy . . .’
EPILOGUE
As they walked along the beach, Angel held on tightly to her mother’s hand. The abduction had left scars. It would take more time to come to terms with than the few weeks since Evie had found her.
He’d driven them all to Rock, thinking the change of scene would be good for both Evie and Angel. It was a glorious winter’s day, the kind Jack loved. The sky was blue and in the curve of Daymer Bay the sand dunes sheltered them from the biting wind.
‘It’s the best time to come here,’ he said to Evie. It was true. No one else had braved the wind and they had the whole expanse of golden sand to themselves.
He reached into his pocket for Beamer’s ball and threw it. The dog chased after it, bringing it back and dropping it at Jack’s feet. He did it again, then, picking it up, he had an idea. ‘You try.’ He passed the ball to Angel.
She took it, a guarded expression on her face, then threw it a few feet, giggling when Beamer obligingly brought it back to her. Letting go of Evie’s hand, she threw it again, running after the dog.
Evie started after her, but Jack stopped her. ‘Let her. No harm can come to her here.’
‘I suppose . . .’ But she sounded reluctant. Jack could understand. After everything that had happened, it wouldn’t be easy to put it behind her.
They stood together, watching Angel. ‘How is she?’
‘Fragile.’ Evie shook her head, her eyes not leaving her daughter even for a second. ‘She’s been having nightmares. But she’s surprising, too. Like this, now, with Beamer . . .’ They watched as Angel grabbed the dog’s collar and trotted along beside him.
‘I’ve never asked you how you found the graves.’ Jack was curious. They’d remained undiscovered for so long.
Evie frowned. ‘With all the searches that had been carried out, I knew I had to look further afield. It was by chance, really. I saw the open grave first. It was only when I looked more closely that I noticed the second. I keep thinking about Tamsyn.’ Evie’s voice faltered. ‘She must have seen the attack.’
‘It looks that way,’ Jack said gently. ‘Either that, or she saw Casey take Angel.’
‘I still don’t understand.’ She stopped walking. ‘About Casey, I mean. Why she did this.’
Jack wasn’t sure he understood, either. But when you were as damaged as Casey was, you couldn’t apply normal thought processes. ‘Casey hated her little sister, for being everything she wasn’t – pretty, loved by their mother . . . You’ve always known that on the day Leah disappeared, Casey shouldn’t have been there, but she was. You saw her, but with everything that followed, you simply forgot. In Casey’s mind, you repr
esented a risk. When she tried to start a new life here as Charlotte, seeing you back here too must have tipped her over the edge. You weren’t supposed to survive the attack. Maybe somewhere in Casey’s warped mind she’d convinced herself that you were guilty of her sister’s death and her revenge was taking Angel. If you’d died, she’d have got away with it. The way you’ve been living, no one would have known you had a daughter.’
Evie shook her head.
‘Pascoe told us that Casey was insane and tried to blackmail him.’ Fucking mad, had been Xander’s exact words. ‘Apparently she told him she’d tell the police he killed her little sister if he didn’t help her . . . She told him she had evidence. We’re fairly sure Pascoe has links to a Satanist group, but of course, they’re very good at blending into the background.’ He didn’t want to tell her what he really thought, that there was an active group of Satanists which included Xander, and that Angel may have been held as a potential sacrifice. There were some things she didn’t need to know. At least, not just yet.
‘I want to get a dog.’ Evie’s voice was distant as she watched Angel and Beamer, still engrossed in their game. ‘It would be good for Angel. And I might feel safer. I really don’t . . .’ her voice shook, ‘feel safe.’
‘It’s hardly surprising.’ Jack spoke gently. ‘It’s going to take time to get over what you’ve been through. But if you’re ever worried, you can always call me – I mean, not as in calling the police, but more as a friend.’
She was quiet. He wondered if he’d overstepped the mark. After everything that had happened, it must be almost impossible to trust anyone.
‘Thank you.’ She sounded hesitant. Then she turned to face him. When she spoke, she sounded more confident. ‘Would you help me? Find a dog like Beamer?’
‘Of course.’
The Death of Her Page 26
