Two kiddies.
A brother and a sister. Chrissy the sister, but where is the brother? Could he be Ewan? Is he the one following me now? Watching me? Sending me things? Was the whole thing an elaborate form of revenge? They must have burned the bar down so the police wouldn’t identify them on the CCTV. The only proof vanished, literally, in a puff of smoke.
The indistinct images that pass through my mind are becoming clearer. Louder. Pushing her. The shouting. The crying. Had they revealed who they were? ‘Our mind tries to protect us from the things we cannot cope with,’ Mr Henderson had said. Is that what I am blanking out? The stark, horrible truth, brutally exposed. Two families torn apart. But we weren’t the victims, were we? Not in the eyes of the public who became our judge and jury. Not in the eyes of Sharon Marlow’s children.
I race through traffic lights on the cusp of red, recalling why I signed up for the dating app. It was Chrissy who instigated it. I remember.
‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ she had said. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ I swallow hard. Her words have left a sour taste that lingers, even as I remember it was Jules who sent the reply and briefly I wonder if she was in on it too, but that’s impossible. We’ve been friends for years, and it was Chrissy who downloaded that particular app.
Coincidence.
Synchronicity.
The victim part of me pulses with an inevitability. Telling me it is no more than I deserve. If I hadn’t been desperate for a birthday present, Dad wouldn’t have had to steal, and Chrissy wouldn’t have lost her mum. Dad wouldn’t have lost his freedom. Iris wouldn’t have lost her independence. Mum wouldn’t have become so stressed, perhaps she’d never have developed MND. My vision blurs with tears and I wipe at them with my sleeve. A chain of events all instigated by my one, small, selfish longing for an iPod and, even now, as an adult, I haven’t learned my lesson. I lost Matt his business when I betrayed his confidence about Craig’s affair. Julia blamed my honesty on her losing her husband.
I slow as I turn into my road. The adrenaline that had flooded my system at the police station now depleted. Mentally and physically I feel defeated. Almost ready to lie down and take whatever punishment comes my way but, as I trudge up the front path, and unlock my door, there’s the happy scrambling of paws, a rough tongue licking my hand. Branwell pirouettes his hello and I know I am not yet ready to give up.
Slinging my bag over the bannisters I take the stairs two at a time, flinging open Chrissy’s door.
* * *
A hundred times before I’ve walked into Chrissy’s room, flopped onto her bed, as she got changed into her pyjamas – the way she would the second she got home from work – swapping stories about our days, discussing what to have for dinner. This time me being here feels different. Intrusive. As though I’m invading her privacy. But we have crossed the line of consideration and trust.
You wouldn’t know from looking around that the police have been here. There’s still make-up scattered over her dressing table. The box of chocolates on her bedside cabinet. Clothes strewn across the floor. It isn’t like the aftermath of a search on TV, with furniture upended and carpets pulled up. ‘Of course we make as much mess as we can.’ I can almost hear PC Hunter’s sarcastic voice but it was what I had been expecting. Instead, it is exactly how she left it. Exactly like a shrine, I think, and the thought makes me shudder. I think she’s trying to ruin my life, but still, I will for her to be safe. To tumble through the door in a cloud of Daisy perfume and apologies and ‘you’ll-never-guess-whats’.
For her to be oblivious to who I really am, the way I was her. We both had different surnames. We never talked about our pasts. Our families. Except Ben, of course. She always was interested in him, and my stomach roils as I wonder whether she has anything planned for him too or if it is enough to take me away from him. But why now? It makes no sense that she’d have tracked me down after all this time without some sort of trigger.
Dad.
His words slide through my mind’s eye.
A month before I was released I wrote to Sharon’s family, the woman who died. Who we murdered, I suppose. I might not have pulled the trigger, but I’ve got blood on my hands nevertheless. Everyone involved has and we’ve all paid the price. We’re still paying the price. I wasn’t allowed their address but the prison said they’d post it on for me and I had hoped they’d reply before I was released. They didn’t. I told her family how sorry I was. How sorry I am. I told them I was getting out and promised I’d spend the rest of my life trying to put right all the wrongs I had caused.
Seven months ago, he’d written his weak apologies and empty promises.
Six months ago, Chrissy had introduced herself to me.
Synchronicity.
Coincidence.
I think not.
Where do I start? I have to do something, I feel so helpless. What could I possibly find that the police haven’t? But then again, they only checked the places large enough for a person, leaving drawers unopened, and that seems as good a place to begin as any.
There’s a thin layer of dust covering her iPod dock on her chest of drawers and I run my index finger over it, jumping as the Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me?’ blares. Switching it off I look over my shoulder, as though I’d see her sitting at her dressing table, coating her lashes with mascara, straightening her hair, but I am alone. Not even Branwell is keeping me company, as though he senses the heaviness in the atmosphere, the presence of the police still detectable, like the smell of garlic suspended in the air. I slide open the drawer of her bedside cabinet and start to rifle through the contents. There’s receipts, a small packet of tissues, a tube of Polos and, towards the back, under a scarf, I find a hot pink vibrator, and I feel my cheeks turn the same colour as I think what PC Hunter might have uncovered in my room, in the bottom of my wardrobe. I scan the room. If I had a secret and wanted to hide something where would I put it? Dropping to my knees I heft the mattress onto one shoulder and shuffle across the carpet until I have examined every inch of the base of the bed. There’s nothing.
There’s something here, I’m sure of it. Something’s off and I can’t quite put my finger on it. A search of her wardrobe reveals nothing. It’s tidy. Ordered. The first half of the clothes a size 10, the second a 12. There aren’t as many hangers for the latter half; she preferred to be smaller, but when her weight crept up – which it inevitably did – that’s when she ended up borrowing my things. I close the doors and turn away from the mirrors.
The chocolates on the bedside cabinet draw my eye. It’s unusual for Chrissy to make a box last so long. I lift off the lid. All her favourites have gone; the ones left, the strawberry cream, the orange crunch, are usually ones she’d have passed over to me before recycling the box. Why didn’t she do that this time? I lift the plastic insert and draw a sharp breath. Underneath is a piece of paper torn from the notepad we keep in the kitchen. I unfold the note. It’s unmistakably Chrissy’s handwriting, large and blocky – she never did master joined-up writing at school she had said. As I read her heartfelt words my knees turn to rubber and I sit heavily on her bed.
Oh Chrissy.
What have you done?
39
A vice tightens around my ribcage until I feel my heart might burst as I scan the words again and again, almost hoping if I read fast enough they will blur together and turn into something else. Something I can cope with. But they remain the same.
Last night was incredible. I can’t stop thinking about it. Thinking about you. I’ve never felt like this before with anyone. I know we’ve talked about this and I know you want to wait, and I understand why, but I think we should tell Ali about us. We’re too old to be sneaking around like teenagers with a guilty secret. If we’re in it for the long haul she’s bound to find out sooner or later and it will be easier coming from us? We’ve promised to be honest with each other so we should be honest with her too. Whatever you think best anyway. You know I’d do anythin
g for you.
Speaking of honesty I’ve something to tell you…
Instead of finishing the sentence Chrissy had written ‘fuck-fuck-fuck’ followed by a series of doodles. Hearts. Flowers. Angels. Lower down the page were small splodges that could have been tears and, in big angry letters,
I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE
I turn the paper over in my hands as I turn the words over in my mind. I can’t do this anymore. What couldn’t she do, and with who? My head is shaking ‘no’, as though I can stop his name popping into my mind.
Matt.
Had he been having an affair despite his promises there was no one else? ‘He’s often out in the evenings,’ Mr Henderson had said. Was that her grand plan, to seduce my husband, break up my marriage? Had her brother got involved and it all escalated into something else?
A murder charge.
I’m adding up two and two and I think I’m making four. Eight. Twelve.
Think.
The day I got out of hospital and went to collect Branwell. Matt wouldn’t let me upstairs. He was edgy. Desperate to get rid of me. Bedroom curtains drawn. Was she there? Is she still there? Hiding from me. Laughing at me. Matt offered to repair my car. Would he really have noticed the damage when it was facing forward on the driveway or had he known it was there?
I take another look inside the box in case I have missed something, and I have. Face down is a photo. The white of the back of the print had blended in with the white of the cardboard. Taking a deep breath I scoop it up. It’s all piecing together now. The truth is hurtling towards me and I widen my stance and plant my feet, as though I can stop it slamming into me, bowling me over, breaking me entirely. I examine the photo, and frustration bolts through my body like electricity as I study the two people in the image. I’m pretty certain the woman is Chrissy. Long blonde hair. A sprinkling of freckles covering her nose. The fine chain around her neck she often wore, with a gold wishbone dangling in the hollow between her collarbones. The man I’m not so sure. I draw it closer to my eyes, as though that might make a difference. He has short brown hair that could belong to a trillion men. A white T-shirt. Nondescript. Unidentifiable to me. And briefly, I pretend to myself if I can’t recognise him, it can’t possibly be Matt, it can’t possibly be my husband, but the rational side of me knows if it isn’t, there would be no need for Chrissy to hide it away like the secret it so clearly is.
I stare at the two of them.
Two birds with one stone.
If I’m in prison Chrissy gets her revenge and Matt gets the house. Knowing all that I am to these people I have loved is a problem to be solved, morphs the fear and the panic and the shame I have felt into something else. Something razor-sharp and ready to wound.
Still holding the photo I stalk out of the room and pound down the stairs.
Tick tock, Chrissy.
Now I’m coming for you.
40
It’s nearly time to end this before it breaks us both.
Are you remembering now? Remembering what you lost me, Ali?
Did you really think you could get away with it?
Do you really think I’ll let you get away with it? Of course not. You took something from me and now I’ll take something from you. Your life or your freedom? Decisions, decisions.
Karma’s a bitch.
41
At the bottom of the stairs I grab my mobile from my bag and carry it into the kitchen. I message Matt and tell him he needn’t walk Branwell tonight, before I smooth the picture of him and Chrissy out onto the worktop and take a photo of it. I text it to Ben and within seconds my phone is vibrating.
‘Where did you get that?’ Ben asks, and I’m glad he knows me well enough not to bother with opening pleasantries. To sense how upset I am.
‘In Chrissy’s room, hidden in the bottom of a box of chocolates.’
‘Don’t do anything rash. I’m coming back. We can talk about it properly.’
‘No. Don’t miss out on your meeting. Besides there’s nothing to talk about. I’m going to fucking kill him.’
‘Kill him?’
‘He’s still my husband.’
Crackling fills the silence that stretches while my heart gallops, waiting, wanting my brother to be as outraged as I am.
Eventually he speaks, slowly, carefully. ‘But Matt’s not…’
Another beat. I hear him take a deep breath before he can continue.
‘But Matt’s not yours anymore, is he? He hasn’t been for months.’
The truth is as heavy and as blunt as a cricket bat and strikes me with force.
‘Sorry.’ He almost whispers.
‘You’re right.’
‘I can come home, Ali-cat. If you need to talk.’
‘I need to find Chrissy. She must be with Matt. Where else could she be? She’s setting me up.’
‘Setting you up for what? Why would she do that?’ Every word he speaks drips with fatigue, and part of me wishes I’d never rung him. His job is draining enough without the constant worry I am putting him through. I know I have to tell him about Chrissy’s connection with Dad, but I don’t want to do it over the phone. If he thinks for one second Chrissy and her brother have been targeting me he’ll be furious, and I don’t want him driving in that state of mind.
‘Let’s wait until you’re home and we can talk it all through properly then.’
I know by this time tomorrow I will have found Chrissy and cleared my name. An idea is taking shape.
Dad’s arrest didn’t just make the local papers, it hit the nationals too. Somebody had uncovered an old, grainy photograph of Dad wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses, mouth a thin straight line, aiming a gun at the lens, and it didn’t seem to matter this had been taken at a fancy dress party, and he’d been dressed up as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator. If you looked closely you could see Mum’s bare arm before she’d been cut out of the image. She was his Linda Hamilton in a black vest top and jeans. It didn’t seem to matter that Dad wasn’t the one who actually pulled the trigger. Headlines screamed his guilt, each one worse than the last from ‘Young mum gunned down in cold blood’ to ‘Stamped out in a post office’. On the Monday it was decided that Ben was so young he’d be better off staying at home, but at twelve, it was thought I should go to school, where I’d be safe and nurtured, among friends. Iris had stayed with Ben, while Mum had shouldered her way through the reporters, dragging me by the hand, my eyes a mass of stars from the dozens of flashes. The snap-snap-snap of the cameras almost drowned out by the stupid questions that showered down, and we stamped on them, over them, as we hurried to her car. How did they think we felt? Did they really believe we knew Dad would break the law? In a desperate situation, are we all capable of monstrous acts? It’s incomprehensible we can reach inside the darkest depths of someone else’s mind, when we ignore the blackness lurking in our own.
At school, the headmaster had been waiting at the gates, assuring Mum if any reporters tried to access the school grounds he would immediately ring the police. Instead of running over to my friends, as I normally would have, I’d been ushered straight inside, as if I were sick or naughty. I’d sat by the window at the back of the class, my face burning, as the kids outside in the playground stared at me through the glass as though I was an elephant with two trunks. My white school blouse was damp, sticking to my back, my armpits, and that’s the first time I ever remember sweating. I had grown up overnight. The bell rang, and Melanie, Izzy and Lauren had been the first through the door, and I’d forced my mouth to smile the first smile it had since I’d run towards the ding-dong of the front door at my party, expecting to find one of my friends on the step. Instead of smiling back, slipping into their usual seats Melanie had fired a look of pure hatred at me, as though I had wronged her, while Izzy and Lauren had avoided looking at me at all. The chairs around me remained empty and when all the desks were filled and a small bunch of kids hovered uncertainly at the front, my teacher had barked at them to sit do
wn.
‘But Miss,’ one of the children had whined, ‘we don’t want to sit next to a murderer.’
‘Yeah,’ chimed another. ‘My mum says all her family are fucking scum.’
They’d been reprimanded, of course, but it had made no difference. I’d been shunned. No one had wanted to come near me, as though the trauma happening to my family was a contagious disease.
‘I can’t go back there tomorrow,’ I had sobbed, sitting on Mum’s lap that night as though I was Ben’s age and not a year off being a teenager.
‘You can’t let them prevent you getting an education,’ Mum had soothed. ‘Knowledge is power. Don’t let them win.’
And that’s exactly what I tell myself now as I fetch my laptop.
Knowledge is power.
I won’t let them win.
42
I have desperately tried to leave the past behind me. Be a good daughter. A good wife. A good friend. Failing miserably at them all. Longing for the thing I did that took minutes out of the billions of minutes I have lived to fade into nothing. But it’s glaringly apparent, as I type Sharon Marlow’s name into Google, adding the year and town of the robbery, that nothing in this digital age truly disappears. A sick feeling rises as over a million results load, and my fingers are shaking so hard I find it almost impossible to scroll through the pages. The condemnation. The endless, endless speculation about the case, the verdict. The call for the death penalty. Although every fibre of my being screams at me to start a new search for Sharon’s children, I can’t help opening one of the more recent reports in an online edition of a red top. A ‘Where are the Tanmoor Three?’ as though they are faded pop stars or Blue Peter presenters. David Webb, the man who pulled the trigger, had died in prison after another prisoner set fire to him. That must have been the incident Dad wrote about in his letter. Although David was in part responsible for everything my family have been through, are going through, I still shudder at the thought of burning to death and Dad helplessly watching. How on earth could that happen inside a prison with the guards and the cameras and the rigid rules?
The Date Page 19
