Shadow of a Doubt

by Michelle Davies

  Anne gasps. ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. You’re twisting my words. We know it wasn’t you who smothered Matty with that curtain. The police got it terribly wrong.’ She dissolves into tears, but instead of going to comfort her, I start to back away. ‘Where are you going?’ she pleads.

  ‘I need to be on my own. Just for a bit. I’ll see you back at the hotel.’

  ‘No, wait, don’t go off like this, Cara, not when you’re so upset.’

  I pause for a second. Part of me wants to stay and have her reassure me that everything’s going to be okay, like she used to when I first went to live with her and John. It was only after leaving the Peachick that I finally felt free to grieve for Matty, and Anne would sit with me as I cried myself ragged thinking about him dying and how it was my fault and I should never have got him out of bed that night. But I can’t bring myself to seek comfort from her now. It feels like a huge void has opened up between us and I don’t know how to bridge it.

  Ignoring her pleas not to go, I turn my back on her and walk away, and as I do, it’s impossible to tell which of us is crying the hardest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Daily Mirror

  12 NOVEMBER 1994

  EXCLUSIVE: Belling babysitter: ‘I caught Cara hurting her brother’

  The babysitter who regularly looked after the ‘Heldean Haunting’ children told police that nine-year-old killer Cara Belling often lashed out at her little brother – and on one occasion seriously injured him.

  Detectives interviewed student Daisy Carmichael, from Chapel Road, Heldean, two days after six-year-old Matty Belling was found dead at his family home in Parsons Close in the early hours of Saturday 16 July. A police investigation has since concluded Cara suffocated him behind a curtain after they argued about her waking him up in the middle of the night.

  The transcript of Miss Carmichael’s police interview, exclusively obtained by the Daily Mirror, reveals Cara broke Matty’s wrist three months before his death, while their parents Anita and Paul were drinking at their local pub.

  Miss Carmichael, 20, had put the children to bed and was downstairs watching television when she heard Matty screaming.

  ‘I went upstairs and found Matty lying on his bedroom floor clutching his wrist. He said Cara had wanted to give him a Chinese burn, but he refused, so she bent his hand right back at the wrist and he heard it crack,’ Miss Carmichael told officers.

  An X-ray confirmed Matty’s wrist was fractured. Asked if Cara had shown any remorse for hurting her brother, Miss Carmichael said the girl became angry when confronted.

  ‘She said Matty was putting it on and that she hadn’t pulled his hand like he said. She didn’t like me telling her off,’ said Miss Carmichael.

  The children’s identities became public knowledge after details of the police investigation were leaked to newspapers – including Cara’s outrageous claim that a ghost called Limey Stan was responsible for killing her brother.

  Miss Carmichael confirmed in her statement that Cara had tried to hoax her about the ‘ghost’ too.

  ‘She kept going on about Limey Stan coming into the house at night and creeping up the stairs. I knew it was a silly ghost story she’d made up to scare Matty and I told her not to say it in front of him because he’d wet the bed at night. But Cara wouldn’t stop going on about it. She was trying to trick everyone.’

  The police have been criticised in some quarters for implicating Cara in the absence of conclusive forensic evidence. While fibres from her clothing were found on the curtain used to smother Matty, fibres matching a dressing gown owned by her father, Paul, were also found. Nor could they retrieve any clear fingerprints from Cara from the curtain material.

  However, as Mr Belling was away working at the time and therefore had an alibi, the presence of Cara’s clothing fibres and the history of violence towards her brother convinced detectives to conclude she was to blame.

  Miss Carmichael also believed Cara was capable of killing her brother – and blamed herself for not speaking up to save him.

  ‘I stopped babysitting as much because I couldn’t control her,’ she said. ‘Now I wish I’d made it clearer to Anita and Paul how concerned I was about her behaviour. I will never forgive myself for not speaking up more. Matty might still be alive if I had. His sister is truly wicked.’

  Cara has been detained indefinitely at a children’s psychiatric hospital in London. Her age means she is too young to be charged with any offence.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cara

  I really did have no intention of ever setting foot in my childhood home again. No sane person would experience what I did, then knowingly put him- or herself in harm’s way again by returning to the scene of such a traumatic episode. But Anne’s reaction changes everything. She and John were the only people I could rely on to reassure me that I did not lose my mind over Limey Stan and the thought of them sharing their doubts behind my back all these years is devastating. Yet it has also solidified a thought that’s been kicking about the back of my mind ever since I found out Mum died: the only way I’ll ever silence the disbelievers and live a normal life without hiding who I am is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t lying then and I’m still not lying now. So that means going back to the house where it started. It’s mine now and I shall rip it apart brick by brick to prove my innocence if I have to.

  From here, the journey to Parsons Close will take me ten minutes on foot if I cut up a lane from the main road, then cross the railway bridge to reach the estate where the house is. My stride lengthens, the faster I walk, but as I round a corner to rejoin the main road, I lose my balance, my limbs still loosened by the alcohol I drank earlier. Suddenly I have a craving for more – call it Dutch courage, if you will – so I dart across the road to where there’s a general store and select a cheap bottle of white wine from the chiller cabinet.

  I don’t normally drink to excess, certainly never in the daytime, but after that confrontation with Jim, the crushing hurt of Anne showing her true colours and the fear of what awaits me at the house, I need the cushioning effects.

  Back across the road, I undo the screw cap and take a swig without removing the bottle from the plastic bag the shop assistant put it in.

  By the time I reach the mouth of the lane, I’m feeling calmer, but no less determined. The bottle of wine is already a quarter empty.

  Halfway along the lane, I expect to come across the primary school where I was a pupil before I went away. However, I already know from keeping up with the town’s news that it was closed because of falling rolls and now occupying the site is a small estate of tightly packed modern homes.

  I stop for a moment and the boxy new-builds dissipate from view as my mind replaces them with the squat, red-brick building where I spent the early years of my education. Inside the main part of the school, its doors and window frames picked out in peacock blue, was the last classroom I was taught in and alongside that were three more classrooms, the main hall, staffroom and the head’s office. Then, across the playground, umbilically attached to the main building by a raised corridor, was a modern annexe with more classrooms and the woodwork room.

  I smile to myself as I picture the criss-crossed markings on the playground for netball, football and rounders – instinctively, we always worked out which was which. Then my recollection is assaulted by the shrill voices of my classmates taunting me as word of Limey Stan spread and I see the tree I used to run to cry behind is still on the site, absorbed into the new estate’s landscaping. Quickly, I walk away and head for the railway bridge, another large swig of wine propelling me onwards.

  By the time I reach Parsons Close, dusk is starting to draw a gloomy veil over the dregs of the afternoon. Some of the houses have lights already on and I hurry past, scared that if I linger for even a second I will attract unwelcome attention. The alcohol might be emboldening me, but it is also spiking my level of paranoia.

  My old house is at the top
end of the close from the direction I am coming in and being the last in the row meant we only had neighbours on one side of us, a lovely Asian family whose surname was Shakoor. They had three boys – Tishk, a teenager all us younger girls had a crush on, Amir, who was a bit older than Matty, and Raman, who was a bit younger – and twin girls who were toddlers back in 1994 and whose names I can’t remember. Me, Matty, Amir and Raman used to play tag together in the street or we’d ride our bikes up to the Rec to use the playground if our mums let us. Scurrying past, I see their house is in darkness and I wonder who lives there now.

  Suddenly I’m at the foot of the driveway next door and my insides somersault so wildly with a mixture of dread and expectation that for a moment I think I’m going to be sick.

  I’m home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cara

  The first person I told about Limey Stan outside of my immediate family was Evie, my best friend at school. We never saw each other outside of class – play dates structured and facilitated by parents were an anomaly back then – but from the moment we stepped inside the playground gates each morning, we fused at the hip and stayed like that until the home-time bell.

  The first thing Evie said when I told her about Limey Stan was, ‘But your house is so boring.’

  She was right, in a fictionalised sense. Haunted houses featured in novels and films tend to be either crumbling Gothic mansions with dark corners and secret passageways or Victorian, multiple-storey terraces with ancient, creaking stairs. A 1930s-built, south-facing, bay-windowed detached suburban home with a side garage didn’t scream horror then and still doesn’t now. Indeed, as I stare up at the house that was for a time my childhood home, a maelstrom of emotions churning inside me, the only word that springs to mind to describe it is ‘normal’.

  And, if I’m honest, I shared Evie’s scepticism. I hadn’t actually seen Limey Stan at that point, so I could not say with any certainty what he was. It was more of a feeling that there was something in the house besides us, an insidious presence. I didn’t know his name then either, that came later: I think I might’ve described him to Evie as ‘this thing’ that kept waking me up at night but that no one else in my family heard, and that was odd because they were all much lighter sleepers than me. Mum used to say it would take a truck crashing into the house to rouse me once I had nodded off, yet this thing was waking me up but not anyone else.

  Slowly, I climb the driveway, then cut in front of the bay window to reach the open arched porch. I trail a hand over the familiar brickwork, a gesture of hello to the home I never imagined I’d set foot in again. The brick is cold and unyielding to my touch.

  With a jolt, I see the front door has been replaced since I was last here – the day they carried me out, it was solid white uPVC, but the one I’m about to open is made from composite wood that’s been painted black, with two frosted-glass panels inserted in the top half. I linger for a moment, unsure how to feel, let alone act. I don’t know what I expect to find on the other side of the door, but it’s certainly not anyone waiting to greet me with open arms and the thought of the house being empty fills me with sadness. I pause to drain the bottle of wine to stop myself turning on my heel and legging it out of here as fast as I can.

  I set the empty bottle down on the doorstep and rummage in my pocket for the ceramic heart Mum’s solicitor gave me and, with fumbling fingers, I isolate the key from the bunch that will open the door. The key turns easily and before I know it I’m inside. I shut the door quietly behind me, then bolt down the hallway, unwilling to linger there a second more than I have to. Yet as my hand reaches to yank open the door to the kitchen, I glance over my shoulder and my brain registers that the glass panels in the front door let so much light into the hallway now that the shadows where Limey Stan once hid have receded to the skirting. The pounding in my chest eases a little.

  The kitchen stops me in my tracks, however. I do not recognise it at all. Like the front door, it has been updated in my absence, with shiny white cabinets and a black marble worktop replacing the oak of old. This isn’t the house of my childhood, I think despairingly. It’s a stranger’s home and not recognising it frightens me just as much as being here does.

  Yet for all its newness, the kitchen is shambolic. There are saucepans, casserole dishes and stacks of plates and utensils covering every inch of the worktop, all unused, six or seven plastic containers in a heap on the floor and some of the drawers and cupboard doors have been left wide open. Immediately, I think it is Karen’s doing – she was so sure she was going to get the house that she must have started going through Mum’s things to see what she could keep or chuck away. Anger nips at me as I forcibly bang shut the doors and drawers, then crouch down to pick up the plastic containers.

  One in particular, an old ice-cream tub, makes my eyes widen with surprise and my ‘Oh’ fills the kitchen. Carefully, I prise off the cracked lid and, with trembling fingers, reach in to stroke the velvety branches of the snow-dappled fir tree and the round face of the ceramic snowman with the cheery grin and bowler hat that Mum and I used to decorate the Christmas cake with every year. There are two reindeer ornaments in the box as well, a mother and baby with matching red noses, and the sight of them brings tears to my eyes, because Mum told me she’d bought them the first Christmas after I was born as a sentimental nod to me and her. I recall Matty once asking where his baby reindeer was and being thrilled when Mum told him the cake was our special tradition and that she would think of something else for him. He was upset, but I did not rush to comfort him, because it was nice to have something that was just mine and hers for once.

  Feeling the loss of them both keenly, I shut the lid and leave the box where I found it.

  Rising to my feet, I glance out of the kitchen window above the sink and gasp. Even in the dying light, I can see the back garden is a tip; the once-manicured lawn is undetectable beneath waist-height weeds and they are choking the trunk of the sycamore tree at the end of the garden as well. The level of neglect shocks me: Mum always loved gardening and would shout at Matty and me whenever our ball, Frisbee or shuttlecocks landed on her carefully cultivated borders. Now it looks as though it’s been years since she was out here lovingly tending to them and my apprehension balloons: what was going on with Mum even before she became ill that her garden was in such a state?

  The kitchen leads into a vast reception room that’s also unfamiliar. There used to be two rooms here, one a designated dining area, the other the lounge, but the wall between them has been knocked through. A dining table still occupies the end of the room closest to the kitchen, but its surface has disappeared beneath piles of old newspapers, books and magazines. Then I walk to the opposite end of the room and my heart sinks further – this part isn’t just messy, someone’s well and truly ransacked it.

  I turn on the overhead light so I can assess the extent of the damage. The light grey sofa, which looks fairly new, has been pulled away from the wall and its cushions upended, while the drawers from the sideboard I remember my parents buying when I was a child have been yanked from their apertures and their contents scattered on the floor. A bookcase in the alcove next to the fireplace is also missing what once crammed its shelves, novels now laid out like stepping stones across the carpet. On the walls, there are gaps where pictures must’ve once hung, the hooks still intact.

  Then I see it, the coffee table with the black lacquered surface. It’s lying on its side where it’s been pushed over and my heart judders in my chest as I lift it upright and rub my hand over the smooth surface, delighting in its familiarity. Suddenly I’m a child again and it’s Thursday afternoon, chips-for-tea day, and I choke down a sob as I think about Matty sitting beside me with our legs poking under the table as we watched telly and ate.

  No matter what anyone else said, not my parents, our babysitter, the teachers at our school, no matter what was decided by strangers with official-sounding titles and foolscap reports who didn’t know me, I loved Matty with al
l my heart and I would never deliberately hurt him. We bickered like normal siblings and I admit that sometimes I would get so wound up I would lash out, but Matty always pushed and hit me as hard as I did him and the wrist fracture he sustained was not my fault – we were playing and he fell. To say I did it on purpose is wrong.

  Minutes tick by as I sit there thinking about him. All this time later and I still miss him so much it hurts. I think about him constantly. I try not to acknowledge the day of his death because it feels too much like the anniversary of when my life was ruined, but, instead, every year on his birthday, I take the day off, unless it falls on a weekend, and visit the tree I had planted in his memory at the nature reserve near my home. I sit beneath it and pop open a can of lemonade, the fizzy drink he loved the most when we were little. Then I toast him and have a good cry, which is what I’m on the verge of doing now. Being back in this house without him is even harder than I imagined it would be and it’s unleashed a torrent of grief that is impossible to control, so I give in to the tears and let them flow.

  God knows how much later I finally stop crying. I lean against the sofa and wipe my damp cheeks on the sleeve of my coat and that’s when I hear a noise in the hallway – the faint but distinct squeak of a shoe pressing down against a floorboard. I freeze, unsure if I really heard something or whether my mind’s playing tricks on me. I’ve had a lot to drink and I’m jittery, being in the house after all these years, so I could’ve easily imagined it. I stay still, my heart thundering in my chest as I listen intently, my hands gripping the edge of the coffee table so tightly my fingertips whiten.