I said, ‘Lara, it’s just Hope. I’m not here to try and frighten you. I’m here to be your friend. I read your file. I’m sorry. I know I wasn’t meant to and you have every right to be angry with me. I had a sister once, too. She died as well. It’s hard, isn’t it? Really hard.’
I don’t know what I was expecting. I suppose I thought she’d just turn round and start talking to me. She didn’t, of course, so I carried on. ‘I don’t love many people. Most people are arseholes, you know. But I did love my sister. She was more like my child than my sister, I suppose. My mum was mental on drugs and booze most of the time, so I looked after her. But then she died. Just like that. And she was gone. Just like that.’
Then she did turn her head and look at me, and although her face was only ever expressionless, I still went on talking to her. Every day, I talked to her, and now and then she would nod her head, as if some of my words had meant something to her.
Now, I said, ‘What do you think Helen wants to see us about?’
She edged a tiny, tiny bit closer to me, tilted her head to the side slightly and looked at me with one eye.
I said, ‘I reckon she’s found new homes for us, that’s what I reckon.’
She turned her head away again.
I said, ‘I don’t want to go. They’re going to separate all of us. Me from Annie. You from me. I’d rather die than go. Wouldn’t you?’
I was right. That was exactly what Helen said when it was my turn to go in and see her. We weren’t often allowed in the office, only for important official moments, like these. Helen sat at her desk with her glasses on, looking like a headteacher. I took a seat in the swivel chair opposite and kept on swivelling while she spoke. She let me.
‘Your social worker has found you a new placement, Hope. A brand-new home, opening in January. It’s quite a long way from here, in Norfolk. It’s a small home, just for two girls…’
‘Is Annie going to be the other one?’
She shook her head. ‘No, love. That isn’t possible.’
‘Then I’m not going.’
‘I think you’ll like it if you give it a chance.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Hope, I understand—’
‘You do not. You do not understand. Where’s Annie going?’
She smiled. ‘I’m sure she’ll tell you, if you ask her.’
I left the office and strode back to the living room to find Annie. She was sitting on the sofa, perfectly chilled, as if nothing bad had just happened.
‘They’re doing it,’ I said. ‘They’re separating us.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ she said.
I sat down next to her. ‘So where’s your place?’
‘Near Edinburgh.’
‘How far’s that from Norfolk?’
‘Hours. Hours and hours.’
‘Well, fuck them. They can’t make us go. We’ll run away.’
‘It won’t be for long. Just till we’re sixteen. Maybe it will be good for us to have time apart. You can work things out…’
I felt her words as a slap, even though I knew I shouldn’t because here I was, pregnant with Ace’s child, and refusing to give him up or get rid of it. I knew that was what she wanted me to do. She never said so, but I could tell. She wanted me to just have an abortion and for us to go back to the way we were before, just the two of us, without Ace.
‘What things?’ I said.
She looked at me blankly. ‘The baby.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘I told Helen I didn’t mind. I said I’d go.’
I stared at her, and saw my life stretch out before me, barren and empty. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK. You fuck off and leave me. That’s fine.’
Something in her snapped then. ‘Jesus Christ, I can’t take this anymore. You are so unreasonable.’
‘Am I?’ I said. ‘Am I really?’ And then the words started falling from my mouth like bile, and I knew what I was saying and how awful it all was, but I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop, even when she was crying like I’d never seen anyone cry before.
At that moment, I hated her. I hated her for feeling that she could live without me, even for a second. I wanted her to hurt and hurt. I wanted her to be in agony. I reached straight inside her to the parts I knew hurt the most, and stamped on them, over and over again. I said, ‘It’s your fault your mother disappeared. It’s your fault. You drove her away.’ And I repeated all the things she’d said her mother used to say to her, even though they weren’t true: that she was disgraceful, ungrateful, cruel, evil…
When it stopped, she stared at me if I’d just beaten her up. I suppose I had, in a way.
Poor Annie. She didn’t know what she was taking on when she got involved with me.
We didn’t speak to each other for days after that. She brooded about the house, shocked and silent, and spent ages in her room, where I could hear her crying. I didn’t know what to do to make it better, and by then, I could barely even remember what I’d said that brought her to her knees like this.
In the end, I went to her and said I was sorry. Because I was sorry. I couldn’t believe I could have done this to her. And she forgave me. She forgave me in an instant, even though I didn’t deserve it.
‘I will never leave you,’ she said.
I didn’t believe her.
54
Annie
I can’t get away from her. Everywhere I go, she’s there and yet not there. I hear her voice in my ear, sometimes loving, sometimes furious. It’s the way she always was, by the end. She loved me in ways I’d never dreamed possible, and yet she was capable of such vile hatred. When I first said I wasn’t going to fight the move to a new home, something snapped in her and she went mad. Truly, properly mad. Everything about her changed. Her voice rose in pitch, her face changed, her body became sharp and angular. ‘You’re going to leave me,’ she said. ‘I know you are. You’re just like everyone else.’ And for what felt like ages, she hurled venom at me, repeating all the cruel words my mother had ever said to me and then adding more of her own. She left me so shocked and bruised, I could barely stand.
Anyone sensible would have walked away from her then. But I was needy. I cried for days. All I wanted was for her to come and make it better, to undo this horrible pain. No one else could do it. Helen tried. She had no idea what was wrong, but she tried talking to me, and although she never said it to my face, I knew she was thinking the sooner she could split us up, the better. I overheard her speaking to Danny about it, in a low, concerned voice: ‘Something has happened between the girls and Annie is heartbroken.’
‘That was bound to happen.’
‘I know. I thought we could manage this. I thought they could manage it, but it’s becoming harmful, and I don’t know what we can do to stop it.’
But I didn’t want it to stop. I just wanted us to go back to the way we were, before Ace came back and destroyed everything.
55
He’s demanded a solicitor. It’s fine – he has a right to one, after all – and now he’s holding fast to his right to silence.
‘Where were you on the night of the twenty-fourth of December?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you know Hope Lacey?’
‘No comment.’
‘Tell us, Mr Clarke: how did your semen end up in Hope’s body that night?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you give Hope alcohol that night?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you deliberately intoxicate Hope that night?’
‘No comment.’
‘Knowing that Hope was severely intoxicated and an accident highly likely, did you invite Hope and her friend Annie to come for a row on Meddleswater that night?’
‘No comment.’
‘And when she fell overboard, did you deliberately refuse to jump in and save her?’
‘No comment.’
‘Mr Clarke, on the grounds that there is significant DNA evidence that
tells us clearly you were there the night she died, we are charging you with the murder of Hope Lacey…’
Lara’s trying to get away from the funeral talk. I don’t blame her. It’s pretty endless – the date, the music, whether my mum will be there, the readings…
Helen came up to Lara’s room earlier and explained what was going to happen: a short service where a few people who loved me would talk, then a small gathering in the village hall with some sandwiches and pots of tea and some orange squash for children.
Lara, like me, wasn’t sure if there was actually anyone who’d ever loved me, apart from Annie, and look where that ended up. ‘My mum doesn’t give a fuck about me,’ I’d told Lara once, during that time when I was trying to be her friend.
Helen said, ‘No one expects you to come, Lara, if you don’t want to.’
Lara looked at her. She stayed away from funerals and anything to do with dead or murdered people. She hadn’t yet learned how to fold memories away, to bury them deeply in places where they could no longer rise up and hurt her. She knows that if she were to go to this funeral, she’d find herself stepping inside the church and back through time, to the day…
To that day.
And if she were to return to that day, without the skilled hand of a professional to guide her through it, then the terrible mess of everything she has only just managed to hold back would rush out of her. It would run all over the place, visceral and chaotic, and Lara would get lost in the mess of her own history, never to return.
56
For weeks, I went on taking myself into Lara’s room, plonking myself down on the floor, and just talking to her. I said whatever came into my head. I suppose some people would have considered the contents of my head weird, or not suitable for sharing with a twelve-year-old, but normal conversation was never going to work on Lara. She’d lived an extreme life. The tedious chatter of ordinary people was never going to find its way into her broken heart.
I used to study her carefully as I spoke. Sometimes, I could see she was tuning me out, but other times, like when I talked about Jade, she would listen carefully and even turn to face me. Once, I was sure I noticed the beginnings of a smile on her lips, though it died before it bloomed.
I talked a lot about Jade. I told her how happy I was when she’d been born, and how her birth had changed me and I’d wanted nothing then but to make sure she had a good life. ‘I tried,’ I told her, ‘but I couldn’t do it. I was just too young, in the end. I couldn’t keep her away from the people who hurt her.’
And when I said that, she inched herself slowly along the bed where she was lying face down, reached out her hand and rested it on my shoulder.
For a long time, neither of us moved.
Lara was the first one I told about the baby. I told her before I even told Annie, or Ace. I ordered a test from Amazon and when I took it and saw the positive glow of that purple stripe, growing stronger and stronger by the second, I started to shake. My heart raced and all I could think was, A baby! And I was excited and frightened because I had no idea what to do about it. I knew I needed to see a doctor and arrange all the things my mother had done when she was expecting Jade – visits to the midwife, a scan, a hospital to give birth in…
But I didn’t want anyone to know. I thought they’d take it away from me.
Three days later, I went in to see Lara. Annie was having a therapy session. We all had to have them, for all the good they did us.
I said, ‘Hey, guess what?’
She sat still on the floor and looked at me.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I said, and made a gesture to indicate a swelling belly, in case she didn’t know what the word meant. That was the trouble with talking to someone who was always silent. You had no idea what they knew. That, I suppose, was Lara’s weapon. A powerful one.
I said, ‘I want to keep it. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, to be a mother. To have my own child. I know everyone will say I’m too young, but I’m not. I know what looking after a baby involves and I know I can do it. I’m good at it, you see. Everyone used to tell me that with Jade. Everyone. They all said I was a natural. The trouble is, I’m here, in this dump, and they’ll probably try and take it away from me. Give it to a load of bastard foster carers. And there’s Annie to think about. She’ll probably lose her shit if I tell her. So I don’t really know what to do. What should I do?’
As I spoke, she turned away from me again and curled up into her usual old ball. Later, when I went back to her room, she was nowhere to be seen, but there was a rag doll, cut into pieces on the carpet.
57
Annie
Your mother didn’t disappear, Annie. You killed her.
Her words keep coming back to me, as I slowly lose my mind. I am losing it, I’m sure. Hope’s voice is in my ear, constantly. Come and join me, she whispers. You said you would once. You still want to.
But Hope is dead, and I’ve never believed in all those psychic powers she claimed to have, her strange connection to some weird afterlife she’d dreamed up. She guessed the truth about my mother that night she read my file. There were cracks in my story. I told everyone she’d disappeared and no one knew where she was, because it was easier that way, but once Hope found my file, with the reports in black and white, she became suspicious. Hers wasn’t the sort of mind that would assume I’d lied because the reality was too painful. In Hope’s world, people lied because they were guilty. It took her a while, but she got the story out of me. And I told her the truth because I trusted her.
There’s a knock at my bedroom door. ‘Annie, love. Can I come in?’
Helen. She’s alright.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
The door opens and she stands there looking round the room. I’m hoping she won’t do an inspection. They do that sometimes, if they think you’re taking drugs or drinking. But I’m not. I’m pretty good, on the whole, apart from that trouble with being arrested. That’s over now, though. I’m back on my best behaviour. Really, I don’t know what came over me at the station on that first day. It must have just been the shock of it all.
‘Emma’s downstairs. She’d like to talk to you.’
Oh, the bloody FLO. Pretending like she’s on our side when we all know she’s just here to see what dirt she can dish on the case, see what she can find out if she gets us to let our guards down. Well, she can fuck off. I am on to that woman, and my guard will not come down, not for one minute.
I turn to face her. ‘What does she want?’
‘Just to talk to you, love. It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Course it’s nothing to worry about. I haven’t done anything.’
‘Then come downstairs and have a chat.’
I do as I’m told. Emma-the-FLO is perched on a sofa in the living room, as if she’s worried she might be contaminated by the home’s madness if she sits on it properly. I stand there in the middle of the room. ‘You wanted to see me,’ I say.
She smiles and nods. ‘Yes. Thank you, Annie. Why don’t you sit down?’
I sink into the armchair opposite, make her think I’m relaxed and she can ask me any old shit she likes.
‘How are you, Annie?’
I stare at her. How does she think I am? When I’m pretty sure she’s got the message I smile politely and say, ‘I’m fine, thank you, officer.’
She nods again. ‘Good. I wanted to let you know that, thanks to your honesty in your interview, we’ve arrested Ace Clarke and charged him with Hope’s murder.’
Thanks to your honesty in your interview. That’s a crock of absolute horseshit, if ever I heard one. It has nothing at all to do with my interview. It’s to do with the fact that the coroner managed to find Ace’s spunk in Hope’s body. It didn’t all get washed away in the lake. That made him the number one suspect.
I shrug. ‘Cool,’ I say.
I want her to apologise for the fact that they arrested me. Just because I was there didn’t mean I had anything to do with it. I’d tried sa
ying that to them at the time, but they were having none of it.
Then all of a sudden, I’m crying. I don’t know where it came from, but I’m wailing like a hysteric.
‘It’s alright, Annie,’ Emma says. ‘You’ve been very brave.’
But there’s nothing brave about this. I never used to cry. Never. Not even when my mum was mental. I only started crying when I met Hope. I was always crying then. Even when she was alive, she had the power to upset me with her horrible death-wish. That’s the trouble, I think. That’s the trouble with love. I can see why people give up on it.
Then her voice comes to me again, so clearly I think the whole room must be able to hear it. Murderess, she says.
I cover my ears with my hands and scream.
58
Hope
Night after night back then, I would lay awake while Annie slept beside me, running my hands over my pregnant belly, frightened and anxious and with no idea what to do. I knew the night I’d conceived this child, so I knew exactly how pregnant I was. Seventeen weeks. Time was marching forwards, but all the outside world could see, if they looked at me hard enough, was a tightening in my clothes and a barely noticeable swelling round my middle. I knew, though, that this wasn’t going to last forever. Sooner or later, this baby was going to make itself known, and I had no idea what to do about it. I hadn’t even seen a doctor or a midwife. I was meant to have had scans by now. Already, I realised, I was a bad mother. I was an awful mother, failing to look after the health of my baby.
I fumbled on the bedside table for my phone. Ace’s number was in there, but I’d entered him as David in case anyone got hold of it and all hell let loose. I scrolled down and started typing.
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