Three Little Lies Read online

  ‘Ellen! What are you doing here? Not that it isn’t nice to see you. She hasn’t been on to you with this nonsense, has she?’

  ‘What do you mean? What nonsense?’

  ‘I haven’t been on to her about anything,’ snaps Karina at Dilys. She turns back to me. ‘Have you seen him?’ she says under her breath, although there is no one to hear except me and Dilys.

  ‘Seen who?’ Why is everyone talking in riddles? ‘Karina, I’m here because of Sasha. She’s disappeared and I’m frightened. The police won’t do anything. I’m sorry if seeing me brings up things you don’t want to think about, but I’m desperate. I can’t help thinking this might have something to do with… everything that happened.’

  ‘Sasha’s disappeared? When?’ Karina says, her fingers stealing back to the ends of her hair. She looks terrified – the only person so far who has had what I consider a sane reaction to this news.

  ‘Friday.’

  She nods, and then says three words that chill me to the bone: ‘I saw Daniel.’

  ‘What? Where?’ My heart skips along frantically. Oh God. Mum was right.

  ‘The week before last. In Forest Hill.’

  ‘But… I thought he was in Scotland? He lives in Scotland.’

  Her face takes on an expression of something close to pity. ‘People can move, Ellen. There’s been nothing to stop him coming back here for five years.’

  ‘He hasn’t, though. Olivia said she hasn’t seen him for years, hardly hears from him.’

  Thoughts tumble through my brain, trying to catch up with each other.

  ‘You don’t know it was him,’ says Dilys, her breath still crackling from her lungs.

  ‘It was him, Mum.’ There is a hardness in her voice that I don’t remember from before.

  ‘You’ve thought you’ve seen him before, though, haven’t you?’ She looks at me. ‘She used to see him everywhere she went at first, and that was when he was in prison.’ Dilys sounds triumphant. ‘You need to forget him and concentrate on you,’ she says to Karina. ‘Start living again. Ellen’s here, look – it’s a sign!’

  ‘That was different, Mum,’ says Karina quietly. ‘That was right after… I wasn’t thinking straight.’ She looks back at me. ‘I saw him. I know I did.’

  ‘Did he see you?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  We share a look, and I don’t know if it’s guilt, or complicity, or fear.

  ‘What d’you think he’s doing back here?’ I take a step closer to her, a muscle memory of our former friendship kicking in as I do so. I remember what it was like to hug her, link arms with her, sleep top to tail in a single bed with her. I remember how it felt to make her laugh till she cried. I can’t imagine this woman laughing, though, with her puffy, lined face and bitten-down fingernails. I imagine how she must see me – thin, pale, dark circles under my eyes. This is what he did to us, both of us. Look what he has made us.

  Karina weighs something up internally. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, and this time it’s definitely fear that flits across her face.

  ‘Karina,’ I say urgently, putting my hand on her arm. ‘What is it?’

  She pulls her arm back as if my touch has scalded her. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Can you think of anything I can try, to find Sasha?’ I say, thirsty for any drop of information. ‘Have you heard from Daniel at all since he came out of prison? Do you know where in Scotland he was living?’

  The shutters come down on her face and she shakes her head. ‘I don’t know anything, Ellen.’

  ‘Sasha and I… we had a few letters from him, after he came out of prison. Saying we lied, that it was our fault he went to prison. Did you…?’

  ‘I haven’t heard from him and I don’t want to. All I know is, he’s back in London.’ She takes a step closer. ‘If you do see him, don’t you dare tell him where I live.’

  ‘Of course I won’t. But if you see him again, will you tell me? Please?’

  She shrugs, which I take as tacit acceptance, and I scribble down my number on a bit of paper. She takes it reluctantly. Dilys has been watching our exchange with the air of someone waiting to say their piece.

  ‘You should invite Ellen,’ she says to Karina as I put the pen back in my bag.

  ‘What? No, don’t be silly, Mum,’ Karina says, blushing.

  I look from one to the other. I have no desire to be invited to anything, but I can’t simply act as though Dilys hasn’t spoken.

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s Karina’s birthday this week. We’re having a little party for her on Friday night, here at the house. Family, mostly, but it’d be lovely if you came.’

  Dilys’s face is filled with naked desire for it not to be too late for Karina to have a normal life, a friend. I try to think of a convincing excuse, but then I look at Karina and, underneath the shame, I can see hope: she wants me to come too. I won’t ever regret my friendship with Sasha, but I can’t help wondering what Karina’s life would look like now, and even mine, if Sasha had never come to live with the Monktons.

  ‘Yes, that’d be lovely,’ I say weakly. ‘See you then.’

  As I drive back round the South Circular, Karina’s party is the least of my worries. Although Scotland is hardly the other side of the world, it felt far enough away for me not to have to look for him around every street corner. But here, in London? When it was only Mum who thought she’d seen him, I could dismiss it, but it’s not so easy now, not now I’ve seen the look on Karina’s face. Dilys says she imagined it, but I don’t think so. I saw her fear, echoing that long ago day in the courtroom, dust motes dancing in the sunlight that streamed through the high windows. A sob forms in my throat as I think about what this means for Sasha. Oh God, where is she? What the hell has he done to her? And under these thoughts, a silky, sinuous voice whispers another question in my ear: is he coming for me next?

  Olivia

  July 2007

  In some ways I’ve been dreading this day more than the others. I want to say Sasha is like a daughter to me, but I simply can’t. There’s always been a barrier, a wall around her. I understand why, of course I do, but I thought I was going to be able to break it down, to reach her. Until I found out what was really going on. Everything changed then. We never recovered from it, even before the New Year’s Eve party.

  No, it was Ellen who was like a daughter to me, more so than Sasha could ever hope to be. The poor thing doesn’t get much in the way of culture or intelligent conversation at home, and it was wonderful to watch her blossoming the more time she spent with us. I’ve missed her more than anyone since this whole terrible business blew our lives apart.

  Sasha moved in with Ellen’s family after Daniel was arrested. I’ve hardly spoken to either of them in six months. The house has been largely silent since she left. Daniel’s been out on bail, but barely leaves his room. Nicholas stays out as much as he can. We’ve all taken to eating our meals alone, at different times. I’ve kept out of the house more than has been strictly necessary, and Tony’s been spending even more time in the pub. He’s been sleeping in the spare room, ostensibly because neither of us are sleeping well and we don’t want to disturb each other, but that’s not the real reason and we both know it. That side of our marriage was floundering anyway – drunks don’t make great lovers – and it’s well and truly over now.

  Occasionally Tony and I make a pretence of sitting down together at the table if we are both in, but we struggle to find any words to say to each other and end up sitting in uncomfortable silence, bolting our food and retreating to our own private spaces as soon as possible. Our family life is broken. I thought we had years ahead of us all gathering around the table with boyfriends, girlfriends, friends, hangers-on – all would be welcome at the corner house, me dispensing my famous hospitality, Tony with a corkscrew in his hand. That dream is well and truly over.

  Here comes Ellen now. I can see the rise and fall of her chest, hear the tremor as she confirms her name and ta
kes the oath. I wonder if her nerves are because it’s the most important, serious thing she’s ever done in her life, or because it’s somehow simultaneously a show, a performance.

  High Cheekbones is back, more patrician than ever, his confidence seemingly undented by the defence’s suggestion of Karina’s unreliability as a witness.

  ‘Miss Mackinnon, I’m going to take you through the events of the night of the thirty-first of December 2006.’

  He begins, covering every detail, starting with the moment Ellen arrived at the house, staggering like Bambi on her unfeasibly high heels, looking simultaneously older and younger than her years. I remember seeing Tony looming over her in the kitchen, wondering whether he was boring the poor girl to death, and Nicholas taking pity and rescuing her. Once we get past that, we are on to the real stuff, the part that matters.

  ‘Did you see Mr Monkton and Miss Barton kissing?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ She speaks clearly in her ‘posh’ voice, the one she puts on when she’s trying to impress. She used to use it on me, but once she became more comfortable, she dropped it, going back to her natural Estuary drawl. ‘At around ten o’clock I came out of the kitchen. It was getting stuffy in there. I saw Daniel and Karina in the porch section of the hallway. They were half-hidden in the coats. They were kissing.’

  ‘And did Miss Barton appear to be a willing participant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then what did you see?’

  ‘He said something to her, I couldn’t hear what, and they went up the stairs together.’

  ‘Can you describe Miss Barton’s demeanour as they went upstairs?’

  Ellen hesitates. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Well… she looked as though she wasn’t sure.’

  ‘She looked nervous?’ asks the barrister, concern etched on his noble features. ‘As if she didn’t want to go?’

  ‘Your Honour!’ Daniel’s barrister is on her feet. ‘My learned friend is leading the witness.’

  ‘Agreed,’ says the judge. ‘Be careful, please, Mr Parkinson.’

  ‘Yes, Your Honour. So, Miss Mackinnon, when did you next see Miss Barton?’

  ‘It was about an hour later, around eleven. I was talking to someone in the corridor when Karina came stumbling down the stairs and ran past us. She looked upset, and a bit… unsteady on her feet.’

  ‘Did you go after her?’

  ‘Not straight away. I was in the middle of a conversation, there was lots going on, I’d been drinking. I sort of registered that she looked upset, but I didn’t think it was serious. I just thought she was drunk.’

  ‘Did you see Daniel Monkton?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And when was the next time you saw Miss Barton?’

  ‘After about five minutes I thought I’d better go and see if she was OK, but I couldn’t find her. I looked everywhere downstairs but she wasn’t there, and I knew she hadn’t gone back upstairs because I would have seen her. So I went out into the garden, and that’s where I found her.’

  ‘She was outside in the garden in the middle of winter?’

  ‘Yes. It was freezing.’

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘Just this little dress. She hadn’t put her coat on. She was sitting on the ground under the mulberry tree at the bottom of the garden. I sat down next to her and put my arms around her. She was like ice. Her whole body was shaking. She had blood on her hands.’

  ‘What sort of state was she in?’

  ‘She was very upset, crying. She seemed drunk. I helped her back inside.’

  ‘What, if anything, did she say to you at this point?’

  ‘She said that Daniel had raped her and hurt her, cut her with a broken bottle.’

  I look over at Daniel, who is motionless, looking straight ahead. I want to say to him that it’s OK, this is all second-hand. Everything Ellen has said has been refracted through the prism of Karina. Ellen didn’t see anything. She doesn’t know anything. Her evidence means nothing, proves nothing.

  ‘We have heard from Miss Barton that she had been involved in a relationship with Mr Monkton for the three months prior to New Year’s Eve 2006. Were you aware of this relationship?’

  ‘Yes, yes I was.’

  I can’t help it, I make a sound, a sort of involuntary cry. I clap my hand over my mouth but it’s too late, everyone has heard. Dilys twists around in her seat to let me feel the full force of her triumphant stare. Daniel continues to look steadfastly straight ahead, but a muscle in the side of his face is twitching.

  ‘Was Miss Barton aware that you knew about the relationship?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  ‘So how did you know about it?’

  ‘I knew she was seeing someone, I could just tell. She thought it was this big secret but it was totally obvious.’

  ‘Your Honour!’ Daniel’s barrister is up again. ‘I am loath to get up during my learned friend’s questioning, but this is pure speculation from the witness without any factual basis. It is irrelevant.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ the judge says, regarding him sternly. ‘Mr Parkinson, can you please get to the point?’

  All eyes turn back to Ellen, trembling but resolute.

  ‘Very well. How did you know that Miss Barton was in a relationship with Daniel Monkton, Miss Mackinnon?’

  ‘It was about two weeks before the New Year’s Eve party. I was round at Sasha’s house after school. Sasha was staying back at school for a rehearsal for the Christmas concert, but she’d invited me over for dinner, so she gave me her key. I went back there on my own and let myself in.’

  ‘Was that something you normally did?’

  ‘No. I’d never done it before, but I knew Olivia and Tony – Mr and Mrs Monkton – wouldn’t mind. I was…’ She steals a glance up at me. ‘They were like family to me, the Monktons.’

  There’s a lump in my throat and it swells a little more. Soon I won’t be able to breathe at all.

  ‘I made myself a cup of tea in the kitchen,’ she goes on. ‘I took it up to Sasha’s room and sat on her bed, reading a magazine. I heard the front door opening and someone coming in. I was going to go down and say hello but I thought I’d wait and see who it was. Then I recognised Karina’s voice. She was laughing, and there was a man there too. Daniel. They were coming up the stairs and there was something about the way they were speaking that made me stay silent. They went into Daniel’s room – it was next to Sasha’s and… the walls are not very thick. I could hear them.’

  ‘What did you hear, Miss Mackinnon?’

  ‘I heard them having sex.’ She lowers her voice on the last word, still a child, incapable of saying it without embarrassment. ‘And after a while there was a sort of banging noise, it sounded like a head hitting the wall, although I can’t be sure, and I heard her say: “You’re hurting me”, but he didn’t say anything, he just carried on.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I heard them both coming out of the room and then they left the house.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘I was a bit… shocked, I suppose. I texted Sasha to say I wasn’t going to come for dinner after all, and went home.’

  ‘So a full two weeks before the night in question, you heard Daniel Monkton and Miss Barton having sexual intercourse, possibly violent, in which she told him he was hurting her? Yet he denies entirely the existence of this relationship.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The judge calls for a break, and Ellen makes her way down from the witness box, her mouth set in a straight, tight line, every ounce of her concentrating on keeping her body still and upright, holding herself together.

  Oh, Ellen, how could you? My almost-daughter. All those times she sat around my kitchen table, helping me cook, telling me about her day. I offered her a taste of culture, a window into a different life from the small one she led at home with her closed-minded parents; I showed her a better way. When I
think that this is how she has repaid me, I burn with an unsettling fury.

  Ellen

  October 2005

  Sasha cancelled the cinema, but for a brilliant reason. Nicholas and Daniel had complained that the party the weekend before had been totally lame, so Olivia and Tony said they could have another one, but with only their friends and Sasha’s – no adults. Olivia and Tony were going to be there, but they’d promised to stay in their room unless things got out of hand. They were such cool parents.