Three Little Lies Read online

‘Do you have an address for her? Even an old one?’

  ‘Oh goodness, I don’t know if that would be a good idea, darling. Not at all.’

  ‘Please, Tony.’ I steel myself and lay my hand over his on the table between us. ‘I don’t want to drag up anything unpleasant, but I’m so worried about Sasha.’ We’re close, our faces a couple of feet apart. There are patches of dry skin on his face and a couple of long hairs curl from his nostrils.

  ‘All right, I’ll have a look in the book and see what’s the last address we’ve got for her. Hang on.’

  He goes to the dresser and takes down a battered black book, with a few remnants of gold lettering that used to say Addresses on the front. He flips through to ‘N’, running his finger down the page until something makes him stop and frown.

  ‘What is it?’ I say eagerly.

  ‘It’s just… I didn’t realise Olivia had updated it. I thought the last address we had for her was up north somewhere, but she’s crossed that one out and written in a new one in London.’

  ‘Sasha’s mum is in London?’

  ‘Apparently. Here.’ He passes the book over to me and I tap the address into the notes on my phone.

  ‘Right, well, it was good to see you, Ellen.’ His eyes swivel to the fridge, just for a second. He’s trying to get rid of me so he can have a drink. I gather all my courage.

  ‘What about Daniel?’

  ‘What about him?’ He’s guarded, but the shutters haven’t come clanging down the way they did when I asked Olivia about him.

  ‘Karina said —’

  ‘Karina Barton? You spoke to her?’ he says in horror.

  ‘Yes!’ I slap my hands down on the table. ‘Of course I have! Sasha has disappeared! I’m doing everything I can to find her because no one else seems to care!’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says quietly. ‘Go on.’

  ‘She said she’d seen Daniel. In London. Mum said she thought she saw him too. Coming in here.’

  ‘And what?’ The bonhomie from a moment ago has completely disappeared. ‘You’ve immediately jumped to the conclusion that he’s done something to Sasha?’

  ‘So you have seen him?’

  ‘He’s my son! Yes, I’ve seen him. What do you think? To be brutal, Ellen, I’m dying.’ The tremor in his hand, the sickly yellow skin. Something in me had already known. ‘I’m not prepared to go to my grave estranged from my son when he has done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Nothing wrong?’ I know they’ve been through hell, Olivia and Tony, but I can’t let this pass.

  ‘Yes, Ellen. Do you really still believe Karina Barton was telling the truth?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. And so was I.’

  ‘Oh, Ellen —’

  He is interrupted by the sound of a key in the door, and seconds later Olivia bustles into the kitchen.

  ‘I forgot the bloody list – Oh!’ She stops dead. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her tone is unfriendly, without a hint of the warmth she showed me last time I was here.

  ‘I saw Nicholas last night. He told me about Sasha’s mum.’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ Her expression softens. ‘Had she never told you?’

  ‘No.’ I can’t say any more or I’ll betray how devastated I am that Sasha never confided in me.

  ‘Is there still no word from her?’ she asks.

  I shake my head, not trusting my treacherous voice.

  ‘But surely you can’t think Alice has got anything to do with it? No one’s heard from her for years.’

  You have. You’ve noted down her new address in your black book. ‘I thought maybe she might be in touch with Sasha or…’

  ‘Alice North has got absolutely zero interest in her daughter, or in anyone else, for that matter,’ she says, picking up her list and checking in the fridge, presumably for anything she’s forgotten. ‘I wouldn’t waste any time trying to find her. Even if you do, you’ll get no sense out of her. Honestly, Ellen, you’re barking up the wrong tree there.’

  ‘What about Daniel?’ I say, suddenly fearless. ‘Is he the wrong tree too?’

  She slams the fridge door shut. ‘I told you last time, I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. I’m sorry about Sasha, I really am, but I think you’d better go.’

  ‘Tony’s told me you’ve seen him.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

  Tony shrugs apologetically at her, gets up and takes a small glass from the dresser. He pours himself a whisky from a bottle on the side, Olivia watching despairingly.

  ‘He had no right to tell you anything of the sort!’ She takes my arm to guide me out into the hall. ‘Look, Ellen, you need to take anything Tony says with a pinch of salt, I’m afraid.’ She’s calmer now, confidential. ‘As you can probably tell, he drinks too much. Always did, anyway, but since everything that happened, it’s been much worse. He’s barely functioning, to be honest. You don’t want to set any store by what he says. Yes, we’ve seen Daniel, but only recently. Tony’s… not very well.’ She breathes in deeply through her nose. ‘He begged me to reconsider our decision not to see Daniel, and I couldn’t very well refuse. But he’s got nothing to do with wherever Sasha is, I can promise you that.’

  Tony emerges from the kitchen, the glass of amber liquid in his hand.

  ‘I had to see him, you can see that, can’t you, Ellen?’ He takes a gulp of his drink and his face softens. ‘It’s all so long ago now.’

  Pity blooms within me as I look at them, these ghosts, shadows of their former selves. I say goodbye, and while Olivia stays where she is, arms firmly crossed, Tony moves forward to squeeze my arm, kissing my cheek as he does so. I try not to wince at the smell of his breath.

  As I walk down the road towards my parents’ house, a journey I made so many times all those years ago, I can still feel his hand on my arm, the place where he kissed my cheek burning like a brand.

  Ellen

  March 2006

  I suppose it was the money going missing that was the first sign that something was wrong. It was a couple of months ago, not long after Christmas. I was round at the Monktons’, sitting at the kitchen table putting the Christmas decorations away, while Olivia made a boeuf bourguignon for what I was learning to call ‘supper’. Sasha had been there earlier, but had gone out shopping a couple of hours before, and Olivia had urged me to stay until she got back. I hadn’t taken much persuasion. Ever since the concert at the Barbican, I’d wanted to spend as much time as possible with Olivia, treasuring it like a precious jewel. Not only was I in awe of her talent, she was also everything I’d ever wanted in a mother: laid-back and permissive, but warm and loving. She treated me like an adult but at the same time she made me feel safe, protected. I’d never had that sort of relationship with an adult. Sasha had noticed and occasionally made fun of me about it, as did Nicholas if he was around, but Daniel never did. We’d never talked about it, but ever since the moment we had shared when Olivia opened her mouth and let the pure sound of it pour out, wrapping itself around us, there had been a kind of silent understanding between us.

  At home, our Christmas tree was lifted down from the loft and unfolded each year, to be topped by a gaudy fairy, the rest of it festooned with tinsel, glittery baubles and multicoloured flashing lights. The Monktons had a real tree peppered with tiny white lights, its piney scent making me nostalgic for a storybook Christmas I’d never had: one filled with homemade gingerbread houses and moonlit walks through crisp snow to midnight mass, rather than dry turkey and falling asleep in front of the TV. Olivia’s decorations were a mix of handmade ornaments made of wood and gingham and twisted cane, and malformed cardboard Father Christmases and reindeer made by the boys when they were little.

  ‘I can’t bear to throw them out,’ she had said to me that day as I wrapped a tatty felt bell in a piece of ancient tissue paper with the lines of Christmases past folded into it. I placed it reverently in the dark green Clarks shoebox with a label on the side that said size 12 and a half.

  ‘Bless you
for helping me,’ she went on. ‘No one else is interested. Do you want a cuppa?’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said, glowing with pleasure as she reached up for the Earl Grey tin.

  ‘Oh damn,’ she said, peering into the fridge. ‘Those wretched boys have drunk all the milk. Would you be a love and pop to the corner shop? I don’t want to leave this.’ She gestured to the bubbling Le Creuset casserole on the stovetop.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘We need some tinned tomatoes too, if they’ve got any, and can you get a paper as well?’ Olivia said, rummaging in her bag for her purse. ‘Oh.’ Her expression changed to annoyance as she opened it. She walked into the hall and bawled up the stairs. ‘Daniel! Nicky! Have you been in my purse?’ They both came out of their rooms and stood belligerently at the top of the stairs.

  ‘What?’ said Daniel.

  ‘Have you been in my purse?’ she repeated. ‘I had three twenty pound notes in there earlier.’

  ‘Nope,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Me neither,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it,’ I called from the kitchen table, eager to be of use.

  Olivia sighed as she came back in. ‘Those bloody boys,’ she said. ‘All right, darling, if you wouldn’t mind. Just get the milk, don’t worry about the rest of it.’

  I came back with not only the milk but the tomatoes, the paper (the Guardian, naturally) and some of the fancy chocolate biscuits I knew she liked. When Sasha finally reappeared, laden down with shopping bags, I expected Olivia to ask her about the money, but she didn’t mention it.

  This week it was a different story, though. I didn’t see Sasha over the weekend because we’d had my auntie and uncle staying, and Mum wouldn’t let me go out. When I called for her on the way to school on Monday morning, she came out almost before I’d lowered my hand from the bell. She looked pale and her eyes were red.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Let’s go.’ She grabbed my arm and pulled me down the street.

  ‘What’s up?’ I looked back at the house in confusion.

  ‘I just want to get away from there,’ she said through gritted teeth. Once we were a hundred yards or so from the house she spoke again. ‘Fucking Olivia.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I said, horrified.

  ‘She’s had more money go missing.’

  ‘What do you mean, more?’ I said, although as I spoke I smelled beef stewing in red wine, felt the crackle of tissue paper under my fingers, saw Sasha waltzing in laden down with shopping bags.

  ‘There’s been a couple of times recently where money’s gone from her purse,’ she said, sliding me a sideways look. ‘You were there the first time, remember? Not long after Christmas.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said, pretending to remember, in one of my futile attempts to keep from her how important the Monktons, and particularly Olivia, had become to me, in case she thought it was weird.

  ‘There were a couple more times after that. She always asked Nicholas and Daniel if they’d taken it. But never me. Until now.’

  I waited in silence, unable to rid my mind of the image of her swinging into the kitchen with those bags.

  ‘She had a couple of hundred quid in her bag – it was expenses from a job she’d done, to reimburse her for food and stuff while she’d been away. The other times it wasn’t as much, and she just thought it was her being scatty. But this time, she knew the money had been there, and she knew it had gone missing.’

  ‘And she’s accused you?’

  ‘Not accused, exactly. She sat me down yesterday morning, “terribly concerned”.’ She did ironic quote marks in the air. ‘Was there anything I wanted to talk to her about? Did I need money for some reason? God knows what she thinks I’m doing with it.’

  ‘So she definitely thinks it’s you that’s taking it? That’s so unfair. What about Daniel? He always seems to have money.’

  ‘What, her golden boy?’ She hoisted her bag defiantly up on her shoulder. ‘He swears blind it wasn’t him, and she believes him. Nick’s the same.’

  ‘Tony?’ I said, clutching at straws. ‘Maybe he’s… I don’t know, a secret gambler or something?’

  ‘Nope, she’s pretty much made up her mind that it’s me. The cuckoo in the nest.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not how she thinks of you, Sash.’

  ‘That’s what I am, though, isn’t it?’ She was tight with tension. ‘I don’t fit. She’s done her best, but to her I’m an outsider. I always will be, and that’s where she likes me. She doesn’t want me to get too close.’

  ‘You’re not alone, Sash, you do know that, don’t you?’ I said. ‘It must be so hard for you, Olivia saying those things, but you’ve got me. I’m on your side.’ I so wanted to ask about her mum, if Sasha had spoken to her about all this, if Olivia and Tony had talked to her. It was such a forbidden subject I was frightened to introduce it, but I took a deep breath and launched in.

  ‘What about your mum? Can’t you talk to her about it?’

  Sasha closed up like a fan. ‘I don’t want to worry her with it.’

  ‘But she’d want to know, surely?’ I tried to think how my mum would feel, if I were living far away with another family and had been accused of something I hadn’t done. She’d be up in arms, I realised, storming in, all guns blazing. Mum was pretty non-confrontational in everyday life, but there had been a few times when she’d come to my rescue. At primary school there was a girl called Joanne Speer, who had made my life hell for a term, and when my mum found out, she was incandescent with rage.

  ‘The little bitch,’ she said to my dad when she thought I was in bed. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard her swear. I don’t know what she said when she went into school the next day, but I do know Joanne never bothered me again.

  ‘No, she won’t be able to do anything and she’ll only worry about me,’ Sasha said. I started to protest but she cut me off. ‘Trust me, Ellen. It’s better if she doesn’t know.’

  ‘So what did Olivia say? How did you leave it?’

  ‘She was nice about it, I suppose. I mean, even though she thinks I’ve taken it, and I suppose I can’t blame her, all she said was if I need money I only have to ask, or if there’s anything bothering me, I should talk to her about it.’

  ‘So who is doing it? Who’s taking the money?’

  ‘One of the boys’ friends, maybe? Or Karina? She’s there all the bloody time at the moment. Or Leo – he and Nicholas are joined at the hip. I don’t know – there’s people in and out of the house all the time. You know what it’s like.’

  She was right. It was one of the things I especially loved about their house: its open-door policy, how Olivia and Tony encouraged all of them to have friends over, to feel that the house was their home too, not just Olivia and Tony’s. Selfishly I hoped this money business wouldn’t change that.

  ‘She’ll simply have to be more careful from now on,’ Sasha said. ‘If she doesn’t leave money lying around, nobody will be able to take it, will they?’

  ‘You don’t think… one of the boys is doing it, hoping that you’ll get the blame?’

  ‘No! Why would they?’

  We walked on in silence for a few minutes, and then Sasha spoke with the bright energy of someone deliberately trying to move the conversation on.

  ‘So, we’re definitely going to go away, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’ I’d finally managed to persuade my mum to let me and Sasha go travelling around France and Spain by train in the summer holidays. I was saving up my wages from my Saturday job at the Body Shop. I wasn’t sure where Sasha was getting the money from, but she always seemed to have plenty.

  ‘Have you had a word with Karina?’ Sasha asked. When we’d first started discussing it at school one day, Karina had been there and had been keen to come too. Later, in her bedroom, Sasha had admitted that she didn’t really want Karina to come, she wanted it to be just the two of us, and I had felt a surge of guilty relief. Sasha had asked me to
break the news to Karina, but thankfully it hadn’t come to that.

  ‘Oh, it’s OK, her mum won’t let her.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Sasha, giggling, and I laughed along traitorously. Ever since I’d spotted Karina on her own at the concert, I’d been feeling increasingly uncomfortable about her interest in the Monktons. I hadn’t mentioned seeing her there to any of them, even Sasha, out of some sort of residual loyalty to my former best friend, but I had asked her about it. She was defiant, saying why shouldn’t she have gone, she wanted to hear Olivia sing as much as I did – this last with a nod to the teasing I had taken at the hands of Nicholas and Leo last time we were all at the Monktons’, about my devotion to Olivia. I’d left it – after all, she was right. There was no reason why she shouldn’t have been there, but something about seeing her sitting there alone had left a peculiar, lingering taste in my mouth, and a vague, unformed question in the back of my mind.