Three Little Lies Page 18

  He nudged me gently with his elbow. ‘No, dummy,’ he said. ‘Like you.’ With that, he got up and walked over to the others without looking back.

  I stared motionless and breathless after him, electrified and terrified in equal measure.

  Ellen

  September 2017

  I sit bolt upright, heart racing. Something has jolted me from sleep, but the flat is silent except for the usual strains of the traffic thundering up and down the road outside, and the sound of distant sirens that forms the backdrop to London living. I can feel every breath I draw, juddery from the pounding of my heart. I look at the clock. It’s 3 a.m., and I think of seeing Rachel in the pub earlier, and her ‘three a.m. friends’. Could I call her now and tell her I’m frightened? If Sasha was here, I’d go padding into her room. She’d shift and wake briefly, shuffling over to make room in the bed, letting me huddle in close to her, knowing without me having to say anything that I needed comfort, company. Someone to make me feel less alone.

  I lie back down, but my sheets are clammy with sweat, so I move over to the other side, trying to breathe slowly and deeply, clearing my mind to let sleep come. I’m on the edge where my thoughts start drifting out of my control into the unpredictability of dreams, when I hear a noise and my eyes snap open. I know what it is. It’s the creak that the floorboard near the front door gives when somebody steps on it. Someone is in the flat. I lie rigid, petrified, feeling every ridge in the mattress beneath my back.

  It never gets completely dark in my room because of the streetlights, and I slide a look left to where my phone sits on the bedside table. I want to reach out for it but my brain spirals ahead of my body and sees my arm reaching over and a hand shooting up from beneath the bed to grab it, hard. However much I tell myself that the danger is out there in the hallway, not here in my room, under my bed, I cannot stretch out my hand. Those childhood monsters that lurked under my bed cast long shadows, reinforced by every schlocky horror movie I’ve ever seen. This isn’t a movie, though, or an unfounded fear. This is real. My whole body is made of jelly. I couldn’t get out of bed even if I wanted to, the power drained from my limbs, replaced by unadulterated terror. Whoever it is, they are moving very quietly, but I hear them opening the door to Sasha’s room, which also gives a slight creak. Is it her? Could it be? Part of me wants to run in there and shake her by the shoulders, scream at her to tell me where she’s been, but even if I was capable of movement, I wouldn’t. What if it isn’t her?

  My stomach lurches and for one terrifying moment I think I’m going to be sick, but I clench my fists and swallow, forcing myself to hold it together. There are noises, rustling sounds through the wall, drawers being opened slowly, papers being moved around. Whoever is in there is trying not to be heard but it’s impossible to be entirely silent unless you remain motionless. I have no choice but to be utterly still, frozen beneath the bedclothes, every muscle strained to breaking point. I don’t know how long the rustling and stealthy moving of objects around goes on for. It feels like an eternity. I will it to end, to stop, but at the same time the fear of where the intruder will go next consumes me and part of me wishes they would stay in Sasha’s room for ever.

  Agonisingly, the movement in the next room stops and there is a moment of stillness. A thrill of pure fear shoots through me and I hold my breath, beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead and trickling down towards my ears. Sasha’s door creaks again and then the footsteps are coming my way, I’m certain of it. I can feel a presence on the other side of my door. I close my eyes, thinking I can’t bear to see the moment my door handle goes down, then open them again, unable after all to bear not knowing. A raft of images flash through my mind, ranging from Daniel Monkton, a silvery knife flashing in his hand, to Sasha, penitent and sobbing, begging my forgiveness. I sit up, looking around at the last minute for a weapon, anything I could use to defend myself, but I don’t even have a glass of water. I promise myself that if I come out of this alive I will sleep with a kitchen knife by the bed for the rest of my life.

  I swear I hear a breath, sense a movement, and I brace myself, but then a police siren springs into life outside the flat, the blue light flickering on my bedroom walls. It makes me jump and I slap my hand over my mouth to prevent any sound escaping. For the first time I hear footsteps – the siren has frightened the intruder as much as me because they are retreating, thank God. There’s another creak and I recognise it, with a thud of relief, as the floorboard by the front door. I hear the faint click of the Yale as it is pushed down, and a soft thud as the door closes. Then silence; beautiful, utter silence.

  Even though I am as sure as I can be that the intruder has gone, I lie there frozen for another twenty minutes, my ears pricked for any sound. There is nothing, and eventually I am forced out of bed by a pressing need for the toilet. I reach out a still-trembling hand and switch on my bedside lamp. Nothing reaches out to grab me, and the room seems instantly less frightening in the light. I pad as quietly as possible to the door and open it a crack, sliding my hand around and fumbling for the light switch in the hall. I snap it on and slowly push open the door. The hallway looks as it usually does: Sasha laughs at me from the central photo of a clip frame containing a collage of pictures of me and her. We are at a festival that was held in the local park a couple of years ago. She’s wearing a pink vest top and a cowboy hat to shade her face from the fierce sun. Her arm is around my shoulder and she’s throwing her head back, laughing. I look hot and uncomfortable in a long-sleeved T-shirt, smiling grimly straight at the camera.

  I walk down the hall to the door. There is no sign of a forced entry. It’s closed, but when I push down the Yale lock, the door swings open. I’m sure I double-locked it. How did they get in?

  I slip noiselessly back along the hall and into the bathroom to pee. The relief is tempered by the noise of urine hitting water, which echoes around the flat. I stop and stuff a handful of toilet paper down there, dulling the sound. When I’ve finished, I re-emerge into the brightly lit hall. I can’t go back to bed without finding out what has happened here. I’ll never get back to sleep, anyway. I check the kitchen and the lounge, which are exactly as I left them. That only leaves Sasha’s room. The door is ajar and I stand outside under the harsh overhead light, my breath coming faster and faster, ragged in the silence. Slowly, I reach out my hand and push. The room is in semi-darkness, lit by the streetlamps outside and the light from the hall, but I can see straight away that someone has been in here.

  Sasha’s room was a mess anyway, but it’s worse now. The drawers under the bed have been pulled out and what was in them strewn on the floor; likewise the bedside cabinet. Clothes have been taken from the wardrobe and chest of drawers, and piled on the bed. The mirror, which stands on an old chest, has been laid on the floor and the contents of the chest (bank statements, old wedding invitations, exercise books I recognise from school) lie discarded all around. Nothing is untouched. I stand in horror at the door, my skin prickling, my mind struggling to comprehend what I am looking at. I can’t tell yet if anything is missing, but clearly somebody has been in here looking for something. But who was it, how did they get in and what the hell were they looking for?

  Olivia

  July 2007

  Sasha’s perfect face is as smooth and polished as ever. Her molten gold hair is neatly pulled back from her face and rolled away where the jury can’t be distracted by it. She’s wearing a conservative dress and jacket, but even if she was in a voluminous kaftan, there would be nothing she could do about the glow that emanates from her like a scent. Yes, she’s beautiful, but it’s more than that. There’s something about her that draws people to her – an empathy, perhaps, unexpected in one so beautiful. I know Ellen felt it – basked in it, bloomed in its warmth. It gives Sasha power, and power is always dangerous. That’s why I had to do what I did.

  She begins her account of the evening. She and Ellen came down to the kitchen around 9.15 p.m. While Ellen was being bored to death
by Tony and subsequently rescued by Nicholas, Sasha was talking to Leo and some others from school in the kitchen. She didn’t see Daniel and Karina kissing in the hallway, or going up the stairs. Shortly after they went upstairs, at around 10.15 p.m., she herself went back up to her bedroom.

  ‘Your bedroom is directly adjacent to Daniel Monkton’s, I believe?’ The barrister adopts a marginally different tone with Sasha than he has with the other witnesses. It’s so subtle I doubt anyone but me has even noticed. Even he, with all his years of experience, all the different types he must come up against in this room and others like it, cannot help but be drawn under her spell.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So when you got into your bedroom, what, if anything, could you hear?’

  ‘I could hear Daniel and Karina through the wall.’

  ‘Who else was there in the room with you?’

  ‘No one. I just wanted to lie down for a minute. I’d been drinking and I was exhausted.’

  When the others talk about their teenage drinking, it sounds kind of sordid, but from her lips it has a sort of glamour. Even I am nearly sucked in – probably would be if it weren’t for what I know about her.

  ‘And can you tell us what you heard through the wall?’

  ‘At first, just low voices, and then silences in between. I guessed they were kissing.’

  ‘Did you hear anything else?’

  ‘I could hear the sounds of… well, you know.’ She looks down, biting her lip. For God’s sake. She’s playing the jury like a trombone – the sweet, innocent little girl, being forced to talk about these unpleasant things, things she has no experience of. As if.

  ‘I’m afraid, Miss North, that the jury needs to know exactly what you did hear. There is no need to be embarrassed.’

  ‘It’s just…’ She clasps her hands in front of her, as if to keep them still, throwing another look at the jury.

  ‘May I remind you that you are under oath, Miss North,’ the barrister says gravely, ‘and that what you say has consequences. It is imperative that you tell us exactly what you observed, truthfully and without obfuscation.’

  ‘I heard them having sex, but it was sort of… quick. I mean, it was over quickly, and I couldn’t hear anything except the bed creaking, and Daniel. I couldn’t hear Karina at all. It was as if she wasn’t there. Then he came out of the room and crossed to the bathroom.’

  ‘How do you know it was him, rather than Miss Barton?’

  ‘I heard him say something to her as he came out, about seeing her downstairs in a while.’

  ‘And what did you do then?’

  ‘I stayed in my room a little while longer. I didn’t hear anything from Daniel’s room. Then I went back downstairs into the kitchen and chatted to some friends from school.’

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

  ‘It was around ten past eleven, I think. I heard some sort of commotion in the hall, and then Ellen brought Karina into the kitchen.’

  ‘And what sort of state was Miss Barton in?’

  ‘She was dreadfully upset. She was saying that Daniel had raped her.’

  ‘And was there any doubt in your mind about whether she was telling the truth?’

  ‘None at all,’ she says, still addressing the jury. ‘She was in a terrible state.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss North. Now, I’d like to take you back, if I may, to the afternoon of the fifteenth of December 2006. You stayed back at school, I believe, for a rehearsal for a Christmas concert?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘And did you stay for the entirety of the rehearsal?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t feeling well, so I left early. Around four o’clock.’

  My heart starts to beat a little faster. What’s going on? Dilys has her arms folded across her in smug satisfaction, a slight smile on her lips.

  ‘And where did you go, when you left the school?’

  ‘Home. I went home. Only…’ She trails off. The innocent little girl is back.

  ‘Yes?’ The barrister leans forward, as if to reassure her as you would a small child, and you can feel the jury mentally doing the same.

  ‘As I approached the house, I could see Daniel and Karina standing outside. I was surprised, as I didn’t think they knew each other that well. They looked as if they were arguing. Karina went to leave, but he grabbed her by the arm, quite roughly, and pulled her back. He came right up close to her and said something, I couldn’t hear what. Her shoulders dropped and she followed him inside.’

  Daniel’s face is a stony mask, chiselled in granite, but there is something in the set of his jaw that tells me he is perilously close to exploding. Dear God, he mustn’t. An outburst from him at this stage would be his death knell. His barrister is also watching him anxiously, unclipping and replacing the lid of her pen over and over.

  ‘Did you go into the house?’ Karina’s barrister asks.

  ‘No.’ She hesitates, and then goes on. ‘I didn’t like to. There was something… not quite right about the way they were with each other. I felt as though I’d be intruding.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘There’s a café on the corner of the next street. I went and sat there for an hour, and then I went home. When I got back, there was nobody in. Ellen was supposed to be coming for dinner but she texted me to say she couldn’t make it.’

  ‘Did Miss Mackinnon subsequently tell you what she had heard from your bedroom?’

  ‘Yes, she told me the next day.’

  My God. I was so stupid, so self-satisfied, so complacent. I’d painted myself as the benevolent matriarch of this alternative, relaxed, welcoming household, when in fact I was sitting on a nest of vipers, deceit and poison lurking in every corner. I keep thinking of Ellen’s face, sitting across the table from me, my adoring subject. She never breathed a word of this, yet I’d prided myself on being her confidante, the mother figure she was missing in that bland, conventional home of hers. As for Sasha… I can’t get to grips with this at all. I can’t believe she would lie about something so serious, but how does this fit with what I know about her?

  ‘What, if anything, did you tell Miss Mackinnon, or anyone else for that matter, about what you had seen?’ he asks.

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone.’ Sasha lowers her eyes again, the picture of demure girlhood. ‘I was confused by it. I didn’t know what to make of it. And also, I didn’t want to spread gossip. So I didn’t mention it.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss North. No further questions.’

  He sits down, and Daniel’s barrister stands. She reminds me of a lioness, sleek and beautiful in her quiet watchfulness, barely concealed ferocity within.

  ‘On New Year’s Eve, as you lay in your bedroom, listening through the wall —’

  ‘I wasn’t listening.’ Sasha’s head snaps up. ‘I could hear.’

  ‘My apologies.’ The barrister’s tone is deliberately bland, but still manages to convey the sense that she’s doing an elaborate, sarcastic bow in Sasha’s direction. ‘As you lay in your bedroom, unable to avoid hearing what was going on in the next room, did you suspect that Miss Barton was not a willing participant in whatever was going on behind the wall?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘But you did not go and knock on the door to see if she was all right? She’s your friend, isn’t she?’

  ‘I didn’t want to interrupt, in case it wasn’t…’

  ‘In case, in fact, the sexual intercourse was entirely consensual?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says in small voice, and I am darkly happy at seeing her deflated.

  ‘But surely, if there was even a small chance that Miss Barton was being raped, the minor embarrassment of walking in on them would have been a small price to pay?’

  ‘I… I wasn’t sure. I’d been drinking.’

  ‘You weren’t sure. You’d been drinking.’ She doesn’t actually do this, of course, but she gives the impression of turning to the jury and giving a comedy eye roll and shrug.


  Sasha’s not looking at the jury any more, and I rejoice inwardly.

  ‘So, other than what Miss Barton herself said, do you have any evidence that the sex that Miss Barton had with Daniel Monkton was not consensual?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘No further questions.’ She sits down, with the air of one who has provided meat for a whole pride’s worth of cubs.

  Sasha throws an uncertain look at the prosecution barrister, who gestures for her to step down from the witness box. The jury are all watching her as she makes her way down the steps, as everyone watches her everywhere she goes. She is mesmerising, every curve and angle and sway of her. I am watching her too, against my will, and as I do so, I wish with all my heart that I’d listened to my instincts and never agreed to take her in.