Three Little Lies Page 23

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, Ellen.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘This terrible party. I’m not so far gone that I can’t see how awful it is. But when Mum invited you, I thought… you being here would make it better. Stupid of me.’

  ‘It’s fine. I was happy to come.’ The words sound forced even to me.

  ‘That’s kind of you, but it’s bloody awful, Ellen.’ There’s an echo of the old Karina there, and I start to laugh, and so does she, and there are tears in our eyes, and I’m not sure if they are of laughter or not, but it feels like old times, like Dilys said. I wish I didn’t have to break the spell by confronting her about Sasha, but I know I have to.

  ‘How are you, really?’ I ask first, seizing this moment when it feels like we might be able to talk about real things.

  ‘Let’s see: I’ve got no job, I live with my mum, and you’ve seen my birthday party. How do you think I am?’ She could sound sharp, barbed, but she doesn’t. She just sounds sad. ‘And now I’ve got the police sniffing around, dredging up the past. Why did you tell them I’d seen Daniel?’

  ‘Why do you think? I’m worried about Sasha. I’m sorry if it brought back unpleasant memories but —’

  ‘Unpleasant? That’s putting it mildly.’ Bitterness creeps in. ‘This has got nothing to do with me. Why are you dragging me into it?’

  ‘Nothing to do with you?’ I say, a pop of anger bursting inside me. ‘So it wasn’t you having a cosy chat with Sasha in Café Crème two weeks ago?’

  She flushes, and if I had any doubts about whether it was her, they are gone.

  ‘That was nothing to do with this,’ she whispers.

  ‘What was it to do with, then? You have to tell me, Karina.’

  ‘I’d seen Daniel. I wanted to talk to someone about it, that’s all. Someone who’d understand.’

  ‘Sasha knew Daniel was back? Why didn’t she say anything to me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Karina says. ‘Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you think you did.’ There are shades of the old Karina, the one who wanted to win the competition of who knows most about Sasha and the Monktons. Is she still in thrall to them?

  ‘Why choose her? Why didn’t you come to me?’ Maybe I’m competing too, but for Karina’s affections. We were so close once, before Sasha arrived in our lives.

  ‘You don’t understand, Ellen. There was a lot going on back then that people didn’t see.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Lots of things.’

  ‘What d’you mean, Karina?’ I cannot let this pass. All these lies, this secrecy, and now Karina’s hinting that there is more to discover. What was really going on at the corner house in 2006? ‘If there’s something you know —’

  ‘Girls! Come and have some cake!’ Dilys’s shrill call interrupts me.

  Karina jumps up, looking relieved.

  ‘Coming, Mum!’ She bounces up and makes for the door.

  ‘Wait, Karina, please.’ The urgency in my voice makes her stop, but when she looks at me, her face is carefully blank.

  ‘What do you mean, there was lots going on that people didn’t see?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Ellen, honestly. I just meant when you’re a teenager, you have all these thoughts and feelings, and you don’t know whether anyone else will understand, or laugh at you, or whatever, so you keep them inside. That’s all.’

  It’s useless to push her, so I follow her back downstairs, and sip the warm wine and eat cake that’s dry like dust on my tongue. I suggest a couple of times that we go back upstairs but Karina acts as if she hasn’t heard me, chatting brightly to her aunt as if she hasn’t a care in the world. At 9 p.m. I can bear it no longer and make my excuses. Karina says goodbye to me in the lounge in front of everyone, leaving Dilys to see me to the door.

  As I drive home, cake crumbs still claggy between my teeth, the truth clangs into me, over and over, like repeated hammer blows to the head. Sasha knew Daniel was back. She saw Karina a week before she disappeared and didn’t tell me. She slept with Leo a month ago. It looks extremely likely that she saw her mother the day she disappeared. She has been lying to me at every turn. Do I really know her at all?

  Safely in the flat, I slide the bolts into place with a satisfying clunk of metal on metal. I chuck my handbag on the floor by the hall table and go straight into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  I’ve just opened the milk and am poised to pour it into my tea when I hear it: the creak of the hall floorboard. I whirl around, dropping the bottle on its side on the worktop, narrowly missing knocking my tea over. Milk spreads from it, a widening pool that drips down on to the floor and splashes my shoes, pale splodges on dark suede. I grip the teaspoon in my hand, the edges of it digging into my palm, but the pain of it is not enough to stop the shaking, the way my insides have turned to liquid, the fire in my head.

  Daniel Monkton is standing in my kitchen.

  Karina

  December 2006

  This afternoon, he wanted me to do something so horrible it finally prompted me to say no. He said it would be a Christmas present for him. I’ve never said no to him before, and now I know why. He turned me around and for a terrifying second I thought he was going to do it anyway, my whole body braced for it, but then he pulled my top up and I felt a searing pain. I opened my mouth to scream but he was ready for it, clapping his hand over my mouth.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said.

  It wasn’t until I smelled sickly-sweet burning flesh that I realised he had put a cigarette out on my back. I stared at a smudged pencil mark on the wall that looked like a bird in flight. Something bitter on his hand made me want to gag, but I held it in.

  ‘Don’t think about telling anyone,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget I’ve taped you on my video camera. I can show everyone what a slut you are with the press of a button. Even your mum.’

  I staggered from the room and went straight to the bathroom, locking the door. Gingerly, I lifted up my top and saw an angry red mark, a perfect circle on my back. I didn’t want to meet my own eye in the mirror, so I closed the toilet lid and sat down. I had a half bottle of vodka in my bag, which was still hanging over my shoulder. I took it out and had a swig. Then another. It was all I could think of to dull the pain. I knew he would be waiting for me in the bedroom. There was no one else in the house. No one to hear me scream.

  I picked up my bag and slid the bathroom door bolt open as smoothly as I could. I tiptoed along the landing, holding my breath. Down the stairs, avoiding the fourth one, which creaks. At the door, I shoved my feet into my shoes, not stopping to do them up, and grabbed my coat from the peg. I slipped out into the freezing air, easing the door shut behind me.

  I know he’ll find a way to make me pay for this. I just wish I knew what it was going to be.

  Ellen

  December 2006

  On New Year’s Eve, I tottered down the road to the Monktons’ in a pair of heels that had seemed reasonably comfortable in the shop. From a couple of hundred yards away, I saw Karina come out of her house and cross the road. She paused on the pavement outside, head down, as if engaged in internal debate. After a few seconds, she shook her hair back and marched up the path, and by the time I got there she had disappeared into the house. I wondered if she’d been thinking about what I had heard through Sasha’s bedroom wall a couple of weeks before. I hadn’t said anything to Karina, supposing that if she wanted to tell me what was going on, she would.

  A man I’d never seen before answered the door to me. He was around Tony and Olivia’s age and he cheerfully looked me up and down.

  ‘Good evening, young lady!’

  Oh God, I’d forgotten this was one of those Monkton parties where they all invited their friends, including the parents. It had seemed so exotic to me at first, adults drinking and socialising like teenagers, something I had never seen my parents do; but recently I’d started to find it a bit weird, although I couldn’t put my finger on
why. They were all musicians, artists, actors – larger than life, extravagant. Until one recent night I’d thought they were all successful too, on the verge of making it big. But as the evening wore on, and they talked more about what they were actually doing work-wise, I had started to realise that was not the case.

  I extricated myself from the conversation with the man at the door. Karina was in the front room talking too fast to a girl from our year and laughing unnaturally loudly. I ignored her and made my way upstairs. As I reached out to open Sasha’s door, it almost hit me in the face as it was flung open from the inside by Daniel, who walked swiftly past me without saying hello, or even registering I was there. I walked in, smiling, ready to tell Sasha about the creep who had opened the door, when I was brought up short. She was sitting on the bed, white-faced, looking down, holding her hand to her mouth, as if to keep something from flying out.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I said, standing uncertainly in the doorway.

  Her neck snapped up and she lowered her hand, forcing her mouth into a bright smile that didn’t touch her eyes.

  ‘Hi! Yes, I’m fine. Just Daniel being an idiot. Wow, you look great. Where did you get that dress?’

  I allowed her to lead me into an inconsequential conversation about clothes and shopping, understanding that she was silently asking me not to press her any further. I wished afterwards that I had done, but it was too late by then. A few minutes later the door burst open again and Karina came in and flung herself down on the bed.

  ‘Hello, girls,’ she said, gleaming with a strange light. ‘What’s up with Daniel?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, he’s in a mood about something,’ said Sasha. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Great!’ she said, lying back on the bed. After a few seconds she sat up again. ‘Woah, that’s making the room spin.’

  ‘Are you pissed already?’ I asked. ‘It’s only early.’

  ‘I’m fine, had a couple of drinks in my room before I came over, that’s all.’ She folded her hands in her lap and smiled brightly. She reminded me of how I was when I got home after an evening around the Monktons’ table, pretending to Mum and Dad that I was completely sober, enunciating every word while simultaneously trying not to be too garrulous. ‘Have you got anything to drink up here?’

  ‘No. There’s plenty in the kitchen, though,’ said Sasha, pointedly.

  Karina didn’t seem to notice her snarkiness, and stood up unsteadily. She opened the door as Nicholas was walking past towards the stairs.

  ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’ we heard her say.

  ‘To the kitchen, to get drinks for me and Daniel,’ he said.

  ‘Ooh, I’ll come with you.’

  Sasha and I looked at each other as their voices faded.

  ‘What’s up with her?’ I said.

  ‘God knows,’ said Sasha. ‘She’s been acting so weird lately. Weirder than usual, I mean.’

  I laughed disloyally. Things between me and Sasha were finally returning to normal after her flit to France, and it felt so good to be back on her team that I didn’t care if I was being mean to Karina. She didn’t know what we were saying anyway, so it wasn’t hurting her.

  ‘What does she look like, as well?’ I said, warming to the theme.

  ‘I know! Did she put that make-up on with a trowel?’ Sasha mimed slapping handfuls of something on to her face and we both collapsed in giggles.

  As the hours wore on, everyone got drunker and drunker. I’d never known adults to drink as much as the Monktons and their friends. I spent a trying fifteen minutes trapped in a corner of the kitchen while Tony stood too close and talked at me loudly about how wonderful it was that Olivia’s career was going so well, and how happy he was for her, how pleased to be able to support her by being there for the family when his own work commitments allowed. I’m not sure who he was trying to convince, but I got the opposite impression to the one he’d been trying to give. Because she was so careful to disguise it, I hadn’t realised until recently how much higher profile than him Olivia was, nor how disappointed Tony was with his own career. I had another reason, apart from boredom, for wanting to get away from Tony. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sasha and Leo engrossed in conversation in the far corner of the kitchen. I’d been trying to signal my need for assistance to them, but either they hadn’t noticed or they were deliberately ignoring me. The longer they talked, the more my anxiety rose. Both of them had sworn to me that they weren’t interested in the other, but looking at them, so beautiful, so perfect, laughing in the lamplight, they looked right together. Leo wasn’t meant for someone nondescript like me. He ought to have been with someone extraordinary. Someone like Sasha.

  It was Nicholas that rescued me in the end. He’d been watching for a few minutes as I nodded and smiled and cast desperate glances at Leo and Sasha, and then at anyone and everyone, hoping someone would sense my distress signals and come over. It was useless, though – they were all talking about themselves, or waiting for whoever they were talking to to finish speaking so that they could start talking about themselves again. Only Olivia, the one genuine star among them, was immune to this endless self-promotion, self-validation; the idea that if you said you were successful, then you were, or would be. I felt a light touch on my arm and turned thankfully to see Nicholas standing there, proffering a glass of wine.

  ‘You look like you might need this,’ he said. ‘Dad, you’re boring Ellen to death.’

  This was another thing that had taken some getting used to – the Monkton children’s casual rudeness to their parents. If I’d said something like that to my dad, he would have gone mad.

  ‘At least she listens to me, unlike my own children,’ Tony said, putting his arm around my shoulders. I must have stiffened because he dropped it straight away.

  Nicholas looked at him with distaste. ‘You’re not giving her any choice, Dad. Come on, Ellen, let’s leave him to bore someone else senseless.’

  I smiled at Tony, but let Nicholas lead me away and sit me down at the table with him.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘It was getting a bit much.’

  ‘Was he giving you the full sob story? How if only he hadn’t had to take a back seat to Mum, he’d have been first bassoon by now? How selfless he is, stepping up to the plate and raising the family so she could shine?’

  ‘He didn’t say exactly that…’

  ‘No, but I bet that was the general idea, wasn’t it? Never mind the real story, where Mum struggled to build her career while simultaneously doing pretty much everything at home.’

  We sat in silence for a few seconds, me unsure how to respond and him seemingly lost in thought. Nicholas was the one to break it. ‘Have you seen Karina? She looks hammered.’

  I thought, with a lurch, how drunk she had already been a couple of hours ago. There was a sharpness about her recently that hadn’t always been there, a jagged edge of unpredictability that made me fearful of her, or for her.

  ‘She was in the hall when I came down here,’ I said. ‘Talking to Daniel, I think.’ The sounds I had heard through the wall a couple of weeks ago echoed uncomfortably through my mind. ‘I probably ought to go and check on her.’ It was stifling in the kitchen anyway. I could do with getting out.

  ‘OK. I’m sure she’s all right,’ Nicholas said lightly. ‘She seems to know what she’s doing.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure she’s fine, but…’

  He waved a hand, as if to dismiss me. I left the room and stood for a moment in the corridor, leaning against the wall. The world spun hazily around me and I breathed deeply. What I really wanted to do was go home and lie down in my own quiet bed, but it was New Year’s Eve, I told myself. I couldn’t leave before midnight. It was dark in the corridor and I was wearing a black dress that blended into the shadows, so they didn’t see me. I nearly didn’t see them, half-hidden by the coats that bulged from the pegs by the front door. At first I couldn’t work out what I was looking at because all I could see was someone’s back,
burrowing into the coats; I thought it might be someone rummaging for something in their coat pocket. But then I recognised the shirt from earlier, and I slowly realised that what I was looking at was Daniel pressed up against someone, kissing them. I looked down at the floor and saw a familiar pair of black shoes, just as he stepped back and whispered something. Karina emerged from the coats, smiling, her hair mussed and her sparkly dress pulled down at one shoulder. She glanced at the coat pegs, and her lips moved but she was speaking too low for me to hear what she was saying. Daniel leaned forward and whispered in her ear again and as he did, her smile faded. As his face moved back into her eyeline, she smiled again, but it was fake, as if painted on for his benefit. He slipped his hand round her waist and led her up the stairs.