Three Little Lies Read online

  ‘Was that something she often did?’

  ‘No,’ I say, bristling. ‘But we were seventeen, not twelve. Sasha came and went as she pleased. Anyway, she didn’t come back that night. Olivia called me again in the morning, and I think she was going to call the police, but then Sasha did phone her, mid-morning I think it was.’

  ‘Where had she been?’ Bryant says.

  ‘She was in France.’

  ‘In France? What was she doing there?’ She speaks in the tone of someone who can’t imagine choosing to visit France.

  I decide to give her the official version. It doesn’t make any difference to what’s happened now, and I don’t want her to assume Sasha’s had a row with someone again and decided to take off. I need the police to look for her.

  ‘She’d bumped into some old friends, a couple she knew from before she came to live with the Monktons. They were going to France to work in a vineyard, and she’d decided on the spur of the moment to go with them. There was no one home when she came to get her passport and pick up her things, and she’d got caught up in the adventure and forgotten to let them know she wouldn’t be home.’

  When it happened, all I could think about was how she could do this to me: disappear off to France without me, leaving me selling White Musk in the Body Shop, when we’d had all these plans. I was crushed, devastated. I hadn’t given a thought to the likelihood or otherwise of her story.

  ‘How long was she gone for?’

  ‘The rest of the summer. Just over four weeks.’

  Time had stretched out like elastic. Karina kept pestering me to go round to the Monktons’ with her and ask Nicholas and Daniel to come out with us, but I felt funny about going there without Sasha. There was that one, rather strange, party, but other than that I’d hardly seen the Monktons. There had been something in Olivia’s voice, when she called to tell me Sasha had been in touch, something I’d never heard before. She was angry with Sasha, of course, understandably so – Olivia had had a sleepless night and been on the verge of calling the police. But there was more. Before, she had always spoken of Sasha with compassion and I had sensed that as a mother of sons, she’d been delighted to be given a quasi-daughter. But that day on the phone, there was a coolness I’d never heard before. A distance, as if she was talking about someone she hardly knew.

  Sasha had barely contacted me at all. She’d sent the odd text, as if to say she hadn’t forgotten me entirely, to which I replied, because I didn’t want her to know how much she had hurt me. When she came back, the thread between us was stretched out, thinner than it had ever been. It might have been in danger of snapping altogether, but I refused to let her go. If I hadn’t held on so tightly, maybe we would have simply drifted apart, and everything would have been different.

  ‘So,’ says Bryant in a tone that tells me I’m not going to like what’s coming next, ‘it’s not completely out of character for Sasha to disappear off like this, without telling anyone?’

  ‘That was eleven years ago! We were seventeen! People do all sorts of crazy things when they’re that age. This is different. She always calls me if she’s not coming back.’ My God, she doesn’t believe me. Is she not going to look for her?

  ‘I know this is difficult,’ she says, laying a hand on my arm, which I shake off. ‘But adults are allowed to go missing. It doesn’t sound as though Sasha is vulnerable, or likely to commit suicide or cause any harm to the public, so at the moment we would grade her disappearance as low risk.’ She raises a hand against my protest. ‘That doesn’t mean we will do nothing, Ellen. Does Sasha have a car?’

  ‘No. I’ve got one; I take her anywhere she needs to go by car. There’s not much point her having one too, not in London.’

  ‘All right. What I need you to do is give me all the information you can – phone number and provider, social media accounts, bank accounts, GP details. We’ll sit and go through it all now. Then we’ll share Sasha’s details with missing persons agencies, we’ll run her name through our database to see whether she’s been in contact with the police at all, and check the hospitals. I know you said her boyfriend has already done that,’ she touches my arm again, ‘but just to be on the safe side – in case he missed any. I’ll also need the contact details for her boyfriend, her work, as well as family, friends and other associates. Anyone who might have seen or spoken to her recently.’

  Her family. Is there any point them contacting the Monktons when I know for a fact Sasha hasn’t seen them for years? As for her mother, she never talks about her any more, and I never ask, aware that it’s a taboo subject, although I’ve never understood why. I reluctantly give Bryant the Monktons’ address, and Sasha’s mother’s name, explaining that I don’t have any contact details for her, that Sasha wasn’t in touch with her herself. Bryant says she’ll look into it.

  ‘So,’ she goes on, ‘this is the address for Tony and Olivia Monkton, Sasha’s godparents. Does Sasha have any other family – brothers or sisters?’

  Here we go. ‘Not brothers and sisters, no.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘It’s… it might be nothing, but…’

  ‘Go on. Anything you can tell me might help us find her.’

  Oh God. ‘When we were younger, the Monktons’ older son, Daniel, he raped one of our friends at a party. Sasha and I testified against him at the trial. He was… angry with us. He blamed us, partly at least.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He accused us of lying at the trial. He was delusional. All we did was tell the truth. He was the one who lied.’

  ‘He was convicted?’

  ‘Yes. He was sentenced to ten years, of which he served five in prison. He got out five years ago.’

  ‘So his probation has ended recently?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t know exactly. He was living in Scotland, I think, but… my mum still lives near the Monktons and she thought she might have seen him the other day, on their street. Going into their house.’

  ‘You said he was angry with you?’

  ‘Yes, he wrote to us. Once just before he was sentenced, and a few times after he came out of prison.’

  ‘Did he threaten you?’

  ‘He said… he would make us pay for what we did.’

  ‘Do you have those letters?’ She looks alert now, sitting up slightly straighter.

  ‘No. Sasha had them. I’ve looked all through her room but I can’t find them.’

  ‘Might she have destroyed them?’

  ‘Yes, it’s possible.’

  ‘Did you ever go to the police with them?’

  ‘No. Sasha said there was no point.’ She said they wouldn’t do anything, and worse, it might get them thinking there was something in it, that we had lied. She said we weren’t in any real danger. She was right, there were never any explicit threats, not since that first letter. You will pay for this one day.

  ‘What do you think? Do you think Daniel has something to do with where Sasha is now?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ I think of the sustained and secret abuse he subjected Karina to, while presenting innocence to the world; the look on his face as he was led away from the dock and into the back of a police van; the days I have lived in fear, every day since he was released. ‘Can you… I don’t know, check up on him?’

  ‘We can certainly try and talk to him. We’ll definitely be speaking to his parents, so we can verify if they have indeed seen Daniel recently.’

  Once I have given her all the information I can, she leaves, pressing her card on me and urging me to contact her if I hear from Sasha, or if I have any further cause for concern. Any further cause for concern? She’s missing – what more cause could there be?

  I sit alone on Sasha’s bed, staring blankly at myself in the long mirror on the wall. My face is pale and there are dark smudges under my eyes, a mix of yesterday’s mascara and sheer exhaustion. What if she never comes back? What if I never see or hear from her again? My fear is mostly for her: about what has happened to her,
if she is frightened, or in pain, or dead. But I’m also frightened about what I have to do next. PC Bryant said she’ll need to talk to the Monktons. I can’t bear for my first contact with Olivia in over ten years to be via the police. I need to get to her before they do.

  Olivia

  July 2007

  So here we are. Here she is, demure and contained in her neat little grey skirt suit and court shoes, looking younger than her eighteen years. Apparently she could have asked the court for special protection on grounds of intimidation and fear of testifying, even providing her evidence via live video link. However, she has chosen, or been persuaded, not to. I can only suppose the prosecution team think that her obvious youth and timidity will work in her favour.

  Everyone else gets a break; everyone else will get to come up and give their evidence, then be whisked off to a comfortable room where somebody will bring them a cup of tea. But my boy has to sit up there behind a glass screen like an animal, hour after hour, listening to every painful minute of it. I try to focus on what I know to be true about him: his kindness, his cleverness, his ability to interpret and play a familiar piece of piano music to the point where I feel as though I’ve never heard it before. I try to hold on to these things to drown out the other voice in my head, the one that is allowing in doubt.

  The prosecution barrister is straight out of central casting, like the judge. He is elegant – smooth-skinned and high-cheekboned, his hair, which is somewhere between ash blond and grey, swept back from his face, a young Michael Heseltine. I can imagine him passing round the port after the ladies have gone to the other room. Is this a deliberate choice? Would choosing a young woman, like Daniel’s barrister, have given the jury the impression that this was some sort of feminist, ‘all men are rapists’ crusade? Will the jury think if even this right-wing, misogynistic dinosaur believes Daniel is guilty, then he must be?

  Karina puts a trembling hand on the Bible and half-whispers the oath.

  ‘Could you speak up a bit, Miss Barton?’ says the judge, with what I suppose he hopes is a kindly, avuncular smile. ‘Some of us don’t have the sharp hearing we once did.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she says more loudly, her eyes lowered.

  When she has finished, the prosecution barrister stands and leaves a beat of silence, giving the jury a little more time to observe the sweet, nervous young woman before them.

  ‘Miss Barton,’ he begins. ‘I’m going to take you through the events of the evening of the thirty-first of December 2006. If at any time you wish to stop and take a break, you must let me know.’

  She nods, still looking at the floor.

  ‘There was a party at the house of your friend, Sasha North, at number 112 Stirling Road, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes dart from him to the jury. I’ve been looking it up – she will have been told to direct her answers to the jury, but that bank of twelve pairs of eyes boring into her, judging her, must be hard to face down.

  ‘At what time did you arrive at the party?’

  ‘Around eight o’clock.’ She puts a hand on the rail in front of her, as if to steady herself.

  I remember hearing her nervous laughter, wondering if I ought to go and rescue her from that ghastly Roland Wiltshire who had answered the door. He and Amelia had been the first to arrive, and Roland kept letting people in while Tony and I were busy putting out food and making sure there were enough glasses. For that first hour, all I heard was women and girls uneasily trying to get away from him at the door.

  ‘Did you see Daniel Monkton when you arrived?’

  ‘No. I went into the living room and chatted to some friends, then I went up to Sasha’s bedroom.’

  ‘Sasha is your friend, and goddaughter to Mr and Mrs Monkton, Daniel’s parents, is that right?’

  She nods.

  ‘Can you speak your answer please, Miss Barton?’ says the judge.

  ‘Sorry.’ She looks from him to the barrister. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  She’s on the verge of tears already and we haven’t even got to the hard part. I force steel into my heart; I cannot afford to start feeling sorry for her.

  ‘Who else was in Sasha’s bedroom?’

  ‘Just me and her, and Ellen Mackinnon. Another friend of ours.’

  ‘And how long did you stay in there?’

  ‘About five minutes. Then I went downstairs to get a drink.’

  ‘Were you drinking alcohol?’

  ‘Yes. It was a party. New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘Of course, Miss Barton. You are not being judged on that. You were no different to any other group of young people enjoying a New Year’s Eve party, in a friend’s home.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, a little more strongly. ‘I thought I was safe there.’

  Blood rushes to my cheeks and I have to look away from her flushed, serious face. She was safe. She was in my home, with my son. It was he that was not safe; he was not safe from these false accusations, accusations that have not only ruined him, but me too. I’ve felt the stares in the corner shop, caught someone looking at me on the train into central London. There she is: the rapist’s mother. What did she do to him, to make him turn out like that? How can she defend him, knowing what he’s done? These questions trail after me all the time, a bad smell that I cannot get rid of no matter how much I scrub myself.

  ‘At what time did you first see Daniel Monkton?’

  ‘When I came down from Sasha’s bedroom, I guess it was around twenty past eight.’ She sounds more confident now, and I can tell she has rehearsed this, over and over. ‘I went into the kitchen with Daniel’s brother, Nicholas, to get a drink. Daniel was in there with some of his friends, getting beer from the fridge.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘Yes. I said hello. Happy new year.’

  ‘And did he say anything to you?’

  ‘Nothing much. Hello, how are you, that sort of thing. I went into the front room for a while, then I was back and forth from there to the kitchen for the next hour or so.’

  ‘And when was the next time you saw Daniel Monkton?’

  ‘Around nine-thirty, I think. I bumped into him in the hall and we started talking.’

  ‘Was anyone else there with you?’

  ‘No, it was just Daniel and me. People walked past, of course. I think Sasha and Ellen were in the kitchen.’

  The splinter of steel that I’ve inserted into my heart twists a little further at the thought of Sasha and Ellen, and what I will have to watch them do from up here.

  ‘Can you tell us in your own words what happened next?’

  ‘We talked for ages, just the two of us. At around ten o’clock we…’ She falters, then draws a deep breath and continues. ‘We started to kiss. There’s a little lobby by the front door where they hang the coats, so we went in there. We were leaning up against the coats and kissing, and then he asked me if I wanted to go to his bedroom.’

  ‘And what did you say?’ asks the barrister gently.

  ‘I said yes.’ She presses her lips together. ‘But it didn’t mean… I didn’t say…’

  ‘It’s all right, Miss Barton, take your time.’

  She’s good, I have to give her that. I look along the row to where Karina’s mother, Dilys, sits. She has positioned herself as far away from me as possible, her bulk squeezed into the end seat. She is silently crying, mopping her face with an old-fashioned handkerchief embroidered with purple flowers.

  ‘We went up to his room.’ Karina has composed herself, hands clinging to the rail again. ‘He had some beer bottles in there and we had a drink from them, and talked for quite a long time. Then we started kissing again. We lay down on the bed. He started to pull my skirt up. I told him to stop but he carried on.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you at this point?’

  ‘He said: “This…”’ Her voice cracks, but she sniffs and tries again. ‘He said: “This is what you want, isn’t it?”’

  I dig my nails into my palms as hard as
I can and try to think about something, anything, else. I will be here in body every day, but I cannot always be fully present. It is simply not possible.

  ‘And what did you say?’ asks the barrister.

  ‘I said no.’ Her voice is strong, and for the first time she addresses the jury directly. I can’t look at Daniel. I daren’t see the expression on his face.

  ‘And did Mr Monkton stop?’

  ‘No.’ She’s whispering again. ‘I pushed his hand away. I pulled my skirt down, but he pulled it up again. I managed to wriggle out from under him and I tried to get out of the room, but he pulled me back and pushed me down on the bed. He smashed his beer bottle, and he held the broken edge against my… my private parts. He threatened to cut me… inside.’