Three Little Lies Read online

  I click on the ‘likes’, checking I didn’t forget anyone when I gave Bryant the list of her friends. I know them all, by name at least. Work colleagues, old university friends, the odd ex-boyfriend she’s stayed friendly with. A name catches my eye and my hand freezes over the screen, my breath suddenly very loud in the silence: Leo Smith. He hasn’t just liked the photo, he’s ‘loved’ it with a little red heart. I knew she was friends with him on Facebook – I am too, have been since we were at school – but he never likes or comments on my photos. I didn’t know she’d had any contact with him, or heard from him in years. An old, buried jealousy shifts within me, a tiny flame I thought was extinguished long ago. I scroll through her newsfeed, checking each photo and status update for Leo’s name. It doesn’t appear often, but every now and then he ‘loves’ a photo of her, even doing the heart eyes emoji on a particularly pouty one, and very occasionally commenting. See you there, he has written on one where she says she’s on her way to a party. See you there? Where? It was about a month ago, but I can’t remember her saying she was going to a party. It was a Saturday, so I would have been working. Why didn’t she tell me she’d seen Leo? She knows I’d want to know, to hear about him. My thoughts tumble ahead, seeing them entwined together, as I did so many times in my imagination as a teenager. I know he fancied her when she first moved in with the Monktons, but she swore she wasn’t interested in him. And when he and I finally got together, that long, hot summer without her, I had done my best to put it to the back of my mind. He was with me, and that was enough. It was nothing to do with her, how it ended. If it hadn’t been for the New Year’s Eve party and all that followed, maybe we would still be together now. Instantly I chide myself for my stupidity. Who ends up with their high school boyfriend? We would have fallen apart somehow or other in the end.

  That doesn’t matter now, anyway. What matters is finding Sasha, and if Leo knows anything that might help, I need to swallow my pride and my ridiculous, decade-old jealousy and get in touch. I message him on Facebook, explaining that Sasha is missing and I need to see him. I can’t risk him not replying, I need him to understand the seriousness of the situation.

  He messages back straight away: What do you mean, missing? Are you sure she hasn’t done one of her disappearing acts? P.S. Nice to hear from you, hope you’re well. x

  No, she would have told me, I type. Looks from her FB page like you have seen her recently. Can we meet up? I am really worried about her.

  OK, when?

  I’m working tonight, but could meet for a coffee tomorrow morning? Wherever you like.

  He suggests a coffee shop in Soho, and we arrange to meet there at eleven.

  My show passes in a blur and when I hand over to Matthew for the night shift, I realise I hardly know what music I’ve played.

  ‘You OK?’ says Matthew, once he’s got his first piece of music on, shifting his headphones back off one ear. ‘You seemed a bit distracted on air. I was listening on my way in.’

  ‘Oh God, really?’ I thought I’d done a reasonable job of hiding my state of mind. ‘I hope Anna wasn’t listening.’ Anna is our boss, by turns charming and terrifying, and we live in fear of disappointing her.

  ‘On a Saturday night? Nah, she’ll be out gallivanting.’ Despite being in his thirties, Matthew’s vocabulary is that of an elderly man, a war veteran. ‘How’s the fragrant Sasha?’ Matthew met Sasha once, a few months ago, when she came to meet me after a shift, and has never forgotten her. He’s married, so I assume (well, I hope) his interest in her is merely aesthetic, that he appreciates her the way one might a painting or a particularly lovely view.

  ‘She’s… I don’t know, actually. She didn’t come home last night, she…’ I dissolve into tears.

  ‘Hey, come on.’ Matthew pats me awkwardly on the shoulder and looks furtively at the computer screen to see how much time there is left on this piece.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, standing up. ‘You’ve got your show to do. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ll see you soon.’ I hurry out of the studio, leaving him looking perplexed and somewhat relieved.

  Out on the street, I take in a lungful of the cool night air and start walking to the tube station. If I worked on Classic FM I’d be in Leicester Square right now, threading my way through street performers and tourists and hen parties up in town for a big night out. As it is, I’m hurrying along the Wandsworth Road, my coat pulled closely around me. A group of young men spill out of a pub as I pass, debating the merits of going on to a club. One of them stumbles and knocks into me, and I shrink back in alarm.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, holding his hands up in exaggerated apology.

  I hurry on, more shaken than the incident merits. The street is getting quieter, pubs and chicken shops giving way to residential buildings. I look over my shoulder, walking faster and faster. Matthew usually gets a taxi home when he does a late shift, but his wife has some high-powered job in the City, so unlike me he can afford to blow half his wages on cab fares. I’m not far from the station now, but my sense of unease is growing, along with a feeling that someone is following me. I haven’t seen or heard anyone, but I have developed a sixth sense for these things, as all women have since the first time we walked home alone with our keys clasped in our knuckles, our bodies flooded with adrenaline, poised for fight or flight. I force myself to keep walking steadily, although the clip of my heels is getting faster and faster. I steal another look behind me but there’s no one there. I can see the lights of the station up ahead and can bear it no longer. Gripping my bag with one hand, I break into a run, my breath coming in short gasps, my shoes slapping on the pavement, and finally I’m there, the bright lights enveloping me. I stand for a moment in the ticket hall, allowing my breathing to return to normal, pretending to look through my bag for my ticket.

  I am safe. I probably always was safe. Unless… unless I have never been safe. Maybe security has been an illusion, a ten-year masquerade that is only now approaching its final act.

  Ellen

  September 2017

  I see Leo before he sees me. He’s sitting in the window, on a high stool, looking the other way up the street. He looks the same, as I suppose he would. A little worn around the edges, perhaps, his golden syrup hair a touch darker. I stand there on the street for a minute, the rain flattening my carefully blow-dried hair. I have an urge to turn and run, to choose not to face him, this, whatever it is. Then I think of Sasha, and I know I have no choice. No one else is looking for her. It doesn’t matter what she’s done. She needs me, as she always has. I push the door open and he turns at the tinkling of the bell, his face breaking into a wide grin at the sight of me.

  ‘Ellen!’ He stands up and kisses me on both cheeks. He was always confident, but time has added a certain polish. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ I welcome the chance for a couple of minutes to get a handle on my feelings, how I’m going to play this.

  He comes back with my coffee and sits next to me. ‘Still no word from her?’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘God, that’s worrying. When did you last see her?’

  ‘Thursday night, but she was at work Friday morning. I was still asleep when she left – we share a flat.’

  ‘I know.’ He looks at me oddly. ‘Did she not tell you she’d been seeing me?’

  ‘Seeing you?’ I put my cup down on the table too hard and coffee slops on to my fingers.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t mean… seeing me, like going out with me. I mean we’d seen a bit of each other. As friends.’

  My heartbeat slows again.

  ‘No, she didn’t mention it. When did… How did you get back in touch?’

  ‘We’ve always been Facebook friends – like you and I. Then I bumped into her in the pub randomly, a couple of months ago, I guess. It turned out we had a couple of friends in common, and had both been invited to the same party a few weeks later.’

  See you there.

  ‘We’ve met fo
r a drink a couple more times since. With other people too,’ he adds hastily. ‘It was good to catch up. Her boyfriend was there one of the times – Jack, is it?’

  ‘Jackson.’ He never mentioned it, but maybe he doesn’t know I know Leo too. I wonder if he was jealous of Leo, suspicious of this re-kindling of an old friendship. He was jealous of pretty much everyone else she talked to.

  ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘Yes. They weren’t much use, though. They’ve classed her as low-risk. They said she’s not vulnerable.’

  ‘Ha. They’re not wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ My hackles rise.

  ‘You know what I mean. Sasha – she’s tough as old boots.’

  Is she?

  ‘You don’t know her like I do.’ I try to speak emphatically but I can’t quell the note of uncertainty that creeps in.

  ‘No, I know, but I remember her from the old days. Nothing fazes her.’

  Not nothing.

  ‘The thing is, I was at my mum’s yesterday, and she said she’d seen… well, she thought she might have seen Daniel. On our road.’

  ‘Daniel Monkton?’ Leo looks horrified, and I remember how badly he had been affected at the time. He was closer to Nicholas, but he’d still considered Daniel a mate. Leo withdrew, went into himself after the New Year’s Eve party. We’d tried to keep things going between us, but it was too hard, for both of us, and eventually he’d brought our relationship to a limping close.

  ‘She might have been mistaken, I guess. It could have been Nicholas – they were pretty alike, although I don’t really know what either of them look like now.’

  ‘No, me neither,’ said Leo, drumming his fingers on the table.

  ‘She didn’t mention them, did she? The Monktons? When you saw her?’

  ‘God, no, we didn’t get into any of that. Did… Do you and her talk about it?’

  ‘Not really.’ It’s the great unspoken truth that lies between us, keeping us apart yet glueing us together.

  ‘Can you think of anything she did say that might give a clue as to where she is now? Anything at all?’

  ‘No, sorry. We didn’t have any deep conversations. It was all… light, you know. Nothing serious.’

  I take a sip of my coffee. This is getting me nowhere. I shouldn’t have come. My phone trills in my bag and I get to it just in time, almost cutting the call off in my haste to swipe and put the phone to my ear in one swift movement.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Ellen Mackinnon?’ I recognise PC Bryant’s voice and everything goes into slow motion. What is she phoning for? Images flash through my brain.

  ‘Yes, speaking,’ I manage.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not bad news,’ she says, as if she can read my thoughts. ‘We called all the hospitals and she’s not been taken in to any of them, and she’s not coming up on the police database.’

  Is this what she calls good news?

  ‘I’ve also been able to gain access to Sasha’s mobile phone records and her bank account. Her phone hasn’t been used since Friday morning, and appears to have been switched off ever since. We can investigate further in due course if necessary.’

  If necessary? What does that mean? Something must have happened on Friday morning to cause her to walk out of her life.

  ‘And her bank account?’

  ‘Yes, I wanted to ask you about that,’ she says, and something tells me I’m not going to like what she’s going to say.

  ‘There was a large withdrawal in cash from Sasha’s account last week.’

  ‘How large?’

  ‘She pretty much cleared out the account. There was around twenty thousand pounds in there. Do you have any idea why Sasha might have done that?’

  My stomach has dropped away, as if I’m on a rollercoaster that’s just plunged down from its teetering heights.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘No idea at all.’

  ‘I know when we spoke last time,’ she goes on carefully, ‘you thought it was unlikely Sasha had decided to take some time out.’

  ‘Yes.’ I know where she is going with this, but Sasha wouldn’t take off without telling me.

  Wouldn’t she? says the voice in my head.

  ‘The fact that she’s made this withdrawal does perhaps indicate that she was planning to go away,’ says Bryant.

  ‘But her passport – she didn’t take her passport,’ I say in desperation.

  ‘Maybe she hasn’t gone abroad,’ says Bryant gently.

  I can tell she thinks I’m clutching at straws, and perhaps I am. Perhaps I have been walking around blindfolded for the last twelve years.

  ‘There’s something else,’ she says. ‘We spoke to Sasha’s boyfriend, Jackson Pike.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He said they’d argued a couple of days before she disappeared.’

  ‘They argue all the time. That doesn’t mean anything.’ Leo is watching me intently. The police, I mouth to him.

  ‘Yes, I got that impression,’ says Bryant. ‘However, Jackson said he suspected she was seeing someone else, and that during the argument, Sasha said she needed a break, wanted to get away. That she’d had enough of all this.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything. He always thought she was seeing someone else. He was jealous, the jealous type. And as for her saying she wanted to get away – it’s exactly the sort of thing she’d say without meaning it, a throwaway remark.’

  ‘Please understand, Ellen, we’re not closing the case. But what Jackson has told us, along with the fact that she has disappeared in the past without explanation, plus the withdrawal from her bank account, means we are not able to treat this as a high-risk case. We’d love to be able to leave no stone unturned looking for every missing person, but we do have to prioritise. We’ll keep looking, keep talking to people, we’re going to check CCTV footage, but I’m not able to escalate the investigation any further than that at this stage. As I said before, do keep in touch, let me know if anything happens that might change things, or of course if you hear from Sasha herself.’

  I agree that I will, but I know I’m not going to hear from Sasha. Either something has happened to her, and I’ll never hear from her again, or… or something else is going on.

  ‘What about Daniel?’ I ask. ‘Did you run him through the computer?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Obviously he’s on record, due to the conviction in 2007, but there’s nothing since then. He certainly hasn’t crossed the police’s path since his release in 2012. His probation ended recently, and I haven’t yet been able to ascertain where he’s living. His parents say they haven’t heard from him in years. There’s not a great deal more I can do, I’m afraid, in the absence of any specific threat.’

  We say goodbye, and I take Leo through what Bryant told me. He listens and expresses concern, but I’m aware that he’s not invested in this, not like I am. If something bad has happened to her, it feels like I’m the only one who can find her, the only one who’s properly looking for her. And if something else is going on here, I need to know what it is.

  I feel like I’m walking up a mountain through cloud, murky and damp against my skin. Perhaps Sasha is somewhere up there at the top, in the sunshine above the clouds, throwing back her head and laughing, her golden hair tossed by the wind.

  I just hope she’s not laughing at me.

  Ellen

  September 2017

  The text pings in at 6 p.m. on Sunday evening. Sasha has been gone for more than forty-eight hours.

  Can I come over? Need to talk.

  Oh God. Jackson. What does he want? I’d be tempted to ignore him if I didn’t know he’d come over anyway. I consider making an excuse, but I can’t keep him away for ever. And actually, I should speak to him again, in case he knows something. I don’t think he’s got anything to do with Sasha’s disappearance. He’s besotted with her, although sometimes he has a funny way of showing it. But he might be able to shed some light.