Page 28 of Cross Her Heart

You told Lisa your own lies,a little voice inside my head says.This perfect marriage she so admired.I silence the voice. That was different. That was private. I take a deep painful breath before opening the front door.

Only when Richard is fully asleep do I creep downstairs. He’s given me my phone back and the kitchen is spotless where he’s washed up and cleaned after the dinner he cooked. My nerves are zinging. Something here doesn’t add up. He doesn’t calm down this quickly – the hot rage is normally followed by at least twenty-four hours of the cold silent treatment. Only afterwards does the remorse and regret come, along with the turning around of events so that it’s somehow my fault becauseyou know what I’m like.This is all far too quick.

It should concern me, but I’m too tired to think about what he might want as I put the kettle on. My head is filled with Lisa and my own shame at being the best friend who should have known. But as I stare at the knife block and think of Richard upstairs, I wonder how much it must take to drive a person to murder. God knows I should be close, but even with how much he’s beaten the love out of me, I couldn’t kill him. I notice there are more final demands in the bin as I tip the tea bag away. No, he shouldn’t be this calm yet.

I keep one eye on the stairs as I try Ava’s number again. I love Ava as much as I can imagine loving a child, a child I could never have, and I may not be able to love Lisa any more, but Ava can stay in my heart. I need something in my heart.

This time though, there’s no answer message. Just a dead tone. Like she never even existed.

28

AVA

That moment keeps going round and round in my head on a loop. Mum staring at me. Me staring at her.Why are they calling you Charlotte? Who’s Charlotte?The wide-eyed frightened-rabbit look on her face.

Even after the brick through the window and being bundled out into the back of a van to go to the police station and then out again, unseen, and driven to this pokey flat, I hadn’t quite figured out what it all meant. Now I block it all out and hide behind my wall of anger and hurt and fear and a thousand emotions in between.

I hate this flat. It smells wrong. Not like home. I miss my bedroom. No reclining sofa in the box room I have here. It’s a strange place filled with strangers andshe’sthe biggest stranger of them all. Everything has changed. My whole life is being evaporated and it’s not fair. None of it’s my fault. I didn’t do anything. I hate it. I hate them. I hateher. I miss my mum who I thought was a bit wet and needy but she was my mum and we’d laugh together sometimes and I knew she loved me. Not this woman. Not this stranger. I don’t want her blood to be part of mine. I don’t want to be part monster.

When I have my door shut, which is most of the time, I can still hear their voices and the creak of the floor under their sensible shoes as they move about. It’s probably only about four or five people but it feels like more. A couple are police. At least one is a head doctor – I know because she tried talking to me but I refused. I’m not the crazy one here. She spends a lot of time in the sitting room with Mu—Charlotte. Not thatshe’sdoing much talking beyond yes or no answers. She’s like a zombie, sitting there staring at the too loud TV. Still looking pathetic, as if she’s got Mum’s skin on. Well, I’m not buying her routine any more. Why should anyone feel sorry for her? She’s the one who did it. She’s the murderer. She’s the one who – I can’t even bring myself to think it aloud – did thatthing. Why am I having to pay the price?

I want my phone and iPad back but Alison said I can’t until they’ve sorted out what’s going to happen withheridentity. And mine. They’ve clamped down on any more papers printing my face but from all the hushed talking outside my bedroom door it would seem that this whole thing is a mess. They don’t know what to do with us.

I don’t want a new identity. I want to be me.

Alison isCharlotte’sprobation officer. I hate them all, these strangers, but if I didn’t, then I’d probably like Alison a little bit. When I rage at her, demanding to see my friends, she looks at me with a weird blend of kindness and pity. She keeps telling me to be patient. Easy for her to say.

I feel sick. But then I always feel a bit sick right now. That’s the other thing I can’t deal with telling anyone yet. How the fuck am I supposed to get that thin blue line sorted while I’m caged up here?

I know it’s all worse because of what I did. Technically it all started with what I did. Someone, an anonymous caller, somehow recognisedherface in one of the pictures with me by the river. Alison says it was simply bad luck. A million to one shot. That doesn’t make me feel better. What I did gave all the newspapers and stuff an angle.Devil mother, angel daughter.Child killer, child saver. They’re picking our lives apart. I kind of always wanted to be famous in thatX-Factorway that everyone does, but I never imagined it would be like this. What do my friends think? Do they miss me? They must do. I bet they wish they could see me as much as I want to see them. I think of Jodie and imagine her saying, ‘Well, this takes weird mums club to a whole new level!’ It almost makes me laugh and almost makes me cry. I wrap myself up in my rage and avoid doing either.

My Facebook account has been deleted. And my Instagram. When Alison told me, her face pretty much said my chances of being allowed another were pretty shit. Hardly likely, is it? Someone would find me and then they’d findherand that would be another huge chunk of government money flushed down the toilet.

No more social media. It’s like staring into an endless darkness. Why am I being punished? It’s all right forher. She didn’t have any friends anyway apart from Marilyn, who probably hates her right now too. She barely used her phone let alone the Internet. Not like me. Ilivedon mine. We live on it. No moreMyBitches. No more Fabulous Four. I’ll probably never see them again. Not until I’m eighteen or whatever and by which time we’ll all have changed. I can’t quite get my head round that, but I can almost, almost accept it as a fact I’ve got to get used to.

But not no more him. Not that. I want to wreck this place with all the pent-up frustration of not being able to contact him. What must he think of all this? Will he still love me? Think I’m some kind of freak? Or is he going out of his mind worrying about me? What about our meeting? We had it all set up. What now? I have to be there. Ihaveto. I’ll do whatever it takes. I need to start thinking cleverly about this. Like a grown-up. A woman, not a girl.

From the kitchen I hear the sound of voices before there’s a quiet knock on my door. Alison pokes her head in. ‘Cuppa?’ she asks.

I nod and smile. ‘Thanks.’

She looks surprised at my lack of sullenness and smiles back.

‘I’ll be out in a minute,’ I say.

When she’s closed the door I lean back on my pillows and stare up at the awful swirling plaster patterns in the ceiling. What I need is for them all to go away. Just for a bit. One night in fact.

The TV twenty-four-hour news is loud in the other room as if she can drown it all out by drowning herself in it. I swallow the anger and hurt that makes me want to go in there and scream my rage at her again. Shouting won’t get me anywhere. I need to be nice. I can do that if it means I will get to see him. I’ll do anything for him. He’s all I have left.

I love him.

29

AFTER

2000

He always comes in on a Tuesday and she walks to work more quickly on those days as if by getting there earlier she’ll see him sooner, which she knows is stupid but she does it anyway. It’s not as if she talks to him. Not properly. She doesn’t know what to say, so she mutters answers to his polite questions and blushes and clumsily sets whatever he needs to print. Still, she likes Tuesdays best. Tuesday is her Saturday.

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