Page 41 of Cross Her Heart

‘I said shut up!’ She turns and leaves him clinging to his stupid rabbit, and by the time she gets back to her room, his sobs slow down to nothing. He’s learning too, that there’s no point if no one comes. Or maybe her ma’s right. Maybe he’s justbetterthan Charlotte.A happy baby. Not like Charlotte was. She was always a little bitch. Fucking hell, she was hard work. Full of trouble from day one. Daniel’s always smiling.She knows what her ma means though. Daniel’s dad didn’t leave.

She carefully puts the tape back in and with a cautious glance at the door presses play, filling her head with Katie’s songs. She knows most of them fromTop of the Popseven though she’s not as into music as Katie is and her ma never buys her any tapes or records. She hums along, imagining the seaside and being with Katie and their families disappearing in a puff of smoke. Then comes one song, ‘Drive Away, Baby’ by Frankie Vein, and she listens to the words, properly listens to them, before rewinding it and listening again. It’s all about getting away. Going somewhere else. Leaving all the shit behind. It’s their song, she knows that straight away. All their make-believe, their fantasies, their thoughts of their families being murdered by an unknown assailant in their beds, everyone who’s ever pissed them off disappearing, Katie’s suffocating ma and stinky little Daniel, pulverised to dust like the old houses on Spring Street, everything is wrapped up in this song. It’s why Katie’s put it on there. She feels the same. They always feel the same. That must be what love is.

Play. Rewind. Play. Time slides. Tony doesn’t come back for over an hour, the pub being too close to the shop to resist, and anywayit’s Daniel’s birthdayand she luckily hears him coming up the stairs between plays, and quickly tucks the Walkman under her pillow.

He doesn’t knock but pulls open her door and stands there, drunk and angry. It’s a house full of simmering anger.

‘You were supposed to watch the bairn! He’s fell out of his cot. He’s hurt his head.’

Charlotte says nothing. There’s no point. From across the corridor, Daniel calls out for Ma. His voice sounds tired. How long has he been crying?

‘You want to bring the social down on us? On your ma?’

He’s pulling his belt off as he talks and his face is blotchy and she knows that’s always when he’s at his worst.It’s all Daniel’s fault, is all she can think as the first blow lands.Everything’s worse since the perfect child came along. No one ever hits Daniel.Why can’t they love her like they love him? What’s so fucking special about him?She focuses on her anger and bites down on her cheek. It stops her crying. Tony’s worse when she cries. It feeds the monster inside him. All his resentment at another man’s kid taking food from his table.

She wakes up in the night, sore and bruised and her bed is soaking under her, and the familiar tang fills the room. She’s wet herself again. She quietly strips the sheet off and scrunches it into a ball, stuffing it under the mattress. She’ll have to wash it when everyone is out or when Tony and Ma are in bed in the afternoon. Ma said she’d get a plastic sheet if she kept doing it. She doesn’t want that. Everyone will laugh at her if they hear about it, and everyone will because Tony’s a big gobshite at the pub and all the parents from the estate drink in there. All the kids would know. No one would be scared of Charlotte Nevill if they knew she wet the bed, and the little ’uns being scared of her is all she has. And what would Katie say if she found out? What would she think of her?

The welts on the back of her legs sting and it’s a cold night, but she hobbles to the window and opens it, hoping to blow the smell away by morning. She peels off her soaked underwear and wraps herself in the old parka jacket that’s too big for her but she loves anyway, and lies on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. She thinks about Katie until she falls asleep. In her dream they’re driving, fast and far, in a big pink convertible and laughing as they go. And in her dream they have blood on their hands.

42

NOW

MARILYN

It’s nearly midnight and I’m wide awake, staring at the ceiling and trying to get my thoughts and feelings into some kind of order. Whenever I close my eyes, all I see is the flash of worry on Lisa’s face when I told her I was having problems with Richard. As if she cared about me. As if we were still best friends. Ava’s missing and she was concerned because I was unhappy. How am I supposed to feel about that?

Someone isn’t who they say they are. Someone I know.

How crazy has Lisa become? Could she still be in love with Jon maybe, to come up with something that wild rather than think he took Ava? What sort of man is he anyway? Who would send those kind of messagesto their daughter?

Too much thinking time, that’s my problem. It’s making the whole world murky and if I’m not careful I’ll start to see conspiracy theories everywhere. I’m too tired for this. I need to go back to work. Penny texted earlier to say Richard had called a couple of times but hadn’t caused any drama, and that there was some work to do on the Wharton account but if I wasn’t up to it then one of the others could manage. My teeth clench at the thought. No one’s stealing my client list.

Anyway, where else can I go? I can’t hide forever. That’s simply delaying the inevitable. If Richard shows up, I’ll call the police. I’m tired of living a pretence. That thought leads me straight back to Lisa/Charlotte. Didsheever get tired of living a lie? Had she ever been tempted to tell me about her past? I’m glad she didn’t. I wouldn’t have wanted to carry that. Even if I was her best friend.

Her name was Katie Batten. She was Charlotte’s best friend.

I give up on sleep and get up. I’ve got too many questions whirring around in my head to doze, and my broken ribs are throbbing, so I pull on some clothes, make a coffee in a takeaway cup in the machine, and pad downstairs. There’s a business centre on the ground floor near reception and I head there, wanting a computer. The lights buzz brightly against the night outside and the man at reception gives me a perfunctory smile as I pass by. This is the best thing about hotels. There is always someone awake. You’re never quite alone and it’s all so comfortingly sterile and impersonal.

I settle down at one of the desks, not too close to the window, although the chances of Richard being out looking for me at this time of night are remote, and turn on the computer. There are things I need to know and thinking about Lisa’s life is preferable to thinking about my own.

I searchCharlotte Nevill and Jon John Jonathan loverand an archived tabloid comes straight up from early 2004. There’s no picture of Lisa, but one of Jon,Jon Roper,sitting in a garden. He’s thin and he’s got an earring in, and he’s scowling at the camera, no doubt as instructed, under the headline,I fell in love with child murderer Charlotte and it nearly killed me …He looks so young and there are dark circles around his eyes and his skin is unhealthy. It’s a salacious piece, as I expected, but between the details of their life together, it feels like he’s crying out for some kind of absolution. A lot of what he says is about Crystal – that must be Ava – and how when she was born the reality of Charlotte’s crime hit him and he couldn’t forgive her, and now he’s lost his daughter too, all because he took up drinking too much to cope. According to the article, he’d moved back in with his mum to try and clean up his life and start afresh.

I know how you feel, I think.If only it was so easy in your forties.I read the article again, where he makes a big deal about their sex life and their drinking, and I wonder how much of it is true and how much he’s embellished to make himself sound better. It all sounds so tragic and sordid. I almost feel sorry for him but for the fact he’s taken Ava.

I flick through a few more results, but they’re mainly different versions of the same article, and there’s just a couple of other pictures. I can’t find a Facebook account for him so I presume the police have shut it down already or whatever it is they do in these situations. Or maybe Jon himself deactivated it when he took Ava.

I start my next search. Katie Batten. Charlotte’s best friend. ‘Katie Batten drowned Ibiza 2004’ takes me straight to the story. God bless Google in all but medical situations. My coffee is growing cold but I take a sip anyway.

The search has been called off for Katie Batten, a British woman missing in the Balearic party island of Ibiza. Ms Batten, twenty-six, was last seen going for a dawn swim on the beach near the bar where she’d been working since May. She had been travelling in Spain for most of the year after the death of her mother in 2002 in a car accident. Friends say she was coming to terms with her mother’s sudden loss, but still had bouts of grief and has been described as nervous and fragile. Her colleagues stated that she spent much of her time alone.

On the night of her death, she was seen going into the sea, and two witnesses, a young German couple on holiday, who had been watching the sun come up in the secluded spot say they tried to call her back as she was weaving, and they thought she might be drunk. Miss Batten responded that she was fine. The young couple watched her swim out, but when they looked towards the rocks a while later, there was no sign of her. Despite the best efforts of search teams, Katie Batten’s body has not been recovered. A verdict of accidental death by drowning is expected from the inquest.

There were a few other small news items but nothing with much more detail. Father had died of a heart attack several years earlier, after which Katie had cared for her mother who had struggled to cope with widowhood. Against another report of Katie’s drowning, there’s a picture, grainy, of a woman on the beach, long dark hair and sunglasses, tanned. Nondescript and taken from a distance. Was this the best they had?

Katie Batten’s body has not been recovered.I re-read the line, over and over. Did she ever wash up? Is this why Lisa is so convinced Katie took Ava? Does she really believe she’s not dead? Could itbeher? But why? There’s no reason. Surely she wouldn’t want anything to do with Charlotte Nevill again even if she did find her? The newspapers have made it clear over the past few days that Charlotte’s guilt wasn’t in doubt. She wasseenkilling Daniel and she admitted it. Why would Katie want to come back into Charlotte’s life now?

I have another sip of my coffee. It’s Jon. Jon sent the messages from his Facebook. Jon is the one who’s vanished with Ava. The police know what they’re talking about. Trust them, not your crazy ex-best friend.

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