Your Guilty Secret

by Rebecca Thornton

  ‘It’s got carbs in it,’ I said, knowing Conor would normally run a mile. He looked like he was going to be sick but then shrugged.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘For today. Listen. I need you in the living room.’ He ripped off another section of pancake. ‘Now. Hurry up.’ He started walking off. I followed him. What did he want? I stopped and straightened a large blow-up picture of Ava on the way. I rested my head on the glass and willed her back.

  ‘Listen.’ He ignored the fact that I was broken. ‘I’ve had another phone call from Kaycee.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I laughed, relieved. Nothing compared to the autopsy. ‘I’ve offered to pay her to keep quiet,’ he went on, ‘but she insists she doesn’t want the money.’

  ‘What does she want?’ I asked. Although in my heart of hearts, I already knew the answer.

  ‘She wants to set the record straight. That’s what she kept on repeating in her last phone call.’

  ‘She was wasted. Absolutely hammered,’ I told him. ‘The reason I was in the bathroom where I got recorded by that Carys girl in the first place was because I had been sent to check Kaycee hadn’t choked on her own vomit. She’s hardly a reliable witness.’

  ‘Fine. So we can use that.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why does she think she can add anything new?’ he asked.

  I swallowed and took a breath.

  ‘Lara?’

  ‘She had sobered up a bit. When I pushed Carys. She’d puked everything up. I think she was pretty with it at that point. She was crying and knew exactly what happened.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, this just keeps getting worse and worse.’ Conor slumped back into his chair. ‘I’m going to have to think about hiring another agency, Lara. To share the workload. We’ve been neglecting all our other clients. They’re starting to complain that they’re not getting enough from us. D’Angelo was talking about moving.’ Idiot, I thought. Getting narked because he wasn’t getting enough attention, like a spoilt child. As if the press had been interested in anything he had to say of late, anyway. ‘Look I’m tired,’ Conor continued, rubbing his eyes. ‘I’m so fucking tired. I’m sorry.’ He stood up. ‘I’m so sorry about your daughter. But if you hadn’t spent however long lying to me about the things that had happened—’ He sat back down again. ‘What else have you lied about?’

  I looked over at the photograph of Ava. The one next to where he sat. ‘I’m sorry. I feel responsible that we didn’t find her sooner. I’m worried that Manny’s onto this. You know when he went silent? All that shit? I’m worried somehow he’s been looking into your past, has got wind of it all and done some digging.’

  That got me thinking about Ben. How I could solve the problem and get Kaycee to shut up.

  I’d replayed the last moments as I had left their house over and over in the past few days since Kaycee had been contacting us. I had a flash of Ben running after me when we’d left the police station. He had been shaking as he dug around in his pocket.

  ‘Fuck,’ he’d said, breathless. ‘I’m still so hungover. Here. I nearly fucking forgot these. You gave them to me. Remember? Lavelli’s wouldn’t be very impressed if you’d manage to toss away millions of pounds worth of gems.’ He’d given a small laugh. ‘I don’t think they’re damaged at all. They went straight into my pocket.’

  ‘What?’ I stepped forward and held out my hands, the jewelled necklace sparkling in the bright sunlight. ‘Oh God. Oh God, Carys. It was all for nothing,’ I whispered to myself. ‘God. I thought she . . .’ I took them from him. ‘She didn’t. She never had them. You had them all along. How come you had them?’ I slipped them into my bag.

  ‘At some point during the night you grabbed them and threw them my way as if they were sweets. You were too drunk to be thinking straight, I guess’ He shrugged, ‘OK. I’d better’ – he looked behind him – ‘get back to Kaycee now. She’s not in a good way today.’

  That had been the last I’d ever seen or heard from him. And Kaycee, Hannah, Joanne, too.

  As I replayed this in my mind, I had an idea which I knew if played right would solve everything, and we could all just move on.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I told Conor. ‘I know exactly what to do in this case. Let me speak to Kaycee. Let me deal with it this time. Then you can concentrate on everything else. Concentrate on your other clients. After the memorial,’ I’d told him.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure.’ I started rehearsing everything I was going to say to Kaycee. ‘I’ll call her back. Can I have her number?’ I asked him. He looked unsure.

  ‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘I was right to come clean about being on my cell, wasn’t I?’ He nodded. ‘So please. Just trust me on this one.’

  Ryans-world.com

  Entry: September 2nd, 1700hrs

  Author: Ryan

  Guys, thank you. Thank you for asking about me. I’m fine. I’m going to concentrate on the memorial. Getting it over and done with. Paying my respects to Ava. Me and a few other bloggers, Perez, and a few of the other big names (yes, I know! Since I started reporting on Ava’s disappearance, I’ve been ranked up there with the big guns!) are getting together to work on an appeal for a charity working with neglected kids to drive home a point. You know, like the celebs who sit on the board for bullying charities as a big fuck you to their childhood taunters.

  I doubt Lara would notice. Or care. (I doubt she’s even reading this. She says she never, ever looks online at any of the stuff written about her, or any of the comments made about her.)

  But that’s our plan of attack. We’re all feeling it, you see. Anger, of some sort. I thought it was just me. My affinity with Ava. But it seems not. And the way Matthew got all the shit. For doing what? Snorting some coke! WTAF!

  Anyway – guys, I’m still working on my massive spider’s web investigation. Tying up threads here and there. I might post a picture of my wall at some point. But, there are a few things that aren’t quite right, but I haven’t yet managed to pin them down yet. I’m working on it. I’ll let you all know when I’ve got something. I guess I’ll see y’all at the memorial. I’ll be bringing you all the latest straight from the event. Thank you, for everything. Love and peace out and RIP to Ava.

  Twitter: @ryan_gosling_wannabe

  September 3rd 2018

  0700hrs

  ‘Look,’ Conor said. ‘It’s two p.m. now in London. It’s the right time to call.’ I found myself wavering after my initial burst of confidence thinking that everything would turn out all right after I’d spoken to Kaycee. The thought of speaking to her made me want to cry.

  ‘Just do it,’ Conor insisted. ‘Enough now, Lara.’ Before Ava died, I would have berated Conor for speaking to me like that, but now I knew I had no leg to stand on and that thought made me feel weak and powerless.

  ‘Fine.’ I took the phone. Conor had already dialled the number and so it was ringing when I held it to my ear. There was a part of me that wished she’d hang up but after a few seconds, the line clicked.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, and I was taken right back to that big smile of hers when I’d first met her. ‘Ben’s told me so much about you,’ she had linked her arm through mine. ‘He’s really proud of you. We all are.’ And now, her soft tone, like she was fearful of who she was about to speak to.

  I let the silence hang for a few seconds.

  ‘Hello?’ she said again, this time more forcefully.

  ‘Kaycee,’ I managed.

  ‘Lara?’ she said. I wanted to ask how she knew it was me but I guessed that she’d see it was a US number and had been waiting for this for a while. I knew I should say something. Anything. Ask her how she’d been but I was frightened of what she was going to bring up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m so sorry about your daughter.’ She spoke so softly that it made me feel guilty. Perhaps she’d just been trying to contact me all along to send me good wishes. But I knew in the silence that followed that, of course,
she wasn’t.

  ‘How is Ben?’ I asked. ‘And your daughter. Isabella?’ I felt a stab across my chest when I thought about them watching their daughter grow up.

  ‘We’re all fine,’ she said shortly. ‘But listen—’

  Here we go, I thought, gripping the phone tightly.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you.’

  ‘You’ve been . . .’ I wanted to use the word harass, but I knew I had to be careful with my choice of vocabulary. ‘You’ve been calling. It was difficult when Ava disappeared. To think that you were against me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘When Ava went missing, we thought she’d come back. We thought perhaps it was part of your show.’

  ‘You thought what?’ I heard a sharp intake of breath. ‘That it was a publicity stunt?’ I wondered if the press in the UK had intimated that. And then I thought about something that Conor had said to me when I first signed with him. That people’s reactions to me were just a projection of themselves, so I had to ignore everyone and just think about myself and my career.

  ‘Don’t let anyone get to you.’ He’d told me that whenever there had been any negative press. So far, I’d managed. But this. This hurt.

  ‘Then I went on all these forums. Followed information about you. Found people who were your fans. I wanted to ask them but didn’t have the guts.’

  A thought suddenly occurred to me: England. It had been Kaycee who had been posting in that forum all along. The lightning avatar. Bolt Enterprises. Of course. How could I have forgotten. It was Ben’s logo. There must have been a part of her that wanted me to make the connection. Stupid me, for not clocking earlier.

  ‘Well, it was Ben,’ she said. ‘It brought it all back to him. After he found out what happened to that girl on the night out, I told him what you did.’

  ‘You were drunk.’ I looked over at Conor who was nodding his head. Go on, he mouthed.

  ‘And so were you,’ she replied. ‘Listen. To be honest, we didn’t know what you were capable of. After, well, it’s been haunting us.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you say anything before?’ I held the phone between my shoulder and ear, twisting my hands in frustration.

  ‘It’d be my word against yours. You were everyone’s dream. I was . . . I am a nobody. Ben told me not to. That it might harm his career. He’s done so well, you know. Despite you. Despite everything. But in truth, I think he had a soft spot for you. I think he was trying to protect you from it all.’ I could hear the resignation in her voice. She didn’t sound angry, or bitter, or jealous. She sounded kind. Compassionate. ‘We were all at the beginning.’

  ‘So why now? What’s going on? Do you need money?’ I saw Conor lower his hands. He grabbed a pen and wrote something on a piece of paper next to me. Keep calm, he’d scrawled.

  ‘I don’t want money,’ she said. ‘We’re fine for money. I just wanted to scare you into thinking I’d go to the papers. I wanted acknowledgement for what you’d done. I’ve been carrying around what I witnessed for all these years.’ Her voice started to crack. ‘Someone lost their baby because of what you did and I knew. I knew and I didn’t come forward. What does that make me?’ She started to cry. ‘I want you to say sorry. I want you to make amends. Say sorry to that poor girl, Carys. I have her in my mind every single time I look at my daughter. You robbed her of that. And now you know what that feels like. I’m so sorry, again. Ava was beautiful. She looked so like you. But now you know. You need to do something. It’s making me ill, Lara. All of this has just brought those memories up again and it’s getting worse. For me and Ben. I have to think of us. My priority is us, not you. All this time it’s been about you. Did you know that? Everything between us has been tarred by your actions. We need to come first now. I need to take charge of that.’

  I knew I had to say something to stop her in her tracks.

  ‘The diamonds,’ I interrupted. ‘It was the diamonds.’

  ‘What diamonds?’ she said with a weird laugh.

  ‘I did it for Ben.’ I winced at the lie but I wanted it all over. With the public turning so viciously, I had to bury this once and for all.

  ‘But you have to promise,’ I said. ‘You have to promise not to say anything. If you do, I’ll deny it all. If you say something to him, he’ll think everything is his fault. It would ruin him. As the person who knows him best in the world, I’m sure you already know that.’ I thought about what would happen if she told Ben what I was about to tell her. How confused he’d look, pulling his cap over his eyes.

  ‘That’s bull,’ he’d say, ‘that didn’t happen at all. I gave you back the diamond necklace the day after we left the police station,’ but before I could think about that any further, I carried on.

  ‘So you see, I want your word, before I tell you what happened. That this goes no further. Just tell Ben you want to put this whole thing to bed. Don’t ask him leading questions. Don’t make him think there’s anything to be suspicious about. All right?’

  ‘I promise,’ she said. I knew she hadn’t thought about it properly. That she never normally would keep a secret from Ben. I also knew that she’d be too scared to break her promise in case of the consequences.

  ‘She saw Ben with my diamond necklace,’ I said. ‘Carys. She saw him. She filmed him putting them in his pocket. She said that he had stolen them and she was going straight to the police. I got angry with her. I reacted badly but I was trying to protect Ben,’ I heard another intake of breath. ‘After all he’d done for me.’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Really? She was going to do that to Ben?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘She said it would make her rich and famous. More so than me spouting some drunken crap. To think that my manager would be swiping expensive jewellery from his clients. She said she would tell everyone that he had set up a ploy to swipe them and then blame someone in the club. That she had overheard him talking to me about it. So she was going to frame me too.’

  ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘But Ben would never do that. He’s not that kind of person. We all know that. He’s such a trustworthy man.’ I could hear her getting more and more worked up. ‘He wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘I know that, you know that. But when it comes to the public . . .’ I stayed quiet. ‘I should know. Look, it was a moment of madness. It was a flare of anger at someone wanting to hurt me and wanting to hurt the ones that I care about the most.’ I let her digest my use of the present tense but the truth was that if I thought about it, there was a part of me that still harboured something for Ben. Nostalgia, maybe. Nostalgia for a time when I could still be myself.

  ‘She was mad,’ I went on. ‘It was a mistake. I pushed her gently. She must have tripped. You saw how drunk she was, how unstable on her feet. You watched the whole thing. I didn’t push hard. And don’t you think I regret that every single day of my life? To think that I deprived this woman of her pregnancy?’

  I doubted she would have the confidence to tell me she remembered the whole episode well enough. After all, it had been well over a decade ago.

  ‘I wish I’d known,’ she said. ‘I wish I’d known it was a misguided act of loyalty.’ I looked over at Conor and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I’m sorry,’ she continued. ‘I’m sorry I ever doubted you.’

  Ryans-world.com

  Entry: September 3rd, 0720hrs

  Author: Ryan

  The more I look back, the more I see it. The staging of each shot ever so carefully styled. The amount of work it must have taken. How it wasn’t real. I’m beginning to realise. That shot I showed y’all yesterday on my Insta? The one of all the work I’ve put into looking at this case? Yeah, that one. It took me hours, and I mean hours to style. Firstly to pixelate all the info, making it look pretty. Thinking about what to write. But then again, I’m flying solo. But not for long! I’ve been picked up by an agency who focus on ‘movers and shakers’ in the online world. How fucking awesome is that? And now I realise what hard work goes into it being
perfect.

  But you know what? I realise now, the tide is turning. All this Goop-style stuff online? It’s being overtaken by the real parenting stuff. You know. The guys that say, ‘I look shit this morning. Here’s a picture of me with armpit hair and baby puke all over me and big motherfucking black rings around my eyes.’ Because we all know that’s what it’s like really, don’t we? I mean, I’m not a parent but I do like to think that once upon a time, my mother, despite her running off on me, did care.

  More and more of you are being honest about what it’s really like. And so we have to ignore the made-up shit. We have to ignore the trolls and the haters and unite to change things.

  Anyway, what I wanted to tell you all in this post is that after trawling through everything (my eyes are starting to feel like they’re bleeding) I found something you guys might be a little interested in.

  Lara King’s OFFICIAL website.

  The one where she and Ava used to post the most gorgeous pictures? So beautiful. I was looking through all the old posts yesterday. My heart hurt to see her, that little girl looking so perfectly into the camera. She did look happy, no matter what Lara was like as a mom.

  But then I noticed something in the more recent posts. The posts that have been uploaded since Ava died.

  There are two. One when she apologised for being on her cell. The other is from the memorial. I didn’t see it at first.

  But then I looked closer, searching for clues, here, there everywhere. And there it was. Right at the bottom of the post in tiny, tiny letters.

  Posted by user CoN.

  Who the fuck? was that I thought. I hovered my mouse over the username. And CLICK!

  Author of this blog post, Conor O’Neill.

  And I thought, holy fucking shit. She didn’t write any of that shit. The stuff about her memorial. Her darling daughter. It was all bollocks. Her PR wrote it. Now I know if I got in touch, asked them for a quote they’d say: Lara King was too distraught to write to her fans. I get it. If I lost my daughter I would be too. But to lie about writing about your dead child?