Instead, Ashlyn sticks it to Damien every chance she gets. Which is why she needs me.
It’s a good thing I have a knack for computers. The money’s all right, I’ve been able to hide some from Mum and start thinking about what I want to do in the inevitable time to come—as much as I hate to admit it, Mum will overdo it one day, no doubt. I’ll be stuck with the flat, scraping to make the rent with my shifts in the shop and wallowing in the irony that I stand outside the walls of the colleges, watching the students term in and term out, and I will never have a chance to attend. Oxford is bloody expensive, too expensive for my blood.
But without the money Ashlyn gives me to make Damien Carr’s life a living hell, and a real influx of cash, I’m stuck. Forever stuck.
Ashlyn takes the table by the window. I bring her a pot of tea and a scone, clotted cream and jam on the side. Ashlyn smiles charmingly, showing the empty spot on the back left where she lost a molar a couple of weeks back, courtesy of her father’s incredible temper.
“Sit down. Take a load off.”
“I don’t have time today, Ash. Mum’s not feeling well, I’m running the shift alone.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t want you to do anything. I need to talk to you.”
Her eyes are wild, bloodshot, but happy. There’s such an edge of insanity in this girl. I’ve seen it in her from the start, from the first day I was aware of her. Little Johnny’s funeral will always be imprinted on my mind; it was the day my mother told me the whole story, the truth about our lives.
You can’t ever speak a word of this. But if something ever happens to me, Alexandria, you go to them. Tell them to test your blood. They will take care of you.
I hadn’t fully understood, not then. Not until I was much older, and my mother had lost herself in drugs and memories of the life she could have had if only she’d been born to the right sort of people.
The resemblance between us is remarkable, considering. How Ashlyn’s never seen it as more than a fluke of nature, I will never know. But why would she? I am the daughter of a junkie. I work in a tea and chip shop. She is the daughter of wealth and privilege.
Never the twain shall meet, unless the former is serving the latter.
I remember, at the funeral, watching Ashlyn edging around the somber people, staring at the grave, laughing at the wrong times, putting her little hand into open pockets, working the crowd. Even then, inappropriate actions were her mandate.
Now, after extensive research, I know Ashlyn probably has a serious untreated borderline personality disorder. But unpredictable as she is, Ashlyn is the closest thing to a friend I have. And when she’s being pleasant, watch out. She can charm the larks from the sky.
“Where’s your mum?”
“In bed. I think.” Or out for a score, but I don’t add this. She’s been high more often than not these past few months.
“When’s the shift end?”
“Sully is coming in at five.”
“Then I’ll meet you at five. Don’t look so scared, hen. Trust me. I’m about to give you the answer to your dreams. Now scoot. Customers are waiting.”
The answer to my dreams. Oh, God, what has Ashlyn cooked up now?
81
THE SWITCH
“They’re forcing me to go to this school in America, and I don’t want to. You keep saying you want an education. It’s perfect. You become me, I become you. We both get what we want most.”
I shake my head, eyes wide. “No. No way. I couldn’t.”
“You most certainly could. You look enough like me to pull it off. You’re brilliant, you sent that photo to Downing Street and no one was the wiser. You can alter whatever you need to in the databases. Our mothers won’t care—I hate to point it out but Gertie is beyond help.
“I have all the money I’ve been saving, you can have half of it to keep you afloat until I get my inheritance. He’s made this provision about the degree just to piss me off, I know he has. He hates me. Making me get a college degree before I can have the inheritance, it’s completely unfair. But it’s been done, too late to undo it. Though who knows. He might leave you something. He seems to have a soft spot for your mother.”
This is said with an accusatory, inquiring glance—maybe she’s been ferreting out the truth at last. As much as I hate him, I still feel a tiny squirm of pleasure at the thought but I push it aside. I want nothing from Damien Carr that he can give. All I want is what he can’t possibly manage. Acknowledgment is the least of it. Love. The love of a man who punishes my sister because I am not her.
“I can’t, Ashlyn. It’s wrong. I could never pull it off.”
“You can. Think of me as your fairy godmother. You’ll get everything you’ve been dreaming about. An education. A life away from this hellhole. You are Cinderella now.”
I look around the flat. Ashlyn isn’t wrong, it is a dump. I have no prospects. Aside from finding myself a rich husband, I will be stuck in this life. And I don’t want a rich husband. I want to learn things. Create things. I want to go to school so badly it makes my teeth hurt.
And now Ashlyn is offering me my dream.
I have to say, I don’t trust her.
“But to take your identity... What does this do for you, Ashlyn?”
She spins in a ridiculous Mary Poppins–like circle. “Freedom. All the freedom I could ever want. I become Alexandria Pine, anonymous café worker, able to go wherever I please. No more bullshit schooling, no more bullshit attacks from Damien. You become Ashlyn Carr, beloved daughter of a scion, going away to school in America.”
“There’s no way we can pull this off.”
“Yes, we can. My photo hasn’t been in the press since Johnny died. No one will have any idea what I grew up to look like. Mother has done her damnedest to keep me hidden away. Around here, maybe, though he lost it and fired Dorsey, did I tell you? Thought she was stealing from him, though it was me who nicked the silver. But no one in America will have any idea you’re not me.”
My heart is bumping so hard against my ribs I have to put a hand against my chest to calm myself. “Let’s think about this logically, Ashlyn. Physical differences aside, age differences aside, you were the one who did the admission interview. The dean saw you. Heard you.”
“You were there the day I did my interview. You know exactly what I said, I know you remember, with that freaky recall you have.”
I had been there. One of the rare times I agreed to ferry a “package” to Ash, who was stuck on the estate for some sort of vital meeting and couldn’t come to Kevin herself. I was getting off shift, Kevin was there, begged me to run it to her and bring back the money. I never liked visiting Ash in her palace, and I refused to be their drug mule, but Kevin offered me a hundred quid to run the errand for him, and I’d had a bad day in tips. For some bizarre, fated reason, I’d agreed.
Ash had grabbed the package, broke it open, took a bump, then made me wait for Kevin’s money while she was on the computer talking to the dean of the school she was going to attend. I had heard the whole conversation.
“But we don’t sound enough alike, or look enough alike...”
“Yes, we do.” Ash pulls me to the bathroom, the cracked and spotted mirror. “Look. Really look. We could be sisters. The shape of our noses. The same eyes. Your lips are fuller, you cow, and your face is a little thinner. But we’re close enough.”
I have the urge to blurt out the truth—we are sisters, Damien Carr is my father, too. Something holds me back. I can’t believe I’m even giving this ridiculous idea credence.
“I’m taller. And no offense, I’m thinner, too.”
“You’re taller and a beanpole, yes, but no one’s going to be able to tell. I was sitting down. Seriously, thanks to Daddy’s disdain for media, there are very few official pictures of me out in the world. You know everything there is to know about me, Lex,
you’ve been around the family since we were children.”
“And the piano? That woman talked about the theater director, who will be teaching you.”
“You took lessons. You know how to play.”
“But not like you. You’re...magical.” I feel ridiculous saying it, but she is really quite good. I can’t even begin to pull off that sort of impersonation. There’s no way. This is mad.
She softens a bit. “Thank you. I’ll teach you everything you need to make it seem like you’re just really out of practice.”
“But we’ll need paperwork...proof. I mean, I’m nineteen, and I look every day of it. How am I supposed to pretend I’m sixteen?”
“No one will know how old you really are. We’ll make fresh IDs, a fresh passport. I know you know how.”
“I said I knew a guy who dabbles, from the café. I don’t know how to do it myself.”
“See? Perfect.”
“And how long am I expected to maintain this charade, Ashlyn?”
My sister, something I can never let her know about, smiles. “Forever. This is your chance, Lex. We switch places. You get out. You have the life you always wanted.”
“And my mother? What about her? You truly think she’ll go along with this?”
Ashlyn whirls away, stomps in those thick-soled boots to the center of the living room. I try not to count, but it takes her a whole five steps.
“Your mother is an addict. Mine is, as well, though her drug of choice is cold hard quid, not heroin. How long do you think your mother is going to be with us, Alex? No, don’t get those tears in your eyes, you have to think clearly. She’s not going to get off the needle anytime soon, and she’ll be dead before anyone even thinks about this. It’s the perfect plan. We’re going to switch places. You’ll have everything you ever wanted, and I, I will disappear.”
She makes it sound so easy. So doable.
“All right. Say I agree. There’s another rather insurmountable issue. How are we going to get around your parents?”
Ashlyn smiles and I feel goose bumps rise on my forearm. My neck prickles with unease.
“You let me take care of that. Leave me alone in this flat for ten minutes and I’ll have everything I need.”
82
THE EXECUTION
Death smells. I have to fight back the surge from my stomach. I can’t lose it now.
Oh, Ashlyn. What have you done?
Damien—my father, our father—is dead, there’s no question. He is devoid of color, past pale, waxy like a creamy candle, a string of vomit dripping down his chin. He has soiled himself; this is part of the stench. The rest is blood. But it’s not his.
Sylvia is propped up against a chair. Her eyes are glazed over with pain. The gunshot must have nicked an artery, the bodice of her silk dress is thick with blood. It drips drips drips onto the parquet floor.
She sees me and raises a hand for help. She mouths the words weakly, but no sound emerges from her pale lips. Her eyes roll back in her head and she slumps forward.
I realize Ashlyn is standing by the curtains, a small smile on her face, pulling off gloves.
“You shot your mother?” My voice comes out in a squeak.
“Didn’t have a choice. She was being difficult. Wouldn’t take the pills I crushed up in the scotch. Damien did, though. Look at him!”
I don’t want to look at him again, the image of his face is seared forever in the vault of my memory.
“There’s too much evidence, Ashlyn. You’re going to be caught.”
“If we’re caught, you mean—and it is we, my dear Lexie, not just me, you’ve been in on this little plan from the beginning, don’t forget—but we won’t. The tableau is just what you think it is. Damien was killed by Sylvia, she’s poisoned him and, distraught, shot herself. Don’t worry, the powder residue will be on her hands. Check her pulse for me, would you? Shan’t be long now.”
Ashlyn is insane. I’ve known this somewhere in my heart for months, years, really.
“I’m not touching her. You never said anything about killing them. I’m calling the police.”
The shotgun is in my face before I can take a second breath. She backs me up against the wall.
“If you call the police before I tell you to, I will explain to them you created this scenario, that you were obsessed with me, with my family, because you had to live in squalor while we got served off gold plates and lived in this fabulous mansion. Who do you think they’ll believe? You? You and your ratty, heroin-addicted mother, or me, the upstanding daughter of a peer?”
I see how neatly Ashlyn has boxed me in. If I weren’t so terrified, I might have admired her ingenuity.
The shotgun drops. “You’re free now, Alex. And so am I. Play your part and nothing bad will happen. Now, get ready. We have a few things to do, then you’ll have to take my place. You’ll have to be the one who comes in from the gardens and finds them like this, after you heard the gunshot.”
OCTOBER
Marchburg, Virginia
83
THE CONFESSION
“I took her place from that moment on. It wasn’t hard to pretend to be devastated, I was. And I told the police Damien had been distraught, that I thought he killed himself. I didn’t think it was fair to brand Sylvia a murderer when her daughter was the psychotic one.
“I managed to sneak back home a couple of days later and found my mum dead on the couch. The needle was still in her arm. No way to know if Ashlyn was responsible or it was just her time, but either way, everyone was gone. Everything was done. I had no real alternatives after that but to follow through on Ashlyn’s grand plan.
“You, Dean, made it so easy on me. I appreciate that. You showed such compassion.”
Ford Julianne Westhaven has never wanted to run away from Goode so much as she does at this moment. But she has no choice, she must stay. She must find out why Becca Curtis is dangling on the gates, her photo being shot from every angle before she is carefully, gently, moved to a horizontal plane.
She must learn why Ash Carlisle is standing in her office, staring out the window, telling a story as insane and twisted as any she’s ever heard.
No, this girl is not Ash. She is the impostor they’ve been worried about. Alexandria Pine. Damien Carr’s illegitimate daughter.
Ford has to decide if she believes the tale she’s being told. Is this girl the real monster? Or is there another, far worse, lurking somewhere on the grounds? The Grendel in their forest?
“It all started over the summer. Ashlyn decided she didn’t want to do all the work it would entail to get a degree. She just wanted the money. She knew I craved an education desperately, more than anything in my life. And she knew I would never, ever, have the opportunities she did. This is what happens when you’re illegitimate. Your agency is ripped away and you’re stuck with the scraps thrown from the real family’s table.
“I had no idea the lengths she would go to, but when I realized how crazy she really is, I knew the best thing for me to do was play along and get as far away from her as I possibly could. If I hadn’t agreed to impersonate her, I have no doubt she would have killed me, too. As she did our brother, our father, and her mother. Possibly my mother, as well. I’ll never know unless she tells me, but even then...” She turns from the window, resolve etched on her face.
“She killed Camille. And Becca, too. Anyone who gets in her way, who she can’t manipulate, she simply eliminates. We’re all in danger.”
Tony isn’t buying it; incredulity is written across his strong features. “You’re telling me a sixteen-year-old girl masterminded an identity scam and killed six people?”
“Six people so far,” Kate says, calmly. “That we know of. Are there more?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t think we can say Ashlyn did all the masterminding. It was her idea
from the start for us to switch places, yes, but I’m the one who did all the legwork. The paperwork. But that’s all I’ve done. I swear to you, I had nothing to do with the murders. Ashlyn kept telling me she was going to handle things, but I never in a million years guessed murder was her solution. And don’t forget, she practically had a gun to my head the whole time. She made it quite clear I had no choice in the matter.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Ford asks.
When Alex smiles, Ford is reminded of the flatness of a snake’s eyes. “What would they have done? She’s a master manipulator. She would have told them I cooked up the whole thing, that I murdered her parents, that I held her hostage. That’s what she told me last night, at least. That she was going to tell you I held her hostage if I didn’t go along with her.”
“What does she want from you?” Kate asks.
Alexandria Pine takes a seat and lifts the teacup to her lips, contemplative. Gone is the hesitant, meek Ash. Alex is tall, straight, calm, focused. How had Ford missed this phoenix, hidden in the ashes?
“The money. It’s always been about the money. She found out about the codicil to the will Damien created and came here to get me to transfer my portion of the estate immediately.”
“Why didn’t you?” Ford asks, almost curious now.
“I tried. The DNA test the solicitor did will show who I really am. I told Ashlyn the simplest thing for us to do was Freaky Friday this whole deal in reverse. I offered to let her pretend to be me to the solicitors, and I’d just switch the DNA results in the computers. It would make the switch official, and no one had to get hurt. She doesn’t want to share the estate. But she isn’t thinking clearly. She’s been doing a lot of drugs. It’s addled her mind. And her mind was twisted to start with.”
Good Girls Lie Page 33