The Alibi Girl

by C. J. Skuse

  ‘What will happen to Ellis when he goes away?’

  ‘She’ll have to go into care or something.’

  ‘No, no way,’ I say to him.

  ‘Shh, keep your voice down.’

  ‘I don’t care, she’s not going to an orphanage. She’s not an orphan, she’s ours.’

  Orphanage. The word made me think of when we’d been to see Annie or Oliver! at the theatre. The thought of Ellis being in one and wearing rags and scrubbing floors and being looked after by some horrible old hag who beat her made me feel sick. I would have to do something.

  ‘She’s staying here with us,’ I tell him, in no uncertain terms.

  ‘It might not work out like that, Foy,’ he says, all big-brotherly and irritating.

  ‘It will work out like that because I’ll make it work out like that. They’re not taking her away. I’m telling Mum.’

  ‘No, you’re not, Foy. Don’t; she’ll know we were snooping. You know how she hates that.’

  ‘Me and Ellis will run away then.’

  ‘Don’t be soft, you ain’t going nowhere.’

  ‘Well they’re not taking her. I won’t let them.’

  When I get back out to the treehouse, it’s empty. Ellis has tidied away the dinner things and there’s no sign of her or our cans of Rio at all. I turn in wild circles, praying for some sign of her. For a horrible minute, I think she’s gone already, vanished in a puff of smoke like the genie in that film we watched at the weekend. I think she might have fallen out of the treehouse and banged her head so I check out the back window. What if a strange man has taken her away? Or a witch has turned her into a mouse? What if they’ve sent her to the orphanage or to Australia already? I shouldn’t have left her on her own. I can’t stop the tears.

  Then, from the top of the castle, I spy a movement from the corner of my eye – she’s wheeling around the top of the car park on her bike. She waves out to me and my whole chest deflates. I swallow hard a couple of times and wipe my eye and I scamper down the ladder and across the car park, where she stops wheeling and stands still on the bike while I grab mine and cycle over to her.

  ‘You were ages,’ she says, handing me a can of Rio from her cardigan pocket.

  ‘Sorry. Needed a poo as well. What are you doing?’

  ‘Getting the polar bear steaks. The shop was shutting soon.’ She points to the skittle alley. And in a heartbeat, I am back in our world and we are in our Lamborghini and Ferrari, and racing each other home to the castle in time for tea.

  The last time I see Ellis is at the airport. We’ve come back from the surprise Christmas Florida trip that Uncle Dan’s treated us all to. My guard is down and I’m tired and groggy after a delayed flight, a sleeping pill that has made me feel sick, and a horrible dinner on the plane. We’ve had a brilliant holiday – I don’t think we spent more than a few hours out of the pool or the parks the whole time, and I’ve eaten so many pancakes with maple syrup that all of my clothes feel tighter. But it’s over now and we’re all a bit quiet. It’s January 15th. A Wednesday.

  ‘Shall we go to baggage claim and you guys go to the toilets?’ says Mum, as she, Ellis and Uncle Dan veer off. ‘We’ll see you at the car. Car park E, bay 114.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Dad.

  ‘I’ll stay with Ellis,’ I say, but Mum says no, go with your dad. And I let go of her hand. It’s a small moment, a tiny moment compared to the last two weeks we’ve spent together, but it’s the one I think about the most.

  ‘Why can’t I stay with Ellis?’ I’m asking my dad this question all the way through arrivals, out of the airport terminal and all the way down the rank to the shuttle bus, waiting to take us on board. A man loads our luggage. I hang onto my Minnie Mouse toy. Mum got me one the same as Ellis won in the hotel raffle. ‘Why, Dad?’

  He keeps fobbing me off. And I know something’s wrong. I don’t know what, but I know he’s lying cos he won’t look at me.

  We’re almost back at the car when he turns to me, sitting beside him, and to Paddy and Isaac, sitting together behind him and he says, ‘Uncle Dan and Ellis aren’t going to be coming back with us.’

  ‘Why not?’ I say, stroking Minnie Mouse’s ears.

  ‘They’re going to their new home,’ he says, looking out the window.

  ‘But they live with us,’ says Paddy, frowning. I look at Isaac but he’s looking out the window too. There’s a little movement in his jaw, like he’s chewing.

  ‘They got a new place. Uncle Dan got a call while we were in Epcot the other day. That’s where he disappeared to. Remember we were queuing up for churros? That was what the call was about. But they had to go now.’

  ‘So where is their new house?’ asks Paddy. Isaac looks like he’s going to be sick.

  ‘I’m not sure, mate,’ says Dad, stroking my hair the way he does when I’ve fallen over. But I haven’t fallen over. He can’t look at me.

  I look behind at my brothers. They can’t look at me either. ‘Why today?’

  ‘It had to be today, Foy,’ says Dad. But he seems so sad.

  ‘But I didn’t say goodbye.’

  ‘I know, it’s not the best timing.’ He licks his lips. His eyes fill with water.

  ‘But Ellis will come at half term. And I can call her tonight, yeah?’

  Dad looks at the boys. The boys look at each other. I never saw Isaac cry before.

  ‘I can call her tonight, can’t I? Dad?’

  ‘Maybe, love. We’ll see, yeah?’ And he strokes my hair again but I take his hand off my head because I don’t like him doing that today. I don’t know why he’s doing it. And he turns to the window and I can see his eyes in his reflection and he’s crying as well. All three of them are now. And I’ve had enough of this, all the crying and the vague answers and the not telling me what’s going on.

  ‘Dad, why is everyone crying?’

  His eyes close in the reflection. I look back at Isaac and he’s not saying anything. Paddy’s got his head down. I look back at Dad and I remember what Isaac said to me.

  ‘Did the police come and get Uncle Dan and take him to jail? What about Ellis?’

  ‘Ellis will be fine, love. She’s got her dad.’

  I don’t remember much else about that day, only what Isaac and Paddy have told me since. I have a total meltdown in the car park and my dad virtually has to drag me back to the car and pin me in my seat. It’s only when Mum comes back, on her own with her suitcase, that I even begin to calm down. She sits with me in the back seat and strokes my head the whole way home. Paddy sits next to us, Isaac in the front and nobody says anything but Pass the mints or Anyone need a wee? Service station in nine miles, all the way back to the pub. I’m told properly when Mum tucks me in that night. I don’t remember exactly what she says. There’s only one bit I recall for sure:

  ‘We’re not going to see Ellis again, Foy.’

  ‘Not ever?’

  ‘No, darling.’

  And she stays with me in my bed because neither of us can stop crying.

  18

  Sunday, 3rd November

  There was a fly in my Petit Filous. I should have taken that as a sign that today would go tits up and take on water. Next up: disgruntled lorry drivers chose to blockade the ferry port, so all the planes are over-booked. I manage by the skin of my back teeth and a shit-load of grovelling to get booked on a flight to Manchester, for which money I could have gone to New York and back again.

  And the flight itself is interminable. I have a portly gentleman on one side of me with a suspicious rash all over his neck, who coughs from take-off to landing, and on the other side of me a screaming toddler who keeps kicking me in the thigh. My anguish isn’t over when we land. Once we hit the tarmac I’m faced with an hour-long security check and a 45-minute wait at Rent-a-Deathtrap while the guy on the desk – Jeff – locates the booking for my hire car.

  ‘I only booked it yesterday afternoon,’ I say. ‘It should be at the top of the pile.’

  ‘Ther
e’s no record of it, Miss.’

  ‘Mrs,’ I said. ‘It’s Mrs Vallette. If you found the booking you would know that.’

  I’m getting hotter and hotter because I have two jumpers and a coat, plus scarf and hat on, to save room in my luggage, and a sheen of sweat is beading on my brow. I’m this side of huffy when the magical Arnold From the Back Room appears, scratching his groin, biscuit crumbs on his tie and says, ‘Oh yeah, Mrs Vallette, that one came in last night, Jeff. The keys are here.’

  I’m all huffed up with nowhere to go then. I have to calm myself and my heartburn down, take the keys from Jeff and then escort myself to bay 204 and a just-washed Peugeot 308 that smells like feet.

  I’m bombing along the M6, now, which is the only thing that’s been kind to me the whole journey. It’s good to hear Radio 2 again. By the time I reach Spurrington, the sky is full of bruised clouds like there’s a storm rolling in, but the still-open cafés and arcades light the puddles along the road and give off a somewhat comforting glow. It’s around 5 p.m. I find a car park along a side street that the hotel – The Lakes View Pub and Rooms – has directed me to on its website, but when I get inside, I discover there’s no reception – only a short blonde woman behind the bar looking pissed off.

  ‘Alright?’ she says.

  ‘Yes, I booked a room for three nights. Mrs Foy Vallette?’

  There’s a board of keys hanging up behind the cash register. She turns to it and unhooks one, then turns back to the computer and taps some keys.

  ‘You go across the road to the red door and it’s second floor up first left.’ She hands me the key for Room 10.

  ‘Oh right,’ I say, somewhat at odds. She offers no other information.

  ‘I haven’t had any staff turn up today,’ she says. ‘Three of ’em, all with hangovers. I mean, what do I do?’

  ‘Erm, what time do you serve breakfast?’

  ‘If you want it, it’s from seven to nine over here.’ She gestures vaguely to the bar area behind us. ‘There’ll be no one to bleedin’ serve it to you, mind.’ She then turns on her heel and disappears through a swinging door.

  I decide that I like her. I respect her inability to bullshit. She’s in a mood and she doesn’t care who knows it. I know where I stand with people like that. It’s bullshitters who get the brunt of my ire. It’s then that the Cotterill bloke crosses my mind and the rage I felt at the airport in the car hire queue resurfaces.

  I leave the bar and cross the road to the red door and make my way up a stygian staircase to Room 10. The whole stairwell stinks deeply of damp, old cigarettes, and spiced Apple PlugIns. I haven’t had a cigarette for ten years but every now and again the smell of them makes me yearn. I soon forget my craving when I notice a turd in the middle of the stairs. At least I think it’s a turd – the bulb’s gone so I can’t see a damn thing in the weak glow afforded by the exit signs.

  My room is an adequate size – a double bed, a single bed and two faux leather bucket seats overlooking the bay. It’s just as well the view is good – nothing in the room is. ‘Christ’s sake.’

  I dump my bag on the coffee table and take in the facilities. I can see the dip in the centre of the bed from here. There’s no TV, no kettle, no shower. Mould around the bath, a slightly sloping floor and creaky floorboards. There are Venetian blinds at the two bay windows but many of the slats are missing. The carpet has a few cigarette burns. Oh, and the main light bulb has gone as well.

  I get out my phone to find the map Cotterill sent me to Ellis’s flat. Two minutes along the seafront. Turn left out of the hotel, along the promenade, past the arcades and it’s in the bank of private apartments after the road with the Chinese supermarket. And I feel it in my chest then – the ache. I’m not thinking about the expensive and uncomfortable flight, or how bad the traffic was getting into the town, or where I’m going to get a bite to eat before everything shuts. I’m just thinking about Ellis. How close I am to where she is. Where she was.

  She’s always been ten years old in my mind. Ten years old, red hair, sun freckles, wearing a pink and yellow sundress and clutching a little Minnie Mouse. She hasn’t aged, she hasn’t changed. Startling blue eyes, little bounce in her walk, little turned-in feet. I unzip my suitcase and get Thread Bear out of the top. Even if she’s forgotten me, she’ll remember him. She’ll remember us sitting him and Miss Whiskers on the breakfast bar in the kitchen, playing Pop Idol auditions or whatever it was. Sitting in the treehouse. We called it our castle. Seems so funny now.

  I put Thread Bear in my handbag, lock the room and venture back outside and along the seafront in the direction of the flats. I keep walking and eventually my app tells me I’m on Ellis’s road – Marine Road West – and so I look for the apartment numbers. 74a, 76a, 78a then bam, there it is – 82a. Basement flat. There’s a light on in the lounge window. And there’s a man in there. Walking around.

  Cotterill.

  I walk up the front steps to the main door and press the buzzer for 82a several times. My heart pounds painfully for no apparent reason and I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not Ellis I’m going to see but him. The man who I’ve been paying to keep an eye on her. The man who’s lost her. The man who called her a freak on the phone. And my guts start to simmer again.

  The front door opens and two incredibly scrawny men lumber out, one with a huge tear in the back of his jeans and the other with a limp and scabs up and down one arm. They barely notice me and carry on padding down the steps. Another man appears in the doorway. Tall, blond, stubbly beard, eyes as grey and heavy as the sky.

  ‘Yes?’ he says, with more than a note of suspicion.

  ‘Oh so you decided to stay then?’ I say. ‘So nice of you.’

  ‘I’m sorry? Are you a friend of Joanne’s?’ He has a Scottish accent. Cotterill didn’t sound Scottish on the phone. In fact he wasn’t Scottish.

  ‘Why are you Scottish? You weren’t Scottish on the phone. Are you in character? I’m Foy Vallette.’

  He looks confused. ‘I’m sorry but I think—’ And then he stops and looks at me silently. ‘You’re Foy?’

  ‘Yes. And you’re Kaden?’

  ‘No, I’m Neil. Scantlebury. You’re the Foy?’

  ‘How many Foys do you know?’

  ‘Claire Foy. The actress.’

  ‘Well I’m clearly not her, am I?’

  ‘You’re Ellis’s Foy?’

  My heart misses a beat and the next one thumps hard. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You need to go.’

  ‘I’ve come all the way from France. I’m going nowhere until I see my cousin. Where is she?’

  ‘No, you need to leave.’

  ‘Please, please, I need to see her.’

  ‘I’m sure you do but that is information I can’t give you right now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You don’t need to know.’

  ‘I do, I do need to know, let me in.’

  ‘How do I know you are who you say you are?’

  ‘What? You said you knew me, you said “Ellis’s Foy”. I’m her cousin. I want to know if she’s alright, please.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘How?’ He folds his arms. He’s not going to let me cross the threshold until I do. ‘I don’t know her now, I knew her then.’

  He’s still not letting me through.

  I hold up my passport on the photo page. He cranes his neck to look at it closer but he’s still not budging. I pack it away. ‘She has red hair and blue eyes. She has a scar on her inner right thigh – no, left – from where she was hiding in a patch of barbed wire when we were playing 123-In when we were six. She has two chickenpox scars on her right wrist. She loves animals. And Disney movies. And riding bikes. And imagining. She lives inside her head. And any time I was afraid she would hold my hand until I stopped. That’s the girl I knew.’

  He scratches the beginnings of a blond beard on his jawline, standing to one side to let me in.

  Even though I have no idea who
this man is, he seems to know about me which means he must know Ellis. Her boyfriend? Cotterill’s report, which I read on the plane on the way over, said she didn’t have a significant other. Some bloody private detective. Couldn’t find his arse with both hands.

  The door opens into a lounge area-cum-kitchenette and off that appears to be a small single bedroom with a bathroom next door. The patio doors in the lounge open out onto a tiny courtyard with steps leading to the seafront. The place stinks of damp and rotting food and there are cat hairs everywhere. Is this his place? No. By the way he folds the blanket on the sofa he’s as disgusted by animal hairs as I am. But I can’t immediately sense Ellis in this room.

  ‘How do you know me?’ I ask as he rounds the breakfast bar and sticks the kettle under the tap. He’s good-looking in a stern, doom-laden sort of way and his back is broad, his hair a dirty blond colour. Same as my dad’s. Except he doesn’t wear glasses. Or smile very much. ‘Where’s Cotterill?’

  ‘Tea?’ he offers.

  ‘Yeah. Thanks. Where’s Kaden Cotterill? Who are you? Where’s Ellis?’ I pull my jumper cuffs down over my fists. It’s freezing in here.

  ‘Which first, tea or questions?’ He turns to me, eyebrows up.

  ‘Questions. Where’s Kaden Cotterill?’

  ‘Gone. Back to London. I arrived as he was leaving.’

  ‘I knew he wouldn’t hang around. Bastard.’ I sit down on the edge of a two-seater sofa, the arms of which are covered in cat scratches and hairs. ‘I’m so bloody cancelling that cheque. What a shyster.’

  ‘So you were employing him to follow Ellis? He told me.’

  ‘Yeah. And now she’s gone.’

  The kettle boils and clicks and he pours water into two mugs. ‘I took a statement from him in case the police need it.’