Cross Her Heart

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘Oh, she talks,’ Bray says. ‘But she doesn’t make any sense. Chat to her. Try to relax her. We’ll sift through what she says for anything useful. We haven’t told her Ava may be pregnant, she’s fragile enough as it is, so don’t mention it. And don’t try to talk about her past.’

  Suddenly I feel sick. I’m going to see Lisa again, but it won’t be Lisa at all. She’ll be Charlotte Nevill wearing Lisa’s skin. ‘I have no interest in her past,’ I mutter, as we trudge across the gravel to the gate. Talk about her past? How would I do that? Hey, Lisa, I’ve had a shitty day at work. Fancy the pub? You can take my mind off it by telling me how murdering your little brother felt. For the lols. Jesus, what a headfuck.

  It’s gloomier inside and has the kind of chill that settles in old houses when they’ve been left empty too long. A hollow cold, as if the bricks have given up waiting for anyone to come and give them purpose. A woman, about my age, in jeans and a sweater, hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, has let us in, and Bray quietly introduces her as Alison, Lisa’s probation officer.

  ‘Any problems?’ Bray asks and Alison shakes her head.

  ‘Once we agreed she could bring a portable radio, she was fine. She’s still uncommunicative, but she’s docile. Taken her meds.’

  There’s no time to process anything before I’m following the two women along a corridor. The uneven floorboards creak under the thin carpet, and in the kitchen to my left, two men are drinking mugs of tea. They see us and one immediately refills the kettle, the screeching tap setting my teeth on edge. My heart is pounding but I keep moving and then I’m in the doorway of the sitting room, Bray nodding me in.

  There’s an old gas fire, all its panels churning out a headache heat, and she’s sitting beside it, her back stiff, staring out of the window as the radio plays some old eighties hit. She’s picking at the edges of her thumbs as she turns to face me. She does that at work when she’s stressed. Picks and bites at the skin until it bleeds and scabs. They’re bleeding now but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. Bray and Alison disappear back into the corridor, giving the illusion Lisa and I are alone. My throat is suddenly sandpaper. There are dark hollows under her eyes and she’s lost weight. Her hair, cut and coloured differently, surprises me. It suits her, I think, or it would if she was dressed to impress. She still looks like Lisa, but I can see Charlotte Nevill in her too. The picture from then, when she was just a child, has been in the papers everywhere for days and days, and she’s still there. Under the older skin. In the bones of her.

  ‘Lisa?’ I say again. She’s looking at me, but says nothing. I wonder if I should call her Charlotte, but I can’t. Even though I know it’s her real name, it doesn’t sound right in my head. She looks so small and pathetic and I hate myself for pitying her. She’s lost Ava. Whatever kind of monster she was or is, her daughter is missing.

  ‘I didn’t take the money,’ she says. ‘It was Julia. I’m not a thief. Not any more.’ The words are blurted out, awkward, as if they’re important, as if they can repair all this. As if I’m going to say, oh that’s all right then.

  ‘I know.’ I think of everyone at work, blaming her, like she’s a bogeyman, and I look at this tragic stranger in front of me who looks like my best friend, and my damaged bones scream as I feel tears welling up from nowhere in my eyes. Hers are dry, but she flinches as I try to blink mine away, my nose suddenly thick with snot.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’ Her voice is so quiet, I doubt Bray can hear her over the radio. ‘You must hate me.’

  ‘I don’t hate you.’ I don’t know if it’s a lie or truth, right now all I feel is sick. ‘It’s confusing. But we have to find Ava. That’s the most important thing.’

  Her face contorts a little, though her eyes stay dry. ‘You’ll help find Ava?’ she asks, leaning forward in her chair.

  ‘Of course I will. I love her, you know that.’

  ‘The boy says he was pushed.’ She’s picking at her skin again, making it bleed afresh, and there’s an electric energy coming off her as she gets more agitated. ‘At the river.’ She looks at me as if this is important.

  ‘Maybe he was.’ I am so out of my depth here and I can’t bear feeling the weight of Bray’s eyes on me so I get closer and take the other chair, although it’s tired and musty and there are stains on the cushions. It’s a relief to be sitting down. The painkillers I took this morning are wearing off and my whole chest throbs.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ she leans forward, as if I’m now her confidante. ‘He was pushed. Because there was the bunny too. I found it in the street. Just like Peter Rabbit.’ Her eyes are wide but bloodshot and her words come fast. I don’t know what drugs they’re giving her but she looks like she’s not sleeping. This energy coming from her isn’t good. I know it. I’ve felt it before when things have been bad with Richard. It’s survival energy.

  ‘What bunny? Did Jon buy it for Ava?’ It’s the first time I’ve mentioned him, but I need to get her on subject. I want to get out of here. Back to the hotel. To turn her into a ghost again.

  ‘Peter Rabbit,’ she says again. ‘Before I found the photograph of Ava missing and the one of me and her smashed.’

  I can’t concentrate with the music playing, Rick Astley declaring he’s never going to give us up, and I reach across to the volume button.

  ‘Don’t!’ She snaps so loudly my hand freezes. ‘There’ll be a message in the music. Our song was on this show. There may be more. I can’t miss them.’

  ‘I won’t turn it off,’ I say gently. But I still turn it down so I can think and Bray has half a chance of hearing anything Lisa is saying.

  ‘Was it your and Jon’s song they played? Are you waiting for a message from Jon?’

  Her fingers move more frantically on her skin and she frowns, her eyes darting away. ‘I’ve been so stupid,’ she says. ‘I should have known this would happen. And now Ava’s gone.’

  ‘And we have to find her,’ I say, floundering.

  ‘Yes, we have to find her.’ She looks up at me. ‘There was a deal, you see. Cross my heart and hope to die. You can’t break a deal like that. You can’t. I should have known.’

  I frown and lean forward, despite the pain. ‘You and Jon had a deal? What kind of deal? Is this why he’s taken Ava?’

  She stares at me, and tilts her head. ‘Why are you asking about Jon? Jon never knew about Peter Rabbit.’

  ‘Jon’s taken Ava, Lisa.’ I’m talking to her like she’s a child. I don’t know who she is but this broken creature isn’t what I was expecting. ‘And we need to find him.’

  ‘Jon?’ she sits back, looking at me as if I’m stupid. ‘Jon didn’t take Ava.’ She pauses and when her eyes meet mine, for the first time they look clear.

  ‘Katie did.’

  I look back to the doorway, and see Alison’s despair and Bray’s frustration. ‘Who’s Katie?’ I ask.

  39

  AFTER

  1990

  The Express, 18 March 1990 Evil incarcerated – psycho sister jailed

  Twelve-year-old Charlotte Nevill, pictured left, was convicted yesterday of the brutal murder of her half-brother, two-year-old Daniel Grove, in October of last year. Nevill, who was only eleven at the time of the crime, has been sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Daniel’s body was found in a house marked for demolition in the problematic Elmsley Estate. He had been beaten with a brick and strangled.

  At the end of a trial which has shocked and gripped a horrified nation, the jury of five women and seven men took just over six and a half hours to reach their verdicts for both defendants. Charlotte Nevill remained impassive throughout the summing up and sentencing, as she had throughout the entire proceedings, Mr Justice Parkway telling her, ‘You will be securely detained for very very many years until the Home Secretary is satisfied that you have matured and are fully rehabilitated and no longer a danger to others.’

  The second accused, also a girl of tw
elve years old, known only as Child B, was acquitted of all charges.

  Witnesses testified that Charlotte Nevill had gained a reputation, from as young as eight or nine, of being a troublemaker and terroriser of the elderly and vulnerable on the beleaguered Elmsley Estate who was running wild and whose mother was no longer able to control her. As Mr Justice Parkway stated in his summing up, Charlotte ‘was clearly influential over the actions of Child B, an easily led, emotional girl from a stable and perhaps over-protective family’.

  Charlotte’s jealousy of her innocent younger brother, perhaps because of her abandonment by her own father, was well known to the family, but no one could have predicted the terrible outcome of this cold-hearted killer’s rage, one who has shown no remorse throughout the proceedings.

  Full story inside, pages 2, 3, 4 and 6.

  Feature article ‘Nature vs Nurture: The making of a monster’.

  40

  NOW

  LISA

  I’m going too fast and she can’t keep up. She looks so tired, and she glances back, confused. I see them in the doorway. Alison and Bray. Vultures waiting for me to spit out something from my rotten insides for them to hungrily gobble up. They see me see them and the terrible pretence that this is a secret meeting is over and they step inside the room.

  ‘Katie’s dead.’ Alison looks at me, not Marilyn, as she speaks, slowly, as if I am simple. ‘She drowned in Ibiza in 2004. We’ve been through all this.’

  I shake my head. ‘No. It’s Katie. She didn’t die.’ I grab Marilyn’s hand. I need her to hear me even if she won’t believe me. I know her. She takes time, she thinks things over. Maybe, just maybe, something I say will lodge in her clever head. ‘It’s not Jon. It’s Katie. And she knows me. She knows me now.’ She frowns and tugs her hand away but I don’t stop. ‘Someone isn’t who they say they are. Someone I know. She’s found me and she’s got Ava.’

  Marilyn’s looking at me like I’m a dangerous mad stranger which tears at my broken heart. She’s my best friend. I’m her best friend. I’m both her friend and the evil killer she’s read about. Charlotte is my shadow, my curse, my anchor in the black. She’ll always be part of me.

  ‘I still don’t know who you’re all talking about,’ Marilyn says. ‘Who’s Katie?’

  ‘Child B,’ I say softly. ‘They could only call her Child B.’

  I see a hint of recognition in her eyes. A vague memory of another girl briefly mentioned in the recent spate of newspaper reports. But Child B was acquitted. No one cares about Katie, not then, not now. Katie didn’t kill anyone. Katie wasn’t the monster.

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die,’ I whisper.

  ‘We’re not getting anywhere here. Sorry,’ Bray cuts in. ‘I’ll take you back to your hotel.’

  ‘Hotel?’ I ask, and suddenly I see the details so much more clearly. The dark circles around the eyes. Imperfect make-up, so not like Marilyn. Clothes not quite what she’d normally wear. ‘Why are you at a hotel?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she answers. A pause. ‘Trouble with Richard.’ Perhaps she feels there have been too many lies between us already, or maybe there’s no point in lying to someone who you no longer consider a friend. She can’t meet my eyes. This isn’t my Marilyn, confident in her charmed life. ‘Is it my fault?’ I ask quietly. She looks for a moment as if she might say yes, as if she wants to say yes, but then she shakes her head.

  ‘No. This is all his fault.’

  ‘Come on,’ Bray says, and all three of them turn away. I follow them to the corridor. Bray is talking about how they’re searching Jon’s house for clues, and our old house, and they’ll find Ava, but I’m not listening. I want to grab Marilyn and make her stay. Something is very wrong in her world and who can she talk to? Is it something new, and if not, why didn’t I notice it? You did. The migraines. The drinking. You were just too wrapped up in yourself. I was a terrible friend even before she knew I was a monster. She’s walking differently – details, always details in my head – carefully. Is she hurt? Oh, Marilyn, my Marilyn, what is going on with you? Ava gone, and you in trouble. What has Richard done?

  ‘Who was Child B? This Katie?’ I hear Marilyn ask as they reach the front door.

  ‘Her name was Katie Batten. She was a sweet kid, by all accounts. Charlotte’s best friend.’

  41

  BEFORE

  1989

  ‘You come back here, Charlotte Nevill, you thieving little bitch!’

  ‘You fuck off, you old bag!’ Charlotte laughs as she calls back over her shoulder, her feet confident on the wasteland littered with bricks and building debris as she runs across it.

  ‘You’re banned, you hear! Banned!’

  Old Mrs Jackson still has one foot in the shop doorway. She can’t chase after Charlotte, not with the Taylor boys over there on the wall, watching. They’d be in there and away with all they could carry before the shopkeeper had got halfway to the demolition site. Charlotte pauses, enjoying the rush of air burning in her lungs.

  ‘See if I care! I’ll burn your stupid shop down! Brick your windows in!’ She reaches down and grabs one to illustrate her point, throwing it half-heartedly. She laughs again, and turns to run. It’s the third week of March but the bitter wind that’s owned February shows no sign of letting go. Charlotte doesn’t care. She loves the way it blasts her skin and makes her eyes and nose run. It’s wild. She feels free. She’ll be in trouble again later but right now she doesn’t care. She refuses to care. Nothing matters.

  Katie is crouching behind the remains of a wall. She joins Charlotte as she comes by, and hand in hand they run laughing across the rough ground where houses have been knocked down but none yet rebuilt. Charlotte hopes that when they get moved out, they’ll get a place near Katie. She knows it’s a dream though. There aren’t any shite council houses where Katie lives.

  They run past the playground with the rusty slides, crappy seesaw and old climbing frames, and turn the corner. The bus shelter is there and they flop, as one, on to the worn seat inside, panting and giggling.

  ‘That will never not be funny,’ Katie says, and her eyes shine as she looks at Charlotte. ‘I wish I could steal like you do.’ Charlotte thinks her heart will burst with pride. Sometimes Charlotte thinks Katie is a living breathing doll. She’s three inches shorter than Charlotte and a proper girly girl because her ma dresses her like that, but under the skin they’re both the same. They both hate their lives, even though sometimes Charlotte doesn’t understand quite what Katie has to hate. Katie appeared like a dream, just there one day on the wasteland, and her life is like a dream too. Proper house. Posh car. Both parents. Music lessons, like the one she’s supposed to be at now. Holidays.

  Charlotte pulls the sweets she’s stolen from the shop from one pocket and the sippy cup full of Thunderbird Red she’s stolen from home from the other, and she takes a long swallow before handing it to Katie, who takes a smaller one. It tastes horrible but she likes the numbing heat of it. They eat the Caramacs and Discos and lean into each other, but that word sits between them today. Holiday.

  ‘Where are you going again?’ Charlotte asks, lighting a crumpled cigarette and blowing out the smoke. She doesn’t like the taste but she’s determined to get used to it. One of her ma’s fags. It’s stolen too. Not that her ma will notice. Or if she does she’ll think Tony’s been at the packet.

  ‘You know full well,’ Katie elbows her. ‘The seaside. My grandfather’s house in Skegness. Will be my mum’s house soon. He’s got the big C. He’ll die soon. Not soon enough. He needs to get on with it. Sickness is so dull.’ She pauses. ‘Did I tell you he designed tricks for famous magicians? That was his job. You’d think someone who did that for a living would be fun, but no. He’s as dull as my mother.’ Charlotte could listen to Katie talk all day. It’s like music, all posh and polite. Sometimes they try to talk like each other and it’s the funniest thing.

  ‘Oh aye,’ Charlotte says. ‘Skegness.’ She’s never been to the seaside. He
r ma went to Grimsby once and saw the sea, but it wasn’t the seaside like they have at Cleethorpes or Skegness. Fishing boats is all her ma saw. She said it stank. She was there for some man. Always for some man. It was a long time ago – before Tony – but Charlotte remembers it because she was left on her own. Her ma locked her in with some sandwiches and juice and crisps and told her to stay quiet and it was just for one night. One night that turned into two. She cried a lot on the second night but it didn’t make her ma get home any quicker.

  ‘I wish you were coming with me,’ Katie says, and leans her head on Charlotte’s shoulder. ‘It’s going to be so dull. And I can’t even go to the funfair. Mother won’t let me on any of the rides in case I get hurt. Or dirty. I’m not sure which she’d think is worse.’ She smiles at Charlotte and they both shrug. Katie’s mother drives her mad with all her fussing. Katie says she doesn’t let her breathe. She says her ma’s neurotic although Charlotte doesn’t know what that means. ‘She’ll be crying over Granddad the whole of Easter. So so boring. He’s old and he’s going to die. So what?’

  ‘Maybe a pirate will save you, like in those old films.’ Charlotte leaps up and pretends to pull a cutlass from the top of her worn-out C&A jeans. ‘I’ll be your pirate!’

  ‘Yes yes!’ Katie is on her feet too. ‘They’ve locked me away in a cabin and you have to set me free. I’ve stolen a knife from the captain, and I’ll gut her when she’s not looking!’ They are always fizzing with energy when they’re together. Always playing pretend. Half in this world, and half in another. Movie stars, gangsters, always adventuring free and together.