Beautiful Liars_a gripping thriller about friendship, dark secrets and bitter betrayal

by Isabel Ashdown

  She’s been in the library all afternoon, going back over old newspaper articles about Juliet’s disappearance, re-reading the media speculation, the sound-bite quotes from ‘close sources’. Her head is full of it, the loose ends and unasked questions pressing against the inside of her mind, and she fears she is destined to dream of Juliet forever, at least until she finds the answers she seeks.

  Wrung out, she glances around her living room, a study in contemporary design: a dash of minimalism here, a nod to the baroque there. When she’d signed the papers, Martha hadn’t even asked about the decor – it was enough to know it would be new, stylish and easy to care for. Safe. It’s a gated community of sorts, the kind Martha would once have scorned as pretentious, but she likes it: she’s grateful to be locked in and secure. It’s a long way from the damp-curled rooms of her childhood home in Hackney, social housing long since demolished to make way for gentrification. The clock on the far wall tells her it’s 9.30 p.m. God, she’ll never sleep now, she knows. She’s been out cold for nearly two hours.

  When her mobile rings, Martha cries out, and without thinking she grabs it from the side table, bringing it to her ear with a brusque, ‘Hello?’

  There’s a rustling sound at the other end, the suggestion that the caller has dropped the phone and is trying to retrieve it. ‘Shit,’ the voice says, gravelly, fumbling, his breath laboured and apologetic as he finally sorts the handset out. ‘Shit. Sorry, Martha. Shit.’

  Dread sinks through her like a weight. Why didn’t she check the caller ID before answering? She finds herself frozen, much as she had been in her dream, the sense of helplessness returning like a memory, and her words won’t come. Outside, the city roars past and the world keeps turning, life continuing on as ever.

  ‘Martha?’ At first his tone is soft and persuasive, but it takes only seconds for impatience to materialise, to betray itself as the stronger emotion. ‘Come on, love,’ he says, and his words are mashed. Drunk. Growing sing-song nasty. ‘I kno-ow you’re the-ere. I can hear you. I can hear the traffic. I can hear you breathing. Martha? Martha? Martha! Answer me, you hard-nosed cow!’

  At his roar she snaps into movement, jerking the receiver from her ear and pressing the red end-call button. It’s been months since she last heard from him, a year, even. What does he want with her? She made it clear she was done with him, done with that chapter in her life. She’d given him money, hadn’t she? More than enough to set himself up, to make his own way. What more could he possibly want from her?

  The following morning Martha and Toby are meeting at the café in the British Library, and when she arrives five minutes early she finds him already seated at a wall table with two coffees steaming in front of him. She started the day in a bad mood, having heard from Juney that they’re still unable to establish the name of the girl at the centre of David Crown’s school allegation, as it was never formally reported on at the time. Apparently no public records exist. Surely it shouldn’t be so difficult to get this kind of information? How hard has Juney actually tried? But perhaps Martha is being unfair: how can she expect Juney to access information that doesn’t exist in the public domain? For that, Martha needs an insider. Perhaps it’s time to call in a few favours. She’ll phone Finn Palin when she’s finished here, see what he can do for her. Of course, he’s retired now, but Martha knows how the old boys’ network operates inside the police force; she’s certain he’ll be able to track down that girl’s name without too much fuss. He owes her that much at least.

  Toby rises as she approaches, and she hates him for arriving ahead of her.

  ‘I take mine decaffeinated,’ she says, nodding towards the drinks as she removes her winter gloves. The wall lights cast a clean pool of white around him, like a halo, and she catches an amused look on his face as he clocks the spotty Dalmatian print of her gloves before she stuffs them in her bag.

  ‘Decaf?’ Toby replies. ‘That’s what I ordered.’ He’s unflustered, unflappable, gently pushing the white cup across the small table and taking his seat. ‘I got us a flapjack to share too – in case you’re hungry?’

  Martha could eat a horse, having skipped breakfast to make it here on time, but still she shakes her head. God, she hates herself sometimes.

  Giving no acknowledgement of her bad attitude, Toby places the case files on the table between them and flips open his reporter’s notebook to reveal a page annotated with small, neat handwriting. He pushes at his floppy fringe. ‘Well, I’ll save you half anyway – in case you get peckish. So,’ he says, taking a sip of his drink, ‘yesterday seemed to go quite well, don’t you think? The production meeting. I reckon Glen Gavin has put together a really good team. Juney is an excellent researcher. She’s given us quite a lot of useful stuff already.’

  Us. Jeez. Out of the Cold is not some kind of bloody partnership; Martha is the lead on this project. Toby Parr is her deputy. He’ll get, what, five or ten minutes of airtime if he’s lucky, and here he is behaving as though he’s her co-presenter rather than some pipsqueak who’s been foisted upon her by management. She eyes him coldly, trying to unbalance him, willing him to drop his cheery posh-boy mask and show what he really thinks of her. That she’s just an estate girl made good, a poorly educated nobody to clamber across on his trouble-free, well-heeled way to the bloody top.

  ‘Can you give me a summary of what we’ve got so far?’ she asks him. It’s a test, and from his change in expression he knows it.

  ‘OK.’ He pulls his notebook closer, studies it for a moment. ‘First off, Juney has been in touch with the Metro, to place that “Can You Help?” ad you drafted. Should go in tomorrow at the latest, to run for five days.’

  ‘Good. I don’t hold out much hope of anyone useful coming forward, but you never know.’

  Toby returns to his notes. ‘To summarise: we have Juliet Sherman, aged seventeen, goes missing at around nine p.m. on a Friday night in January 2000, on a towpath beside the Regent’s Canal. Last known person to see her alive is you, Martha Benn, seventeen-year-old school friend. That evening she’d also been with your mutual friend Olivia Heathcote, and her own brother Tom Sherman, at the Waterside Café bar, where you’d all had two, maybe three alcoholic drinks before Juliet had to leave for her voluntary job at Square Wheels. You walked with her along the canal, with your bicycles – it was dark, but lamp-lit – halfway to the Square Wheels cabin, before leaving her to walk the remainder alone as you returned to the bar for your forgotten bag. The roads nearby were fairly busy, with it being a Friday night, and you said you saw a number of other walkers and cyclists along the path, and that Juliet was in good spirits when you parted. As far as we know, no one else saw or spoke to her before she disappeared, but we don’t believe she can have gone much further because her bicycle was found the next day only metres from the spot where you’d parted. The person of interest is David Crown, leader of Square Wheels and local landscape gardener, who vanished a day after Juliet went missing, having withdrawn a large sum of money. Ultimately, the police concluded that Juliet and David had been involved in a secret affair, and that they left together of their own accord.’ Toby pauses, looking for Martha’s approval.

  ‘Which is, of course, bollocks.’

  ‘We know that the police interviewed everyone who saw Juliet that night, including her parents and David Crown, before he disappeared – but no one could shed any more light on the mystery. We now also know that there was a previous sexual assault allegation made against David Crown when he was a teacher, but that it was dropped and written off as a pupil’s fabrication.’ Toby runs his finger down his list. ‘Have I missed anything?’

  Martha gazes past him towards the busy foyer of the library café. ‘Olivia and Juliet fell out earlier that night,’ she says, bringing her focus back to Toby.

  ‘Really?’ He looks back at his notes, frowning as though he might have overlooked something.

  ‘It wasn’t reported on, because Liv didn’t mention it in her interview.’

&nbs
p; ‘But you knew about it?’

  ‘I heard them – it was just before Juliet set off for work and the two of them had left the café ahead, while I said goodbye to Tom and a few of the others. When I got outside, I saw them around the corner – Juliet was unlocking her bike – and they were having a heated argument. Really heated. Liv was trying to stop Juliet from leaving, grabbing on to her coat, but Jules shook her off, pushed past. It stopped the minute they saw me.’ Martha can see their panicked faces now, their rage quickly shutting down to avert her questions.

  ‘You didn’t mention this in the meeting yesterday.’

  ‘No. And I didn’t tell the police at the time either. Liv asked me not to.’

  Toby’s eyebrows furrow. ‘Really? Didn’t you think it was important to let them know? It could have been vital to the case.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Toby. Were you ever a teenager, or were you born fully grown? We were seventeen – our best friend had just vanished, and we were terrified and guilty and grief-stricken. Liv didn’t want anyone to know that they’d argued because she was just so ashamed that her last moments with Juliet were bad ones.’

  ‘Do you know what the argument was about?’ Toby asks.

  ‘No,’ Martha replies. ‘I asked Juliet at the time – as we were walking away from the bar – but she dismissed it. Said Liv was just being a drama queen and it would blow over. She made it clear the subject was closed, so I didn’t push it.’

  Toby looks unconvinced.

  ‘I was fine about not telling the police they’d been arguing. I mean, I knew Liv didn’t have anything to do with Juliet’s disappearance. But it always bothered me that Liv never told me what the argument was about. Those two – Juliet and Liv – their relationship with each other was always just that bit tighter than it was with me. They went back further, they’d known each other since primary school – I met them at the start of secondary. Of course, they bickered from time to time, but it never got serious or nasty. I don’t think I’d ever seen them exchange cross words before that night.’ She picks up her coffee cup. ‘Or ever again.’

  Toby adds a few neat lines to his notebook. ‘You’ve written to Liv, you say? We really need to speak to her next, don’t we? Find out what they were arguing about – see what else she might know. That’s got to be a priority.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Martha replies, suddenly irritated, sensing a suggestion that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Scowling, she adds, ‘And I’ll give the orders, thanks, Toby. You do know I’m the lead here, don’t you?’

  There’s a moment’s silence as she stares him down, challenging him to disagree.

  ‘Martha,’ he says in a soft voice. ‘I think we need to get this out of the way, don’t you? Look, I really want this to work, and I really want to do the best I can for the show – for you. But it’s going to be hard if you’re going to pick me up on every little thing. It feels as if you don’t trust me.’

  ‘You have to earn someone’s trust,’ she replies, feeling her cheeks flush as she realises how uptight and clichéd she sounds. ‘How can I trust you when I don’t even know you?’

  He smiles, not unkindly. ‘But that’s not true, is it? And even if it were, would you be as hard on someone who, well, who came to the job without any connection to you at all? Some graduate, or a junior from outside the team?’

  She feels shame creeping beneath her collar, and she hides behind her coffee cup, stalling for time to think.

  ‘Is it because of my connections on the board? Because everyone else seems to have got over that particular elephant in the room.’ He gives a small laugh, self-conscious to have brought it up.

  ‘Have they?’ she replies, reaching across the table to break off a corner of the untouched flapjack. ‘Everyone knows you leapfrogged several perfectly capable junior researchers to take this role – most of them women, I might add – and there’s not a person on this project who thinks you got that job purely based on your qualifications or experience.’

  ‘And there’s not a person on this project who thinks you got this job without sleeping your way to the top.’

  Martha would have made a show of alarm if Toby hadn’t beaten her to it.

  He clamps his hand to his forehead and curses, a whisper of a word. ‘Crap. Martha, I’m sorry. That was a low blow.’

  Now it’s her turn to laugh, and she’s not even sure whether it’s relief or embarrassment she’s feeling. ‘So that’s what people think, is it? That I slept my way to the top? Do people actually say that?’

  Toby shrugs, looking as though he’s about to retract his words, then shrugs again, defeated.

  Well, I got what I wanted, Martha thinks, with no sense of victory. Good boy Toby tells it like it is.

  ‘I’ve heard it said,’ he murmurs, his shoulders dropping, his eyes downcast.

  Wow, Martha thinks, she really has knocked the wind out of his sails. At once she feels like the school bully, and she hates herself all over again. ‘So, exactly how many executives am I supposed to have shagged to reach these lofty heights?’ She allows a humorous lilt to break through, a show of forgiveness, perhaps. Something.

  Toby’s eyes flicker up beneath his furrowed brow, and Martha sees the slightest glimmer of hope reignite.

  ‘One?’ she ventures. ‘Two? Five? Ten?’ He doesn’t answer, but a slow smile starts to spread across his features as the number rises. ‘More?!’ Martha demands, breaking into incredulous laughter and slumping against her chair back in disbelief.

  Recovered, Toby stands and picks up their empty cups. ‘Just the one,’ he replies.

  Martha rolls her eyes and snaps off another piece of flapjack, nibbling the corner of it like a petulant teenager. She blanks him, scrolling her forefinger down her phone, checking for new messages.

  ‘I’ll get us a refill,’ Toby says, and if she didn’t know better she’d think he was stifling a laugh. ‘And then, please can we agree to a fresh start?’

  He has her in the palm of his hand, Martha knows. What’s the expression? Kill them with kindness? Well, he’s slaughtered her. And despite herself she finds she likes him, and she has no choice in the matter when she agrees.

  ‘OK. Fresh start.’ Ignoring the chime of an email alert on her phone, Martha picks up the rest of the flapjack and takes a bite. ‘What are you waiting for?’ she asks through a full mouth. ‘Fuck off and get those coffees. We’ve got work to do.’

  5. Casey

  I’ve barely slept a wink tonight, worrying myself into a state of high emotion over the email I sent to Martha this morning. As I lay in the darkness I ran over the words in my head, searching for clues that I had got it wrong. Had I misjudged what Martha wanted? It was true that there was some urgency in her original message, wasn’t it? My stomach knotted and turned; at this rate I would be stuck on the toilet for most of the morning while my insides cleared out. It’s a curse, I reminded myself, passed on from my mother. ‘A delicate constitution,’ Mum had called it. ‘Irritable bowel syndrome’ was the doctor’s diagnosis, but not before I had endured over two decades of its tortures. Perhaps I should get up and take a tablet, I considered as I lay there biting down on my lower lip, fighting back the tears. But I must have carried on lying there in pain for at least another hour, writhing against the twist in my gut. Sometimes I think I must like it, to allow myself to suffer for any longer than I need to. Do I like it, the pain? Surely not.

  Shortly after 3 a.m. I abandon sleep to make myself a cup of tea and swallow two of my anti-spasmodic tablets. The stomach cramps should ease in the next fifteen minutes or so, and in anticipation I cut myself a chunk of fruit cake to have with my tea, placing it on the side table as I fetch Martha’s letter. Wincing, I lower myself on to the sofa to re-read it and reassure myself that I haven’t got things muddled, haven’t got it all wrong. Next, I open up my laptop and review my own – or rather Liv’s – reply, and with a mixture of relief and impatience I feel satisfied that my message to Martha was well worded. Appropri
ate. So why, then, I’m wondering now as I bite into my cake, hasn’t Martha replied immediately? I look at my watch, the small Timex that Dad gave me on my fifteenth birthday. It’s a child’s watch really, its pink leather strap now balding and cracked, and straining at my wrist on the last hole. Really, I ought to get the strap replaced, but I can’t bring myself to part with the old one. It would seem so wrong to throw it away like any old rubbish.

  I’m drifting again.

  I sent the email to Martha at just after ten yesterday morning, and here I am almost a whole day later, and still no reply. To distract myself I’ve been researching her on the internet, and I’m surprised at how private she appears to be, skirting over her childhood in interviews and no mention of her missing friend Juliet anywhere to be found. I’ve added what I can to my notebook, and made a mental note to spend more time delving into Martha Benn’s past. She’s really quite the mystery! When, by the time I went to bed last night, there was no reply from her, I thought with irritation: Well, it can’t be that important. I wrap my quilted gown closer, rearranging the belt with a cross tug. Maybe Martha has exaggerated the importance of Liv’s role. Maybe she’s playing games. Or more likely, I think with a sudden flash of embarrassment, she’s a busy woman, and she hasn’t had a chance to pick up her emails. Perhaps she’s at one of those red carpet events you see in the glossies – an awards evening or a charity gala – or perhaps she’s been out all night, wining and dining and signing autographs. That’ll be it, I think now, feeling the pain in my stomach subside as my heart rate slows and my eyelids grow heavy. That’ll be it. As sleep tugs at me, I imagine myself in a schoolroom, dressed in a smart uniform to match my three best friends, sitting together on a table of four: Martha, Liv, Juliet and me.