‘Yep, that and the lie about the bracelets. You weren’t quite so clever about it back then.’
‘We were only little,’ Tasha said. ‘If my stupid mother had kept her mouth shut it would have been fine. She was so appalled. Mothers of friends should never be allowed to be friends. Still, if it were now, I’d have bought the nail polish myself and kept it secret instead of my mum knowing it was mine because she’d paid for it, Then she’d never have been able to say it must have been me who sneaked into your room and poured it on your dress. Everyone would have just believed it was Hayley.’
‘I think you’ve gone a little bit further this time,’ Becca said dryly. She’d been too nervous for dinner and the fizz was going to her head. ‘Two people are dead.’
‘Yes, it’s safe to say that things have become a little more serious than I’d planned,’ Tasha said.
‘No shit.’ Her snort of laughter came out of nowhere, but once she’d started, Becca couldn’t stop despite how shocked she was. It was ridiculous, them sitting here talking about everything that had happened as if it were just a little argument that had got out of hand. Becca thought of Amanda Alderton’s face at the funeral and somehow that made her laugh even harder. It was laugh or cry. It was hysteria, maybe. Whatever it was, Tasha stared at her for a moment and then they were both laughing, unable to stop, setting each other off into fresh fits of giggles each time one of them started to get themselves under control.
It’s like the old days, Becca thought with a pang as her sides began to ache and her eyes watered. The old, old days, when we were small.
Finally, both girls having worn themselves out, the laughter faded to the occasional burp of a giggle and then sighs, before silence.
‘We’re like the girls from The Crucible,’ Tasha said when she had the breath to speak. ‘Out in the woods, laughing and casting our dark spells.’
‘I’m not getting naked, though. Not with these thighs.’
‘Ha.’ Tasha smiled at her, genuine warmth in it. ‘You were always the funniest.’ She squeezed Becca’s arm affectionately before looking away. ‘You know I need the laptop back.’
Becca unzipped her backpack and pulled out the slim silver Airbook. ‘Here. It needs charging.’
Her heart thumped as Tasha took it. She saw her eyes fall on the New York sticker on the corner of the lid, and then she grinned again.
‘Thanks, Bex.’ Tasha got up. ‘My legs are stiff. I’ve been sitting here for ages. Shall we go for a walk?’ She held up the computer. ‘I might just lob this into the river. My mum never uses it anyway.’
Becca stood and Tasha linked arms with her. ‘Maybe this is how it was always meant to be, Bex,’ she said. ‘You and me. Best friends forever. And if you figured all this out on your own, just imagine what we could do together. Sort out Jamie McMahon’s dog, for one thing. Get even with Aiden for being such a creep?’
‘We’ll have plenty of time for all of that,’ Becca said.
They walked for a while before Becca spoke again. But in the end she just had to ask. They were in a bubble tonight, a private space of their own. If Natasha was ever going to open up, it would be now.
‘It must have taken so much planning,’ she said. ‘And then faking the amnesia. You even died for a bit.’
‘That shouldn’t have happened. That was Jamie McMahon and his wretched dog’s fault for being late on their walk.’
‘But why did you do it, Tasha? Was it over Mr Garrick? Please tell me you didn’t fancy him, too.’
‘Don’t be gross!’ Tasha laughed. ‘Of course I didn’t.’
‘So why?’ Becca asked again.
Tasha took a deep breath. ‘It’s really not all that complicated,’ she began.
Sixty-Two
They were stretched out on the sofa, Caitlin’s head on his chest, watching an action film when her phone began to buzz. Thus far it had been a very chaste evening, but with Aiden upstairs Jamie didn’t really feel like taking it to the next stage, and it felt good just to be relaxing with her. It felt natural.
‘Oh god, what now?’ she muttered, reluctantly reaching to the table to pick it up. They’d moved on to the second bottle of red and both had a pleasant, hazy buzz going. Marc Aplin showed on the screen and she sat up, answering it.
‘This had better be important.’ She looked at Jamie apologetically as she answered the phone. He wondered if this was why she was single. How did men take coming second to her job? He couldn’t imagine it bothering him. It would be hypocritical, after all. If anyone loved his job, it was him. Her back stiffened.
‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘Can you send it over to me?’ She signalled to Jamie for her coat and he went and got it before clearing some of their buffet debris away in case she needed the table space. She rummaged in the wide pockets for her iPad mini and once she’d found it, kicked her coat to one side.
Jamie sat beside her again as she rolled the cover back to make a small stand and turned the tablet on. He felt slightly awkward, like he was intruding on a personal call or something, but he was also curious. Was this a new case she hadn’t mentioned? Or was it still something to do with the girls? She said Becca had come to see her and they were still investigating – was this some fresh evidence?
‘I’ve got it,’ she said, and clicked on a link.
It took Jamie a moment to figure out what he was watching, the images pixelated and jerky until the iPad settled down and started playing it properly. It was the shopping centre. Near the exit.
‘I see her,’ Bennett muttered into the phone, her eyes focused on the screen where a girl in a coat was walking towards the rear exit doors and the car park. ‘Nothing unexpected yet.’ The clip changed to the exterior and the cinema loomed in the distance on the other side of the banks of cars. The girl stopped and undid the coat, pulling it off fast. She looked around her for a second and then stuffed it into a bin.
‘Have you got a close-up?’
Jamie was still staring at the small figure in the film when Caitlin shut it down and went back to her inbox. She clicked a second link. A still made large.
‘That’s not Jenny,’ Jamie said, softly. ‘That’s Natasha.’
Caitlin was on her feet, the phone still pressed to her ear. ‘So she bought the coat in Primark, put it on and then ditched it after buying the phones. Have you got footage from Primark?’ A pause. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, this is enough. I want her brought to the station. And Rebecca Crisp, too. Rebecca had figured this out. Call me when you’ve picked them up. I’m going to need a—’ She stopped as Aiden appeared in the doorway. ‘You had more than one glass of wine?’ she barked at him. He shook his head.
‘It’s all right,’ she finished, ‘I can get a lift in. Find those girls and then call me back.’
‘What’s going on?’ Aiden asked. ‘I just came down for a Coke.’
He looked mildly stoned, which irritated Jamie as they had a detective in the house, but he figured she wasn’t going to give much of a shit right now.
‘It’s Becca and Tasha,’ Jamie said. ‘I think you might have got your mentals the wrong way round.’
Aiden stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
Caitlin’s phone rang and both men turned to hear what was said.
‘Bennett.’ She was pacing, a small, tense figure, and Biscuit was matching her steps at her heel. She stopped suddenly, the dog almost barrelling into her calves.
‘What do you mean they’re not at home?’ She looked at Jamie as she talked to her sergeant. ‘But it’s gone midnight. If they’re not at home then where the hell are they?’
Sixty-Three
‘You were all my friends,’ Natasha said. ‘Don’t you see?’ They’d walked a little and then paused, Becca smoking some more.
‘It was up to me to decide who stayed and who went. Like when you started getting all that puppy fat, a
nd when Jenny arrived at school, I knew I had to swap you out. You didn’t fit with what I wanted. How I wanted to be seen. Hayley said it didn’t matter but it did. I had to threaten to tell everyone she’d pissed herself in my dad’s car that summer to get her to stop whining. Jenny fitted better. There wasn’t space for you, too.’ She looked sideways at Becca. ‘You understand, don’t you?’
‘Sure,’ Becca said, glad of the night around them, hiding her face. Tasha made her craziness sound so reasonable. But then she believed Becca was willing to let all of this go, just to be her best friend again. She must think Becca was as crazy as her. Becca was glad her voice at least was calm. ‘I mean, I didn’t get it, not at first, but I do now. But I still don’t understand why all this? And why involve me?’
‘I knew Jenny and Hayley wouldn’t say anything,’ Natasha replied, after a long pause. ‘You know, afterwards. When I woke up and my memory was supposedly gone. They’d want to find the film first, and obviously they didn’t know about my little trail of evidence leading to them. I had met them in the woods. We’d arranged it at lunch, not by text, though. As far as they knew I’d only found out about Jenny and Garrick the night before, just like in the statement I gave to the police. But obviously I wasn’t quite as goody-two-shoes about it with them. When we met that night – and it wasn’t at three a.m., it was earlier – I told them I’d followed and filmed them in the car park with Mr Garrick. I told them I hadn’t decided what to do about it, or what I wanted in exchange for it.’
She pushed away from the tree she’d been leaning on and took Becca’s arm, and they started to stroll again, slow and easy, as if it was a summer afternoon, not the middle of the night.
‘It was fun watching them squirm and beg, pleading with me not to do anything. I told them I’d think about it and we all left. Later on, I came back and ran through the woods, planted the rope and the capsule cases and all that stuff, got myself scratched up and then jumped into the river. I knew it would be cold – it’d been snowing for a while by then – but I thought I’d only be in there for a few minutes. I’d planned to swim to the other side and crawl out in time to pretend I was unconscious, ready for Jamie McMahon and his dog to find me on the bank. But I hadn’t realised just how cold it would be in the water. That I couldn’t make it. That Jamie and Biscuit would be late.’ She shivered, trapped for a moment in the memory. ‘He found me eventually and I was okay, I guess. And it was better for the amnesia story. No one doubted it after I died.’
‘But why fake the amnesia? Why not just say they pushed you in the river after you confronted them about Jenny and Peter Garrick?’
Tasha stared at her for a moment as if the question was stupid.
‘Where would the fun be in that? It was about punishing them. For keeping secrets from me. For lying to me for months. They needed to think I didn’t remember any of it. I knew they’d suck up to me. I knew they’d find an excuse to go to my room and try to find the film. They must have searched when they went and got my iPod and stuff and brought it to the hospital. They must have been desperate by then. They knew it wouldn’t look good for them if they said we’d met in the woods that night, especially as I’d accidentally died. It would look like they had something to do with it. It was easier for them to keep quiet and bide their time, hoping I never remembered. Which of course made them look even more guilty when everything I’d planted incriminating them came to light.’
‘Are we all so predictable?’ Becca asked. The path was widening as they neared the river. They had been pieces on a chessboard, that was for sure, but there was no opposition. Just Tasha moving them around as it pleased her.
‘We’ve all been friends for a long time,’ Tasha said. ‘And Jenny loved Mr Garrick, disgusting as that is. She wanted to protect him. You’re proving more interesting, though. More like me. Under the skin.’
‘I guess so. But you still played me. You knew I’d come to the hospital.’
‘I wasn’t planning to be in the hospital for so long. But I had planned to befriend you again. I figured it wouldn’t be so hard. You were only hanging around with Hannah, after all. I mean, god, Bex, there’s stooping low and then there’s low.’
Becca ignored the comment. She’d done enough disservice to Hannah while she was alive. She wasn’t going to slag her off now that she was dead.
‘You needed someone you trusted to get suspicious of them,’ she said. ‘You needed me to pass evidence and suspicions on to the police while you sat back and prodded me in the right direction and played the victim. You wanted it to look like it all came from me and that you were still scared of them.’
‘Pretty brilliant, wasn’t it? The set-up at the clearing was the first test. To see if you’d buy it. And you did. Hook, line and sinker. After that, I knew you’d see anything they did or said from that angle. My angle. And why not, when everything fitted?’
It was brilliant. Becca had to give her that. ‘And Hannah?’
‘Oh, be fair. That was as much you as me. If you hadn’t wanted that light moved and got Hayley to do it, the idea would never have occurred to me. I improvised, but you set it up so well. I thought it would be perfect for keeping the pressure on Hayley and Jenny, and give me a wonderfully dramatic moment to “remember”. It wasn’t meant to fall on Hannah. It was meant to look like they’d tried to drop it on me. I mean, to be honest, Hannah messed everything up a bit. She got in the way. Trust her to die so easily. I didn’t want Hayley and Jenny to go away forever. Just for a while. Just to learn their lesson. To remember that I’m the one who made them and without me they’re nothing. I mean, we’re still pretty much best friends. They need to remember that.’
An owl hooted and Becca nearly jumped. Tasha was talking so casually. So clinically. As if Hayley and Jenny would ever be her friends now. How badly wired was her head? Sociopath, not psychopath. Maybe both.
‘It feels good to talk about it all,’ Tasha said. They were nearly at the river. ‘It’s been a lot to hold inside.’ Her voice quietened. ‘Maybe now I’ve shared everything, the dreams will let me go.’
‘And of course,’ Becca said, wanting to get everything clear, ‘once Hannah died, that was the perfect time to get your memory back.’
‘When I saw Hannah drop and Bennett walked in, it was sublime. Everything fell against them at once. No one was going to question that evidence. Not with my statement to back it up and that notebook I was keeping. Why do people always believe diaries? They’re just words.’
They had reached the river and Becca’s heart thumped hard as they turned to walk along the uneven bank. Had Tasha turned right on purpose, so that Becca would be closest to the water? Easier to shove?
‘Why didn’t you say they pushed you? In your statement.’
‘I thought about it, but I didn’t need to. Far more convincing to say I didn’t remember how I fell in, don’t you think? Spelling it out would have been too much. It’s like in that diary – I wasn’t perfect in it, but I was believable.’ She smiled, broad and happy. ‘Believable is all that matters. See?’
She’s enjoying this, Becca realised. Tasha was loving showing off how clever she’d been. How far ahead of everyone. How meticulous.
‘But why, Tasha? Why do any of it in the first place? Why were you punishing them? Surely not just for keeping Mr Garrick a secret.’ Now that she had the full confession, she needed to understand why. And sociopath or not, it must be more than just that.
Tasha stopped walking. Close up, Becca could see something like hurt in her face. Hurt and maybe anger. A lot of anger. For a fraction of a second, Tasha looked truly ugly. Moonlight cut pale across her face, highlighting the dips in her cheeks, and her eyes shone from deep black circles. Her mouth was a tight slit as she seethed with memory. Even her hair, now so golden-blonde, appeared tar-streaked in the night. She looked like a dead girl from a horror film to Becca. And emotionally maybe that’s what she was. Fina
lly Becca was seeing the real Tasha. The one on the inside. The fucked-up crazy one.
‘They didn’t want to be my friends any more,’ Tasha said, eventually. She was staring at a point somewhere beyond Becca. ‘I knew it. They started going off together just the two of them. Not inviting me. Making excuses to not include me. I couldn’t believe it. Their arrogance.’ She spat out the last word. ‘One night, Jenny got high and said I was too controlling. Too judgemental.’ She shook her head a little. ‘How dare she? I’m the Barbies. Of course I controlled them. I made them the most popular girls in school. I shaped them. How could I be dumped by them? I have always been the most popular girl, Becca, you know that. Ever since primary school. Now, with only sixth form left, they wanted to take that from me? How would everyone view me if they left me? I’d be a loser. I don’t lose, Bex, you know that. I tried to make it better for a while, but then I overheard them talking about me. Calling me cold. Psycho. Control freak. They thought I was a bitch to them. They said there was something wrong with me in my head.’
No shit, Becca thought. She wondered if there had been other incidents like the green dress over the years. How many times had Natasha played Jenny and Hayley off each other until they got wise and decided they’d had enough?
‘So when I found out about Mr Garrick, I knew what I had to do. I had to show them. To teach them a lesson. They needed to see what I was capable of. There were less than two years left of school and I would not be shamed. I would not be threatened. Not by them.’ Tasha looked at Becca. ‘I decide who stays or goes, not them.’
‘So this had nothing to do with Mr Garrick at all?’
‘Of course not.’ Tasha barked out a harsh, unpleasant laugh. ‘Like I care who Jenny’s fucking? If she’d told me about it I might actually have helped her – made it work far more in her favour. But they didn’t trust me with that little secret. Oh no, they wanted to keep that for themselves. As if they could. As if they could ever keep anything from me. They thought I’d do something horrible to him. That’s what Hayley said. And they didn’t want that. It made me laugh. Like they’ve ever really known what was best for them. That’s why they’ve always had me. They thought I was going to put that film on YouTube and make them a laughing stock. And I could have. But that would have been too obvious, wouldn’t it? That’s what someone ordinary would have done. That would have just been spiteful. What I did, well, I wanted them to learn from it. What I did had a point. Things just got slightly out of hand.’
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