I wished with all my heart that Mum was still alive, so that I could finally get her away from this man. So that I could finally talk to her properly and tell her that I understood what she’d been through, but that she was stronger than she believed. She must have been to have survived everything that he’d put her through, which meant she could have been tough enough to walk away and live a happy life without him, if only she’d had a little more support from me.
Too late for Mum. Not for me, though.
I dug into my purse. ‘Here! Drink yourself to death for all I care.’
My last tenner floated to the floor. Dad launched himself forward like a starving man and snatched it up.
I’d no funds for a meal or anywhere to stay, but it was worth giving my money away if it meant putting Dad in an early grave.
* * *
The people in my life had proved themselves to be worse than useless. It was time to rely on myself. I didn’t let myself down. Living on the streets was hard. No one would give money to a beggar with decent, clean clothes and fresh breath. The weight of judgement in the gaze of strangers made me rage. I knew what they were thinking: that it must be a con, that I was a career beggar who climbed into my BMW at the end of a hard day’s begging and drove to my luxury flat. It didn’t seem to occur to them that everyone has to begin somewhere, and even rough sleepers don’t start out filthy and dishevelled.
After just two nights I found an alternative. My clothes were still decent, my hair brushed, my face clean. I didn’t yet look like somebody who was homeless. I went to Broad Street, where loads of pubs and clubs are in Birmingham, and stood just down from a busy pub where people were spilling onto the pavement. I was careful not to approach anybody. Instinct warned me that if I did, the person would be on their guard, waiting for me to ask them for the inevitable. So instead I hugged myself and started to cry, looking helplessly up and down the road as if not knowing what to do. A young woman about my age peeled away from her group of friends.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, no, um, not really. I just… I’ll be fine, honestly, it’s not your problem.’ The tears came easily; all I had to do was think of how desperate I was and what the alternative might be if I didn’t get some money. Falling into prostitution. Perhaps being raped or murdered. Freezing to death one winter night, trying to sleep in a shop doorway in sub-zero temperatures.
‘You don’t look fine. Come on, what is it?’ She came closer, almost on my hook. The intuition that had always told me how best to approach someone to make an Ann Summers sale kicked in again. I knew what to say.
‘It’s so stupid of me. I was out with my friends and have lost them, they must have moved on to another pub without me. And my mate’s got my purse and phone in her handbag. I don’t know how I’m going to get home.’
A jagged whimper shook from me. She put her arm around me, comforting. Her head close to mine.
Hooked.
‘Hey, we’ve all lost our pals at some point.’ As if remembering, she turned and shouted to her own group. ‘Oy, don’t leave without me!’
A couple of them came over. ‘What’s going on?’
She explained everything. Perfect – it sounded even more believable coming from her.
‘Here, use my phone to call someone to come and get you.’ One of them started to pull out her mobile, but was stopped by my sob.
‘I don’t know anyone’s number off by heart. Not even my boyfriend’s. They’re all stored in my phone. I’m such an idiot.’
‘Yeah, I’m exactly the same,’ they all chimed.
‘Look, how much will it cost to get a cab back to yours?’ said the first girl.
My sniffing slowed. ‘Um, twenty quid.’
‘We could cover that between us.’ Her friends looked reluctant.
‘No, I couldn’t possibly accept,’ I hurried. ‘Not unless you give me your phone numbers so that I can get in touch tomorrow and arrange to pay you back.’
‘You don’t have to do that,’ said the dark-haired girl, but she pulled out a pen all the same. I wrote all three of the numbers down on my forearm, careful to get them right. The three of them then gave a fiver each, then called another of their gang over and she pitched in the final £5.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ I gasped, hugging each of them in turn. ‘Have a great night!’
As I turned towards the road, holding my arm up to hail a taxi, they waved goodbye and walked away. Disappeared into another pub. A black cab with its orange light glowing pulled up beside me, and I leaned in at the partially wound-down window.
‘You’re all right, I’ve changed my mind. Sorry,’ I said.
Pocketing my £20, I sauntered on to another section of the street. Ran the same scam over again on men and women. The later it got, the more drunk people were and more generous, their instincts too soggy to warn them I might not be everything I seemed. That night I stayed in a nearby hotel and treated myself to a slap-up breakfast in bed in the morning.
Just like I had as a little girl, I’d found a way to survive through storytelling. The stolen sweets I’d said a kind stranger had paid for. The puppy I’d found wandering in the street, which Dad had eventually taken from me and sold to a man down the pub. The amazing coincidence of me doing brilliantly in that maths test for the first time ever, and scoring exactly the same as the school brainiac who just happened to be sitting next to me but whose paper I absolutely definitely had not stolen the answers from… I remembered all those times from when I was a kid, and how happy they had made me. Now, with a decent night’s sleep for the first time since Andy had first hit me, and a belly full of food, I had that same sense of happiness.
I wasn’t proud of how I’d solved my problems, but was proud of the fact I had. So many people had tried to break me – Dad, kids in innumerable schools, Andy. They had all thought I was weak and had tried to smash me to pieces emotionally. But I was stronger than stone. Stone could be cracked and demolished or worn down through attrition eventually. Instead, I’d discovered I was something else. I was water. No matter the obstacle, I would always find a way round it or through it. I couldn’t, wouldn’t be stopped.
I would make the happy ending to my story. Even if it meant stealing someone else’s.
Fifty
Now
The police officer wraps a blanket over my shivering shoulders. Enveloping me in my own lies. Cloaked in them, I try to gather my tumbling thoughts. Soon questioning will start, but for now I have a brief moment to think, line up the memories and decide what to say, what to miss out. How many lies to tell.
A paramedic car pulls up, lights flashing, sirens blaring. It has barely come to a stop before its door is opening and a man in green gets out.
‘Alex! Are you okay? What happened? I’d no idea… ’ he gasps.
His expression has gone from businesslike to shocked in seconds.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he adds before I can answer. Carrying a bag of medical tricks, he strides over to me, kneels down and studies the laceration to my eyebrow that is dripping blood all over my face and clothes.
‘It looks worse than it is,’ I promise.
I hadn’t realised that Leon would be called out to this. We were only introduced two days ago. He’d held onto my shoulders so tightly after bumping into me in the hospital as I’d hurried away from the patient library. I’d been desperate to leave Carrie’s betrayal behind; seeing her sitting reading books instead of getting chemotherapy treatment had hurt me so much. But the recognition of Leon’s smile had stopped me in my tracks.
‘Do we know each other?’ he’d asked.
I’d started to walk away. At the last moment something had made me turn and answer.
‘Crusoe’s Café, in Tynemouth. I think I saw you there the other day.’
‘Of course!’ That smile again.
‘Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go.’
‘I’m going that way too, mind if I walk with you?’
He’d fallen into step with me before I could object. All I’d wanted to do was get away from Carrie.
‘Erm, are you stalking me or something?’
‘Sorry, sorry. It probably looks like that, doesn’t it, the way we keep bumping into each other. But I work here, I’m a paramedic, so I do actually have a valid reason for being in the hospital. Are you visiting somebody?’
‘Long story,’ I said shortly, hurrying on. He kept pace with me.
‘I’m Leon Cassera, by the way.’ Him offering his hand threw me. The shock of my discovery about Carrie fought with this Leon bloke’s disarming charm. I found myself shaking his hand and telling him my name, discombobulated by my own actions.
‘Actually,’ he hung his head and looked sheepish, ‘this is going to sound, well, weird, definitely, but I’ve got a bit of a confession to make. I already knew your name.’
‘So you are a stalker?’
‘No, nothing like that,’ he laughed. ‘But a week ago a friend of yours kind of told me all about you.’
He was either some kind of busybody, or was possibly linked to the clinic in some way. Whatever it was, I wasn’t interested, needed to get back to my car and get my head straight. My feet moved faster, patter, patter, patter along the lino-lined corridor.
‘Phew, you walk quickly. Look, okay, I get that this sounds insane, but I’m just going to tell you anyway, so that it’s out there. Then you can do what you want with the information.’
Annoyance and attraction warred inside me just enough to keep me quiet.
‘Okay.’ He was nervous, kept repeating the word. ‘Your mate, she mentioned that you’re single. And I’m single, so I wondered… I’m a paramedic, and friendly, fairly outgoing, respectable, I like surfing and a spot of drawing every now and again. Quite a mean chef. My wife left me recently, but try not to hold that against me—’
‘You seem really sweet, but I’m not interested in dating right now. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to about me.’
He bit his lip. ‘Ah, right. Fair enough. She didn’t sign you up to the dating app after all, then?’
‘I truly have no idea what you’re talking about. Anyway, must go.’
I’d turned my back on him, when his next sentence hit me.
‘Your mate, Carrie, must have got the wrong end of the stick, sorry. We got talking in the pub one night. She kept telling me about her amazing friend, Alex. Explained that you were too shy to meet blokes but that you’re really lovely and said she’s going to sign you up to some dating sites without you knowing, to see if she could get you together with someone. Only problem was, she didn’t have an up-to-date photograph of you, so she asked me to take a sneaky snap of you both because you’d be suspicious if she took one. Gave me a time and place where you’d both be, and bought me a pint for my trouble.’
He’d chuckled, not realising his words had trickled ice down my back.
‘Got to admit, I thought it was a bit strange, but figured I shouldn’t stand in the way of true love. So, I took the picture that night.’ He looked at his feet, then smiled up at me through blond eyelashes. ‘I have got say I, erm, I think you’re really beautiful. Feels like fate that I’ve seen you twice since. What do you think? Fancy having a drink with me sometime?’
‘You took a photo of Carrie and me? Together?’
‘Here.’ He pulled out his phone and showed me. ‘Sorry it’s not great. Bit blurry. Not sure it’s usable, but Carrie seemed pleased enough when I texted it to her. Did she show it to you? I promise I don’t normally take sneaky snaps of women I don’t know.’
‘Oh, that picture. Yes, I saw it. You texted it to her? You didn’t print it off and leave it on her doorstep?’
He hadn’t. In that moment I’d realised Carrie not only didn’t have cancer, she’d also sent those messages to herself. Her tangle of lies grew knottier, and the more I had tugged to undo them, the tighter they seemed to become.
The sting of Leon cleaning up my bloody wound drags me from the past. All around me, police scurry backwards and forwards outside Carrie’s house, setting up a cordon with blue and white tape. A man and woman in police uniform walk over to me and introduce themselves.
‘We’d like to take a statement, please,’ says the woman.
‘Can you just give me a minute to finish cleaning her up?’ Leon requests. He is all business while doing his job, giving no hint of the flirtation from two days earlier.
The officers do as they’re asked and stand some distance away, while Leon continues to fuss. He gently presses my left cheekbone, and I gasp.
‘Hmm, I’d like that X-rayed just in case it’s a fracture. Even if it’s not, it’s going to be a hell of a bruise. There’s a strong chance you’re concussed. Can you follow the light for me?’
A tiny torch’s rays blind me momentarily. Only after several rapid blinks am I able to do as requested. Left, right, left, right, its hypnotic beam sends me flying back into the past again…
To when I tried to confront Carrie about everything. I’d marched round to her house, told her I knew she’d lied about the cancer, starting there because that was the worst of her deceptions. That call from her, pretending to be a doctor, had been the last straw. But before I could mention the messages or Leon, Smudge’s collar had arrived.
She’d looked so horrified. What an actress! Confused, I’d no choice but to go along with her to find out what the endgame was – especially as I’d just learned that confronting her with what I knew wasn’t the way to uncover the truth. As one liar to another, I needed to understand.
Her story about Andy had resonated with me, but the more I looked at everything as a whole, the more it felt as though I was reading a book I’d dropped and sent pages scattering, and now I was reading them out of order.
Andy might not be behind the messages, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t existed in Carrie’s life at some point, I decided. Perhaps she was emotionally disturbed. Maybe she even had Munchausen’s syndrome or some such, or Andy was the product of a psychotic break brought on by terrible things that really had happened to her in the past. It was hard to accept that the woman I’d come to think of as a daughter was a compulsive liar. Mad or bad, until I knew which I’d reserved judgement.
I thought about talking it through with Rosie. Fear that it would only reinforce her suspicions that I was a woman on the edge stopped me. That’s why I hadn’t confided in Jackie, either, despite her having her own reservations about Carrie. Besides, her involvement wouldn’t solve anything, only complicate matters.
There had been, of course, the possibility of going back to the police, but the fact was there was nothing to tell them. I’d no further proof to persuade them to look into Carrie’s connection with Joanne’s death than I’d had the last time I’d spoken with them. The story of how Joanne died may or may not have been true, but I didn’t trust it because I wasn’t convinced Andy even existed. To test the theory, I’d described Leon to Carrie and asked if he sounded like her evil ex, and she’d eagerly agreed.
Perhaps Carrie had killed Joanne. If so, I’d have to tread very carefully indeed, but somehow, despite everything, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that of her.
The obvious conclusion could only be that Carrie had done all of this for money. The problem was, she’d repeatedly turned down my offers to take the bucket list donations. A con would have explained lying about the cancer, but not lying about being on the run from a murderous husband.
Suspicions were starting to form about her true target. Nausea spread through me alongside the realisation. Still I’d denied the truth. Instead I made a decision: if I wanted to get to the bottom of this, I had no choice but to play along and see how the cards fell.
That’s how I ended up sitting on the front wall of Carrie’s garden, having blood wiped from my face.
Fifty-One
Blood tickles my cheek, and I pull my sleeve over my hand to dab at it with the material. Leon gets there first.
I’m barely listening; instead I’m remembering watching Carrie cry over her cat’s collar. In my mind’s eye, I see again the dry flakes of blood cracking across the ‘lost’ poster. I remember the flash of inspiration that made me suggest texting Andy, because I hadn’t expected her to get a reply. I’d gone back to my house thinking I’d trapped her, and she’d be forced to confess everything when he didn’t come.
As I’d walked home, I’d spotted that knot of boys on bikes who I’d once accused of playing tricks on Carrie.
‘Hey, remember that twenty quid I gave you?’ I called. The leader had nodded, keeping his distance as he did nonchalant wheelies. ‘Did you ever see anyone hanging round my friend’s house?’
‘Nah. Saw her putting a box out on her step yesterday, then you coming back and finding it. Was she playing a joke? She looked dead pleased with herself after.’
That answered the mad or bad question, then. Before I could answer, he was speaking again. ‘Oy, is there any money for her cat?’
‘What do you mean? Have you seen Smudge?’
‘Seen him round the bins yesterday. Tried to catch him but couldn’t. I told your mate, but she wasn’t bothered – but if you’re willing to pay, I could trap him for you.’
‘You sure it was the same cat in the posters?’
The whole group had stopped, eager at the chance of cash. ‘Yeah!’ they chorused.
‘Got cool eyes,’ added the one with the skull balaclava.
‘Leave him be tonight, but if you can try and get him for me tomorrow morning I’ll give you all fifty pounds to split between you. That’s a tenner each. No telling anyone, though, otherwise everyone will want in on it and you’ll hardly get any money.’
The Perfect Friend: A gripping psychological thriller Page 23