Lost Innocence

by Susan Lewis

  Apparently enjoying the moment, he said, ‘I can be anyone you like as long as you feed me. Do we have some snacks to be going on with?’

  ‘There must be crisps here somewhere,’ Rachel answered, tugging open a cupboard. ‘This family has a passion for them. Ah, here we are, good old salt and vinegar. Gosh, it takes me back, foraging about in this kitchen, gossiping and cooking and getting pissed as we go. That’s one thing I have to say about your husband, Alicia, he always had a great nose for wine. Are you married, Cameron?’

  ‘You don’t have to answer that,’ Alicia told him, shooting Rachel a meaningful look.

  ‘I’m happy to,’ he insisted. ‘My wife and I separated about a year ago. You could say she traded me in for a younger model, because her new partner would probably still be in short pants if he weren’t so precocious. Not that I’m bitter, you understand, but I wouldn’t have minded giving him a bit of a duffing-up when it first happened.’

  Rachel and Alicia were laughing, but acknowledging the seriousness of it, Alicia said, ‘Are you still in contact with one another?’

  ‘Only if it concerns the children, or the divorce.’

  ‘How many children do you have?’

  ‘Five or six,’ he said airily.

  Alicia’s jaw dropped, until catching the twinkle in his eye she started to laugh.

  ‘OK, three,’ he admitted, ‘but it often feels like five or six, they have so many friends. They’re all girls, and they’ve all flown the nest now, except when they need money or a shoulder to cry on, then Dad’s place is the best pad in town.’

  ‘Do you have any photographs?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Not with me, but I have a whole album full where I’m staying, if you’re ever passing.’

  Choking on a laugh, she put her glass down and started to pull out place mats and plates to set the table outside.

  By the time they sat down to eat it was almost nine thirty, and not having realised how late it was until she happened to glance at the clock, Alicia felt a bolt of fear for Nat. Why hadn’t Jolyon called yet? What was delaying him?

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Rachel whispered, sensing her distress.

  ‘But look at the time.’

  ‘Jolyon will call as soon as there’s some news.’

  Alicia looked at Cameron, and alongside her concern she felt a swell of gratitude for the welcome distraction of these past few hours. Had she been alone she’d probably have chewed her nails to the knuckles by now, or paced a rut into the carpet, or torn out half her hair. As it was, she’d managed to go a few minutes at a stretch without even thinking about Nat, or Craig, and during the moments when she had, she’d been able to disguise her anguish with a smile.

  However, the heaviness of her concern for Nat began weighing on her heavily now. How could she have spent this time enjoying herself while her son was going through such a terrible ordeal? Even if she couldn’t be with him, she should at least have been calling Jolyon to find out what was happening, or sitting by the phone waiting for a call. Instead, she’d invited a man who was practically a stranger into her home, let him ply her with wine and sympathy and cook her a meal, while she indulged in a horrible rant of complaint and self-pity. She was obviously losing her grip, unable to get anything into a proper perspective, or even to know how to behave. She could hardly believe now that she’d started a brawl with Sabrina. What the hell had she been thinking? All this time she’d managed to avoid her, then like the crazy woman Sabrina had accused her of being, she’d had to go and create the kind of scene that was so degrading she wanted to bury herself away never to come up again.

  ‘Alicia,’ Rachel said gently, ‘you’re not eating.’

  Alicia looked at her. ‘I’m …’ Her heart wrenched as the phone inside started to ring.

  ‘Shall I get it?’ Rachel offered.

  ‘No, I will,’ Alicia said, and putting down her napkin she ran into the kitchen and closed the door.

  ‘Were you sleeping?’ Jolyon asked when she answered.

  ‘No. How is he? What’s happening?’

  ‘He’s tired, and a bit shell-shocked by everything, but on the whole he’s bearing up.’

  ‘Did he lie?’ she asked, in spite of knowing it was a pointless question now the DNA was back. Maybe there had been a mix-up, or a cross-contamination…

  ‘He seemed to think that because he didn’t ejaculate, there would be no trace of semen, so that’s why he lied,’ Jolyon told her.

  Alicia was struggling. ‘So he did have sex with her?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ she murmured, clapping a hand over her mouth. ‘And was it…? Was it…?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  ‘That’s still in dispute,’ Jolyon answered, ‘but he’s admitted to hating her when he did it, because she’d just told him about Craig and her mother.’

  Alicia’s eyes closed in despair. Her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak. She’d always known it would devastate Nat if he found out, but for it to have come to this … ‘Have they formally charged him yet?’ she finally managed to ask.

  ‘No. They’re interviewing Annabelle again in the morning, so a lot will depend on what she says now. Off the record I’ve been told that Nat wasn’t the only one she had sex with last Saturday night.’

  Alicia’s heart gave a small leap of hope. ‘Do you mean someone else could have caused the bruising?’

  ‘It’s possible, but I don’t want to put too much store by it at this stage, because there’s still a way to go, and there’s still the problem of her age.’

  Remembering that was a horror that wouldn’t go away, she said, ‘No matter what Annabelle says, Sabrina won’t let him get away with…’

  ‘Don’t think about her now,’ Jolyon advised. ‘Just concentrate on yourself and try to get a good night’s sleep. I’m taking Nat home with me.’

  Immediately understanding why, she said, ‘You mean he can’t come here because I went over to Annabelle’s earlier?’

  ‘It didn’t help the situation, but don’t be too hard on yourself, most of us would have done the same in your shoes.’

  Taking very small comfort from that, she said, ‘Can I speak to him?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll get him to call you from the car when we’re on our way home, but I wouldn’t expect too much if I were you. He’s not only exhausted, he’s deeply ashamed for having lied, and feels that he’s letting you down badly.’

  ‘But you have to tell him he’s not,’ she cried. ‘If anything it’s the other way round.’

  ‘Actually, I think Craig’s the one who did the letting down,’ Jolyon said soberly, and with a quiet goodbye he ended the call.

  As she replaced the receiver Alicia was registering only those final words. He was right, of course, Craig had let them down. If he hadn’t cheated on her with Sabrina, or remortgaged their house, or taken the easy way out by dying, none of this would be happening. They wouldn’t even be in Holly Wood, never mind facing the kind of threat to Nat’s future that was going to utterly destroy it if Jolyon couldn’t make it go away.

  Yet she wanted Craig more now than she ever had in her life, because she was absolutely terrified that Jolyon wouldn’t be able to achieve what she could only feel would be a miracle.

  Lisa Murray was always interested to see where, and how, the victims who made up her caseload lived. Sometimes it could add a whole new dimension to her character assessment, or at least a new insight into what made them tick. When in their own environment they generally became more confident, she found, and opened up in a way that the sterile atmosphere of Pilning, for all the efforts to make it feel like home, sometimes prevented. In some instances she’d found another personality altogether emerging from the protective shell adopted in the rape suite, and in Annabelle Preston’s case that was starting to happen.

  There was no doubt the girl led a privileged existence out here in this leafy backwater, with all the trappings most girls her
age could only dream about. Whether she appreciated how fortunate she was seemed doubtful, since her attitude towards it all seemed to be one of indifference, or perhaps entitlement. However, when children grew up with all the advantages money could buy, to them it was the norm. So Lisa wasn’t about to judge the girl harshly for not seeming to realise that not everyone lived in an exquisitely restored Queen Anne house with at least six bedrooms, a Mercedes and a Lexus in the drive and fastidiously achieved detail in every room.

  What she wasn’t prepared to give Annabelle a break over, however, was the way she’d lied during her initial interview, because one lie in a statement was like one drop of poison in a water glass. The drink might still look safe, and ultimately, it might do no harm, but only a fool would trust it without finding out first why it had been put there and how damaging it could be.

  Annabelle’s expression was edged with surliness and defiance as she regarded Lisa across a gilt-edged coffee table carefully positioned between the twin japanned sofas they were sitting on. The room was pure Classical Revival, from the arabesque wall decorations, to the maplewood secretaire, to the very grand marble and limestone fireplace. Its colours were muted and tasteful, with an ivory-wash carpet, sofa accessories in the same shade, and peppermint-striped wallpaper that blended perfectly with the copious silks swagging and draping the windows.

  Repeating her question, Lisa said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us you had sex with the other two boys?’

  Annabelle was still scowling, but behind it Lisa was detecting an uncertainty and defensiveness that interested her far more than the typical teenage attitude. ‘You’re not going to tell my mother any of this, are you?’ she demanded.

  ‘No, now please answer the question.’

  ‘OK, if you must know, I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d end up thinking I was a…Well, that I, you know… Went with anyone, and even if I did, which I don’t, it wasn’t them who raped me. It was Nathan Carlyle.’

  Lisa gazed directly into her eyes, half expecting her to look away, but she didn’t. ‘Could you have acquired the bruising to your genitals while having intercourse with them?’ she asked.

  ‘No-o, because they weren’t raping me.’

  ‘Did you ask Theo to lie in his statement?’

  Annabelle flushed. ‘I had to, didn’t I, or we wouldn’t be saying the same thing.’

  ‘Have you contacted Neil to ask him to do the same?’

  In an effort to cover her embarrassment Annabelle tilted her head cockily and pursed her mouth. ‘No,’ she answered.

  ‘Why?’

  Annabelle didn’t reply.

  ‘Is it because you don’t know where to find him? In fact, you’re probably not a hundred per cent certain his name’s Neil, are you?’

  ‘That’s what he said it was, and I don’t see any reason why he’d lie.’

  ‘Are you in the habit of having sex with boys you don’t know?’

  Annabelle’s nostrils flared. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she retorted. ‘When you’re at a party and the music’s going and everyone’s having a good time, it’s like you’re in love with the whole world, so it’s not about who you know, or what their names are, because everything’s cool and you just do it with whoever you want.’

  ‘And you wanted to do it with him, and Theo McAllister, but not with Nathan Carlyle?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Lisa waited for her to realise her mistake.

  It didn’t take long. ‘I mean, I wanted to with Nat,’ she corrected, ‘right up until he turned feral. Then he scared me and I wanted to get away, but he wouldn’t let me. I told you already, I thought he was going to kill me. Look, I’ve still got the bruises on my neck to prove it.’

  Since Nathan had admitted to grabbing her round the throat, Lisa didn’t ask if she might have got the markings from the other boys. Instead she said, ‘The thong you brought with you to Pilning on Monday wasn’t the one you were wearing on Saturday night, was it?’

  Annabelle baulked as the colour deepened in her cheeks. ‘What do you mean?’ she said stiffly.

  ‘I think you understand the question.’

  Annabelle’s lips were pursing more tightly.

  ‘We have the one you were wearing,’ Lisa told her, ‘it was found by one of the forensic team in the woods.’

  Annabelle swallowed hard as her eyes went down.

  ‘I thought I’d made myself clear on Monday about the seriousness of lying to the police,’ Lisa said sharply. ‘This isn’t a game, Annabelle. A young man’s future is at stake and now we know you’re lying about how many sexual encounters you had, and that you’ve planted false evidence, you’re making it very difficult for us to believe anything else you’ve told us.’

  Annabelle sat very still, her beautiful young features a mask of resentment and guilt.

  ‘Annabelle?’

  She started to answer, but then her face crumpled and tears swamped her eyes. ‘I’m not lying about that,’ she insisted. ‘I swear I’m not. He got hold of me like he was going to kill me and I was really scared. He was off his head, and…’

  ‘… so were you,’ Lisa cut in, ‘so are you sure you really remember what happened? Might he have been play-acting, and you, under the influence of drugs, misunderstood…’

  ‘If that’s what he’s saying he’s lying,’ Annabelle cried. ‘He was deadly serious and I’m lucky to be alive.’

  Lisa only looked at her.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re being so mean to me,’ Annabelle wailed. ‘I’m the one who got raped. It was me he threw down on the ground and tried to strangle.’

  ‘In your original statement you said you tripped, then he threw himself on top of you,’ Lisa reminded her.

  ‘Yeah, well that’s what happened.’

  ‘That he threw you down, or threw himself on top of you?’

  ‘The second one.’

  Lisa nodded.

  She allowed several moments to pass, interested to see if the silence would put Annabelle even more on the defensive and perhaps push her into entangling herself even further in the web of lies she’d spun. Not that she doubted the girl had been raped, or at least she clearly believed she had, it was all about trying to get her story straight for a jury, because the shape it was in right now meant she wouldn’t even see the inside of a court.

  Eventually, Annabelle’s eyes came up, and to Lisa’s surprise the antagonism and hostility had gone. In their place was a lost young girl of fifteen who was no longer at all sure of herself. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said in a tremulous voice. ‘I shouldn’t have lied to you. It was wrong, and I wish I hadn’t done it, because I can see how stupid it was now. It’s just…I mean…I didn’t want you to think I was …’ She shrugged rather than say the word slut, or slag, or slapper, which was what Lisa imagined was on the tip of her tongue. ‘And I didn’t want Theo to get into trouble because of my age,’ she added.

  ‘Well, it’s a little late for that now,’ Lisa told her. ‘Anyone who has sex with a girl under sixteen is breaking the law…’

  ‘But I wanted to do it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s still an offence, so now it’ll be up to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether or not they want to press charges.’

  Annabelle could hardly have looked more desperate. ‘Please don’t,’ she implored. ‘I’m losing all my friends as it is.’

  ‘Annabelle, you’re an intelligent girl. You know you’re too young to be having sex…’

  ‘But everyone does. It’s not just me…’

  ‘It’s you we’re talking about, and I can’t press home strongly enough how much you’ve weakened your case by lying. If all this goes in front of a jury, it’s going to be very difficult for them to bring a conviction for rape when you’ve lied and tampered with evidence. A charge of unlawful sex probably won’t even be contended, because Nathan is no longer denying that intercourse took place. So now, Annabelle, I want you to think about this very carefully be
fore you answer, and then I want you to tell me the absolute truth. Did Nathan Carlyle rape you?’

  Annabelle’s head came up. There was no hesitation at all, though her words were quiet and slightly shaky, as she said, ‘Yes, he did. He definitely raped me.’

  Detective Inspector Caroline Ash wasn’t particularly fond of the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer who was assessing the Carlyle case, and she was going to like the weasel-featured excuse of a man a whole lot less if he decided there was not enough evidence to go forward with. Damn the Preston girl. If she hadn’t lied during her initial statement, this could be sailing straight through to Crown Court. As it was, the weasel was not sending out many vibes of encouragement.

  Contrary to what Clive Bevan thought, sitting there with his immaculate hair and soap-star looks, this wasn’t a grudge prosecution as far as she was concerned. It was a straightforward determination to seek justice for a girl whose behaviour might be questionable, and whose veracity was as dodgy as a three-legged donkey, but SAIT officer Lisa Murray was convinced she was being truthful about the rape, and given Lisa Murray’s track record that was good enough for Caroline Ash.

  ‘But you don’t have any actual evidence,’ the weasel pointed out, for the umpteenth time. ‘This is a classic “he said, she said” and if that’s all you’ve got it’ll be thrown out before you…’

  ‘How many more times,’ Bevan interrupted, launching into his own repeat, ‘there’s the bruising, the semen, Carlyle’s admission he hated her… The boy’s lying, I’m telling you. There was nothing consensual about that shag, and once we get him up on the stand, believe me, the jury’s going to see straight through him.’

  In the end, after hours of arguing, bullying, cajoling and even, occasionally, reasoning, the weasel finally signed off on the prosecution, leaving Detective Inspector Ash with a smug hope that Craig Carlyle was looking down from his cloud, and DS Bevan with a phone call to make.