Your Guilty Lies (ARC)

by Ruth Heald

  ‘How could you all grow up in the same area without knowing?’

  ‘I’m just getting my head round this, Katie. I’m not sure if I believe it. But I didn’t have much of a relationship with my father, so I don’t really know what he was like. I didn’t even know who he was until I was about thirteen. I tracked him down. Told Mum I was going to football practice and visited once a week. He used to make me do odd jobs for him in the garden.’

  ‘Didn’t you see your father’s name in the papers after the girl died? It was big local news. You must have realised then.’

  ‘We moved away. Mum suddenly decided urban life was too much for her and she moved us down to Kent to live with her sister in the countryside. It was too far away to keep in contact with my old friends. I would never have found out what happened. I wrote letters to my dad, but he never replied. I didn’t hear anything about him again. Not until he died.’

  ‘When did you move?’ I ask. I’ve laid the newspaper articles out in front of me. Paula’s sister died in September 1979.

  ‘It was shortly before I went into my third year at secondary school,’ Ian says. ‘So it must have been 1979.’

  ‘When in 1979?’ I ask urgently.

  ‘In the school holidays. It would have been early August.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask. ‘It was August, not September?’

  ‘I’m sure. We were in the countryside a few weeks before I started at the new school at the beginning of term.’

  If he’s telling the truth, then he can’t have killed Paula’s sister.

  Forty-Four

  I put down the phone, head spinning. Either Ian’s lying, or Paula is. I look at my watch. I hope Amy will be here soon.

  The landline starts ringing as soon as I put it down, an unfamiliar tone. No one ever rings this number. It must be Amy.

  But the caller display shows a foreign number. I stare for a second and then something clicks. The German family that Paula used to work for. They must be returning my call. But it’s the middle of the night.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello? Is that Katie?’ The woman says in heavily accented English.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, my heart pumping in my chest.

  ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t ring before. I didn’t get your message. You left it on my work phone and I was on holiday. If I’d have picked it up, then I’d have called immediately.’ Her words come out in a rush. ‘You said you were employing Paula. You need to get her out of your home.’

  My heart sinks. I feel terrified for my girls. ‘Why?’ I ask, dreading the answer.

  ‘She’s a bad woman. She seems sweet and kind, like she’s nurturing the children. But it’s all an act. She hurt my girls. They’re twins. They were only little. She played them off against each other, told one she was good, the other one she was evil. They’re both with a child psychiatrist now. Thank god I found out in time. Otherwise it could have been much worse.’

  ‘Oh my god.’ I can’t believe what I’m hearing. But somehow it all makes sense.

  ‘How did you find out?’ I ask.

  ‘One of my girls got very thin. I thought she was too young for anorexia but we couldn’t work out what it could be. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her. But then she confided in us that Paula wasn’t feeding her. She was deliberately neglecting her, making sure she was weak.’

  I feel sick. I think of Frances. How tiny she is. Has Paula been starving her?

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But my daughters told their psychiatrist that she used to make them fight each other, egging them on to injure each other. Just for her entertainment.’

  I remember what I’d read in the psychiatric journal about Paula’s childhood. How her twin had joined in with her father and hurt Paula. Was she so damaged by her experiences that she tried to replicate her own childhood with this woman’s twins, encouraging them to hurt each other, like her sister hurt her?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.

  ‘You need to get her away from your children. As fast as you can.’

  * * *

  I feel so afraid. I don’t want to go to bed, don’t want to sleep without Amy here. If Paula did all of that to the German children who she had no connection to, then what has she been doing to mine, the children of a man she hates?

  I feel sick and hug the twins close. I go into the upstairs hallway and look out of the huge stained-glass window at the front of the house. I can’t see any headlights or hear any car engines. There’s no one about. I take the twins with me to the front door to check it’s bolted.

  Then I go back to the box full of newspaper articles. I pull out the folder containing the psychiatric case study. I scan the case study again, reading how badly Paula was treated by her twin. Their father used to make them fight each other, the same as Paula had done with the German family. Both twins had had bruises all over their bodies. But Paula hardly fought back, and her sister got increasingly violent. She would hurt Paula just for fun. The case study expresses surprise that Paula seemed so together after everything that happened. It concludes that it’s inevitable that Paula will have suffered some psychological damage from her childhood and the death of her sister, but that she seemed happy and well-adjusted.

  There are several bits of paper behind the case study. Old social services assessments. At first they are glowing, saying how well Paula’s managing despite her upbringing, how well she’s settled into foster care.

  But as the reports move through the years, there are causes for concern. Injured pets. Younger children who were terrified of her. Then later, reports of violence towards other children in care. Foster family after foster family gave up on her because they didn’t feel safe with her in their homes.

  22

  We’re down in the basement again. With Dad. He takes us here a lot these days. He makes us fight so he can see who’s the strongest. He’s become obsessed with comparing us, standing us side by side and commenting on our similarities and differences. He says I’m too thin, too weak, too stupid. He tells us that he should never have had twins, that he should only have had one daughter, that I am the mistake, the one he doesn’t want or need.

  Ever since I sent that note to our brother, the punishments have been getting steadily worse. The last few days he’s hardly let me eat, taking away my food at dinner before I finish because of some tiny thing I’ve done wrong, like dropping my fork or forgetting to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. I’m constantly hungry.

  Since the note, my sister has been joining in when he punishes me. He says I’m her responsibility, that after I messed up by sending the note it was down to her to stop me from messing up again. The first time she ‘helped’ him he made her hit me with his belt until I bled. She cried afterwards.

  But now she’s hardened. She’s worse than Dad. She believes him when he says she’s better than me. She believes everything he says, that we are opposites, that she is good and that I’m bad. Now she hurts me just for fun. I can see from the glint in her eyes and the smile on her lips that she enjoys it. I have bruises all over. Dad always rewards her when she hurts me, with small gifts and trinkets. Today she’s wearing two necklaces he bought her, the one with the tiny silver bird and a new one: a heart-shaped locket with a picture of the two of them together inside.

  He’s told us that whoever wins this fight won’t have to go into the basement ever again. I don’t believe him, but I can see my sister does.

  I’m already weak with hunger. The room around me is blurry. Even if I tried to fight back, I know my sister would win. I don’t know why she listens to him. I don’t know why she obliges him by punching and kicking me. She must hate me.

  I look at her before we start. Her eyes are completely cold, completely dead. She holds up her hand as if to hit me. Dad watches, licking his lips in anticipation.

  She pauses, looks at me, and I see a moment of confusion, a moment of compassion.

  ‘Come on, girl,’ Dad whispers
encouragingly. Then her expression changes to one of pure anger and she brings her fist down hard into my face.

  Forty-Five

  I pace back and forth, waiting for Amy. The twins are asleep in the living room. I couldn’t put them back in their cots. I have to keep them close to me. When I hear a car and see headlights light up the window, I go to the front door and wait behind it.

  I hear someone get out of the car and slowly drag a suitcase to the door. When she knocks, I peer out through the peephole to check it’s Amy. It is.

  I hand over the last of my cash for the taxi, then gratefully let her in and explain what’s been happening.

  ‘You must be terrified,’ she says, as she navigates down the hallway on her crutches. ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Paula’s gone. Ian’s not here. I just didn’t want to be alone tonight.’

  ‘Are you sure Paula’s gone?’ Amy says, her eyes darting around the hallway as if she expects someone to jump out of the shadows. ‘She sounds crazy. She really thinks Ian killed her sister?’

  I go to the kitchen and show Amy the newspaper articles. Her eyes widen as she reads them. ‘Paula’s twin fell down the basement stairs,’ she says slowly. ‘That’s how she died…’

  I nod. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you think it’s a coincidence that I fell down the stairs here too?’ She glances down at her injured leg.

  ‘Amy – you were drunk.’

  ‘I was. But I also remember tripping over something.’

  ‘You did,’ I confirm. ‘It was a box of screwdrivers. I was so angry with Ian for leaving them there. It was so careless.’

  ‘The box was right across the top of the stairs. Almost as if it had been put there on purpose.’

  ‘Are you saying Ian deliberately tripped you up?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. The thing is, you assume Ian left it there, but I don’t think he did. It was Paula who came down the stairs before me, not Ian. I think she left it there to trip me.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know. You said she wanted to befriend you. That she wanted to live in the house with you. Well, I was in the way, wasn’t I? I was going to be your birth partner. I would have supported you when Ian was away. But I couldn’t because I broke my leg. Which meant she was the one who was there for you.’

  I nod. I think about the way Paula wormed her way into my life after the birth of the twins. How I depended on her because there was no one else. How the psychiatric report I read said that Paula had been violent towards her foster siblings. How Paula had treated the children in Germany. And I think about how Sabrina thought Paula had pushed her too.

  ‘You think Sabrina was telling the truth, that she pushed her down an escalator?’

  ‘Maybe. I mean, it seems possible.’

  ‘If she thinks Ian murdered her sister then she might have pushed her for revenge.’ I swallow. If she was willing to push Sabrina, killing Ian’s unborn baby, then what might she do to my twins?

  ‘Do you think she’s hurt my girls?’ I whisper, tears slipping down my cheeks as I remember what the German mother told me Paula did to her twins.

  Suddenly afraid, I go into the living room to check on the girls. They’re still asleep.

  Amy glances down at the babies on their mats. ‘They’re safe now. They’re with you.’

  I pick up my daughters and hug them tight.

  ‘Do you want me to stay up with you, or do you want to try and get some sleep?’ Amy asks.

  I’m exhausted. ‘Can you sleep beside me?’ I feel silly asking for something so childish, but I know Amy will understand.

  We go up to Paula’s room, as that’s the only room where the cots fit. I can’t be apart from the girls tonight. I need them close to me, so I can protect them.

  I feel odd lying down between the sheets in Paula’s bed. Amy drops off to sleep beside me immediately but every noise makes me jump. I don’t feel safe here. My mind is spinning. I tell myself everything will be OK. Paula left without a fuss. She must have been feeling guilty. But why would she leave without putting up a fight? When I talked to her about moving out because the house was for sale, she was furious. She’d said she’d be homeless. So where has she gone now?

  Eventually I fall into a fitful sleep, tossing and turning as my nightmares engulf me, dreaming of unknown hands suffocating my twins until I’m jolted awake. Each time I wake, I go over to the cots and hold my hand a little above the twins’ mouths to check they’re breathing. Amy lies in a deep sleep beside me.

  * * *

  I wake to the sound of smashing glass.

  I shake Amy until she stirs from sleep. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Amy – something broke. Did you hear it? It sounded like glass. A window.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, blinking rapidly, disorientated.

  Have I imagined it? ‘You stay here with the twins. I’ll go and investigate.’

  I creep down the stairs slowly. The house creaks and groans. Outside, rain pounds against the roof.

  When I get downstairs, I go into each room in turn. I’m petrified. There’s no one in the living room. I check each window. They’re all still closed and locked. Then I perform the same checks in the dining room. There’s no sign of any break-in there either.

  When I turn and go into the kitchen, I see what I’ve been dreading. The window of the back door has been smashed in and the door is wide open. The rain blows through the door into the kitchen.

  But there’s something wrong. There’s no glass on the kitchen floor. I look out of the door and see the beautiful wooden baby walker that Ian bought the girls lying outside in the undergrowth. Paula must have thrown it through the window from the inside. She was already inside the house.

  The smashing must have been a distraction. To get me out of the bedroom. Away from my twins. My heart lurches.

  I run back up the stairs, two at a time, as fast as I can.

  When I get to the bedroom, everything has been swept off the bedside table onto the floor. Amy lies still in the bed, blood oozing from a wound in her head.

  The twins’ cots are empty beside her. They’ve gone.

  Forty-Six

  I try and shake Amy awake, but she’s out cold.

  What’s happened to her? And where are my twins?

  ‘Alice!’ I scream. ‘Frances!’

  I dash round the house, overwhelmed by panic.

  There’s only one person who could have taken them. Paula.

  I rush downstairs.

  The door to the cupboard under the stairs is open. Paula’s taken them down to the basement. I can hear the faint sound of the piano music coming from the cupboard. The familiar lullaby.

  Heart thundering, I peer down the stone stairs. Paula’s sitting on the mattress with my babies, her face lit up from beneath by a single candle, her shadow long on the wall behind. She hugs Alice in her arms, while Frances lies on the damp mattress alone.

  ‘Paula,’ I shout. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m looking after them for you. You and Ian aren’t capable.’

  ‘You were going to hurt them. I spoke to Hanna. From the family in Germany. She said you damaged her children. You starved her daughter. Made her children fight each other.’

  ‘So what if I did?’

  I stare at her, incredulous. ‘Don’t hurt my girls. Please.’ My heart thumps faster. I can’t believe I ever trusted her with my babies.

  ‘Ian never deserved children,’ she says. ‘Not after what he did.’

  ‘I understand why you hate him. But what he did is nothing to do with my children. They’re innocent. So give them back. Please.’

  Paula shakes her head.

  I make my way down the stairs slowly. Without my phone to light the way, I can only see the outline of the uneven stone stairs and I’m terrified I’ll slip over. Paula can blow out the candle at any time and plunge the whole place into darkness. The lullaby co
mes to an end and I can only hear static on the tape.

  When I get to the bottom of the steps I try to grab Frances, but Paula snatches her away just in time and I fall onto the mattress with a bump, jarring my elbow.

  ‘Give her to me,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t you care about your other daughter? Don’t you care about Alice? Or do you only want to help your weaker daughter? The one who tore you apart when you gave birth. The one who would never have survived years ago. Who was too weak to live without medical intervention.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that Frances is so weak she should have died when she was born. You’re clearly not cut out to be a mother to two children. Nature found a way of fixing that. She should have died.’

  ‘You’ve been doing it to Frances too, haven’t you?’ I ask, my voice filled with disgust. ‘The same thing you did to Hanna’s daughter. You’ve been starving her.’

  She laughs. ‘You’re such a bad mother, you didn’t even notice. Didn’t you wonder why Frances is so thin? Why she doesn’t feed?’

  ‘Of course I did. I’ve asked you about it so many times. You know that.’

  ‘You were asking the wrong person. I’ve been medicating her, making her more sleepy than Alice, watering down her formula.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I wanted you to think you were doing something wrong, or that you were going mad.’

  ‘Why? Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Just for fun, really,’ she smirks. ‘I liked watching you in pain. Like your stitches too, when I infected them with bacteria. And your labour, when I insisted you didn’t need pain relief and cranked up the drugs in the drip at the hospital. Of course, I liked it more when it hurt Ian too, but when it became clear that Ian didn’t really care about you, I enjoyed hurting you for its own sake.’ As Paula speaks, the tape restarts the same lullaby. Quietly at first and then getting louder.