Shadow of a Doubt

by Michelle Davies

  ‘Either you promise to never tell anyone it was me or––’ He broke off and looked about wildly, as though seeking inspiration. Then his eyes swivelled towards upstairs, where Cara could still be heard crying. Anita’s stomach lurched in terror. ‘Or she’s next,’ he finished.

  Anita let out a strangled cry. ‘No!’

  Without thinking, she stepped forward to grab the knife from his hand, but he thrust it towards her so the tip was dangerously close to her chin. His hand wobbled and the knife with it.

  ‘This would slice through her body like butter,’ he hissed. ‘One stab is all it would take.’

  ‘Please don’t hurt my daughter,’ she whimpered, her face awash with new tears, her jaw throbbing from his fist.

  He took her by the arm and dragged her to the foot of the stairs. Cara’s howling had subsided to wracked sobs. Anita was desperate to get to her and comfort her, but under no circumstance would she risk Cara unlocking the bathroom door now. It was too late for her to save Matty, but she would do whatever it took to protect his sister.

  ‘Call her to come down.’

  The wild look on his face terrified her, but she shook her head. ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘Then I’ll go up.’ He stepped onto the bottom stair, but she managed to hold him back.

  ‘Okay, I’ll do as you say!’ she said in desperation. ‘I won’t tell the police you were here. Just leave Cara alone.’

  ‘How do I know you’ll keep your word?’

  More tears streaked her face. ‘I promise you on my life I will.’ She meant it too. She would rather he escaped unpunished than see Cara harmed.

  He thought for a moment. He was perspiring heavily and the effect of the sweat glistening on his face in the darkness of the hallway made him seem even more menacing. Anita began to sob.

  ‘If you ever tell anyone about this,’ he began, raising the tip of the blade level with her chin again, ‘I‘ll make sure Cara doesn’t see her next birthday and you’ll be burying her next to her brother. I’ll make it look like an accident too, so you’ll never know when it will happen or even if it was my doing. But I will kill her if you dare mention my name to the police.’

  Still sobbing, Anita pleaded with him. ‘This isn’t you talking. You’re not this person.’

  He faltered for a second and she tried to take advantage by seizing the knife. She saw a flash of metal, then an intense pain seared the back of her hand and she looked down to see blood bubbling up through a gash in her skin. Anita cried out in shock and his eyes widened as though surprised by what he’d done, but then his expression hardened. ‘Now do you believe me?’

  She clutched her hand over the wound. Despite the blood, she could tell it wasn’t deep. But she now knew, looking into his eyes, he was capable of hurting Cara. It devastated her to think he would get away with killing Matty, but she would not let him take her daughter’s life too. ‘I do believe you,’ she nodded, tears drenching her cheeks. ‘I won’t tell on you.’

  He lowered the knife. Above them, Cara also continued to cry.

  ‘You should tell the police it was her fault, that she was the one who wrapped Matty in the curtain. The police won’t charge her, she’s too young.’

  Anita was repulsed. ‘I can’t do that!’

  ‘You’ve been saying for months you think there’s something wrong with her.’ In the darkness, his eyes were almost black as they bored into hers. ‘The police are going to want to blame someone for what’s happened. If they think it’s you, you’ll go to prison.’ Anita flinched at that. ‘But if they think Cara did it while playing a game and it was an accident, chances are she’ll be let off with a slap on the wrist.’

  Anita was too dumbfounded to reply and he took that as his cue to make a run for it. He was almost at the back door when she caught up with him and grabbed his arm. He gave her a disdainful look as he tried to shrug her hand off, but she clung on.

  ‘You might have bought my silence now, but trust me when I say I will not take this secret to my grave,’ she said, her face ablaze with emotion.

  He wavered. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ’I do. When the time comes, the whole world will find out you murdered my son.’

  Part Three

  Now

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Cara

  I slam my palm down hard on the table, furious at what Lisa has just admitted. The barista who brought over the free lattes casts a worried glance in our direction.

  ‘You heard Matty die?’ I hiss. ‘Why have you never told me this before? More to the point, why didn’t you do anything to stop it happening?’

  Lisa gulps back fresh tears. ‘I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. For weeks you’d been saying your house was haunted and then I hear––’

  I cut her off, disgusted. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t help us.’

  ‘I know it sounds awful, but you need to listen to me carefully, Cara. You need to hear the whole story. There’s more to it.’ She looks so earnest, it halts my tirade.

  ‘Go on,’ I order her gruffly.

  Lisa takes a deep breath, then begins, her voice low and considered.

  ‘I let myself in the back door and was in the kitchen on my way to find you in the front room when I suddenly heard Matty yelling and you screaming. Then there was this awful, horrible choking sound and I didn’t know what it was.’ Lisa swallows hard. ‘I know I should’ve come to help, but I panicked and hid in the cupboard under the stairs. I left the door open a crack and I watched you run past into the hallway and heard you bang the bathroom door shut, then Auntie Neet came rushing downstairs and that’s when she found Matty. She was crying so much and I was about to come out of the cupboard and go to her when I heard him too.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Limey Stan.’

  I stare at her, astonished.

  ‘You heard Limey Stan in the room where Matty died?’

  Lisa nods and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. For so long I’ve wanted validation that I wasn’t going crazy and imagining Limey Stan, and now my cousin has just confirmed I wasn’t – but twenty-five years too late.

  ‘Did you get a glimpse of him?’ I ask wonderingly.

  ‘No. I just heard his voice.’

  I sit back, stunned. Then something in me snaps.

  ‘You never said a word!’ I yell at her, not caring if I’m overheard. ‘You heard him and yet you let everyone believe it was me and that I’d made it all up. I was shut away in the Peachick for two years because of you and sent to live hundreds of miles away from everyone.’ Angry tears stream down my face. ‘You let people think I killed Matty.’

  Lisa reaches for my hand, but I snatch it away.

  ‘No, you don’t get to play the supportive cousin now,’ I spit at her.

  ‘I understand why you’re angry, but you need to hear me out,’ she says imploringly. ‘Before I tell you what happened next, please know that I am so, so sorry I didn’t help you that night. I will never forgive myself for not stopping what happened. But it’s not true to say I never spoke up about it until now. I did, so many times––’

  Her words are flying at me like machine-gun fire and it’s making my head swim. ‘Slow down,’ I say. ‘Explain what you mean.’

  After another deep, shaky breath, she begins. ‘I did hear another voice besides your mum’s in the front room.’

  ‘Limey Stan’s,’ I intone dully, but my body and brain are ablaze with fury. Every inch of me thrums with it.

  ‘Yes, but when I say I heard Limey Stan’s voice, what I mean is I heard whoever Limey Stan was. There wasn’t a ghost in your front room that night, Cara, it was a man – and he was talking to your mum.’

  I lurch in my seat, dizzy with horror. ‘No, it can’t have been.’

  ‘It was. I heard them talking after Auntie Neet came downstairs and found Matty’s body.’

  I let out a low moan. My mind is spinning so much I can’t see straight. Lisa jumps out of her seat a
nd kneels beside my chair.

  ‘Cara––’ She reaches for my hand and this time I let her take it.

  ‘She can’t have … She wouldn’t …’

  ‘I didn’t want to think it either and, believe me, I’ve gone over it a million times since, wondering if I was mistaken, but I’m certain that’s what I heard. Limey Stan, whoever he was, started saying something about not getting into trouble and then I heard Auntie Neet agree he should leave before the police arrived and then I heard him coming towards the kitchen and I was so petrified he’d find me, I slipped out the front door and ran all the way home.’ Lisa begins to cry again. ‘The next morning, everything was such a blur after Mum told me that Matty was dead that I couldn’t be sure if what I’d heard actually happened. At one point, I convinced myself that I hadn’t even left my bed and I’d dreamt it all.’

  I don’t acknowledge I’m hearing her, so she swings back into her seat and leans across the table towards me, her voice lowered again. I keep my gaze firmly trained on the surface of the table, because I cannot bear to look at her. Lisa could’ve saved both Matty and me from our different fates that night, but instead she saved herself.

  ‘Two days after it happened, I tried to talk to Auntie Neet about what I’d heard. She got hysterical and said I was lying to stir up trouble and that I was making her suffering worse, which is a horrible thing to be accused of when you’re a kid,’ Lisa says. ‘Mum and Gary wouldn’t listen to me either and when police officers turned up to question them, Gary sent me to my room before he even let them in the house. I didn’t know what else to do. Everyone was so convinced of your guilt, they refused to entertain the idea someone else could’ve attacked Matty. Then the hospital diagnosed you as being delusional and I started to panic that I wasn’t well either and became convinced they’d take me away too. So I kept quiet. But when they told me you were coming out of hospital and going into foster care, I tried to talk to Auntie Neet again, but she told my mum I was shit-stirring and it got really nasty between us for a while and I started to doubt myself again.’

  She pauses and I finally force myself to look at her and I can see she is as devastated telling me all this as I am listening to it.

  ‘After I went to university in Scotland, I didn’t come home that much, but every time I did, I’d go to see your mum and would ask her again about the voice, and every time she’d say I was either making it up to cause trouble between her and your dad or I’d imagined it.’

  Something about her account doesn’t make sense, and I say so.

  ‘You’ve had all these years to share your suspicions with the police but you haven’t. Why not? If they knew you were in the house at the time Matty was killed, they’d have interviewed you as a witness.’

  Lisa nods. ‘Lots of times I thought about going to the police station to report it, but at the end of the day I had no proof. I didn’t see anything, I just heard talking.’ She looks shamefaced. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  My voice clamps in my throat. How can I respond to that? Lisa merrily got on with her life afterwards. I didn’t have that luxury.

  ‘I also loved your mum. If I’d have gone to the police and it turned out I really was mistaken, she’d never have forgiven me for dragging her through more stress,’ she adds.

  I swallow hard. ‘What about my dad? Did you ever try talking to him about it?’

  ‘A couple of times, but the thing with your dad, he was a closed book after Matty died and you went. Conversation with him was impossible.’ Her eyes fill with fresh tears. ‘He missed you so much.’

  ‘Not enough to get me out of foster care.’

  Silence settles over us for a moment. Then I clear my throat.

  ‘So, Limey Stan was a real person and not a …’ But I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence. The already shaky foundations of my childhood are being razed to the ground as we speak and my mind is filled with only one thought: Mum put the blame on me.

  ‘There was no ghost in your house that night,’ Lisa says emphatically, finishing my sentence for me. ‘Limey Stan was a real person and Auntie Neet knew it all along.’

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Cara

  I remember little of the journey back to Parsons Close, or the hours that follow. I do know Lisa helped me upstairs and into bed, where, my mind blanked with shock, and shivering uncontrollably, I curled up on my side under the duvet. Tishk must’ve brought Mustard round when he saw Lisa’s car in the driveway because my dog bounded into the room just as I got into bed, as relieved to see me as I was to see him, then settled down on the floor bedside me, one ear cocked, my consummate guard.

  I do not sleep though. I simply lie like that for hours, staring into space, until I hear a tentative knock at the door and Lisa comes in bearing a mug of tea, which she sets down on the bedside table. Then she hesitantly perches on the edge of the mattress and smoothes back my hair from my forehead.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she whispers.

  I close my eyes tight to stop the tears coming, but it’s no good, they’re too dense, too demanding.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asks.

  I shake my head. Where would I start? My mother sacrificed me, her nine-year-old child, apparently to save her own skin. Her treachery and her lies condemned me to two years in a hospital being treated for a condition I wouldn’t have had but for her manipulation of my mental state, and then she ensured I was sent far away from home, away from everyone and everything I loved, so she didn’t have to live with her guilt. Really I should be incandescent, but I’m too heartbroken to be as angry as I should be. My mum was one of two people whose job it was to protect me from harm, my dad being the other. For his part, I have to believe he didn’t know what she did to me. I don’t think he’d have allowed it, so instead she let him think his only daughter took the life of his only son.

  And they called me the wicked one.

  I gesture to Lisa that I want to sit up and she helps me, propping up the pillows against the headboard. She lifts the tea to my lips so I can take a sip and pats my back gently when I cough it straight back up. I lean back against the pillows and look at her. I can tell she’s been crying again and there’s a tiny fraction of me, hardened like a kernel and buried deep inside, that doesn’t care she’s upset, because despite her excuses, she had the power to stop me being sent away and did nothing. But, really, I do not blame her. I know what it’s like to be the child who can’t make themselves heard by the adults around them, whose version of events is shot down every time without question. My mum told Lisa she’d got it wrong – as a thirteen-year-old taught to respect her elders, what else was she meant to think? Punishing her for not having the guts to pursue the truth isn’t fair of me and, right now, I think I prefer her as an ally rather than an enemy.

  ‘I need to ask you something,’ I say. ‘Why tell me now about Limey Stan? I mean, you didn’t have to – you could’ve carried on letting everyone, me included, think he was the famous Heldean ghost.’

  Lisa reacts as though she’s been preparing for this question.

  ‘It was after Auntie Neet left you the house that I knew I had to say something. It was such a huge, unexpected gesture after you two being estranged for so long that there had to be a reason for it, and I suspect it was because I was right all along – there was someone else in the house with her the night that Matty was murdered and rather than speak up and admit it, Auntie Neet let you take the blame. I think giving you the house was her way of trying to make amends.’

  ‘So you think it must have been this man who killed Matty and not me?’ I watch my cousin keenly for any sign that she thinks I was responsible. Because, when you think about it, a strange man being in the house doesn’t necessarily mean I’m innocent.

  ‘He must’ve done it. You said someone grabbed Matty through the curtain and I saw your mum come downstairs afterwards, so it can only have been whoever was in the front room.’ Lisa takes a deep breath. ‘I think he was her lover and
your mum had been sneaking him in late at night while your dad was away and it was him making all that noise while you were in bed.’

  Finally, someone in my family believes I didn’t kill Matty. Gratitude floods through me and I lean forward to hug her. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper. She starts to apologise again, but I shake my head. ‘Please, enough. You tried to get my mum to confess – it’s not your fault she didn’t.’

  ‘I should’ve tried harder.’

  ‘I’m not angry with you, Lisa,’ I say firmly.

  No, that emotion is reserved for my mum and what she did, for my dad for being so blind and weak he didn’t see what was happening in his own house, and for the police for assuming my guilt just because I’d had a run of bad behaviour at school and had accidentally hurt Matty’s wrist once. It’s also reserved for the bastard who killed him after torturing me at night for months on end.

  ‘I won’t let him get away with it,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to find out who he was.’

  My eyes smart as I say it. Truth be told, I am bereft to discover Limey Stan was almost certainly a real person. Like it or not, my entire identity and who I am is tied up with being the girl from the Heldean Haunting and not even a surname change helped me escape the notoriety of that. To discover it was all a lie perpetuated by my mum is something I shall never get over.

  ‘But it happened twenty-five years ago and the only person who knew who it was has just died,’ Lisa points out.

  ‘Well, it’s definitely someone who’s still in Heldean because they’ve been breaking into the house pretending to be Limey Stan again.’

  ‘It might not be the same person.’

  My laugh is brittle. ‘Oh, come on, who else is going to write I am Limey Stan on a mirror or move Matty’s toys about?’

  ‘Someone who wants to wind you up? One of those spooktators you were telling me about – it would give that blogger something to write about.’

  I can feel myself getting annoyed. I don’t need her doubting me about this. Then I notice the high spots of colour that have appeared on her cheeks and I realise she’s agitated too.