Little White Lies

by Philippa East

Friday 27th September:

  Day 124

  JESS

  She did believe us, she told us so, and so did the prosecutor and so did the judge, and the next day the trial restarted and they read out the verdict and Cassingham was found guilty.

  He was guilty!

  They came to get him and take him away. He didn’t even struggle, he knew it was over. In the hubbub that erupted in the courtroom, I grabbed Abigail’s arm, saying, ‘Aren’t you glad?’ She had to be – as glad as me.

  ‘He hurt me,’ she whispered as I put my arms around her. ‘He hurt me so much.’ She was all stiff and rigid in my arms, but that only made me hug her harder.

  Now her lawyer came wrestling his way through the crowd, dabbing at his brow with the heel of his hand, leaving damp patches on the cuff of his shirt. His eyes were shining and his mouth wore a smile. ‘I rarely do this,’ he said, ‘the police usually speak. But come with me – the reporters will be waiting at the western exit. If you’d let me, I’d like to make a statement for you all.’

  We followed him out along a tall, wide corridor, with windows high up on the walls and sunlight that sparkled on rain-spattered glass. Outside there was a whole crowd to welcome us, joy at the verdict, and everyone so happy. Puddles on the ground, but bright sun shining – the kind of weather that rainbows came from. I kept hold of my cousin, my arm around her, so close her bony elbow dug into my waist. I wanted to shout to the waiting crowd, Look at us! Look at the two of us together! I wanted everyone to see us like this, with nothing in the world to separate us now.

  Tomorrow the papers would be full of our story. The happy ending at last, at last. To the clatter and flash of cameras, sun catching the wet, the lawyer was making his statement, praising our family for our courage, our love. He would have known about everything that had gone wrong, everything we had missed, everything our family had mistakenly done, but his words showed that none of that mattered. It could be forgotten, wiped away like raindrops, because Cassingham had been found guilty and everything, everything else was over.

  I was so happy it was like walking on air.

  Chapter 38

  Friday 27th September:

  Day 124

  ANNE

  On the long train journey home, Abigail curled herself into her seat. Across from her, Jess stretched out her legs so that their feet were touching. They fell asleep together like that, the way they used to as tiny children.

  None of us needed to speak any more: Lillian, Fraser, Robert and me. We had come through it. Everything had been laid bare in that courthouse, layers of the story we had never dreamed of, but now it was over. Cassingham was guilty – guilty of everything – and now we were free, finally, to be Abigail’s loving family. As we rode through the soft dusk, I had never felt closer to them. Even Preston – left to make his own way back to Heathrow – was one of us now.

  Outside the courthouse, I’d gently introduced him to her. She’d huddled next to me, not quite ready yet to fit him back into her life. But he hadn’t got upset or angry, just told her he loved her and how much he cared, and I was so proud of him for that. I could see it then in his clear, healthy face: he had always cared so much for Abigail, he just could never before find the right way to show it.

  Beside me, Abigail’s eyes rolled beneath their lids; her head flopped sideways and rattled against the window. She had barely spoken since the verdict. If I was honest, she seemed to have shrunk into herself again. The thought made a heavy hollow in my stomach but I pushed it away. All right, so the trial had overwhelmed and exhausted her. So many huge facts and questions to deal with and no doubt that would be hard for her right now. But all that mattered was that Cassingham was guilty.

  From here on, I told myself, she would only need time.

  When we reached our station close to dusk, my sister stood to pull down our bags. It was only when I stretched up to help her that I realized she was no longer taller than me. Somewhere in the span of years, I had caught her up and as we lifted down my suitcase together, I glimpsed how changed she looked.

  ‘Lillian?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you all stay with us tonight?’ It had never been like this: she’d never been the one in need of rescue. Without looking at me, she nodded.

  Back at home, with the twins collected from Jack’s house, all of us headed, exhausted, to bed. I tucked the twins in and brushed my teeth next to Robert. It was only once I was lying in our old familiar bed, the room lit by a bright flat moon and Lillian sleeping at the end of the hallway, no longer all-knowing, no longer perfect, that the thought struck me: who am I to turn to now?

  Chapter 39

  Friday 27th September:

  Day 124

  JESS

  You could always hear trains from Abigail’s house – the soft clatter, the echoing horns. You could imagine the passengers going here and there, freight carriages running through the night. When she was little, Abigail used to say they kept her awake. Later she got used to the sounds.

  When I woke – to the sound of a train or a voice, I couldn’t really tell – the room was dark, the lamp was off, but the curtains were drawn back from the window. A bright white moon was shining outside, an almost-full moon, and Abigail was awake, sitting cross-legged up in bed. Her hair was loose over her shoulders and growing long now, bright blonde. In the moonlit dark, it was like she was glowing.

  ‘Happy Birthday, Jess,’ she whispered.

  In the middle of all the chaos, I’d forgotten. Today was my birthday. I was sixteen. Abigail and I were the same age again.

  I reached out to turn on the little Mickey Mouse lamp she still had in her room. ‘Will you come with me?’ she said, blinking in the brightness. ‘I’ve something to show you.’

  ‘You mean-’ I rubbed my eyes, ‘like, a present?’

  ‘Sort of, yes,’ she said. She pushed herself off the bed. Only now did I notice – she was fully dressed. I had a moment of strange-dream logic, when behind the surprise everything easily makes sense. Abigail, there in front of me, was so clear.

  Without questioning her, I pulled on my jeans and jumper. Silently she opened the bedroom door. The landing outside was dark. Behind their own doors, all the bedrooms were dark, but the moonlight shone through the landing window. It was like it was following us, lighting the stairs up in silvery-grey.

  Softly Abigail opened the door opposite – the door to the twins’ room. I heard a snuffling murmur – Laurie or Sam turning over in his sleep. ‘Look.’ She pulled me forwards into the doorway beside her. The twins were tucked-in humps in the gloom. They looked so young, so peaceful. ‘Do you see?’ said Abigail.

  See what? It was Sam, it was Laurie, her brothers. They were fast asleep, they were fine. As if hearing my thoughts, she let the door close again. Her voice was thick, her words almost slurred, like she was talking to me without being properly awake. ‘Come on then. Let’s go.’

  I thought about saying to her, no, come on Abigail, let’s go back to bed. Whatever it is, we can do it in the morning. It was dark and the house was cold, but in the morning everything would be warm and bright. Instead I followed her down the stairs, holding onto the banister like I was afraid I’d tumble the descent head-first. The bare floorboards downstairs were chilly. I shivered in my thin jumper, my bare feet. But Abigail was already at the back door, lifting our coats down from their hooks.

  ‘Where are we going?’ But she just pressed a finger to her lips. She looked so beautiful to me then, my old familiar playmate. Here she was, my friend, my family, the single person who mattered to me most. I took my coat from her and tugged it on, took my scarf as well to wind about my neck. Together we sat on the kitchen floor to pull on our shoes.

  Silently, she unlocked the back door. Outside, the night was beautiful. A sharp bright cold after the cloudiness of London, and the sky was crystal clear. No sign of rain and the moon so close to full. In its light and under the glow of the streetlights, we headed across the decking and to the little fence at the botto
m of the garden. As she opened the gate and I followed her through, our breaths made white clouds in the pure air.

  I had no idea of the time. It could have been midnight, it could have been almost dawn. It was like time had stopped entirely and in these moments only Abigail and I existed. As if only the two of us had ever existed and somehow everything had been leading to this.

  We made our way up the silent street, like shadows. No birds, no cars, no barking dogs. The whole world was still. We wove our way up the street to the lopsided railings at the end, to the path that led all the way to the embankment. Of course. Where else would we have gone? In the moonlight, like a spell, I could see the outlines of old footprints on the muddied ground ahead, marking the way, as if this was the way we were always meant to come. The path through the scrubby bushes was like a tunnel, mired in shadows as the streetlights fell away behind us. Brambles caught at my elbows and shins. I twisted and turned against them in the dark, yet Abigail slipped through ahead of me so easily, like she was a fairy-spirit or a ghost. A branch whipped my cheek and then my scarf caught and tangled, dragging away from my neck. ‘Wait.’ I tried to pull it free, but it wouldn’t come. Instead Abigail pulled at my elbow. ‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘You won’t need it.’ The air on my bare neck sent electric tingles through me. I was suddenly so aware of being alive.

  At the end of the path, we came out onto the sweep of grass where once we’d sat in the sun, picking daisies. Was this where she wanted to bring me, to this place where months ago I’d given her my own simple presents – the bracelet of daisies, the childhood photo? What did she have for me here now? The tangled ground was bare, the grass muddied. The moonlight was bright, but the air, the night, was so cold.

  ‘What is it? What do you want to show me?’

  But Abigail only pointed, and I saw it now – the fencing below us that blocked off the tracks and the hole in the mesh that would so easily let two girls slip through. ‘From here you can get to the bridge,’ she said. ‘And from the bridge you can see everything.’

  Still at that point I could have turned back. But I didn’t. On the other side of the fencing, the ground fell away steeply. We slip-slithered down, our fingernails catching on clumps of damp grass, roots, mud. It should have hurt, but the pain didn’t seem to reach me. At the bottom, we skidded to a stop, breathless. Down here the moonlight struggled to get through and there were no more streetlamps, just shapes in the dark and the smell of iron. She pointed. ‘Look.’

  Along the track, sixty, seventy yards away, the bridge spanned over the railway, its signal light shining red like a beacon. Red for no trains coming, no trains allowed through, but still a dangerous place, we both knew that. A thick iron structure of struts and railings, the two heavy girders that ran along the sides. A workman’s bridge, closed to the public.

  ‘We can climb up onto it,’ said Abigail. ‘I know a way.’

  ‘But why? What’s up there?’ My voice came out faint, little more than a puff in the dark. I felt the words fade and disappear. She only said, ‘You’ll see.’

  And so I followed her. I would have followed her anywhere. After all, what had I ever been without her? We padded along the gravelled edge of the railway line, our feet slipping on the shifting stones. At the foot of the bridge, under its shadow where the night fell deeper than ever, I made out the spiralled iron staircase, tight and narrow, that led up to the flat crossing span at the top. This far away, the hoot of a train carried like music. Abigail grasped the thin handrail and we climbed, the iron ringing with each step. We passed the tiny workman’s walkway, suspended from the girder that ran parallel to the bridge. And then we were at the top, on the wide safe flat. We were high up now, above the tracks, higher than the grassy embankment. From up here, the sky was vast, a deep pit. In the crystal-clear night, the black was forested with stars, brilliant clusters of them, so many that one blurred into another. I took hold of the smooth safety railings that ran the length of the bridge and tipped my head back.

  ‘The Milky Way,’ said Abigail, pointing.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ I gazed up into the starry cavern, the cold night air pinching my throat. I could have yelled straight into that beauty.

  Beside me, Abigail was leaning over the rounded railings. Her hair swung like a curtain as she looked down. ‘I had to bring you here to show you. To make you see.’

  She didn’t mean the stars, I knew that. What then? ‘Be careful!’ I giggled. But she shook her head, like my warning made no sense.

  ‘You can’t see from here.’ She put a foot on the lower bar of the railing, like it was a rung, a ladder she was climbing. Before I could stop her, she swung herself up.

  She was like an eel, the way she slithered right over. One minute there, and the next only her fists, and her body dangling. Then she dropped, landing with a clang on the tiny walkway below, little more than a thin shelf, suspended from the girder by a line of iron ropes. ‘You have to climb down here,’ she said. ‘From the girder, you’ll be able to see.’

  Even then, I didn’t question her. I hardly remember following her over the railings. My body seemed to move by itself. It was like the movements of childhood, scaling a climbing frame, swinging from a tree branch, everything in balance, everything easy. For a moment, I hung, full stretch from the railing, fishing with my feet and then I was down, dropping to the iron-mesh walkway beside her, the girder at my elbow and the real bridge just above.

  The distant train hooted again, louder this time and I thought I could feel its vibrations now too – the faintest hum in the wires above our heads.

  Abigail pulled herself right up to sit on the girder that paralleled the length of the bridge. Its surface was punctuated with thick iron rivets, handholds for our small cold hands. She was sitting now with her back to the tracks, her feet in her laced-up trainers hooked into the thin iron ropes below.

  ‘Come sit beside me.’

  In the moonlight I could see her so clearly, the perfect reflection of myself. The iron girder was freezing, but when I pulled myself up beside her, the structure was wider, safer than I’d thought, a flat seat like a bench for the two of us. She tipped her head back and I did the same.

  She was right. It was better than ever up here. The silhouette of the bridge’s railings, two feet, three feet in front of us, but beyond and above them, nothing at all. Sitting here, on the wings of the bridge, it was like floating in mid-air. Here, perched on the girder, we were flying. Abigail’s blonde hair glowed ruby, lit up by the signal light. ‘I believe everything they’ve told me,’ she was saying. ‘All the explanations they’ve given.’

  In the excitement of climbing over, and the beauty of it all, it was a moment before I could catch up with her. She was talking about the trial. The adults, the whole history that had come rolling out in the courtroom. ‘Me too,’ I said, holding tighter and letting out my breath. I tried to find Orion or the Plough in the stars. There were so many pricks of light, I could hardly separate them. ‘In the end, we got to the truth.’

  ‘You saw the twins sleeping, didn’t you? Peaceful and safe.’

  The twins? Abigail wasn’t making much sense, her voice had become slurred again, but sitting up here beneath the Milky Way I hardly cared. Better to breathe in the bright air, to fly and float in the exhilaration of it all.

  ‘That safety is all I’ve wanted. But it isn’t like that for me, it isn’t.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I kept searching the sky.

  ‘Jess—’ her voice cracked in the cold. ‘Do you remember our game – Do-you-trust-me?’

  I almost laughed. It was like she’d read my mind. ‘Of course!’ With every breath I felt the air rush to the bottom of my lungs, setting my blood fizzing. I let my eyes close. I could still see the stars behind my eyelids.

  I heard Abigail let out a huge breath, and I imagined it billowing up white into the sky. ‘Jess, will you play that with me now?’

  It was like a dream. ‘Of course,’ I said, my eyes still
closed, lost amidst the stars.

  I was aware of her slipping down from the girder, her feet clanging on the thin iron below. I opened my eyes – and found her standing right in front of me, pressed up against me on that tiny walkway. Standing between my legs, the way a boy might stand with a girl. For the strangest, brightest moment, I thought she was about to kiss me.

  Instead: ‘I thought it would be better,’ she said, ‘when he was found guilty. I thought I’d feel safe then, Jess, but I don’t. It became worse because it made me see everything I’d been through. I feel more frightened than ever now, do you get that? So I need you to play it with me. Do you trust me?’

  She circled her hands about my wrists and I glimpsed now a film of blankness in her eyes. She was like a dreamer, a sleep-walker, or maybe it was only the glare of light, the far-off headlight of the train as it rounded the corner in the distance behind me.

  ‘Do you think you can understand, Jess, how that feels? When it’s supposed to be someone you trust?’

  She smiled at me and I let myself lean backwards, the way it always was in our game. One of us leaning and one of us holding. I thought I understood what she was doing. She only wanted that feeling again; that sensation of perfect trust, perfect safety. After everything she had been through. I let myself sink backwards, laying myself down on the bed of black air.

  ‘Do-you-trust-me?’ she said, the magic mantra.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. Yes, yes, yes.

  I was leaning back now further than ever, further than we’d ever played before. It filled me with a burning thrill. I closed my eyes, safe in her grasp, counting the seconds – seven, eight – until she would pull me up. The sound of the distant train came clearer. The hum of the engine seemed all around us.

  ‘When you’re terrified because you thought you could trust them …’

  Thirteen, fourteen … Still I hung there. ‘Abigail?’ Her hands began to burn against my wrists. She was still tipping me, tilting me. Blood rushed to my head, spots of light dancing in my eyes.