The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

‘Clingy? What are you talking about?’

  I slung her bag over my shoulder and gave her a curious, almost pitying glance. ‘I’m heading off myself. On my own. And look, I’ve arranged it so you can take the place at Cambridge. The matriculation list says Catherine Lestrange, I got Mummy to write and ask them to change the surname. The place has been deferred for a year. You just need to show them your birth certificate. It says Jane Catherine Lestrange, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Tell them Professor Lovibond got the date of birth wrong on the form.’ Quite casually, I chewed the gum in my mouth. ‘He’s left now anyway. You’re Jane Catherine Lestrange, I’m Catherine Lestrange Hunter. Get it? They’re not going to suspect anything, it’s too unusual a name. And, anyway, why would they? You just say you’re using your mother’s name now. We told them.’ I inhaled, wondering if my subconscious had known all along that this was what I should do for her, if this was why I’d laid my plans. ‘It’s all worked out pretty well – it’s best if we’re not together after this really. Now we can both go off and do our own thing.’ I nodded at her. ‘Yeah?’

  Janey put her hands on her hips. She gave a short half-laugh, half-cry. ‘Kitty, why are you being like this?’

  I had to bite my lip at the sight of her sad, sweet face. I’m doing this for you. I’m doing it all for you. ‘You can take my place. Go to university. That’s why I’m doing this.’

  ‘I don’t want to go off and do my own thing. The whole point of this was we went together. I don’t want to go to Cambridge. Apart from anything else even if I – I wanted to go, how on earth will I get anyone to believe it’s me and not you?’

  ‘Why not? I’m Kitty Hunter. I’m not Catherine Lestrange. Never have been. They won’t be looking for Catherine Lestrange. She’s a combination of the two of us. You get to be a – a new person. It’s simple, and it’s really rather genius. It’s a third person. She’s both of us. If someone asks you if you know a Kitty Hunter you just shake your head. Sorry, that’s not me.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go, not like that!’ She laughed, helplessly. She was standing on the other side of the car, arms folded around herself.

  I sighed. As if I was trying not to show how irritated I was. ‘Isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted? Don’t you deserve it? Wouldn’t you have got those grades, if you hadn’t been mad with grief? Is it your fault? No.’ She opened her mouth, and I moved in for the kill. ‘What about your dad, Janey? Wouldn’t he want you to go? What’ll you do instead? Go back to Greenford? To an empty house? To the secretarial course? Listen. I feel bad about it, but not that bad. We both used each other, didn’t we?’

  She was sobbing. ‘No. No, we didn’t, Kitty. I thought I’d found you – I thought –’

  I shrugged. ‘Look, we had fun, didn’t we, this summer? But we’re pretty different. I’m – well, this is what I do. I’m trouble. Ask anyone.’

  She shook her head, her mouth turned down with the rictus of crying, half laughing. ‘You’re not, you’re not that person. Stop pretending.’

  ‘I’m pretending now, am I?’ I opened my eyes wide. ‘Listen, Janey. It’s been a laugh and you were a good person to have around, I’m not saying you weren’t, but you have to admit we don’t have much in common. And I’m not sure I can go across Europe with some girl from the suburbs who wants to talk about her dad the whole time and doesn’t really know what she wants to do with her life.’

  ‘So where will you go?’

  ‘Maybe head west. Cornwall. Hang there for a bit. Try my luck in London, get a job . . .’

  ‘Are you still angry because I didn’t save you, that night with Giles?’ Janey’s small mouth was turned downwards, and she kept closing her eyes heavily, as though she could barely stand to look at me, to take it in.

  I shrugged, and curled my fingers, digging them into my palm. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a change from what we agreed. But that’s how it goes.’

  ‘We’re in this together, Kitty. Don’t.’

  I cleared my throat delicately. ‘Look, I never once pointed this out but at school I wouldn’t even have acknowledged you. Do you realise how lucky you were? How my father says Mummy’s lame ducks will eat us out of house and home one day? And you’re the biggest lame duck of all, Janey.’

  ‘Stop it, Kitty. Don’t do that.’ She moved towards me. ‘I know what you’re trying to do. And I don’t believe you. I saw the real you. I know you.’

  A few spots of rain landed on her green dress. The wind ruffled the folds of fabric on my sleeves. I cut across her.

  ‘Listen, don’t miss that ferry. If you go back to the house, they’ll want to know where I am and it’d be a shame if you got arrested for my disappearance, or something, or God forbid they call your mum. You’ll have to go to Spain. Live with her and Brian, or whatever his name is.’

  ‘Kitty, look.’ Janey cleared her throat, and smiled. ‘I know you’ve had a really bad time. It’s me, remember? But let’s do this together, not apart.’ She came around the car, towards me. ‘You can’t just – be nobody. You can’t – not exist any more. I know Giles hurt you, and your father . . . and everything . . . We can find a way through this though. Us two. Come here –’

  I’m doing this for you. It hurts because I’m doing it for you. In response, I dug out an envelope from my backpack and hurled it with all my might, right into the middle of the purple heather and rusting bracken. ‘Here’s your papers. The ferry ticket. Your stuff. Bye then.’ I cleared my throat, battling to keep it steady. ‘H-have a good life, Janey.’

  She swivelled away from me with a desperate cry, eyes following an arc to see where the paper envelope landed. She looked back towards me, in agony. ‘Stay. Just stay there, Kitty!’ and then she turned and ran towards the thick scrubby moorland.

  The second she’d gone I dropped behind the car, clutching her ridiculously unwieldy bag to my chest. I fell out of her sightline, crawling down onto the lane a few feet below us. By the time she looked back, only ten seconds later or so, I’d vanished. At the lip of the lane was the path that led to the Vane Stones.

  I could hear her calling my name. ‘Kitty! Kitty!’ Like the cry of seabirds, circling overhead. ‘Kitty!’

  The large envelope I’d thrown was one of Merry’s Smash Hits! magazines that she got on subscription. She’d shoved it in the car the other day when we’d gone to get milk and forgotten about it.

  Arching beech trees and a tiny drystone wall edged the boundary at the top of the moor. There was no one around.

  ‘Kitty! Come back! Don’t leave me!’

  Tears ran down my face, and my heart ached, physically hurt. I slammed my hand to my mouth, so that the sob that escaped me was muffled.

  I had to let her go. I had to. I smiled as I saw how easy it would be for her, how perfectly I had arranged it, how well my plans had fallen into place, and I hadn’t even designed it like this: I had agreed I’d take up my place at Cambridge if I was allowed to be someone else. That someone else was her. She was me. I had completed the circle. I had made it good. I had not been able to rescue my mother any more than Janey’s father had, but I would rescue his daughter instead.

  The five large boulders of the Vane Stones were surrounded by windswept thorn trees, twisted by the years into curious shapes. I sank down behind the largest stone, as her voice carried on towards me.

  I thought of them as Diver’s stones. They’d found the young governess from the house here, her neck broken, her clothing in disarray. I’d always known he’d lured her up here and then killed her. I knew that was why he’d killed himself. That was why he’d been buried here, I was certain. I knew Pammy had known that too. She’d known how rotten it was. I knew that they had in some way caused her death, exposed her to danger. I knew these things, because the blood of my ancestors ran in my veins and the honey from the same hives coursed through me. I couldn’t shake it off, and I’d tried for so long.

  ‘Kitty! Come back! I’ll do anything! K
itty! We can’t miss the ferry!’

  I hadn’t woken up that morning expecting to betray Janey. I knew she wouldn’t betray me, either. I knew she’d look in my bag and find all the papers she needed. My passport and hers, tied together in a ribbon. The letter, from King’s College, Cambridge, confirming Catherine Lestrange’s place. All our money, combined. And, prosaically, apples, and sandwiches. And even some Tooty Frooties.

  I knew after a while she’d drive away. She had no other option. I didn’t want to be found. We understood each other. I thought and hoped she’d truly believe I didn’t like her, that I’d been playing her all summer, that I’d planned this out. It’d make it easier. I knew that she’d never fully give up on me, though. A buzzing thought came to me that suddenly I didn’t want her to, that I could cry out, that she could come and save me, but I squashed that part down, like my father squashed bees under his thumb.

  She stayed longer than I’d thought. She got as far as the Vane Stones, but I knew the little cavern, in the hollow of the hill behind the largest stone, and I hid in there whilst she stumbled around. I could hear her sobs, her muttering to herself and I bit my lip so hard I tasted the metal of my own blood. Janey, my kind, clever, sparky Janey. I have to let you go.

  I curled myself up, as tightly as I could, so I couldn’t hear her broken voice calling for me.

  It stopped raining, and over the bay yellow light broke through the grey clouds. It was an hour later I think that the battered blue car that had picked her up only five short weeks previously was bumping down the track across the moor. I backed out of the tiny space in the rock ten minutes before, propping myself against the stone, clutching her bag. I looked down, away from the sight of the car.

  There was the remaining bee, still on the ruffles of the dress.

  I caught it, held my hands together, an open ball, and shook up and down, then I opened my hands, cupping them to my chest. I heard its furious buzz, and felt it sting me again. Surely I’d done enough now? I leaned back against a rock, feeling the rain on my face. The buzzing that had been so loud all my life had suddenly gone. I waited to feel the terror – but it didn’t come.

  ‘Of course.’

  I took out Wellington Bear, hugged the soft, matted fur, and smelled his soft head. He smelled of my mother, and of Janey. It was silly to want this final attachment, I know. But now, holding him tight, I was ready. The whole summer, from her arrival to these last moments, flickered in front of my eyes, like images on a screen. All of it. I remembered it all, the good and the bad. And I realised, as the heat of pain mixed with the scent of heather, and as the buzzing of the bees and the new, sudden warmth of the evening sun washed over me, that I had been ready for ever so long. It flashed before me, like flickering images on a screen, the whole summer, and I remembered it all. I was ready. I waited.

  31st August 1989

  To: Charles Hunter,

  Vanes, Somerset

  After the Collecting, we are running away. We are telling you so you make sure they don’t come looking for us. And if they do, we’ll tell them about you. We know your little secrets. We know what you did. We know all your deceptions.

  We don’t want to live like this any more. Janey doesn’t want to go to secretarial college, she wants to study and do something with her life. Kitty doesn’t want to go to university and then marry someone and be a posh housewife, she wants to travel and get away from here. Far away FROM YOU.

  But no one listens to us when we say these things. We’ve been told what to do and where to go all our lives.

  We’re not listening any more.

  Where we’re going, you won’t find us.

  Wherever you look, we’ll be invisible.

  We’re never coming back.

  SIGNED:

  The Beloved Girls

  Catherine Hunter & Jane Lestrange

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Catherine rang the doorbell of the large white stucco house and stepped back, trying to ignore her shaking legs. She was tired and still felt dirty, though in fact she had showered that morning for the first time since Friday. More than anything else though, she was incredibly thirsty. Whenever she had imagined cutting loose, taking herself out of the lie that was her own life, she hadn’t considered thirst would be her main preoccupation.

  The road was busy with traffic, but few pedestrians. Still, she felt uneasy. She had come up out of Warwick Avenue Tube station, head down, scarf covering her backpack so it couldn’t be seen on CCTV. When she’d bought the backpack, two years ago, she’d made sure it was as nondescript as possible. But, still, it didn’t hurt to be careful.

  Standing there, she did her checks, the ones she had done every day for the past twenty-nine years, and only halfway through did she remember once again that these checks were redundant. It was over.

  ‘You’ve got a form of OCD, I reckon,’ Jake had said once, leaning in the doorway of her office, waiting to go to lunch, as Catherine did her checks out loud:

  ‘One-two-three-four-five. OK, I’m ready.’

  ‘What do you keep in that bag, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, the basics. A fake passport, ten thousand pounds in cash and a lightweight wig, in case I have to suddenly cut loose and revert to my old identity,’ she’d said, and he’d laughed.

  Sometimes she asked herself if enough time had elapsed. If she could just admit to being a different person, not only in name. For she was not Janey any more, she was not that brave, worn-down, but hopeful girl who had got on a boat and woken up in a different country and had to start completely from scratch. But the answer was never what she wanted. To be that brave, to admit what she had done was to admit she had left Kitty behind to die. That she had stolen a place that wasn’t hers at one of the best universities in the world. That she had lied at every step of the way, to everyone who knew her, and to those who loved her. Of course she could never go back.

  Catherine rang the bell again. It was bank holiday Monday and this was the third day in a row she’d come here. There had been no answer before either and she was too afraid to wait, or ring the other flats to ask the other occupants of the building if they knew anything.

  Most of the other houses on the road were mega-mansions. Behind her was the canal, with the waterbus that took you through the dark, slimy tunnels to the zoo. They had taken the waterbus for Tom’s ninth birthday, and he had fallen in the canal, and Davide had had to dive in to fish him out, and then they weren’t allowed to stay on the barge. Thinking of this, and Davide’s rage, and he and Tom both dripping wet and covered with stinking green algae, cabs refusing to take them home, ending up in a McDonald’s on the Edgware Road, she wondered how they had ever managed to laugh about it. But they had. They’d all ordered Big Macs and Tom had been allowed an extra portion of fries. ‘I’ll let you have them all, Tom,’ his big sister had announced magnanimously, eyes wild with jealousy.

  It was 4 p.m., and Catherine and Davide should have been on the Eurostar back. What were they all doing now; right now?

  This was the third day without them. She shook her head, knowing she mustn’t think about them too much. It was best that way. Leaving, escaping the horror that her life had become made sense until she started to think about Davide and the children. She had sent a postcard from the station so they wouldn’t worry.

  I’ve done the right thing. They probably are better off in fact. I can’t be with them any more. I’ve been seeing ghosts. I smashed up the study, I sent the letters. I don’t remember doing it but they’re in my handwriting so I must have. I can’t make it better. I’m so sorry. I love you all.

  She wasn’t sure where she’d sleep tonight. She was thinking about this, and whether she could bear another night on a bench, when the door was suddenly flung open. Catherine jumped, clutching her bag to her chest.

  ‘Hello?’ said the woman in the doorway, politely. ‘Which flat were you looking for?’

  ‘Oh. Flat C.’

  Catherine looked her up and down, drinking
in the sight of her – the once frizzy dark hair, tamed into a glossy black mane like a cloak over the slim shoulders. The pale face, the perfect, slightly too-dark arched eyebrows, the slim fingers clutching the door. She was understated and glossy, in espadrilles, expensive jeans, a paisley silk-printed smocked top. She tucked a lock of dark hair behind one ear, and gave Catherine a cool smile, showing slightly too-white teeth.

  ‘That’s me. How can I help you?’

  ‘I – I came before but you weren’t in –’ Catherine began, but now she was here she didn’t know what to say, not to this cool, beautiful stranger. How to start.

  ‘I was away for the weekend. What is it, please?’

  ‘I – I wanted to ask you if you’d heard.’ Catherine cleared her throat. ‘Heard the news about –’

  Relief swept across the woman’s face. ‘Oh! I’m so sorry. I’m not interested in religion, thank you so much.’ She made to close the door, but Catherine put her hand on it, and stopped it. The woman’s eyes flew wide open. ‘Excuse me! You can’t –’

  ‘Merry,’ Catherine said, quietly. ‘Merry, it’s me.’ The door stayed where it was. Catherine peered around the frame. ‘Merry? Did you hear me?’

  The head poked out again, eyes bulging, pupils fully dilated. ‘You,’ she said, slowly, swallowing. ‘No. It can’t be. It’s – you. No.’

  ‘It is. It’s Catherine.’

  ‘You’re not Catherine,’ Merry said. Her eyes darted up and down the road. ‘Listen, I don’t know what – what this is. I saw in the paper that you’d gone missing. Catherine.’ She gave a quick, hissing snort. ‘I know who the hell you are and you’re not Catherine. You’re Jane Lestrange. The question is where you’ve been, and another question is how on earth you did what you did and what the hell happened to my sister, and how on earth you’ve got the nerve to show up here after all this time when – Jesus.’ Merry shook her head, her face slowly flooding with red. She scratched at the corner of her open mouth, then closed her eyes. ‘I – No. I can’t. No. Goodbye.’