Before I Let You In (35 page)

‘So the woman you were talking about when you said you blamed her, you hated her for being weak and allowing her husband to be stolen …’

‘She never even tried to stop him, you know.’ Anne’s voice was filled with bitterness now, and for the first time Karen thought she could see the angry girl she recognised from their sessions. ‘I love her, of course; she’s my mother and she saved me from going into care when I was seven years old. I owe her everything. But all I ever wanted was a stable family. She could have given me that, but instead she chose to let him screw you. You’ve met her; she’s weak. I bet you walked up to my house and she just let you in. She probably offered you a cup of tea.’

Strangely, Karen wanted to defend her boyfriend’s wife, but she couldn’t. Emily hadn’t asked her to stop seeing her husband. Karen had always wondered about the type of woman who turned a blind eye, but when it came to it, that was exactly what Eleanor had done. How did Karen know she wouldn’t do the same?

‘You shouldn’t blame your mother. You don’t know what it’s like.’

‘To feel like someone you love is giving up on you?’ Anne snorted. ‘No, I’ve got no idea of that.’ She kicked at the clumps of dried soil on the concrete. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Karen replied. Her shoulders sagged at the weight of all that had happened, all the pain she had caused. ‘I guess we should go to the police.’

Confusion passed momentarily over Anne’s face. ‘You don’t want to do that.’

‘They’ll find you anyway, Anne. It’s better to hand yourself in. They already know all about what you’ve been doing to my friends and me. You left fingerprints at my house. They’re looking for you now, it’s only a matter of time before they arrest you for Eleanor’s murder.’

It was a risky lie and Karen had no way of knowing if Anne would believe her. Anne’s eyes widened in fear, and Karen could see no trace of the confident young woman who had sat across from her in her office, mocking her with her questions of morality and taunting her with her knowledge of Karen and her friends.

‘Me?’ Realisation dawned on her. ‘No. NO. You know I’m not responsible for those things, you know her death wasn’t my fault. You can’t do this to me!’ She sank slowly to her haunches, doubled over as though hit by a sudden stomach cramp. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’ She began muttering something but Karen couldn’t hear what she was saying. She didn’t feel like a threat any more. Karen moved to kneel down beside her, but she didn’t even seem to notice; instead carried on mumbling the same sentence over and over.

‘Look, Anne, I’m sure they will take everything into account. It was an accident, that much is obvious. If you admit it they will go easy on you.’

The girl looked up, a mixture of fear and defiance in her murky blue eyes, and in that second Karen knew she’d underestimated her for a second time. She’d been wrong about what fear could make a person do.

‘You won’t get away with this,’ Anne hissed, and grabbing hold of Karen’s shirt collar, she dragged her towards the moving brown water.

84

Bea

‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Bea announced, following Michael up the stairs of Karen’s home. ‘I feel like an intruder.’

‘We’re trying to help. Besides, I live here.’

Bea scowled. ‘Don’t get me started on that again. I just don’t see how this is going to help Karen with your lunatic daughter. No offence. We should be driving around screaming her name out of the car window, not creeping around her bedroom.’

‘I hoped she’d have given up chasing Anne and come back here, but as she hasn’t, there’s something I wanted to show you.’ He emerged from the master bedroom with a shoebox in his hand and handed it to Bea, who took it gently, as though she was expecting it to burn her. She sat down on the top step of the stairs and opened the lid, Michael pacing behind her.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘I found this once, hidden under some of Karen’s things. I opened it up and it had your name in it, and Eleanor’s, so I put it back thinking it was personal.’

Bea pulled a notebook from the top.

‘There’s all sorts in here. It’s like a dossier of everyone she’s ever met. I’m in here, and Eleanor,’ Bea murmured, pain shooting through her chest at the picture of her friend. ‘What we like, what we dislike, what we’re scared of, practically everything about us. It’s like one of those journals you make as a kid.’

‘Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe she’s just kept it for the memories.’

‘Then how come you’re in here?’ Bea held up the notebook, open at a page that contained a picture of Michael, along with every detail of his life: where he lived, the names of his wife and children, even their pictures.

‘Not Anne, though, she’s not in here at all,’ said Bea, scanning through. ‘It’s like Karen never knew about her.’

‘She might not have. Like I told you, Anne’s adopted. We were never allowed to put photographs of her on Facebook, and she moved out before I met Karen. Jesus,’ he breathed. ‘I always thought she didn’t want to know about them. She never asked.’

‘She never really needed to, did she? I mean, she has it all written down here. What is this even for?’

‘Maybe it’s just a really detailed way of not forgetting things about the people she loves. Like some people keep lists of birthdays and special occasions; maybe this is just an extreme version of that.’

‘Fran’s in here. Adam too. There’s half a page on Gary from work. That’s hardly memories.’

Bea turned page after page, details of her own life jumping out at her. It was like how
This Is Your Life
would be if Michael Aspel was actually a deranged stalker.

‘See this?’ She pointed to a yellowing newspaper article glued to one of the pages. ‘I knew this guy.’ A hand clenched at her chest to see the picture of him staring out from Karen’s album. ‘At university.’

Michael studied the article. ‘Says he had an accident. Why has Karen kept that?’

‘No idea,’ Bea murmured. Or rather, she didn’t want to have an idea.

‘There’s a train ticket here for Shrewsbury to Liverpool, it’s dated two days before the article.’

Bea shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t she have told me she was in the same city when this happened?’

‘There’s a lot she hasn’t been telling either of us by the looks of it.’

Bea held up a stack of photos that had been left loose in the box. ‘Look at these.’

Michael looked at the scenic shots, each one showing the place Karen went when she needed to think.

‘I think I know where they’ve gone.’

85

We were holding on to one another so tightly that it didn’t matter any more who was dragging who down. All that mattered was the freezing, dirty water that waited to suck us under should we lose our footing.

She was stronger than me, surprisingly so for someone so slight. Or maybe she was just more scared. There is a certain strength that comes from fear, and from the knowledge that you no longer have anything to lose. She’d been following me, she knew what I had done, what I was capable of, and she didn’t want to meet the same fate as Eleanor. Maybe she’d thought she wouldn’t care any more, but everyone fights back in the end, when they feel the life slipping from them; however much they have craved death, moved towards it like an old friend in the last moments of their life, everyone fights for one more breath.

I’d heard the splash a second before I felt the breath sucked from my lungs by the freezing water. She released me then, the shock of the impact rendering her temporarily immobile. She’s not going to fight, I realised, even as my legs were propelling me towards the surface. She’s just going to give in.

But the survival instinct had been stronger than her despair, and she’d broken the surface of the water seconds after me. The river that had looked so calm on the surface was a churning tide underneath that threatened to drag us both down to our death. Maybe that was the way it should have been. We were both guilty in this; we’d both had our part to play. Mine had been the hands that had taken Eleanor’s life, but she had been to blame as surely as if she’d been there with me. We were partners in a crime neither of us ever intended to commit. And now we were going to pay our penance.

86

How would you feel if I told you that Adam wasn’t sleeping with Anne Lenton?

He was. I saw them together.

You saw what you wanted to see.

What is that supposed to mean? Why would I want to see my best friend’s marriage fail? Why would I want her to be in danger? Myself in danger?

So you could be the one to fix it when it all fell apart. Like you always did.

Say what you want – I know what I saw.

Take a look at this, please, Karen.

Who is it?

It’s the manager of the Pandora shop. See her hair? It’s similar to Anne’s, don’t you think? She recognises Adam; he checked the store’s electrics a couple of months ago. And here, here’s a still of the store’s CCTV. See how she’s touching his arm as she leaves? She was going on her lunch break; it’s why you couldn’t see her uniform.

Why are you doing this?

Adam wasn’t having an affair.

Yes, he was.

No. He remembers working at the shop. He’s never seen Anne Lenton.

He’s a liar. What he’s saying can’t be true.

Why not, Karen? Would it be so terrible if you were wrong? If your friends had never been in danger?

They were. I know they were. It wasn’t for nothing. I was just trying to protect them. Like I always did.

Is that why you took Noah? As a warning?

I just wanted to make her see. She wasn’t taking me seriously.

And the other things? The hair cream? Bea’s date with the man from the internet site?

Nothing I did made them see the danger they were in. What she was capable of.

What Jessica was capable of?

Yes! That they were in danger.

And yet Anne Lenton never went near your friends, did she? She lied about having an affair with a married man to make you ashamed of what you were doing with her father, but she never did a single thing to hurt anyone. The only danger to your friends was you.

Liar. Liar. Liar LIAR LIAR.

87

Bea

They found both cars pulled up at the spot in the third of the photos, but neither woman was in sight on the banks. Bea jumped out before Michael had even cut the engine; she was at the edge of the river before she heard his door slam.

‘Can you see them?’ he shouted, jogging up to meet her. Bea’s eyes scanned the river.

‘Oh God.’ She reached out to grab his arm, but he’d already seen the two women surface fifty yards away and had broken into a run, shrugging off his jacket as he went.

‘Call 999!’ he shouted back to her.

Bea was rigid with fear. Her fingers fumbled as she pulled the phone from her pocket and swiped in, punched 999. Afterwards she couldn’t even remember giving the operator the details; all she could recall of that moment was the question running through her mind about the horrific choice Michael had to make.

His daughter or his lover. Which one would he save?

88

What happened then? Before Bea and Michael pulled you out of the river?

You know what happened. I told the officers already. She grabbed me. She dragged me in. She tried to kill me.

Your boyfriend—

He’s not my boyfriend.

Your ex-boyfriend saw you both come up for air and then he said you pushed her back down.

He’s mistaken. How can anyone have known what was really happening? What was going on under the surface? It was an accident.

Are we still talking about what happened in the river?

What happened in the river, what happened to Eleanor, what happened to Amy – does it matter? I couldn’t save any of them in the end, could I? She was right about that – they all were. You can’t save everyone. Some people are beyond saving. I tried.

Your sister’s death was an accident.

It was still my fault. I could have saved her. She would still be alive if I had done my job.

You weren’t old enough to be put in charge of your sister in that situation. She was your mother’s responsibility.

Do you think I don’t know that? I’ve dedicated my entire life to helping people who had childhoods like mine. You can tell yourself over and over that you weren’t to blame, you can reason and plead with yourself, but in the end there is always that voice whispering that if you’d only paid more attention, been more responsible, no one’s life would have been ruined. A baby wouldn’t be dead. You wouldn’t be evil.

Is that what you think? That you’re evil?

Most people go their whole lives not killing anyone at all. I’ve killed my sister and my best friend. Do you think I’m evil?

I think you need help.

You can’t help me. No one can. You can take me back to my cell now.

89

The first time I killed someone I was just four years old. For so many years I tried to tell myself it was an accident – I wasn’t responsible for the death of my sister. But I didn’t save her either. I have spent my whole life trying to protect the people I love, to try and make up for the baby girl I couldn’t save. Sometimes I’ll admit that I went too far, but all I ever wanted to do was protect them. I blamed myself for what happened to Bea at university; I should never have been so far away from her. It’s why I installed the camera in her laptop – to look out for her when we couldn’t be together.

As we grew up, me on the outside of our triumvirate looking in on the friendship Bea and Eleanor shared, I made sure they always needed me. I suppose looking back I felt like I couldn’t be phased out if I was indispensable. When it looked as though things were ticking along too neatly for them, all it ever took was a little help from me to make sure their lives were shaken up enough for me to save the day. At school it was a rumour, or a boyfriend caught cheating; as we grew up it was easier to show my worth without having to intervene in the first place. Thoughtful gifts when they were having a bad day, dates I remembered that they barely remembered themselves. I prided myself on making these women the centre of my universe without them even knowing. And in return they gave me a taste of normality, a peek into an ordinary life with family feuds that came from stealing each other’s clothes rather than from the aching loss of a baby girl.