Bad Little Girl(95)

But there’s something else, isn’t there? What? No, nothing. Oh there is, Claire, you know there is. A door in her mind opened, and behind it was crammed one big truth, tumbling out like a badly folded eiderdown.

Lorna had started the fire.

But you knew that all along, didn’t you, Claire? You hinted as much to the girl last night. And think about the soap opera countdown, Claire. Think about that. The abuse. The fire. Even the name Lauren.

Had Lorna started the fire?

Her fingers typed ‘cause of boxing day fire’, though she knew the answer already. Here it was, in cheerless black and white in the Daily Mail. Accelerant likely to be petrol and/or lighter fluid. Down the drains, the stairs, the letterbox. That smell when Lorna had arrived that final time, almost catatonic. ‘We have to go to Cornwall’; that smell, mingled with, but not masked by, dirt, sweat, sugar, all those familiar Lorna odours – ‘He poured lighter fuel on me!’ Back, back, her mind ran, panting, to an earlier memory; Claire had been at Lorna’s home, the time when the dog had attacked, and the men had been drinking, watching football. Outside, the barbeque, crusted with rust and meat, one of the men squirting lighter fluid on it, to make the burgers cook faster.

This little girl. My little girl. This sweet, goofy, kittenish darling. This killer of her own people.

Claire sat like a sack of laundry on the swivel chair, mouth open, eyes glazed. She didn’t notice the assistant standing by her, a middle-aged woman gifted with the stunned, emptiness of heavy medication. She was saying something.

‘Need ID for the computers.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, the girl on the desk didn’t tell me.’

‘Need ID.’

Claire scrambled in her bag, pulling out mints, fumbled for her purse, and stopped. Think Claire, think. They keep records of who looks at what on the internet, and what would it look like if one of the ex-teachers of a kidnap victim was researching her?

‘Sorry, I’m not sure I have anything on me. All I seem to have is this.’ One of Marianne’s loyalty cards for Boots, she had two – ‘You keep one, Claire, just so we can get double points for Lauren’s vitamins’ – and it was this that she handed to the woman. ‘Will this do?’

‘Is it a credit card?’ The woman stared at it, her face completely blank.

‘Sort of.’

‘We take them. I’ll photocopy it. Give it you back.’

She ambled off; Claire’s stomach turned over, hoping that she wouldn’t be checked on by another, more competent, assistant. At the photocopier, the woman stopped, frowned at the card, turned it over, frowned again. Claire stopped breathing. Then the woman, still frowning, pressed a button doubtfully, then another. A smile edged across her face when the paper churned through the machine and arrived, hot, in the tray below. She came back to Claire, smiling still, proudly. ‘Not done that before. Couldn’t work the buttons.’

‘You did very well.’

‘Here’s your card.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Can carry on your session now, on the computers?’

‘No, thank you. In a hurry now.’

‘Bye Miss Cairns!’ bellowed the woman, suddenly, and turned around. Claire sped out of the library, into the sun.





35





She drove back, carefully, well below the speed limit.

She planned. Tried to plan.

Get your things and go, Claire. Just leave or get them to leave? How can I make them leave? She slowed down even more, annoying a tourist in a hire car behind, before pulling over onto a verge to think more clearly.

Tell them you’re sick, tell them that you went to see the doctor and you’re sick, and you have to go to hospital. But that won’t get them out of the house. No. Tell them that there’s a problem with the will – that some cousin’s come out of the woodwork and wants them out of the house. Would that work? Tell them, oh, what? Tell them you got a solicitor’s letter. But they’ll ask to see it. OK then, tell them that you had to take the letter to a lawyer today – that’s why you went out, you didn’t want to worry them – and the solicitor kept the letter, and they advised you to vacate the property immediately until it’s all sorted out.

Would that work? Claire looked at herself in the mirror, mimed explaining a letter. Oh God, she was a terrible liar! But it’d have to do. Yes, tell them that she’d been told that it would be the best thing to get out of the house while the will was being looked at again. Tell them to get as many of their possessions out as they could, take them to Marianne’s house, wherever that was, and, and then what? Then, they’d all meet up at a – some kind of cheap hotel – yes, the Premier Inn on the edge of the caravan park. Claire would go first and make the reservations. And then she’d drive away, leave them. Go back home to her flat and her job.

But this was absurd! Lorna wouldn’t let that happen, wouldn’t let her go. Especially now, when she knew that Claire had a pretty good idea about the fire . . . Wherever Lorna went, Claire would have to follow. She was trapped.

She gave way to tears, great, racking sobs, her thin arms hugging her chest, and after the tears stopped, she still shook. Terror. This girl, this lovely little girl, her girl, had done something that terrible. The horror that everything was a lie – could that be true? That she’d made it all up from the start – No! Not all of it, surely! Yes, all of it. All the love she’d given and had felt flowing back to her in welcome waves was based on sickness, deceit.