Cross Her Heart(48)

‘Katie did.’

I look back to the doorway, and see Alison’s despair and Bray’s frustration. ‘Who’s Katie?’ I ask.





39


AFTER


1990

The Express, 18 March 1990 Evil incarcerated – psycho sister jailed

Twelve-year-old Charlotte Nevill, pictured left, was convicted yesterday of the brutal murder of her half-brother, two-year-old Daniel Grove, in October of last year. Nevill, who was only eleven at the time of the crime, has been sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Daniel’s body was found in a house marked for demolition in the problematic Elmsley Estate. He had been beaten with a brick and strangled.

At the end of a trial which has shocked and gripped a horrified nation, the jury of five women and seven men took just over six and a half hours to reach their verdicts for both defendants. Charlotte Nevill remained impassive throughout the summing up and sentencing, as she had throughout the entire proceedings, Mr Justice Parkway telling her, ‘You will be securely detained for very very many years until the Home Secretary is satisfied that you have matured and are fully rehabilitated and no longer a danger to others.’

The second accused, also a girl of twelve years old, known only as Child B, was acquitted of all charges.

Witnesses testified that Charlotte Nevill had gained a reputation, from as young as eight or nine, of being a troublemaker and terroriser of the elderly and vulnerable on the beleaguered Elmsley Estate who was running wild and whose mother was no longer able to control her. As Mr Justice Parkway stated in his summing up, Charlotte ‘was clearly influential over the actions of Child B, an easily led, emotional girl from a stable and perhaps over-protective family’.

Charlotte’s jealousy of her innocent younger brother, perhaps because of her abandonment by her own father, was well known to the family, but no one could have predicted the terrible outcome of this cold-hearted killer’s rage, one who has shown no remorse throughout the proceedings.

Full story inside, pages 2, 3, 4 and 6.

Feature article ‘Nature vs Nurture: The making of a monster’.





40


NOW


LISA

I’m going too fast and she can’t keep up. She looks so tired, and she glances back, confused. I see them in the doorway. Alison and Bray. Vultures waiting for me to spit out something from my rotten insides for them to hungrily gobble up. They see me see them and the terrible pretence that this is a secret meeting is over and they step inside the room.

‘Katie’s dead.’ Alison looks at me, not Marilyn, as she speaks, slowly, as if I am simple. ‘She drowned in Ibiza in 2004. We’ve been through all this.’

I shake my head. ‘No. It’s Katie. She didn’t die.’ I grab Marilyn’s hand. I need her to hear me even if she won’t believe me. I know her. She takes time, she thinks things over. Maybe, just maybe, something I say will lodge in her clever head. ‘It’s not Jon. It’s Katie. And she knows me. She knows me now.’ She frowns and tugs her hand away but I don’t stop. ‘Someone isn’t who they say they are. Someone I know. She’s found me and she’s got Ava.’

Marilyn’s looking at me like I’m a dangerous mad stranger which tears at my broken heart. She’s my best friend. I’m her best friend. I’m both her friend and the evil killer she’s read about. Charlotte is my shadow, my curse, my anchor in the black. She’ll always be part of me.

‘I still don’t know who you’re all talking about,’ Marilyn says. ‘Who’s Katie?’

‘Child B,’ I say softly. ‘They could only call her Child B.’

I see a hint of recognition in her eyes. A vague memory of another girl briefly mentioned in the recent spate of newspaper reports. But Child B was acquitted. No one cares about Katie, not then, not now. Katie didn’t kill anyone. Katie wasn’t the monster.

‘Cross your heart and hope to die,’ I whisper.

‘We’re not getting anywhere here. Sorry,’ Bray cuts in. ‘I’ll take you back to your hotel.’

‘Hotel?’ I ask, and suddenly I see the details so much more clearly. The dark circles around the eyes. Imperfect make-up, so not like Marilyn. Clothes not quite what she’d normally wear. ‘Why are you at a hotel?’

‘Nothing,’ she answers. A pause. ‘Trouble with Richard.’ Perhaps she feels there have been too many lies between us already, or maybe there’s no point in lying to someone who you no longer consider a friend. She can’t meet my eyes. This isn’t my Marilyn, confident in her charmed life. ‘Is it my fault?’ I ask quietly. She looks for a moment as if she might say yes, as if she wants to say yes, but then she shakes her head.

‘No. This is all his fault.’

‘Come on,’ Bray says, and all three of them turn away. I follow them to the corridor. Bray is talking about how they’re searching Jon’s house for clues, and our old house, and they’ll find Ava, but I’m not listening. I want to grab Marilyn and make her stay. Something is very wrong in her world and who can she talk to? Is it something new, and if not, why didn’t I notice it? You did. The migraines. The drinking. You were just too wrapped up in yourself. I was a terrible friend even before she knew I was a monster. She’s walking differently – details, always details in my head – carefully. Is she hurt? Oh, Marilyn, my Marilyn, what is going on with you? Ava gone, and you in trouble. What has Richard done?