Cross Her Heart(72)

I travelled. Foreign bankers are always less stuffy about the rules of cash bank accounts if you know how to persuade them. I sold property to offshore companies deep in the web of assets I owned. I sold companies to various of the identities I forged, ready for when I might need them.

You’re looking at me like I’m crazy, Ava. So I didn’t go to school or university, but I never stopped learning. I slept with the kinds of criminal and white collar people who could teach these things and when I’d taken all I could from them, I’d vanish. Probably a relief to both parties. I’ve never been overly lovable. Mother would tell me so in her later years. When she’d started to see me rather than the princess she’d always wanted.

Charlotte always longed desperately to be loved. I didn’t. I’d had her and she was enough. Charlotte though, I knew she’d always need someone. And the thing with people, as you know, little Ava, is that they talk. The bigger the secret, the more likely it will eventually burst free gloriously loud, telling everyone at once, and that’s what happened with your father.

I read the story in Spain. I got the newspapers every day after Charlotte was released, and never missed a day. You have to be meticulous if you want to find someone. How could I risk a tiny detail or photo evading me that could lead me to her? As it turned out, she was all over the front pages when it happened. When he told. I devoured every word. All those ridiculous details he made up to make himself sound better and her sound worse. I knew that whatever happened I’d have to kill him one day. Just for being so pathetic, if not because I needed to, and as it turned out he came in far more useful dead than alive. Everything ties up so nicely.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the story he sold. The waiting was much harder after that. God, it was hard. What if he died? Drank himself to an early grave? Had a car crash? Life never seems more fragile than when your success depends on someone else staying breathing a few years longer. But lack of patience destroys plans. People get sloppy. I had to focus on what I needed to do and hope fate would stay on my side with Jon. I had to wait for years. But I had plenty to keep myself busy.

The first thing I had to do was kill Katie Batten off. It was easy. If you’re unloved, no one asks questions or looks for you. Certainly not the Spanish police with their hands full of drunk and high teenagers. Who’s going to waste time looking for some drowned English woman’s body? So, once she was dead I activated one of my other dormant identities – the government aren’t the only people who can create those – and bided my time. I couldn’t put myself in Jon’s world straight away. He needed to forget her, you see? He needed to be over it. To have her words vague in his head. To have forgotten all mention of Girl B. Time and space were required.

I still checked the papers, of course, every day like clockwork, but after Jon’s betrayal, your mother was obviously much more careful. And she had you to focus on. To love. To keep safe. She’d want to stay settled. Give you the childhood she never had. A big heart, Charlotte. Damaged, but big.

After a while, I moved into Jon’s area, got a job – supermarket checkout girl – and waited some more. I let a life build up around me. People believe lives, as if they’re the truth of a person rather than the window dressing. You only have to look at Facebook. All those miserable people trying to outshine each other with holiday photos and humble brags and #feelingblessed. Adding people they’ve never met and thinking they somehow know them from the shit they share. One random friend in common. Your father didn’t like social media. After his experiences with the press, I think anything with media in the name was a turn-off. But he was lonely and sober and he made it so easy to get close to him. Slowly, slowly I let him fall in love with me. Well, not with me, but with Anna. Anna the shopgirl. Sweet and giving.

They say women are the softer sex. The more emotional. Which fool decided that? A man in love is weakness personified. A man in love will tell you anything. Share anything. Give you everything. And he did. Once I turned on that tap inside him, the whole story poured out. He loved you, you see, in his own weak way. He showed me the letter your mother sent him back in 2006 when he’d given her the money. He’d kept it.

He said they’d called you Crystal, but he thought she’d change your name to Ava. She’d always wanted to call you Ava but he hadn’t let her. He thought it was an old woman’s name, but now he thought it was beautiful. He whined and whined about wishing he knew you or knew where you were and hated that you probably knew nothing about him. Nothing good. He wanted you to know he loved you.

I had to bite back a laugh, if I’m honest. What is it with men? They create their own misery and then act as if it was somebody else’s fault. So much self-pity in their genes. Or in their jeans? He wanted to find you but he had nothing to go on and he’d tried to contact the probation services about it but they’d told him he’d have to wait until you were eighteen. What did he expect? He’d cost them a whole new identity and I for one know that’s not cheap.

I told him to forget you. I told him it wasn’t healthy and he should move on. I said his future was with me. He was weak – always weak – and agreed. I took the letter, of course. It was dwelling in the past.

He didn’t deserve to keep that letter – he hadn’t seen the clue to where you both were, right there in front of his eyes. The small faded postmark on the envelope. I did though. I saw it very clearly indeed.