Cross Her Heart(89)

I still have time. I take a breath. Think, think, think. Use your brain. The torch streaming light ahead of me, I go back to the pantry and stare down at the tiny cellar. It’s a wide staircase though, which implies to me a big basement. Space. I’ve always been good with spaces. Look at the space. What ground-floor rooms should the basement run under? Not going to be the kitchen. When the house was occupied, it would have been too cluttered and busy for secret doorways. Especially if there was a cook or housekeeper or whatever the fuck those old posh families had. Somewhere else.

‘I’m coming, Lisa, I’m coming,’ I mutter as I follow the walls and corridors, tracing my fingers on them and tapping, listening for anything that might not be right. Nothing. I go into a sitting room, and there it strikes me. I almost smile.

The bookshelf. Those old books haven’t been left there for no reason. If you were going to design a house with trickery at its core, a secret doorway would have to be in a bookshelf.

Heart racing, I pull the various books free, throwing them to the ground, clearing the ledges. One refuses to budge as if it’s glued in place. Part of the shelf. I pause, breathing heavily, and shine the torch on it. Very carefully, I push it forward. Something clicks and the whole shelf swings inwards. My mouth drops open as the cool rush of air hits me.

I’ve found it.

I think I Marilyn a distant wail of sirens. The sound is barely more than the hum of a mosquito. If it’s the police, they’re still some distance away. My feet are hot in my shoes. My whole body itches with impatience. All I have as a weapon is my torch. I should wait for the police. I know I should wait for the police. To go down there unarmed is fucking madness.

But as a shriek from below carries up the stairs, I find myself doing it anyway.





78


LISA

She wanted me to be Charlotte again. But I’m not. I was Charlotte. Now I’m Lisa. I have my own rage but I have Charlotte’s too, and as the second cuff comes off I channel all of it, shaking my faux sluggishness off in an instant and shrieking as I lunge at her.

‘You fucking bitch!’ My words spray in her face as I shove her backwards. ‘You fucking shite bitch!’ There’s so much I want to say, to scream at her, all that grief, all those years of guilt, what she did to me, what she did to Daniel, but these are the only words I can find.

She thuds heavily into the table, and I reel sideways, more unsteady on my feet than I was expecting. I stop moving but the world doesn’t. Shit. Katie’s surprise and shock turns to a sneer, and as nausea threatens to drop me, I see why. The knife. My knife. She grabs for it and I lunge to stop her but she’s not drunk and drugged and she lithely turns and then it’s in her hand. She smiles, triumphant, as I sway, trying to focus.

‘Never could keep up,’ she says.

‘Fuck you.’ Behind her, I can see movement under the blanket. Not panicked wriggling but more focused. I need to keep Katie distracted. I need to stay alive long enough for my baby to get away. ‘So you’re going to stab me? That screws your perfect plan, doesn’t it?’

‘I’ll improvise something,’ she says, but I see the irritation. More movement under the blanket. Does Ava have one wrist free? ‘I’d rather you went to prison, but if you’re both dead I can live with that.’

She lunges towards me and I manage to stumble out of the way. She laughs and I realise with a sudden despair that she’s playing with me. I can barely stay on my feet.

‘Lisa?’

The voice is so unexpected, I turn automatically. She’s standing in a doorway behind us, her eyes wide, shocked, a torch limp in her hand by her side. Marilyn. Marilyn found us. I let out a small sob at the sight of my best friend, my true best friend, but she’s suddenly leaping towards me, the torch dropping useless to the ground as she shoves me sideways, hard.

I spin, falling backwards to the ground, in time to see Katie, her face ugly with all her crazed bitterness, slice the knife down into the space where a second ago I had been standing. The space Marilyn now occupies.

I hear Marilyn gasp. It’s not pain but utter surprise. She looks down. The handle is embedded in her chest. For a moment, there’s a perfect stillness, and then her head turns to face me. She’s trying to smile. Her mouth moves, attempting to form a word, and from where I am on the floor I can hear the liquid rattle of her breath.

‘Run,’ she finally says, before, like a puppet whose strings have been cut, she crumples to the floor.

I don’t run. I can’t run. I am done with running. I drag my eyes from my beautiful friend’s broken body and then I’m screaming. I hear the noise and I know it’s me, but it’s like it’s coming from somewhere else, someone else, somewhere far outside of me. I have no rational thought. I am a weapon of pure pain and I leap up, no unsteadiness in my legs now, and launch myself at Katie, my bodyweight taking both of us to the ground, the weight knocking the wind out of her under me. My hands grasp at her throat and I start to squeeze.

Marilyn. Daniel. Me. Ava. All those years. My whole life. She’s struggling but my grip is a tightening vice on her slim neck. I see the fear in her eyes and I revel in it. ‘Fuck you, Katie Batten,’ I say through gritted teeth and as tears spring up at the back of my eyes. ‘Fuck you, you crazy bitch.’

She’s choking, awful sounds coming from her crushed windpipe, and she desperately struggles to breathe, but still my grip tightens, the muscles in my hands starting to scream with the effort. I’m going to kill her. I know it. And it feels good.