Sisters and Lies Page 12

  At the door both of them kissed me, talked about doing it all again.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I said, desperate to get out of there.

  I looked at Shannon then, at her even teeth and her wide smile. I had seriously misjudged the situation. I had thought she was going to be the enemy, but it turned out to be even worse than that. She could have been a friend.

  24.

  Rachel: day seven, 11 a.m.

  Evie’s story had found its way into the newspapers and everything exploded. There were several slightly hysterical voicemails on my phone from my publisher and agent, as well as a good clutch of emails from readers asking me if I was okay. A quick Google search confirmed that three red-tops and a few broadsheets were carrying the story, ‘Author’s sister in horror smash’, with some insinuating it might have been a suicide attempt. All of them, without exception, had spelled Evie’s name wrongly.

  My publisher and agent naturally sounded the most agitated – both wanted me to get back to them as quickly as possible so they could issue a statement.

  Jacob had also sent a message. He was coming over. ‘If you’re not going to answer any of my messages or my phone calls I’m going to have to fly over in person. I should have done it days ago.’ But I’d clamped down on that immediately. It was too soon. Too confusing. And I still felt sick about the girl I’d found in our home. I tried not to think about it but when I did I wanted to retch.

  Please don’t, Jacob. I’m sorry I haven’t been in contact sooner but I needed time to think. I’ll keep you updated on any developments with Evie, I promise. And maybe in a few days we can talk properly. When everything’s calmed down a bit.

  Rachel, are you sure? he’d replied, and I’d pinged back, Yes. I’m sure.

  Miraculously he’d left it at that.

  Eventually I rang my publicist back. ‘I don’t think it was suicide,’ I said, rubbing the skin on my finger where my wedding band had recently sat. ‘Evie wasn’t trying to kill herself.’

  ‘We won’t mention anything about suicide,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘We’ll say your sister was involved in a car accident on Sunday night and is currently in a coma, but with every hope she’ll recover. Keep it short and sweet.’

  ‘Anne, I don’t know if there is hope she’ll recover. Some coma patients never regain consciousness.’

  ‘And some do, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Well, then, that’s what we’ll say.’

  I knew what she was trying to do. Keep my spirits up. Remain positive. But it was easy for her to be positive, sitting in her cushy office in Covent Garden with a skinny latte. All she had to do was write a press release. She wasn’t dealing with the reality. She wasn’t dealing with a fucking life.

  I paced around the apartment, like a caged animal. The emails were flooding in, mostly from nice people wishing my sister well, but also from a few crazies, telling me this was my fault because I was an atheist. Because of what I’d done to my unborn child.

  The TBM email of the previous night seemed like small fry in comparison to that lot. The things they wanted to do to me: torture, flaying, an eternity damned to Hell and back. If only they’d known I’d just chucked in my marriage as well. They’d have had a field day.

  They had no idea, of course, of the actual story of my abortion – how I’d got pregnant by the first man I’d loved, the first man I’d had sex with. And sometimes I wished I could explain to them how hard it had been to make that decision; how alone and scared and powerless I’d felt. But I couldn’t, because people like that never listened, didn’t want to listen. They would never understand that there had been no choice. Only necessity.

  I had taken that option because it was the only option. By terminating the pregnancy I had allowed myself to survive.

  I had no desire to rake over the details again, reopen the wound. But in the stillness of Evie’s flat, the memories came flooding back.

  And so did he: Luke Spain. The one-time love of my life.

  We’d met one night, when I had just turned seventeen, in a bar several miles from where I lived, and I’d almost passed out with attraction to him: his dirty-blond hair; his motorbike leathers; the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

  He’d wooed me with cheap alcohol and vinyl – sharing his love of rockabilly, his obsession with Elvis. When we talked, I felt understood in a way I never had previously; during sex I bucked like an animal – alive and wild.

  Until I found out I was pregnant, and he decided not to answer my calls any longer. Finally, I tracked him down to where he lived – he’d always been alarmingly vague about it – and when I arrived at the door, it was not Luke who answered but a tiny, fragile four-year-old.

  ‘Is Luke Spain here?’ I stammered, taken aback, but she just stood there smiling at me, twirling a strand of white-blonde hair round one finger.

  A moment later, a pretty brunette woman appeared. ‘Hello? Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Luke.’

  ‘Well, he’s at work at the moment. Maybe I can help you. I’m his wife.’

  And that was when the ground had fallen from under me. I mumbled something about being a Jehovah’s Witness. That I had got Luke’s name from the phone book. And then I had slithered home to repeat the word over and over and over.

  Married.

  With a daughter.

  Everything we’d shared had meant nothing.

  It had been a lie.

  I didn’t decide on the abortion immediately. For a week or so, I spun it round in my head – all the while thinking, I love him, I can’t live without him. And I tried calling him endlessly – until my fingers were weary from pressing the buttons on the public telephone.

  On the seventh day, he eventually showed up outside my school and yanked me into his car, drove me to a secluded lake, then turned off the engine. ‘Don’t you ever go near my home again, do you understand me?’

  ‘But I’m pregnant, and you wouldn’t answer my calls. What was I supposed to do?’

  He stared at me then, a strange, demented look coming over his features. ‘Christ, Rachel, don’t you understand? This was just a bit of fun. I’m married. I have a kid. I don’t want another.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘You need to get rid of it,’ he said quietly.

  I reached for his hand. ‘Please, come on …’

  But he pulled away. ‘Rachel, just be sensible, for fuck sake. I don’t love you. I don’t want anything to do with you. I love my wife.’

  Tears ran down my cheeks. ‘Luke, what we had –’

  ‘What we had was fun, but it’s over now. Don’t be selfish. Do the right thing. Have an abortion and pretend this never happened.’ He drove me back to school in silence.

  Two weeks later, when I had figured out the logistics and the money, that was exactly what I did.

  My mind stayed in that place. After the abortion I had been like a zombie – all feelings suppressed so I could just get through life without Mammy or Evie suspecting what had happened to me. But it had had a ripple effect. I’d become colder and more distant, which Evie had interpreted as rejection, with the result that she no longer confided in me about the bullying, no longer told me what was going on in her head.

  I wanted her to open up. I wanted us to be close again. But I couldn’t summon the energy to make it happen. How could I console her when I could barely drag myself out of bed each morning? Most of the time I just wanted to be dead.

  Looking back, I was suffering from depression and possibly post-traumatic shock, but I didn’t realize it, and by the time I did, it was too late. The damage had been done and Evie had lost faith in me. By that stage the wound was too deep to heal.

  I thought now of all the horrible emails I’d just received – from the Bible-bashers; from TBM. How censorious they sounded; how they wanted to make me feel bad for my abortion. But the truth was, I didn’t regret it. Not remotely. What I did regret wa
s how I’d lost my connection to Evie during that year, how I hadn’t been able to tell her what was wrong with me and, as a result, she didn’t tell me what was going on with her.

  Sure, she’d found out about the termination eventually and, no doubt, worked out why I’d been so distant that year, but I’d never said the words to her face: ‘I’m sorry I abandoned you when you needed me most, Evie. I’m sorry I was so caught up in my own pain that I didn’t recognize yours.’

  I stared at my phone, unable to ignore the vile emails and horrible tweets clogging up my inbox. The reality was, I didn’t care about those people. I’d take them on a million times if it meant Evie would wake up. If it meant I could hold her in my arms and say sorry for what I’d done.

  But as the bile and vitriol continued to stream in, I realized that that was not how life worked. I couldn’t trade my suffering for Evie’s recovery – no matter how much I wished it.

  Nor could I undo the past. Even though I wished, from the bottom of my heart, that I could.

  25.

  For a long time, I stayed like that, lost in time, thinking about Evie, about the termination, about Luke. But eventually I got up from the couch and shook my body loose. I shouldn’t be doing this, I thought, losing myself in pointless, maudlin thoughts. I’d got over the Luke thing years earlier – that was what Sanctuary had been about – and while it was true that I could never change what had happened, I could certainly influence my present, my future.

  I went towards the coat-stand, grabbed my leather jacket, then found my boots and pushed my feet into them. I needed to stop moping and do something productive. I needed to find a new way of helping Evie.

  I thought of DI Ainsworth – how stuffy and unhelpful he’d been. Maybe it was worth paying him another visit to give him the new information I’d gleaned since our last chat. He might start taking me seriously if I relayed to him what Donnagh had told me. That Evie had been hiding things. That she’d been living a lie.

  When I arrived, Ainsworth did not seem particularly excited to see me. Before I’d even had a chance to sit down, he launched into the reasons why Evie’s ‘accident’ was not under criminal investigation.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, even though I was pretty sure I did.

  ‘Because, as I explained to you initially, Ms Darcy, it was a single-car collision, dead of night. No mitigating factors, no other car.’

  ‘I have new information, which may change your mind about all that.’

  ‘Do you now?’

  ‘Yes.’ I ignored his condescending air. ‘It will change everything.’

  Ainsworth emitted a heavy sigh. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better take a seat.’

  ‘So you’re saying your sister was living a double life?’ DI Ainsworth was fiddling with a pen, peering at me through his spectacles.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ I replied. ‘She was hiding her true identity from Donnagh, her supposed boyfriend.’

  ‘Why do you say “supposed”?’

  ‘Well, it turns out, he used to bully her at school. Badly. And yet as adults they were in a relationship and living together. Even though he claims he didn’t know who she was. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

  Ainsworth continued to peer at me. ‘Many things appear odd to me, Ms Darcy, but this does not change the facts. Eve was alone in the car when she crashed. Mr Flood wasn’t with her. He wasn’t chasing her. There were no old bruises or scars on her body that would suggest he had been physically violent towards her.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, exasperated. ‘I’m not even saying Donnagh was the one responsible for Evie’s crash. I’ve also received this strange email from someone who goes by the title “The Better Misogynist”. I’ve been wondering if the crash could be linked to him.’

  Ainsworth summoned what appeared to be the bare minimum of interest. ‘What did this email say?’

  I repeated it verbatim.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘It was just one email, though, was it?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘And you’re a well-known author, am I correct?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘That email is probably just trolling, then.’

  I couldn’t believe how quickly he was dismissing this new evidence. ‘I don’t think so. It sounded like he knew Evie. Like he knew me too, actually.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Ainsworth said, picking something from his nose. ‘I’d say keep an eye on it, but I’d be very surprised if there was any link.’

  ‘For fuck sake,’ I muttered under my breath. Then, in a normal voice, I said, ‘Won’t you even report it to your cybercrime unit – see if they can find who might have sent it?’

  Ainsworth seemed to chuckle. ‘Our cybercrime unit,’ he repeated, as if he found the idea very amusing. ‘Because we have one of those.’ He paused, breathing heavily. ‘Ms Darcy, I’m sorry to have to bring this up again, but all the evidence points to this being an attempted suicide.’

  ‘You say that but –’

  Ainsworth held up his hand as if to halt me. ‘Given your concerns about a possible motive, I took it upon myself to ring Ms Durant’s local GP. The details were in her wallet, which we found at the scene of the crash. He confirmed that she had come to him suffering with anxiety and that he had prescribed Xanax and antidepressants. He also said she had told him about a previous suicide attempt when she was a student, back in Ireland.’

  I flushed, embarrassed.

  ‘It would have been helpful,’ he went on, ‘if you’d mentioned that during our earlier discussions.’

  ‘It was years ago. She was only a kid.’

  ‘She was twenty-one,’ Ainsworth said. ‘Ms Darcy, I’m sorry to break it to you but it looks extremely likely that your sister crashed her car, well, Mr Flood’s car, intentionally. All the evidence would suggest that.’ He laced his hands together, and tilted his head, as if to say, ‘Please, you silly woman. Just accept the obvious.’

  Something exploded inside me. ‘For fuck sake, Ainsworth, why don’t you, for just one second, stop talking about Evie trying to commit suicide as if it’s fact and do something proactive for a change? Why aren’t you out there trying to find the person who did this to her? Why aren’t you looking for the fucking perpetrator?’ I broke down in a stream of sobs so loud that people in the corridor could probably hear me.

  For a second there was complete silence. Then I heard the squeak of a chair leg and the loud thud of a door shutting.

  A few moments later Ainsworth was back in the room. ‘Here,’ he said, handing me some tissues and a glass of water. I took them.

  He sat down again and took off his glasses, rubbing at his temples. ‘Ms Darcy, I’m going to ignore that little outburst and try to make you understand things from my side.’

  I nodded. Even I knew cursing blue murder in front of a policeman wasn’t the greatest idea in the world.

  ‘In my line of business, we operate on this thing called evidence. And so far the evidence regarding your sister is as follows. Some time between eleven and midnight on the third of August, your sister, Eveline Durant, took her boyfriend Donnagh Flood’s car and drove four miles into the borough of Lewisham. At some point she lost control of the vehicle, a 2015 Porsche Carrera. It was a mild night with no ground frost or rain so we can rule out weather as a factor. There was no other vehicle involved, no blood on the front bumper to suggest she’d hit an animal or even a human. Following the accident, we interviewed Mr Flood, who said he had been seeing Ms Durant for roughly eight weeks, and that they had just returned from Paris. As a precaution, I contacted the Irish police, who carried out a background check on Mr Flood. He committed a few minor offences as a teenager – possession of a small amount of drugs, one count of stealing a car as a minor – but since the age of seventeen there have been no further infractions. And his record in the UK is also clean.’ Ainsworth took a gulp from a plastic cup that he had brought in at the same time as the one for me. ‘Are you following all this?’
he said in my direction.

  ‘Yes,’ I said quietly, conscious now that I must do nothing more to piss him off.

  ‘I also discussed the case with a number of colleagues and as of now we can find no reason why we would regard it as suspicious.’

  ‘Even with this new information – the fact that she was concealing her identity from her boyfriend? The email I got from TBM?’

  Ainsworth sighed. ‘None of it changes the facts, Ms Darcy. The ones I have just enunciated.’

  ‘At length,’ I replied sarcastically.

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Ms Darcy, I’m a busy man and, though I sympathize with your situation, I can’t allow this case to take up any more of my time.’

  ‘But what about the email? Won’t you at least follow it up?’

  ‘Ms Darcy, as you said yourself, it was one email. Fair enough if a few more come in, I’ll see what I can do, but for the moment I just don’t have the resources to spend on something as minor as this.’

  ‘Minor? You think Evie’s coma is minor?’

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ he said, in a semi-growl. ‘How many more times do I need to explain?’

  ‘Can’t you at least try to pretend you care about Evie? About what happened to her?’

  ‘Ms Darcy, I do care, but as I said, I’m a very busy man. Your sister had mental-health issues and all the evidence points to the fact that she tried to kill herself – that’s the nuts and bolts of it, I’m afraid. What more do you want me to say?’

  I stared at him, open-mouthed, at a complete loss for words. I’d come here seeking help and all I’d got was total apathy.

  No, it was much worse than that.

  It was total disdain.

  I wasn’t just shocked at Ainsworth’s attitude, I was incensed. As I stood outside the station, dragging hard on a fag, I wanted to kick the bastard’s head in. How could he have been so dismissive? So inhumane. Yes, maybe it looked like every other suicide crash he’d ever investigated, but didn’t he owe it to me at least to talk to Donnagh and look into the TBM email? To pretend he cared?