Three Little Lies

by Laura Marshall

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Female Sleuths; Suspense

Synopsis

When Sasha disappears, Ellen fears the worst. Then long-buried secrets resurface, Ellen realizes she may not know Sasha—or what she's capable of—at all.

2005. Seventeen-year-old Ellen falls under the spell of glamorous newcomer Sasha. As Ellen is welcomed into Sasha's family, she doesn't see the darkness that lies beneath their musical, bohemian lifestyle. At a New Year's Eve party, events come to a dramatic head, resulting in a court case (in which Ellen is a key witness) that means family life at the Corner House will never be the same again.

2018. Now thirty, Ellen and Sasha are still entwined in each other's lives and sharing a flat in London. When Sasha disappears, Ellen fears the worst. She has gone missing like this before and the police won't take it seriously, but long-buried events in their shared past mean that Ellen has good reason to be frightened—not only for Sasha, but also for herself. Finding out the truth about what really happened on New Year's Eve twelve years ago puts Ellen in terrible danger, and forces her to confront not only the past, but how well she really knows her best friend.

Release date: September 4, 2018

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

July 2007

My little boy. He looks so alone up there. It’s the first time he’s worn a suit since he left school, which God knows feels like five minutes ago, although it’s over two years. It seems like only yesterday that I was sending him off to school for the very first time, his hands lost in the sleeves of a jumper I’d bought with growing room. I can see that boy in his face, which is the same to me as it’s always been. Yes, of course he’s changed, but the new faces have just been layered on top of his original face, the one that only I can see now—smooth-skinned and perfect, a sprinkling of freckles across his nose, his expression completely open.

It’s closed now, seemingly emotionless, although I’m not fooled. I’m the only one who can feel the tremors running through him, because they run through me too. Flesh of my flesh. Until a baby is around six or seven months old, it has no idea that it’s a separate person from its mother. Up until then, it thinks they are one person, which is why separation anxiety kicks in around this time. Eventually, the baby gets it, but for the mother it never goes away. You and your child are, always and forever, one. You feel every cut, every mean remark, every heartbreak.

“Court rise.”

There’s a bang on the door signaling the judge’s imminent arrival, startling Daniel, who looks instinctively up at me for guidance. I try to smile but my lips won’t press themselves into the right shape. His eyes sweep the public gallery hopefully, even though he knows Tony won’t be here; can’t face it. I can’t face it either, but I’m here. It’s merely the latest in a lifetime of things I couldn’t face but did anyway—getting up five times a night to feed him or soothe his crying, spending endless Sunday mornings watching him play rugby in the freezing rain, driving him all over the country to play piano concerts, sitting beside him all night the first time he got drunk, too petrified to sleep in case he choked on his own vomit. Everything I’ve done has been to protect him, to make things better. This is what we do, we mothers. I need to keep reminding myself of that, whatever happens, whatever I’ve done. It was never about me. It was for Daniel.

The judge sweeps in, a caricature in a frayed wig with florid cheeks, the jury watching him expectantly. They are nervous, overawed; it’s probably the first time most of them have been in a courtroom, let alone been a crucial part of the process. Some of them let their eyes flicker to Daniel, but they don’t linger on him long. What is it that makes them look away? Disgust? Fear? How much do they already know about him, about what he is accused of?

I lean forward, resting my arms on the rail. I will be here every day until this is over. I can only let myself see a positive outcome, where he is exonerated—the witnesses discredited, the… victim admitting she lied. We will take a taxi home and I will put him to bed and he will sleep, and his body and mind can begin to restore themselves.

I can’t countenance the alternative. I shudder at the idea. For me, as for most people, prison has always been an abstract concept; at most, I have driven past them, imagined the prisoners inside, but as a race apart: criminals, not ordinary people. Completely alien to me and my way of life, something I will never come across or have to think about. Well, not anymore. When you have other mothers as friends, the conversations move on over the years. First it was all sleepless nights and nappies, first words and potty training; then schools, friendship dramas, puberty. Most recently, it was drugs, sex, and alcohol. I thought they would be the last problems we would have to deal with before I forged a new relationship with my sons, an adult one. I imagined them taking me out for lunch, consulting me for advice on home improvements, hugging me again, like they did when they were little, but this time it would be them making me feel safe instead of the other way around. I never in a million years imagined I would be here, in this unknown landscape where none of my friends can, or would want to, follow me. I would swap places with any of them in a heartbeat.

The judge sits down, and so does everybody else apart from the prosecution lawyer, who turns to the jury to make his opening statement. And so it begins: my little boy’s rape trial.

September 2017

Sasha’s not in when I get home from the studio, so I put on a CD of Olivia’s recording of “Dido’s Lament” by Purcell, full blast. Of course I’ve got everything she’s ever recorded downloaded, but this is my absolute favorite, softer and more intimate than some of the showier arias. It was the first thing I ever heard her sing live, and there’s something about slotting the CD into my old hi-fi that feels right. I played it on the show today, shoving down any misgivings I had about whether Sasha might be listening. She was at work; there’s no chance they were playing Simply Classical in her office. I don’t suppose any of her colleagues have even heard of such a tiny digital radio station unless she’s mentioned it, which I doubt. She hardly even talks to me about it—a silent signal that she disapproves of my choice of work, redolent of the Monktons as it is. Classical music was their world and she rejected it utterly, as she has done everything connected with them since the day she moved out.

It was different for me, though. I loved it as she never did. My parents weren’t ones for listening to music. My mum listened to BBC Radio 2 in the kitchen sometimes, and they had a few CDs in a dusty stand in the front room, one of which might be put on if they had friends around, but they didn’t care about it. It didn’t stir any emotion in them. I went through the motions of fandom when it came to the bands other girls liked, pinning posters to my wall and even going to a couple of gigs with Karina, but my heart was never in it. It wasn’t until that first concert where I sat in the darkness next to Daniel, heart pounding, tears in my eyes, Olivia’s voice pouring over me, into me, like warm water, that I understood what music could be.

I lie down on the sofa, wanting to relax into the music but keeping one hand on the remote control, alert for Sasha’s key in the door. I hadn’t been expecting her last Friday—I thought she was going out straight after work—but she’d come home around 7 p.m. in a foul mood and found me listening to Olivia. She hadn’t said anything about the music, but I could feel her displeasure, radiating out like soundwaves, invisible but powerful. I’d switched it off and tried to talk to her, but she’d stomped off to her room, saying she was tired. There was definitely something up with her but I never got to the bottom of it. This Friday it’s not Sasha’s key but the door buzzer that interrupts me, jerking me upright like a marionette. I hastily turn off the music and take the few steps into the hall.

“It’s Jackson,” says a terse voice on the intercom. No hello, how are you. Not for Jackson the niceties of the normal greetings that oil the social wheels. I sigh and buzz him up, waiting until I hear his footsteps in the hallway before I open the door.

“Is she here?” he demands, sweeping past me into the front room.

“No, she’s not back from work yet. Was she expecting you?” I am chilly, matching his brusqueness note for note.

“Clearly not,” he says, flinging himself down on the sofa, legs apart. “I went to meet her from work… as a surprise.” He has the grace to look shamefaced about this last bit. We both know he was checking up on her. “She hadn’t been there all afternoon. The receptionist told me she left at lunchtime, and her phone’s going straight to voice mail. If she’s not here, where is she?”

“How the hell should I know? I’m not her keeper.” I try to maintain a cold note of indignation, but a thread of worry tugs at a far corner of my brain. Where is she?

“You’re not far off,” he says. “Best friends, aren’t you? So close? Tells you everything?”

A small voice in my head wonders if this is true, but I want it to be, so I agree.

“Yes, she does, and whatever you’re thinking, it’s not true. She’s not seeing someone else, Jackson. She’s really not. She loves you.” This last part sounds weak even to me. I’m not sure she does. The rest of it doesn’t ring entirely true either. Twelve years of friendship should give you a certain understanding, a shorthand. We shouldn’t have to tell each other what’s going on, how we’re feeling. We should just know. Usually I do, but in the last week or so, since she came home in such a strange mood, Sasha’s been distant, evasive, brushing off any attempt on my part to get her to open up. Jackson deflates a little with the realization that I genuinely don’t know where she is, and I lower myself onto the edge of the armchair.

“What’s going on with her, Ellen?” His bluster has evaporated, and with a jolt of surprise, I realize how much he likes her. “I mean, she’s always blown hot and cold, but this is something else. It’s not the first time I’ve caught her out in a lie recently.”

“What do you mean?” I say, torn between my discomfort at discussing her like this and my need to know. What has she been lying to him about?

“Oh, I don’t know… Not being where she said she was going to be, or being… evasive. Cagey.”

“She’s always been a bit like that, though.” This is true. She liked to retain an air of mystery, even when we were teenagers and had little to be mysterious about. “That’s just how she is. It doesn’t mean—”

“That she’s shagging someone else? Oh, grow up, Ellen. She’s not this perfect superhuman being, you know. She’s as flawed as the rest of us. If not more so.”

“I know,” I say, stung. “I never said she was.”

“No, you never said it,” he says scathingly. “But we can all see it, what you think of her, how much you love her.”

“She’s my best friend!” My cheeks are hot. “And what do you mean, ‘we can all see it’? Who’s ‘we’?”

“Forget it.” Jackson picks moodily at a loose thread on his jeans.

“Look, she’s not here, and I have no idea when she’s going to be back,” I say as firmly as I can, standing up and moving toward the door. I don’t want him here, cluttering up our flat with his accusations and insinuations. “When she gets back, I’ll tell her to call you, OK?”

“I think I’ll wait,” he says, taking out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “She’ll have to come back sooner or later.”

My instinct is to acquiesce, but I force myself to speak. “I’d really rather you didn’t. And you can’t smoke in here.”

He sighs theatrically and puts the cigarettes back in his pocket. “Fine, I’ll go. But make sure she rings me as soon as she gets back.”

“I’ll tell her you were here, Jackson. It’s up to her if she wants to ring you or not.”

After he’s gone, I go into the kitchen, where my phone is charging, and call Sasha. Her voice mail clicks in straightaway. I listen to her message as if there’s going to be some clue contained in it. “Hi, this is Sasha’s phone. I’m not available right now so please leave a message.” She’s smiling as she speaks, you can hear it.

“Hey, it’s me. Jackson’s been here spouting off about you not being at work. Where are you? Call me when you get this.”

I replace the phone on the side and lean back against the worktop, staring out of the window. There’s not much to see from this side of the flat. The next block of flats is about five meters from ours, a strip of potholed concrete in between. A couple of old-style punks with Mohawks live in the flat opposite. Sometimes they smile and wave when they’re in their kitchen cooking, but there’s no sign of them today. You can just see a section of pavement on the route that leads to and from the station, and there’s a steady stream of commuters making their way home from work. None of them is Sasha. That thread tugs at me again; memories push against the door I closed on them years ago.

I sit down at the tiny kitchen table by the window, taking a pen that has found its way into the fruit bowl and twiddling it around and around, ink staining my fingers where it’s leaking. She would normally be back from work by now, entertaining me with tales of her day, pouring us both a large glass of wine, rooting around in the fridge for something to cook. It’s one of my favorite times of day when I’m in, although I’m not a traditional nine-to-fiver, what with irregular shifts at the station and other freelance work.

I’m hungry, but there doesn’t seem much point in cooking just for me. I toast a slice of bread and eat it without a plate, gazing out into the evening. As the sky darkens, the frequency of the passersby decreases, but there’s no sign of Sasha. I call her again, but it’s still going straight to voice mail. The nagging voice in my head that I’ve been trying so hard to ignore is louder now. I put Olivia’s CD back on to try to drown it out, but it’s a mistake because it brings those days back, and what had started as a whisper—a question, a suggestion—becomes a voice that I cannot quiet.

What if he’s back? it says. What if he’s had enough of his new life in Scotland? What if he’s been waiting, biding his time, lulling us into a false sense of security? Waiting for one of us to let our guard down, to slip up? What if he was waiting for her outside work? What if he followed her down the street, cornered her in a dark alley, bundled her into a car?

No. She’s gone out somewhere, her phone’s out of battery, that’s all. She’ll be back soon, smelling of wine and cigarettes; she’ll take me in her arms, hug me, affectionate and silly, slurring her words, full of gossip, indiscreet as ever. We’ll sit and talk late into the night as we often do; in the morning I’ll take her in a cup of tea and we’ll half-watch Saturday Kitchen on the telly in her room while we look at clothes online, planning an afternoon shopping trip.

It’s almost completely dark now, but still I sit here. I haven’t turned the kitchen light on, so I am able to see outside rather than staring at my own reflection. The pavement is more or less empty, just the occasional latecomer from work, head down, speeding along, or groups of friends on their way to the pub, chatting and laughing. Meanwhile I sit here, watching, waiting; trying to stop the voice that forces its way into my brain, seeping around the walls and locks I have constructed to keep it out, reverberating through me. The voice that reminds me that ten years ago, Daniel Monkton was sentenced to ten years, five of which he spent in prison, and five on probation, his every move scrutinized. The voice that tells me Daniel Monkton is free to go where he pleases now, and contact who he likes. The voice that says Daniel Monkton is back, and he wants to make us pay for what we did.

July 2005

The day the new family moved into the house on the corner, Karina and I sat pretend-casually on the front garden wall of Karina’s house opposite. Karina was painting her nails a vivid shade of electric blue, the bottle balanced precariously on the uneven brickwork, as I leafed through a copy of one of her mum’s magazines.

The summer holidays had only begun that week, and already they promised to be the most boring since records began. Yet again we weren’t going anywhere on holiday. Lilly Spencer’s mum and dad were taking her to Dubai, and she hadn’t stopped going on about it for weeks. We weren’t even going to Bournemouth.

The corner house had been empty for years. I’d heard my dad saying they wanted too much for it, it was too big for the street and no one who had the money they were asking for it would want to live around here. I didn’t really understand what he meant, but the house was certainly bigger than any of the two- and three-bed town houses and duplexes that lined the rest of the street, and its corner plot meant the garden was huge compared to mine and those of my friends. It even had a garage, unlike any of our houses. Karina and I had gotten into the garden one day a few years ago, through a gap in the fence. The grass was up to our knees and it soaked the bottom of our jeans until they clung wetly to our legs. We’d peered in through the windows at the empty rooms with their high ceilings and bare wooden floorboards. One of the windows was loose and Karina had wanted us to pull it open and go inside but I wouldn’t. Instead we had explored the garden, our early-teen self-consciousness preventing us from playing the game of hide-and-seek it really demanded. In the end we had climbed the mulberry tree right at the bottom of the garden, and imagined lives for the people on the top deck of passing busses.

The moving van arrived first. The new family must have given them the key because they started unloading straightaway. It wasn’t normal stuff, though. The first thing I saw come out of the van was an ornate birdcage, the kind of thing you’d see in an old film on the telly. No bird. Then box after box, marked in big, bold letters: BOOKS. So many books.

“Do you have a lot of books in your house?” I asked Karina. I mean, I’d been there obviously, and hadn’t seen any, but I didn’t know where people who had a lot of books kept them. Maybe they were in her mum’s room. We weren’t allowed to go in there.

“No,” said Karina. “Do you?”

“No, hardly any. My mum’s got these old cookbooks with pictures of weird stuff that no one would want to eat. She never cooks out of them, though. And we’ve got the Bible, I think.”

“Do you think they’ve read them all?” she said. The movers scurried back and forth, getting redder and sweatier each time.

“Dunno. Maybe they’re teachers?”

She sniffed. Neither of us thought much of teachers.

A second van drew up, smaller than the first. Specialist Movers, it said on the side. Two men got out, one old and bald, the other younger with curly hair and glasses.

“What’s this?” said Karina, settling herself more comfortably on the wall and screwing the top back on the nail polish, her fingers splayed out like claws.

The two men went into the house and we could hear them talking to the normal movers, although we couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“We’ll have to go around the back, through the French windows,” the curly-haired one said as they came back out of the front door and started opening the van. Karina and I waited, holding our breath, to see what was going to come out.

“Oh,” said Karina, as the younger man backed slowly out of the van, down a ramp, wheeling something on a trolley. It was huge and wrapped in a blue blanket. The older man gripped the other end as though his life depended upon it. “What is it?”

As they maneuvered it carefully up the curb and through the garden gate, there was a faint plinking noise.

“It’s a piano,” I said, in wonder. “One of those big ones. They must have taken the legs off. I wonder when the family will get here.” I was impatient to see the exotic creatures who owned all this stuff.

“It might not be a family,” said Karina. “I think it’s a weird, old professor who lives alone.”

“Maybe,” I said, trying not to stare too obviously at what might come out of the truck next. Whatever it was, we never saw it because our attention was drawn to a rusty old car that had pulled up behind the moving van. I clutched Karina’s arm and hissed, “They’re here.”

The first one we saw was the dad. He unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and stood by the car, yawning and stretching. He was tall and broad-chested, with wavy dark hair swept back from his face. He was wearing a navy jumper with a paisley scarf knotted artistically around his neck. I tried to imagine my dad wearing a scarf like that, but I simply couldn’t do it; I kept getting a picture of him with the gray, wooly one my mum had bought him for Christmas last year. I didn’t think he’d even worn that.

“Ooh, Ellen, he’s good-looking,” said Karina.

“Good-looking?” I whispered. “He’s about forty-five!”

“So what?”

I struggled with these conversations with Karina about boys, and whether they were good-looking or not. We were late starters, both of us having had our first kiss over the summer break, at Tamara Gregg’s party. Since then, Karina was forever demanding whether I would get off with such-and-such a boy, and debating the merits of all the boys in our class. Part of me longed to reply that I’d rather die than get off with any of those smelly idiots, but I didn’t. Even though I had turned sixteen just before her, Karina had a way of making me feel young and stupid when it came to stuff like this, so I joined in, usually agreeing with her assessments. I’d only kissed that boy at Tamara’s party so people at school didn’t think I was a total freak for never having got off with anyone. Karina always ended up concluding that the one she most wanted to go out with was Leo Smith. Leo had hair the color of golden syrup and dark brown eyes. He wasn’t the coolest, best-looking boy in our year, or the star of the school football team, but there was something about him. He was clever, but it didn’t seem dorky on him like it did on some of the others, the nerdy ones who spent all their spare time in the computer room. I didn’t fancy him, exactly, not like Karina did, but sometimes I imagined having meaningful conversations with him, in which he truly understood me like no one else ever had.

Next out of the car were two boys, dark-haired like the dad. One looked about our age, the other a bit older, maybe eighteen. They were both wearing Converse sneakers with jeans. The younger one had a gray T-shirt with a long-sleeved white top underneath, and the older one was wearing a shirt with a skinny tie. They lounged out of the car, heads down, muttering to each other, toes poking at tufts of grass sticking up between the cracks in the pavement. I felt the heat from Karina as she pressed her leg into mine; I could almost hear her brain computing their suitability as potential boyfriends. In complete contrast to their languor, the mum came bursting out of her side of the car, a whirl of embroidered purple material, jangling silver bracelets, and flowing, dark hair. She rhapsodized over everything: the house, the sunshine, the size of the garden.

The four of them started up the garden path. Karina drew breath, and I readied myself for an exhaustive dissection of the two boys, but then the car door opened again at the back, and a head appeared. The first thing we noticed was her hair, a shining sheet of bright gold all down her back that made me think of the shiny paper around chocolate coins. Then it swung around like a cloak and we saw her face, heart-shaped and perfect apart from a thin, red scar on her right cheek. I heard Karina gasp and I knew I’d done the same.

As if she’d heard us, the girl swung her head around and gave us a scornful, challenging glare. I dropped my eyes guiltily and Karina became absorbed in her fingernails, blowing them dry as if her life depended on it. The girl let us wither for a moment more, before flicking her hair around again and sauntering into the house without speaking a word to the mum, who was standing just inside the front door, blathering on about the size of the bedrooms and the views across the London skyline. As the front door shut behind them, the mum’s voice was abruptly cut off, leaving Karina and I staring at each other in the sunshine.

“Did you see…?” Karina whispered.

“Her face. Yeah.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“Dunno.”

Karina shuddered theatrically. “G. . .