94

FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE A LONG TIME, CATHY AND I DIDN’T speak. Then she laid a hand across mine on the tabletop. Wrapping her fingers around my bandaged wrist, she turned it over.

‘Will you be all right?’ she asked.

I gave a little shrug. ‘Well, you know those piano lessons I talked about having one day? Turns out I might have to give up on that idea.’

She put my hand down and smiled again. ‘I’m sorry about what I did,’ she said, and she might have been apologizing for scratching one of my CDs.

‘For killing those women?’ I whispered.

‘Lord, no. I’m not sorry about that,’ she said, with an odd little shudder. ‘I’m sorry about trying to make you kill the Groves girl. I should have known that would never happen.’

I had nothing to say back to her.

‘When you sent the warnings to the Curtis and Groves women, I should have known you wouldn’t play ball,’ she went on. ‘I told those detectives I sent them, by the way – that I was trying to stop. I think they believed me.’

‘They did,’ I said. I’d been careful when I’d sent the notes to Karen Curtis and Jacqui Groves, there was no way they could be traced back to me. I might as well have not bothered. My warning hadn’t saved Karen, and Jacqui had never been a target anyway.

‘And I’m sorry for what I said all that time ago,’ Cathy said, leaning back a little. ‘You know, when you came to the boat and I went a bit mental. It wasn’t your fault, what happened to us in the park, with those boys, I just had to—’

‘Get me off your back,’ I finished for her.

She nodded. ‘You’d spent eight months looking for me,’ she said. ‘I knew you were never going to leave me alone. I’m sorry, Tic. I just needed space. And some time.’

I let my head nod slowly, as though I understood completely. Which I did, in a way. My sister had needed space and time. To plan the destruction of five families.

‘Did you set fire to the houseboat?’ I asked, and when her eyes fell to the table I knew she had. More deaths on my conscience, then. She leaned forward across the table. ‘Why did you do it?’ she said. ‘Why did you tell them that girl in the river was me?’

‘To set you free,’ I replied. ‘I knew that’s what you wanted. A couple of days later, a friend of mine died and it seemed like I had the same chance. I didn’t think the world would miss the Llewellyn girls.’

‘Was that Lacey?’ she asked me.

I nodded.

My whole life long, I’d allowed only one other person to call me Tic, and that was the sad, sweet, drug-crazed young woman I’d met and become close to when we’d both been homeless ten years ago. The story I’d told DI Joesbury in a Cardiff hotel room had been almost 100 per cent true. I’d just told it from the other girl’s point of view. And I’d made up the happy ending. Not long after officially declaring Cathy dead, I’d come back to the Engine Vaults to find Lacey seriously ill. I’d managed to drag her to the street and, with no other options at hand, I’d stolen a car that hadn’t been properly locked. I’d intended to drive her to the nearest hospital, to put her in a private clinic when she was better, but by the time I got the car back to where I’d left her, she was dead.

So I’d taken a chance on a new life. Lacey’s record with the police was relatively clean; mine wasn’t. I’d driven to the coast, taken what few papers she’d had and replaced them with my own. Then I’d pushed the car and my friend into the sea. At three o’clock in the morning on a clifftop in Sussex, I’d become Lacey Flint.

And it had worked. I’d taken the time to grieve for both my friend and my sister, then set about building a new life for myself. I’d walked away from the streets, kept my distance from anyone who might know either Lacey or me, and gradually gathered up the reins of another woman’s life. Neither Lacey nor I had much in the way of family, which significantly reduced the number of people I needed to avoid; and I’d had money, which had helped a lot.

When I’d felt I was ready, I applied to join the Metropolitan Police. Never having taken drugs in my life, I sailed through the drugs tests and then the various entrance exams. I’d taken a law degree and been accepted on to the detective programme. It had been an OK life, while it lasted.

‘We’re going to have to tell them,’ I said. ‘Who we really are.’

Cathy had a trick I remembered from years ago, of crinkling up her eyes until they became bright, sparkling slits. She did that now. ‘In the eyes of the world, Victoria Llewellyn is a sadistic, bloodthirsty killer,’ she said. ‘I made sure of that. Do you really want to be her again?’

Sitting there, looking into those glinting, hazel-blue eyes, I couldn’t have said whether she was trying to protect me or destroy me. And yet it all made a twisted sort of sense. My neglect of Cathy all those years ago had started the process that had made her what she was. I’d turned my sister into a killer; and now she’d done it right back.

‘That reminds me,’ she went on. ‘Did I kill that butch detective friend of yours?’

I waited, and watched her smile die.

‘No,’ I said, when it had. ‘You punctured a lung. The doctors managed to stitch it up. He’ll be OK.’

I was relying on reports from mutual friends. I hadn’t seen Mark since the night we’d both almost died. Nor would I, for as long as I had any control over the matter. It was enough, surely, that never a second went by when I didn’t think of him.

At the news that he would live, Cathy gave a little shrug and nodded her head. I judged she was pleased, on balance, that he wasn’t dead, because she’d realized how important he was to me. Otherwise, it was of very little interest. That was the moment when I finally accepted that my sister was insane.

‘Cathy,’ I said.

‘Shush.’ She leaned forward again. ‘Don’t call me that. I’m Vicky now. I always liked your name better anyway.’

‘Cath – do you realize you’re going to prison for life?’

She sat upright in surprise. ‘Get real, Tic,’ she said. ‘I’ll be out in ten.’

We were slipping into la-la land.

‘Cathy,’ I began. She held up a warning finger and I realized there was nothing I could do but let her have her way. I was to blame for the dreadful things my sister had done in my name. The least I could do now was to let her keep that name if she wanted it.

‘Vicky,’ I began again, and just saying the word made me feel like something essential inside me had slipped away for good. ‘You killed four women. They are never going—’

‘Oh for God’s sake.’ She leaned forward, holding up the fingers of one hand and started to count them off. ‘One, I’m going to plead guilty and show lots of remorse. That always reduces the sentence. Two, I’ll be a model prisoner. I’ll get therapy, I’ll go to church, I’ll study for a degree. You just watch me. Parole in ten years.’

The officer in charge of the room started making his way in between the tables, letting everyone know visiting time was almost up. She looked up at him in surprise, then at me with something like panic on her face. I caught a glimpse then of the scared little girl I remembered from her first day at primary school.

‘You’ll come and see me again, won’t you?’ she said and I could only nod. She was my responsibility, now more than ever. I’d made her what she was.

Everyone was leaving, the prisoners were standing up and walking towards the door that would take them back to their cells. I stood up too, let her kiss me and then watched her head for the door. Before she disappeared, she waved, just as she’d always done when she’d gone through the school doors as a child.

I turned and made my way out, knowing that the next time I saw her, life in prison would have knocked a little more of the spirit out of her. And the time after that, a bit more. And so it would go on, for a very long time.

She was wrong about the leniency of the system. However she chose to plead in court, however she behaved in prison, she wasn’t going to be out in ten or even twenty years. My sister would spend the rest of her life paying for what she’d done.

And so would I.