Beautiful Liars_a gripping thriller about friendship, dark secrets and bitter betrayal Read online

  Praise for Isabel Ashdown

  ‘Beautiful Liars is a twisty, gripping, and utterly unpredictable.’

  Will Dean, author of Dark Pines

  ‘Beautiful Liars is a psychological thriller, but it’s a lot more than that, too – it explores themes of friendship, of memory, of our pasts and of the lengths we’ll go to in order to belong. This is a great character-driven mystery that’s as enjoyable as it is satisfying.’

  Elle Croft

  ‘Exploring the darker side of sibling rivalry, Isabel Ashdown, her writing as perfect as ever, skilfully unpicks this tangled web of mistrust to give us a story that grips hard from the start.’

  Amanda Jennings, author of In Her Wake

  ‘Addictive and brimming with dark surprises.’

  Juliet West, author of The Faithful

  ‘Brilliantly twisty and compelling’

  Sam Carrington, author of Saving Sophie

  ‘Kept me up three nights in a row.’

  Holly Seddon, author of Don’t Close Your Eyes

  ‘Draws you in right from the first page. This book had me totally gripped!’

  Sam Carrington, author of Saving Sophie

  For my stepfather, David, with love

  Contents

  Praise for Isabel Ashdown

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Part One

  A Death

  1. Casey

  2. Martha

  3. Casey

  4. Martha

  5. Casey

  6. Martha

  7. Casey

  8. Martha

  9. Casey

  10. Martha

  11. Casey

  12. Martha

  Part Two

  A Death

  13. Martha

  14. Casey

  15. Martha

  16. Casey

  17. Martha

  18. Casey

  19. Martha

  20. Casey

  21. Martha

  22. Casey

  23. Martha

  Part Three

  A Death

  24. Katherine

  25. Martha

  26. Katherine

  27. Martha

  28. Katherine

  29. Martha

  30. Katherine

  31. Martha

  32. Katherine

  33. Martha

  34. Katherine

  35. Martha

  36. Martha

  37. Hattie

  Acknowledgements

  Reading Group Guide

  Author Q&A with Isabel Ashdown

  Extract from Lake Child

  About the Author

  Also by Isabel Ashdown

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  A Death

  It wasn’t my fault.

  I can see that now, through adult eyes and with the hindsight of rational thinking. Of course, for many years I wondered if I’d misremembered the details of that day, the true events having changed shape beneath the various and consoling accounts of my parents, of the emergency officers, of the witnesses on the rocky path below. I recall certain snatches so sharply – like the way the mountain rescue man’s beard grew more ginger towards the middle of his face, and his soft tone when he said, ‘Hello, mate,’ offering me a solid hand to shake. Hello, mate. I never forgot that. But there are other things I can’t remember at all, such as what we’d been doing in the week leading up to the accident, or where we’d been staying, or where we went directly afterwards. How interesting it is, the way the mind works, the way it recalibrates difficult experiences, bestowing upon them a storybook quality so that we might shut the pages when it suits us and place them safely on the highest shelf. I was just seven, and so naturally I followed the lead of my mother and father, torn as they were between despair for their lost child and protection of the one who still remained: the one left standing on the misty mountain ledge of Kinder Scout, looking down.

  I can see the scene now, if I allow my thoughts to return to that remote place in my memory. I watch myself as though from a great distance: small and plump, black hair slicked against my forehead by the damp drizzle of the high mountain air. And there are my parents, dressed head-to-toe in their identical hiking gear: Mum, thin and earnest, startle-eyed; and Dad, confused, his finger pushing his spectacles up his florid nose as he interprets my gesture and breaks into a heavy-footed run. Their alarmed expressions are frozen in time. There is horror as they register that I now stand alone, no younger child to be seen; that I’m pointing towards the precipitous edge, my eyes squinting hard as I try to shed tears. There are no other walkers on this stretch of path, no one to say what really happened when my brother departed the cliff edge, but the sharp cries of distress from the winding path far below suggest that there are witnesses to his arrival further down.

  It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault. This was the refrain of my slow-eyed mother in the weeks that followed, while she tried her best to absolve me, to put one foot in front of the other, to grasp at some semblance of normality. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she’d tell me at night-time as she tucked the duvet snugly around my shoulders, our eyes never straying to the now-empty bed inhabiting the nook on the opposite side of my tiny childhood room. ‘It was just a terrible accident.’ But, as I look back now, I think perhaps I can hear the grain of uncertainty in her tone, the little tremor betraying the questions she will never voice. Did you do it, sweetheart? Did you push my baby from the path? Was it just an accident? Was it?

  And, if I could speak with my mother now, what would I say in return? If I track further back into that same memory, to just a few seconds earlier, the truth is there for me alone to see. Now at the cliff edge I see two children. They’re not identical in size and stature, but they’re both dressed in bright blue anoraks to match their parents, the smaller with his hood tightly fastened beneath a chubby chin, the bigger one, hood down, oblivious to the sting of the icy rain. ‘Mine!’ the smaller one says, unsuccessfully snatching at a sherbet lemon held loosely between the older child’s dripping fingers. This goes on for a while, and on reflection I think that perhaps the sweet did belong to the younger child, because eventually it is snatched away and I recall the sense that it wasn’t mine to covet in the first place. But that is not the point, because it wasn’t the taking of the sweet that was so wrong but the boastful, taunting manner of it. ‘No!’ is the cry I hear, and I know it comes from me because even now I feel the rage rear up inside me as that hooded child makes a great pouting show of shedding the wrapper and popping the yellow lozenge into its selfish hole of a mouth, its bragging form swaying in a small victory dance at the slippery cliff edge. The tremor of my cry is still vibrating in my ears as I bring the weight of my balled fist into the soft dough of that child’s cheek and see the sherbet lemon shoot from between rosy lips like a bullet. ‘No!’ I shout again, and this time the sound seems to come from far, far away. Seconds later, he’s gone, and I know he’s plummeting, falling past the heather-cloaked rocks and snaggly outcrops that make up this great mountainous piece of land. I know it is a death drop; I know it is a long way down. I can’t say I remember pushing him – but neither can I remember not pushing him.

  So, you see, I’m not to blame at all. From what I recall of that other child – my brother – he was a snatcher, a tittle-tattle, a cry-baby, a provoker. Even if I did do it, there’s not a person on earth who would think I was culpable.

  I was seven, for
God’s sake.

  1. Casey

  What a morning! What a strange and wonderful morning. It had started so badly, when I woke early after a fitful night’s sleep, feeling fat and ugly as I stared into the mottled bathroom mirror, almost beside myself with stomach pains. My eyes were puffier than usual and bloodshot, and in the dawn light of the tiny room I actually wondered if I was getting a moustache. But that low feeling is now a distant memory, because the bright and magnificent thing that happened next quite banished it to the shadows.

  I suppose I’m lucky living on this street, unexceptional as it is, in that the post arrives early each day. Not like at home – my old home – where the post didn’t come until well after midday, and the postman was a grumpy old woman with a crew cut and too many earrings. Postwoman, I should say. Or is it postperson these days? I don’t know; these things change so often, it’s almost impossible to keep up. I only learned last year that it’s no longer considered acceptable to use the expression ‘coloured’, but apparently that one’s been non-PC for years. I count my blessings for the television and the internet, which educate me in these things, or else I’d be getting it wrong all over the place. Can you imagine how mortifying it would be to be caught out like that, to be accused of being a racist simply by not keeping up to date, for not knowing because nobody told you and you didn’t happen to read about it and it never occurred to you that these things might change while you weren’t paying attention? Not that I mix with a great variety of people these days, despite the fact that London is quite the cosmopolitan city. I don’t mean that I choose not to mix with them; it’s just that I don’t mix with any people very much, not since my teens, anyway. Oh, but now I think of it there’s the chap behind the counter at the local post office, who I would guess must be Indian or Pakistani, although his name badge says ‘Harold’. His skin is a deep mahogany and I can’t even begin to think what age he might be, though he seems both young and old at the very same time. Is it wrong of me to think of Harold as a white name? I suppose it is. Not that it matters at all, of course. I don’t mind who serves me at the post office, and Harold is always very helpful and polite. I’m proud to say I’ve never had a racist thought in my life.

  Anyway, the postman who delivers to this street is young and male (and white, as it happens) and from the few exchanges we’ve had I’d describe him as quite the charmer. When I say young, I mean he’s about my age, mid-thirties, with the brightest green eyes, and a mischievous smile that makes me blush from my collarbone to the roots of my hair. I don’t get too many parcels that won’t go through the letterbox, so it’s rare for him to have to knock on the door, and the few bits of mail that I do get have usually landed on the mat before I can snatch a glimpse of him through the front window. In the old days, my work documents would arrive in hard copy, thick bundles of A4 enclosed in padded envelopes, often requiring a signature on delivery. So I saw a lot of Ms Crew Cut over the years at Mum’s. But in recent times things have changed for the humble proofreader, and now almost all my work comes via email, a condition of my freelance contract being that I own a decent printer to run off documents myself. The whole arrangement seems a bit off to me, because, while these publishers can’t be bothered to send a hard copy to me, they still demand that I return my corrected documents to them by post, so I have to go through the hell of a trip to the post office at least once a week, skirting the long way around to avoid passing the old house with its nosy neighbours and difficult memories. If it weren’t for my regular postal excursion, I don’t think I’d leave the house at all. And why would I? I love it here. I loved it from the moment I laid eyes on the place and decided I would have it. It’s never a cause for celebration when someone in your family dies, but without my recent legacy I would never be living here so happily. I’d been longing for my own space for years and Mother’s money was a godsend.

  Goodness, I’m still sitting here at the table by the front window, gazing out into the morning as my mind jumps about all over the place! I think perhaps it’s a symptom of living alone, although I fear it was probably the same when I was living with Mum. At times, when I struggle to focus like this, I will pinch the soft skin of my underarm until it makes my eyes water and forces me to concentrate on just the one thing. Well, the postman is in my thoughts, but of course he isn’t the main point of this excitement, delightful as it is to remember answering the door and finding him standing there. He was looking especially chirpy today, and he gave me a wink, and made a pleasing cluck-cluck sound with his mouth as he walked away. ‘Have a good day, love,’ he called back without turning, and he vanished into the next street on the corner of my terrace. I pressed myself against the doorframe after he’d gone, trying to sustain the physical memory of him, glad that I’d brushed my long hair so diligently last night.

  The parcel contained a gruesome biography I’d ordered online about the London killer John Christie, plus a new thesaurus to replace the one I spilled tea all over last week when I drifted off on the sofa. Delivered with the parcel were a few marketing flyers and, to my surprise, a handwritten letter addressed to the previous owner, Olivia Heathcote. How odd, I thought initially, that this was the very first piece of mail I’d ever received for my predecessor, but then it struck me that of course she must have put a forwarding arrangement in place, and, now that twelve months had elapsed, any residual letters would start to fall through my door. I can’t say why exactly, but just holding that envelope in my fingers, with its curly handwritten address and its opening flap sealed by the tongue of a stranger – well, it rendered me quite breathless. I placed it down on the table and gazed upon it for a while, running my palms over my painful belly, trying to ease the bloating that had seized me in the night. I’m overweight, it’s fair to say, but today my stomach felt even more distended with trapped gas, griping and twisting away inside me like a snake. I’d been forced to open the windows in my bedroom when I rose, just to let out the terrible whiff of it. It’s a curse.

  Breathing deeply through my discomfort, I went over the logistics of returning the letter to the post office. I had two manuscripts parcelled and ready to go, so it would be no bother to return this item at the same time – but then, I countered, wouldn’t it be ridiculous to hand them an envelope absent of a return address? Surely they could do nothing with it? There would be no way of getting it back to the sender, and I’m quite certain it would have ended up in their recycling bin. Finally, I decided to open up the envelope and see if it contained a sender’s address within, and then return it. That, I swear, is what I intended to do.

  Once I had read the contents, however, my thoughts were taken in an entirely different direction and I realised I’d been handed a gift. And that is why, an hour later, I haven’t moved an inch, and I sit here clutching the letter, blinking in astonishment at the last few words: With love, Martha x

  Dear Liv,

  If this letter finds its way to you, I know it will come as a surprise that I’m getting in touch after all this time. I can only say I’m sorry to have left it so long. It’s hard to believe that eighteen years have passed, and yet they have. But let me get to the point.

  Perhaps you’ve seen me on TV in recent years? I’m not saying this to brag, but because my latest project is a new show that investigates ‘cold cases’ – historic police investigations that have either been closed down or forgotten about, but where we believe there’s a chance to solve them with fresh evidence or modern forensics. I hope you won’t think it gratuitous; after what happened with Juliet, well, I suppose it’s made me want to delve deeper into these unsolved crimes, to try to make a difference. The show is called Out of the Cold, and we’ve just begun work on our very first programme – and this is my reason for making contact. We’re going to be investigating Juliet’s disappearance.

  I know this will upset you. Believe me, I thought long and hard before suggesting we feature her story – but remember how we all said at the time that there had to be more to it than the police wou
ld ever consider? We all knew there was no way Juliet would have disappeared like that by choice, but now, Liv, I really feel there’s a chance we could find out exactly what happened and bring someone to account.

  I can’t tell you much more now – but I’ll fill you in on everything once you’ve confirmed you’re willing to talk. This could be in person, by email, on the phone or however you prefer, and all we would be asking you for are your memories of that time. I feel sure that the not-knowing will have haunted you as much as it has me, and I hope with every fibre of my being that you will agree to help. What I can tell you is that David Crown remains a person of interest, so anything you can recall about him will be of help right from the start.

  Liv, I hope you are well and happy. I hope above all that you’ll forgive me for past mistakes – and make contact.

  With love,

  Martha x

  The morning sun casts fingers of light across the letter, picking out the dust bobs that float in the space between me and the net curtains to the street beyond. There’s a tremor running through me, a juddering reverberation like the one I feel when heavy lorries rumble up the road and rattle the glass panes. But this is different. This comes from within. I turn over the envelope, smoothing it out on the tabletop, running my thumb across the handwritten indentations of the address. My address, but not my name. Olivia Heathcote.

  Martha Benn – the Martha Benn – thinks that I am Olivia Heathcote. She thinks she is writing to Liv Heathcote, and she wants her help in this unsolved case. It’s a case I recall only too well; it disturbed my mother terribly, the idea of that poor girl vanishing so close to where we lived, and for several weeks afterwards she insisted I wasn’t allowed out alone, even in daylight hours. It made the national news for a while, until the police concluded that she had eloped with an older man. But I didn’t believe that for a minute – and I’m guessing that Martha doesn’t believe it either.

  I push back my chair and stand shakily, the names swimming across my mind like new friends: Martha, Liv, Juliet, David Crown. I must lie down; it’s all rather too much, and for the first time in an age I almost wish my mother were here to share in this excitement. I ease myself into the sagging sofa – my, how it sags – and position my neck against one armrest, catching a waft of body odour as I lug my legs up and over the other. Does it sound dreadful to confess I can’t remember the last time I took a bath? The shower hose is broken, but that’s no excuse as I’ve always preferred a bath anyway. If I’m to meet up with Martha Benn – and it’s quite possible that this really could happen – I need to buck up my ideas. I’ll run a bath this afternoon, after I’ve had a little rest. I close my heavy eyelids, dropping swiftly into the darkness of slumber, allowing myself to imagine something new. How would it feel to be ‘Liv’? I wonder. How would it feel to be someone else altogether?