She’d probably want to kill her.

Chapter Fifty

Carly

One week ago

Carly tried to put her thoughts in order, rearrange the words in her head while she waited for Marie to join her in the lounge. It wasn’t exactly that she felt they should do the interview but, now she’d had a chance to calm down, she had to admit her curiosity was building brick by brick – but the wall of questions crumbled the instant Marie shuffled into the room.

‘Marie? You look awful. Are you sick?’ Carly began to stand but Marie held out her hands to stop her. At first Carly thought Marie was trying to keep her away from any germs but then she noticed the track marks on her arms.

‘Oh, Marie.’ Again, Carly felt the weight of responsibility she always bore. She should have noticed before. She could have done something. Now she knew, she could help. ‘Is that why you wanted to do the TV thing? For money for…’

Carly’s eyes flickered towards Marie’s forearms. She didn’t know what Marie was taking. What did you inject? Cocaine? Heroin? It was a different world to the one Carly inhabited.

Marie sank into the chair, her knees springing up, her hands pushing them back down. ‘I want the cash for rehab. I want to be clean, Carly.’

‘How much do you need?’

Marie told her the figure. Carly felt her chest tighten. She made enough selling bits and pieces online to cover her frugal lifestyle. She couldn’t fund that much. ‘Couldn’t your GP help?’

‘Been there, done that.’ Marie seemed to shrink before Carly’s eyes until she was eight once more. A wave of maternal longing swept over Carly.

‘Tell me what you need us to do. What do the production company want?’

A new angle.

Marie shook her head.

‘You must have had something in mind when you asked us here earlier. Tell me.’

‘You’ll… You’ll hate me once you know.’

‘I won’t. I couldn’t. Marie, please, what is it?’

A new angle.

Wasn’t it enough that their dad had arranged their abduction to save his business? The community had been outraged when the truth came out, some disbelieving. There had been a smidgeon of reassurance when it was thought the girls had been abducted by a stranger – there was only a slim likelihood it would ever happen again. The revelation that Simon had arranged it had hit the town hard. A monster walked among them and they had sat with him in the pub, stood next to him at football matches, chatted to him as they walked their dogs. They had never guessed and were horrified but, however bad they thought they had it, it had been a million times worse for Carly.

She had chosen to love him. Chosen to think of him as her dad. Even now, it was impossible not to label him this way because she thought of Leah and Marie as her whole sisters. They’d never thought of themselves as anything but. Once a journalist had thrust a microphone towards her mouth and demanded to know whether Carly wished her mum had never met Simon so Carly wouldn’t have gone through such an ordeal. The notion threw Carly. The small space of her throat had closed and she’d pushed past the woman with her weasel face, her acrylic red nails and thoughtless questions.