I don’t want to ask, but I have to. ‘Carly…’ Just how unbalanced has my sister become? ‘Did you kill Marie?’

Chapter Seventy-Three

Carly

Now

Carly nods her head – yes, I killed Marie – and then she shakes it before nodding it once more. Did she kill her? She really doesn’t know. Something is sandpapering her memories, smoothing away the blunt edge of reality. She pushes her tongue into the gap in her mouth where the tooth that had been knocked out the day they were taken used to sit. Is it her fault? Is it her fault again? She thinks it is.

‘Get your coat. You’re coming with me,’ Carly had told Marie that day in her sister’s flat when she had expected to leave with her forgotten phone but instead was handed the cold, hard truth. Her stepdad had tried to set her up, her alone. Her mum had known. Marie had known. Probably Leah, too, she had thought. The world in which she had always felt unsafe now felt even darker, more dangerous, as though she’d be better off without it. As though the world would be better off without her. All along it had been Leah that Marie had wanted to save. Leah. Not her.

Never her.

‘Where are we going?’ Marie’s face creased with anxiety.

‘To the cashpoint. I’ll give you some money. Not enough, but some, but we’re not doing the TV interview.’ Carly had felt shock and confusion but rising to the surface a deep sense of shame. She’d loved her sister completely. Both her sisters. She was such a fool. She’d give Marie what she had in the bank and then she was cutting her off. Her and Leah.

‘Thanks. Afterwards, can you drop me somewhere?’

‘Where?’

Marie told her where she wanted to go and Carly wished she had never asked.

‘Carly. I do love you. Sisters.’ Marie offers her little finger: ‘A pinkie promise can’t be broke, Or you’ll disappear in a puff of smoke…’ Carly didn’t join in, leaving her arms by her sides. Marie trailed off.

Sisters.

But they weren’t, not really. Her and mum. Leah, Marie and Dad. Two jigsaw pieces forced together to try and complete a picture of a happy family but they didn’t fit.

Marie dropped her hand but still wore the trace of a smile on her lips. Anger burned among Carly’s confusion. Marie looked different. Lighter somehow. Relieved to have shared her secret or relived she was getting her fix. Once again, Carly felt unimportant and alone.

‘Shall we go?’ Marie was bouncing on the balls of her feet, eager to leave. There was no more conversation. No explanation. No further apology.

Although a thousand sorrys couldn’t eradicate the utter despair Carly felt as she trailed Marie down the stairwell.

Her.

It was only ever meant to be her who was taken.

Carly remembers the teeming rain as she had pulled up outside the bank. She remembers withdrawing her daily limit of five hundred pounds. Even if that hadn’t been her limit, there was no more money left to give. Back in the car she had followed Marie’s directions to a pub, wooden boards criss-crossing its windows, paint flaking from the DOG AND DUCK sign swinging cheerily in the breeze. Marie turned to Carly. There was so much Carly wanted to say. So much she wanted to ask. Marie gave a barely detectable nod and attempted a smile, her eyes bright with tears.