My best friends secret, p.27
My Best Friend's Secret, page 27
Tell her she has got it wrong, Claudia! Tell her before it’s too late.
She nodded. ‘“RS” for Rebecca Spencer.’
I thought of Issie and Willow and what she had done to them.
‘Please,’ I implored.
‘You showed me no mercy.’
‘I didn’t do that to you. I would never force anyone to do that,’ I reasoned.
‘But you did!’ she contemptuously threw back at me. ‘You laughed at me as I sat where you are surrounded by candles and covered in blood after mutilating myself. You scorned me, saying I was pathetic! Then you forced the others to join in. They were too scared to argue with you, so they went along with it. They were all scared of you. Not one of them stopped you. Not one. Even when I was sobbing at what you had made me do to myself. Any of them could have prevented it. But they didn’t. Instead, your friends watched as I cut their initials into my flesh to remain forever,’ she accused.
‘I… I…’ I stuttered, too horrified by the look in her eyes to formulate words.
‘You watched me with glee, enjoying every cut I made with the razor blade.’
Numb, I shook my head.
‘Afterwards,’ she continued, ‘instead of getting help and reporting you, your friends joined you in ridiculing me. You said to me that I would be better off dead after what I’d done.’
I stared at her, trying to absorb what she was telling me.
It couldn’t have happened. She’s insane, Claudia! And delusional! It couldn’t have happened.
The chilling reality dawned on me that if she thought I was the one who had initiated this horrific act, then it wouldn’t end with her initials and my school friends’ cut into my navel; her ultimate revenge would be to kill me.
She’d killed Issie! She’d left Willow in a critical condition in a medically induced coma. And Jaz…
‘Jaz,’ I began, shaking my head in disbelief. ‘It was you at her funeral? You were watching the four of us at the graveyard?’
Riley didn’t reply. Not that she needed to as her expression was confirmation enough that it was her.
I thought back to the woman standing observing myself and the others. ‘It was you who knocked Willow down disguised as Ava. How? How did you have the key fob for her Range Rover?’
‘I followed all five of you for months. I ascertained your habits. Ava has a favourite coffee place. I bought an identical Gucci handbag to hers and sat down behind her in the coffee shop. Her bag was by her feet, and while she was busy on her phone, I swapped the bags and, finding the key fob, returned her bag, took mine back and left.’
I was stunned.
‘And Jaz? She didn’t kill herself, did she?’
A dark smile played at the corner of her lips. ‘I met Jaz in a bar that she frequented. We got together and dated before she—’ Riley stopped. ‘Well, you know what happened.’
I couldn’t disguise the fact I was surprised. ‘You were Jaz’s girlfriend? The person that she mentioned to Ava?’
Riley shrugged. ‘I assume so.’
I realised that Riley had just played this part to get close to Jaz to begin exacting her revenge.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The night that she died, I ran her a bath and lit candles in the bathroom. A bottle of Dom Pérignon later, and she started on the vodka in her freezer. Jaz was celebrating making partner at her law firm; I’m sure you must have known that. By the time I eventually persuaded her to get into the bath, she was on the verge of passing out. She made it so easy for me. I cut her wrists without a murmur from her. Then, while she bled to death, I took her phone and deleted every trace of my existence from it.’
‘That was you?’ I asked, horrified at her cavalier account of Jaz’s death. I attempted to swallow, failed. ‘When I rang Jaz that night, then messaged her begging her to call me, it was you who read my messages?’ I shook my head in disbelief. ‘And then you deleted my calls and WhatsApp messages so that when Jaz’s parents or the police checked her phone, there would be no trace of my messages that night? It was you who left that suicide note?’
She didn’t answer me, but the satisfied gleam in her eye was enough.
‘And you somehow copied my handwriting and sent her parents that letter the week before you killed her, outing her?’ I stared at her, filled with horror at the magnitude of her crimes.
She held my gaze.
‘But…’ I dropped my gaze to her body. ‘Surely, Jaz would have noticed the initials on your stomach? How did you explain them?’
‘She never saw them. I have lived my life making sure no one sees them. And if anyone asks why, I explain that I have an injury from an accident that hasn’t healed and needs a permanent dressing in case of infection.’
Then I remembered that Jaz had ghosted me before she died.
‘Did you say something to Jaz about me? She stopped answering my messages and calls the weeks before her… her death.’
A smiled played at the corners of her mouth. ‘Maybe I did.’
‘What did you say?’
She shrugged. ‘Does it matter? All that counts is that she believed me.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘You know why. Because of what you forced me to do. The five of you destroyed my life!’ Her eyes burned with murderous hatred.
‘I… I… I wasn’t there,’ I stuttered. ‘I swear on my life that it wasn’t me.’
‘Then why do I have your initials carved on my stomach? Why do I have your four friends’ initials cut into my skin as well?’
I shook my head, unable to answer her. I had no idea why.
‘I’ll tell you why, because you forced me to do it!’ Tears trailed down my cheeks as I accepted that reasoning wouldn’t work. Riley wouldn’t acknowledge the truth – I wasn’t a witness, let alone the perpetrator of the crime she was accusing me of committing against her. My mind was in overdrive as I tried to figure out what had happened here twenty-two years ago. ‘Enough stalling! I want you to cut my initials into your skin. Now!’
I weakly nodded, feeling light-headed. I looked at Jacob’s sickeningly pale, unresponsive face. One wrong move and the knife would slice through his neck to the carotid artery and jugular vein. If severed, he would rapidly bleed to death. The price of saving Jacob’s life was to mutilate my body, but I had no choice: I loved him.
With a trembling hand, I took the lid off the craft knife, exposing the sharp blade. I wiped my blurred eyes with the back of my other hand, accepting my fate. I chewed my bottom lip as the cold tip of the blade touched my skin. I let it rest there as I built up the courage to cut into myself. Below, I could see the raised three-inch scar from my appendectomy.
‘Do it!’ ordered Riley.
Blinded again by tears, I swiped them away. Wincing, I dug the blade into my flesh. ‘Argh!’ I cried out, forcing myself to continue downwards, cutting the first part of the ‘R’ into my skin. Blood oozed out from the incision, making me feel nauseous. I blocked out what I was doing, willing myself to think about Jacob and the baby I was carrying. That I needed to survive, at whatever cost, for the sake of their lives.
Hand shaking, I finished cutting the ‘R’ as I moaned in pain.
Sobbing, I dropped the craft knife.
‘Now the “S”,’ instructed Riley.
‘Please,’ I cried. ‘I… I need some time…’
‘Now!’ she forcibly repeated.
I looked at her and then at the tip of the knife delicately poised against Jacob’s neck. Filled with dread, I picked the bloodied knife up and steeled myself as I pressed the blade against my flesh, sinking it in to cut out the letter ‘S’.
I had no idea how long it had taken me. All I knew was that it felt as if my blood-smeared abdomen was on fire. I raised my eyes and looked straight at her. ‘I’m done,’ I muttered, letting the craft knife drop from my hand.
‘No. Now you have to cut out your friends’ initials.’
I can’t… I can’t do it…
But what will happen if you don’t? What will she do to you? To Jacob?
Then everything went black.
39
When I opened my eyes, it was to find Riley leaning over me, violently shaking my shoulders.
‘GET UP!’ she yelled. ‘Get up and finish!’
‘Riley?’ I mumbled, disorientated.
I realised I must have passed out.
‘GET UP!’ she spat in my face.
‘No,’ I whispered. I noted that Riley had dropped the knife she had been holding against Jacob’s throat on the floor next to her, tantalisingly just beyond my reach.
‘You have to!’ she threatened.
‘I didn’t do that to you,’ I hoarsely argued.
‘You know you did!’
I was clutching at straws, trying to find something that could prove to her that I wasn’t there. Then I remembered one crucial detail. I wore glasses when I was eleven because I was short-sighted.
‘Glasses? Was I wearing glasses?’ I asked her.
‘What?’ she replied, caught off guard.
‘If it was me, I would have been wearing glasses.’
Startled by my question, she suddenly released her grip on me.
‘I was short-sighted and wore glasses. I only started wearing contact lenses in the June of that summer term.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ she stated. ‘I’ve never seen you wearing glasses. Nor are there glasses or any contact lenses cases in the bathroom or your bedroom.’
‘My bedroom?’ I questioned, startled by this revelation. A coldness crept over me. ‘Why were you in my bedroom?’
Riley didn’t answer me. I could see the doubt in her eyes as she struggled to recall whether the girl who made her cut those gruesome initials into her flesh was wearing glasses.
‘I had laser eye surgery when I was twenty,’ I explained, pushing myself up onto my elbows. ‘If it had been me, I would have been wearing glasses.’
She didn’t answer me, but I could see the realisation in her eyes as they widened at the acknowledgement that whoever forced her to cut herself had perfect eyesight.
‘It wasn’t me,’ I asserted. ‘And you know it!’
She grabbed the knife she had dropped and shakily stood up.
‘It couldn’t have been me,’ I repeated, seeing the doubt in her eyes.
She took a couple of steps back as if fearful of my words.
‘When did it happen?’ I questioned as soon as the thought came to me.
She looked down at me as if I was the crazy one. But I remembered that Rebecca Spencer arrived at Queen Victoria’s School for Girls at the start of May, and by the end of May, she had disappeared without a word. But the day she vanished I was absent from school. I wasn’t here the night of her initiation. I knew nothing about it – I was critically ill.
She hesitated before asking, ‘Why?’
‘It’s important,’ I replied.
She frowned, seemingly trying to figure out if I was trying to trick her.
‘When was it?’ I firmly asked, holding my nerve.
‘Saturday the twenty-second of May!’ she spat in disgust. ‘How could you not remember?’
Relief coursed through me as tears filled my eyes. She was wrong. She had got it all wrong and I had the evidence to prove it.
‘I don’t remember because I wasn’t here.’
‘Stop lying to me! You were here that night!’ she contemptuously stated.
I shook my head. ‘No. I was rushed into hospital in the early hours of that Saturday morning.’
‘No! You were here. You orchestrated all of this! I have your initials cut into my stomach, Claudia Harper. Your initials!’
‘I wasn’t here,’ I continued. ‘I was in hospital for six days because my appendix had perforated.’
‘It had to be you! There were five of you. You were all friends.’
‘It wasn’t me!’ I insisted. ‘Riley, you have to believe me.’
She furiously yanked her sleeves up and stretched out her arms, exposing multiple thick, gnarled scars zigzagging across her wrists and arms.
I gazed in shock. Sakura, my research student, was right.
‘Oh God… Riley,’ I mumbled, horrified.
‘You did this to me!’ she accused.
‘No…’ I muttered.
‘You told me I was better off dead and suggested that I use the razor blade to slit my wrists! And that’s what I did! I went back to my dormitory, and I ran a hot bath, climbed in, and I did this because I couldn’t live with what I had done! It was you, Claudia Harper! YOU!’ she yelled.
Did she really try to kill herself at Queen Victoria’s School for Girls? Or is she lying?
‘Who found you?’ I sceptically questioned. I had no reason to believe her. I knew nothing about her, aside from the fact she was a liar. She had lied her way into my home.
Christ, Claudia! She went into your bedroom when you weren’t there! What else did she do?
‘Madame Barraud,’ Riley thickly answered.
‘What?’ I was surprised. Madame Barraud was our French teacher and a favourite amongst the students. But if Madame Barraud had found her, the other students involved would have been severely punished, if not expelled. So why, if what Riley was claiming was true, didn’t that happen?
‘Madame Barraud was in the grounds having a cigarette. She saw the bathroom light on and came up to check as no one was supposed to be out of bed. If it hadn’t been for Madame Barraud, I would have died. When she asked about the letters cut into my stomach, I told her what you had all forced me to do, and you know what she and the headmistress, who she immediately summoned, did?’ Riley asked.
I shook my head.
‘They accused me of lying! They covered for you, saying you were in hospital and so couldn’t be the ringleader—’
‘But that was true,’ I interrupted. ‘I was in hospital.’
‘Your friends denied everything, of course. It was all turned back on to me, the victim. I was demonised and made to look as if I had done this to myself to get you in trouble. They called my mother to arrange for me to be collected immediately and taken for medical treatment. They claimed I was too psychologically unstable to continue at the school. That I was a liar, and an attention-seeker.’
‘Riley, I—’
‘No!’ she interrupted. ‘The school protected you! You and your friends. You made me try to take my life, and the school defended you. I tried to kill myself because of what you and your friends did to me. And I was treated as the problem. Not you. ME!’
‘I didn’t do it,’ I stated as I stared into her feverish eyes. ‘I didn’t do it!’
‘Stop lying! You’re “CH”. No one else at the school had those initials. I checked every graduation yearbook photograph. I followed all five of you through social media. Every photograph you posted. All the school reunions that you attended. Always the five of you. So, you can’t pretend it was someone else. There was no one else who was as tall as you with long reddish hair. You orchestrated all of this,’ she accused, gesturing at the surroundings. ‘You started this in this very clock tower twenty-two years ago.’
I didn’t reply. I had no idea how to get out of this situation, but I knew one thing, I wasn’t responsible for whatever happened here that night all those years ago. Jacob didn’t deserve to die for something I wasn’t a party to, and neither did I.
Then it hit me. What if it had happened? At that moment, I understood. Riley Harrison – Rebecca Spencer – had made a mistake. It wasn’t me who had been there that evening. But I knew who it might have been.
‘What about Lottie?’ I suggested, staring at her.
‘What?’ Riley spluttered, confused.
‘Lottie. Lottie Hambleton. She and I were the tallest girls in our year. She also had strawberry blonde hair. She shared the dorm with me, Jaz, Issie, Willow and Ava. It was her, not me.’
‘NO! It was you!’ screamed Riley as she suddenly rushed at me. ‘It was your name that I was told to cut into my skin. CH for Claudia Harper!’
It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to react. I felt a coldness deep in my abdomen. I looked down to see Riley pull the blade of the knife out of my stomach. It was slick with dark blood. I dragged my questioning gaze up to hers. In that moment, I saw in her eyes that she knew I was pregnant.
How? How could she know?
I watched as she pulled her right arm back as she prepared to plunge the blade in again. I realised that she was trying to end my pregnancy.
Some kind of primitive preservation kicked in, overriding the paralysing shock that restrained me. I darted between the clock machinery as she lunged at me again, the knife just missing me.
‘NO!’ she screamed in frustration.
Heart thundering, and panting, I watched her as she appraised the situation, her eyes wild with murderous rage. Behind me, the clock hands remained perfectly frozen in time.
‘Riley, please,’ I tried to reason. ‘It wasn’t me. Lottie Hambleton. It was her!’
‘NO! I have your initials on me, not hers!’
I shook my head. ‘You have hers. “CH” is Charlotte Hambleton. But she was only ever called Lottie.’
‘NO!’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you think I would know?’
‘You’d only been here for a few weeks before this happened to you. All you knew was what people told you. Lottie gave you the initial “C” for her name. It meant that if anyone found out, she could argue she didn’t do it. No one called her Charlotte. She was only ever known as Lottie. But you wouldn’t know that.’
‘STOP IT!’ she screamed at me. ‘You gave me a piece of paper inviting me to the initiation signed, “CH”. You!’
‘No, I didn’t. Lottie did,’ I fired back. ‘You didn’t know any of us. You never spoke to me, or my friends. I doubt you even knew Lottie’s name was Charlotte. Did she say she was called Charlotte?’ I demanded. ‘Did she? Or did she give you my name instead to protect herself since I wasn’t here?’
Riley was silent. But I could see the confusion in her eyes.
‘You’re making all of this up to stall the inevitable. This Lottie or Charlotte Hambleton wasn’t in any of the end-of-year graduation photographs. Which means she doesn’t exist.’
