‘That you believe Margot drove into Liv and left her for dead.’
‘I think you’re desperate for it to be her,’ I argue. ‘It’s too much of a stretch.’
‘Stop being so fucking blind!’ he continues. ‘Margot has you hoodwinked. The leopard hasn’t changed its spots, it’s just hiding them under a different coat. And let’s not forget, long before Liv, she tried to kill you first. She tried to killbothof us. You need to stop listening to her and start listening to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she is a fucking sociopath and I am your brother.’
Chapter 62
Anna
I want to argue with Drew but I can’t. He’s right. Margot did try and murder us the night she and her gang broke into our home. That version of us, Andrew and Joanna, feels strange to me now.
After he and I sought refuge under our parents’ bed, it was Margot’s face I saw moments before she set the room ablaze. Our eyes locked: her expression mirrored the shock I felt at seeing her. I took in her curly auburn hair, her green pupils, her silver nose ring and eyebrow piercings. Then she vanished out of sight, jumping to her feet, and seconds later the trail of lighter fuel she had squirted across the carpet and above us on the bed was zigzagging like flaming ribbons.
I remember everything about that night with such clarity. The aftermath of our escape. Watching my brother being brought back to life on the cold pavement outside our burning home. Screaming in fear and pain while paramedics treated my burns. Crying long into the night in our separate hospital wards. My bewildered aunt and uncle appearing the following day after a flight from Pakistan, the two of them forced to come to terms with both the death of family members and having to care for two children. The days,weeks and months that followed. The skin grafts, the infections, my brother’s rasp through smoke-damaged lungs, moving into a new home in a new county with a new school and new parents.
The transition was difficult for us all, our worlds turned upside down and inside out. The rebellious streak that had blighted Andrew’s relationship with our dad burned alongside his body in the fire. Confrontations and clashes were replaced by long periods of silence and deep depressions. He became a shadow of the brother I remembered. I adapted to change better, but fragments of me would always remain under that blazing bed.
While arrests were made, there were no charges. All evidence had been destroyed by the fire, and anything left against the four suspects was circumstantial. It wasn’t enough that I picked out Margot’s face from a dozen mugshots they showed us, because Andrew was too traumatised to corroborate. At six and testifying alone, I was not considered a reliable witness for the prosecution.
It took another seven years before I crossed paths with Margot for a second time.
I was in my bedroom watchingAnt & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeawaywhen the presenters introduced a brand-new seven-piece pop group made up of four boys and three girls. Their song had an instant hook, the band’s outfits were bright and colourful and their personalities excitable as they each chased the camera for attention. They were perfect fodder for a thirteen-year-old me. But it was the post-performance interview when my already fragile world spun another hundred and eighty degrees.
‘I’m Margot,’ chirped a brash redhead with green eyes and a wide smile. Although her physical appearance had altered with age and maturity, I instantly recognised her. Her eyes shone with the same intensity as when our gazes had met as I hid under that bed.
It was her. It wasdefinitelyher.
I screamed Andrew’s name until he came into my room, then I tried to make him see what I saw. I thought there was a glimmer of recognition, then he shook his head. He didn’t remember her. The commotion brought the attention of my aunt and uncle, but they were equally sceptical of my accusations. Only after days of pestering them did they finally relent and contact our case’s investigating officer.
Later in the week, a lower-ranking police officer was sent to talk to me. Detective Sergeant Roger Fenton – the same man who, years later, would turn up at our house, and whom my brother had killed ten weeks ago. He’d recognised the adult version of myself in the pages ofYeah!magazine at Frankie’s awful gender reveal party, realising ‘Anna’ on the picture caption was short for Joanna, and that my surname had changed from Khan to Mason when our aunt and uncle formally adopted me and Drew.
Considering my allegations against Margot, he was surprised to find me not only at her party but living in a house opposite her. And after a little investigative work, he learned the other members of Margot’s gang – who, like her, had been questioned but released without charge – were now dead.
But back then, I’d know immediately he was only there to pay me lip service.
‘Look, Joanna, I have every sympathy with you,’ he said, ‘but you were only six years old at the time, a kid. You were traumatised. You don’t know what you saw through the darkness under that bed. This pop star might look a little like her, but it isn’t. Your mind is playing tricks on you.’
I argued and argued but still he wouldn’t believe me. Only, it turned out a part of him quietly had. I hated them all for doubting me, especially my brother. The person closest to me hadn’t even offered me the benefit of the doubt.
The frustration became intolerable, particularly once the Party Hard Posse began climbing the charts. But I wasn’t going to give up trying to be heard. I called theNews of the World’s news desk to tell them what she’d done, but they hung up on me. I made it through to the band’s record company’s press office, but they told me not to call again.
I had one option left. To confront Margot in person. Because if I hadn’t forgotten her, surely she hadn’t forgotten me either? So one morning I played truant at school and hopped on a London-bound train to spend four hours outside Oxford Street’s HMV store with hundreds of Party Hard Posse fans, patiently waiting for the band to sign their latest CD.
And when I eventually approached the front of the line, I’d never been more certain of anything in my life. Margot’s hair might have been styled and coloured differently, her face might have lost its puppy fat and her nose might have been thinner, but her green eyes remained as sharp and distinguishable as when I’d seen her that night.
My heart pounded in my throat when I stepped up to the band, sitting behind a table, taking it in turns to sign my CD case and poster. Then, for the first time in seven years, Margot and I were face to face. I was close enough to spot a small hole in the side of her nose and another in her left eyebrow where she’d once had the piercings I remembered. It was all I could do to stop my legs from buckling beneath me. I could barely say my own name when she asked. Only the second syllable came out.
‘Anna,’ I muttered.
As her black marker pen glided across the merchandise, I realised that if I didn’t say anything else, everything I wished would happen would not. I had to feed her ego to make her really see me.
‘You’re my favourite,’ I said.
It worked. She looked up at me. But instead of a flicker of recognition, panic, or better still, sheer terror, there was only a smile.
