Charlie opened the other eye, managing to lift her head off the ground.
Helen’s police radio, lying on the floor by her discarded bike. And the voice... the voice was DC Bridges. Searching for her.
Perhaps it wasn’t all over. Perhaps Charlie did have a shot at redemption after all. She knew she had to try. She hauled herself up, then collapsed to her knees. Her body was shaking, her teeth chattering. She was seeing double. But she had to make it to that radio somehow.
114
“How could you?”
Marianne laughed. There was a beautiful irony to Jodie’s question. It was exactly what Marianne had said toherall those years ago. A broad grin spread across Marianne’s face—couldshehave even predicted it would all work out so perfectly?
“It was simpler than you might think. The men were easy—you know what they’re like with a pretty face. And the girls—well, they were very... trusting. I’d like to say it was hard work, but as you can see I got others to do the heavy lifting.”
She shot a glance toward Mark’s body.
“Did you see Charlie, by the way?” she continued. “How is she doing? She ran straight past me when I opened the door, so I didn’t really get a proper look at her.”
“You’ve destroyed her...”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. She’ll be fine. She’ll get better, be with her boyfriend, have her baby. Whether she’ll be able to look the kid in the eye’s a different matter, but she won. She survived. I thought she was going to do it, but Mark took it out of her hands.”
“Why didn’t you just come for me?” Helen demanded.
“Because I wanted you to suffer.”
There it was. Bald and unadulterated.
“I did the right thing. I’d do it again.” Helen’s voice was getting louder as her fury took hold. And for the first time, there was a flash of something—anger?—in Marianne’s eyes.
“You never really cared how much I suffered, did you?” she spat back.
“That’s not true.”
“It wasn’t that you wanted me to suffer. It’s just that you didn’t care if I did, which is worse.”
“No, that was never what I felt or wan—”
“I was inside fortwenty-five years.They tried to break me in juvie and then tried all over again in Holloway. I wrote to you, so don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. The bottlings, the abuse, the beatings. I told you all about itandhow they paid for it. I ripped one girl’s eyeball right out of her fucking head in Holloway—do you remember? ’Course you do. But still you didn’t write, you didn’t visit. You didn’t help meat all, because you wanted me to rot. To shrivel up and die. Your own sister.”
“You stopped being my sister a long time ago.”
“Because of what I did to them? At least I had some fucking balls, you ungrateful little bitch.” Venom was seeping through now. “Isavedyou. You were next in line. They would havedestroyeda little girl like you.”
The truth of Marianne’s accusation scythed into Helen’s conscience.
“I know that. I know you felt you were helping me—”
“Wecouldhave been happy together, you and me. We could have gone somewhere, lived off the street, got something going. They would never have found us. If we’d’ve stuck together, we’d still be fine now.”
“Do you really believe that, Marianne? Because if you do, you’re more far gone than I thought—”
Suddenly Marianne was marching across the room toward Helen, fire in her eyes. Helen immediately raised her Glock and Marianne paused, checking her march. There were only three feet between the pair now.
Helen took in her sister’s face. So familiar in its shape and lines, but so alien in its expression. As if a monster had climbed inside her and was eating its way out.
“Don’t you dare look down on me,” Marianne hissed. “Don’t you dare... judge me. It’s you who’s on trial here, not me.”
“Because I did the right thing? Thedecentthing? You murdered our parents, Marianne. You murdered them in cold blood.”
