Martha opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I took one moment to look at her before I spoke, to take in the whole of her, to capture the anger that was building inside me.
‘Why?’ I said finally, indicating the portraits.
Martha stared back, silent still. I wanted to take her shoulders and shake the words out of her but I forced myself to stay calm.
‘Why?’ I repeated. ‘Why did you draw all these portraits? Why did Gabriella even let you? Answer me, Martha. I need to know.’
Now she reacted, dropping her head, her shoulders slumping. ‘Because she was kind. She was the only person who was. She came here and we talked. She listened to me and I told her things.’
‘And she let you draw her?’ I hardly believed it and yet I remembered the vivid sting, the time I’d seen Gabriella leaving Martha’s house, the feeling of betrayal. How often had Gabriella visited Martha? Far more times than I must have known.
‘It’s not so terrible, is it?’ said Martha. ‘I was good at art, wasn’t I?’
I looked at the portraits. There was no denying it. Martha was incredibly talented.
‘But why did you give the portrait to Edward Lily?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said sharply. ‘I wouldn’t have given him anything.’
‘Why?’
‘He was no better than anyone else.’
‘Wasn’t he?’ I spoke sharply.
‘I told you. Men and boys. All after Gabriella. It was never going to come to any good, was it?’
She looked away and I followed her gaze. I’d been so taken up with the portraits, I’d forgotten about the cupboard I’d forced open. Now she was registering what I’d done. ‘You had no right to do that,’ she said, her voice raised and angry. She pushed the door closed. ‘Who do you think you are?’
‘I had every right,’ I spat back. ‘I’m looking for my sister.’
‘You won’t find her.’
I took a step forward and she flinched. Her face was white, her eyes glittering. What was she afraid of? Turning to the cupboard, I grabbed the handle.
‘Leave it,’ she snapped.
‘Why? What have you been hiding?’ A sealed door and a broken bowl. Why would Martha paint the cupboard shut? I dropped my hand. A terrible idea was forming in my head, slithering into my consciousness. Lowering my voice, I forced out the words. ‘Was somebody locked in there?’
‘It’s not your business.’
‘It is my business. Did your father lock Gabriella in that cupboard?’
‘No!’
I moved across and spoke into Martha’s face. ‘You’re lying. My sister was a prisoner. He locked her in there, didn’t he? Then what did he do?’
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer. I was imagining Gabriella captured. Had she called out? Had she hammered on the door? I followed the flow of her emotions: the disbelief, the fury, the closing in of terror, the desperation when she realised no one was going to come.
Martha was breathing heavily. I loosened my hold with disgust. She was like an animal, helpless and pathetic.
‘How long did she stay inside the cupboard?’
‘Stop saying that,’ said Martha. ‘He didn’t lock her in there.’
‘Then why did you paint it shut?’ I persisted. ‘What are you trying to hide?’
‘It wasn’t her,’ she said, staring back.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was me.’
There was silence. ‘You?’ I let out my breath. ‘Why?’
‘Three days,’ she said, ignoring my question. ‘He kept me there for three days. Can you imagine what that was like?’
She crossed the room and sat on the bed. I watched her, my arms hanging uselessly by my side, unable to move or speak. Martha afraid in the darkness, not Gabriella. A peculiar kind of relief. A peculiar kind of dread.
Eventually, I moved across and knelt at her feet. ‘Tell me,’ I said, forcing myself to be quiet. I put my hand on hers. It was like bone, with the barest covering of skin. For a second she let it lie there, and then swiftly, she pulled away.
I sat back, trying to find a different way. ‘Tell me,’ I said again.
She closed her eyes and spoke. ‘He used to be kind.’
I thought of what Eliza had told me. ‘Was that before he lost his job?’
‘He was an electrician,’ said Martha, smiling as if proud of the memory. ‘He used to let me play with his toolbox. I was his little helper.’
‘And then?’
The smile disappeared. ‘He was a salesman.’
There was silence again. ‘And what was he like after that?’
‘Drunk. Friday nights to begin with. Then every night. And when he came back, he raged around the house.’ She closed her eyes as she remembered. ‘Staggering on the stairs, peeing in the bowl, hitching up his trousers, hauling at his zip, buckling the belt.’ Now she looked at me. ‘Have I told you about his belt?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘He put it round her neck and pulled it tight. You want to know about my father? I would’ve killed him if he hadn’t died. I would’ve drowned him when he was old, pushed his head down in the bath, or smothered him with a pillow. I would’ve done it, I swear, as soon as he was too slow to catch me with his fists.’
My blood turned cold. ‘Whose neck?’
‘My mother’s.’
‘And you?’
‘No.’
‘And Gabriella?’ I whispered.
She slowly shook her head.
‘Then who?’
Martha covered her face with her hands and I knew better than to push. I studied her for a few seconds more, willing her to speak, but she was crying, fat tears splashing onto the bed. I stood up, feeling helpless, blood racing as I tried to understand. If Martha wouldn’t say, I had to find another way of finding out the truth.
I went back to her parents’ room and stood in the doorway looking around me. The atmosphere was dark and brooding, like the demon in my dreams. Something was hiding. Secrets. In the cracks and crevices of the walls. I was so close to understanding. I only had to look harder and I’d know.
Stepping across the belt and the magazines, the scraggy carpet and the rug, I headed for the boxes. I touched their sagging sides and read the labels on their lids. There was the name of the company: Rawlinson Supplies. And the addresses of shops and businesses in different towns across the country. The destinations of a travelling salesman. Glasgow. Warrington. Sheffield. And York.
I read the names again, struggling to understand. It was as if my brain was working in slow motion. York, I read.
The belt. I kicked it over. A buckle slumped into sight. It was shaped like an eagle, its metal tarnished with age.
York. The word rang like a death toll.
Martha had followed as soundless as a ghost. I looked up and a coldness swept through my chest.
‘Sometimes I think I see her,’ she said.
An image came. A blonde girl with a fringe. The girl murdered in York. ‘Victoria Sands?’ I said in barely a whisper.
Martha made an impatient gesture, shaking her head. ‘No. I see her. In the street, or by the lake. And here – footsteps, running through the house. Do you hear her? Do you see her?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not possible.’
But I knew she was right. I saw Gabriella everywhere too.
‘What happened to her?’ I said. ‘If he didn’t strangle her . . .’ I paused. ‘Did he do something else?’
She looked at me, and despite everything, surprise lit her face. ‘No. I told you. He didn’t kill Gabriella.’
I exhaled with a sudden guilty relief. There was still hope. I took a giddy step towards Martha, stretching out my hands as if I might grasp the truth. She jerked backwards. ‘Why did you come back?’ she asked. ‘Now I have to live it all again.’
‘What do you have to live again, Martha?’ I spoke softly. ‘Tell me.’
She gave me a curious look, as if thinking something for the first time. ‘You’re just like those women, aren’t you?’
‘What women?’
‘Those ones that made me go to church.’
‘Church?’
‘Yes. They thought I was lonely when my mother died.’ She gave me a sly look. ‘Why would I be lonely? I went once. That was enough. They gave out pamphlets about Christ and how he saved us, and took our sins, and would forgive us for what we’d done as long as we embraced him and repented. They probably thought they could save me too.’
‘Save you from what, Martha?’
‘You’d like me to tell you, wouldn’t you?’
I kept my voice low and steady. ‘Tell me what?’
‘The how and the why.’
‘Yes, Martha,’ I said. ‘I’d like you to tell me the how and the why.’
‘The why’s easy – have you seen a butterfly in a spider’s web?’
‘Tell me!’ I said, my voice rising. I was twelve again, my glasses bandaged, the book of suspects in my hand. ‘What do you know, Martha? Tell me about the day she disappeared. Did you see her?’
Martha wasn’t listening. ‘I can almost hear it,’ she said. ‘I can almost smell it.’
‘What can you hear?’
‘Screaming.’
‘What can you smell?’
‘Flowers.’
I waited, my heart beating so loudly it must have echoed around the house. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Tell me about that day.’
A frown creased her forehead. I imagined the pictures forming in her mind, the sequence of events. She’d stayed for an art class after school. She’d walked home in the semi-darkness. Had Martha’s arrival on Acer Street coincided with Gabriella’s?
‘What time did you get home?’ I said.
Martha screwed up her eyes as if trying to remember. ‘I don’t know, but I knew my mother would kill me because I was late. She’d lock me out.’
‘Is that what happened, you were locked out?’
‘I sat on the wall,’ she said.
‘What wall?’
‘Along the street.’
‘You stopped because you were afraid to go home?’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘I stopped because I saw the man.’
‘What man?’ Now my words sounded far away as if I was in a dream.
‘Edward Lily.’
I breathed deeply, counting in my head, before I spoke again. ‘What was he doing?’
‘Talking to Gabriella.’
‘Did you hear what they said?’
She nodded. ‘They didn’t notice me at first.’
‘What? What did they say?’
She paused. ‘He said he loved her. He said he wanted to be with her. I thought . . . I thought he was trying to . . .’ She broke off.
‘Did you know he was her father?’
She stared at me and shook her head. ‘No. I thought . . .’ She stopped again, her face flushed. She must have believed the worst of Edward Lily.
‘He was her father,’ I repeated and watched as the knowledge took its hold. ‘What did Gabriella say to him?’
‘I don’t remember. I don’t understand. Why didn’t she tell me he was her father?’
‘Why would she?’ I said. ‘She didn’t tell me.’ I crossed my arms, trying to hold my emotion in, gripping my elbows, digging nails into my flesh. ‘Try,’ I said. ‘Try to remember what Gabriella said.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Please, Martha. It’s important. What did Gabriella say?’
She pushed her palms into her eyes as if trying to force the memories back. ‘She said she wouldn’t leave her family.’
I breathed again with relief. ‘What else?’
‘She said she didn’t want to hurt anyone. And . . . and she gave him one of my portraits. The one I’d given her as a gift.’
Why? To apologise for rejecting him? As a substitute for her? ‘Was he angry?’ Martha shook her head. ‘And what about you? Were you annoyed that Gabriella gave him the portrait you’d drawn?’
Martha looked away. It was true. She’d been angry and jealous . . . like me.
‘And Tom?’ I said at last, my heart pounding. ‘Was he there too? Did he walk past while they were talking?’
Martha nodded.
Tom’s ever-changing statement. His forgetfulness. Had he seen Gabriella with a man or with a girl? The answer was he’d seen her with both. He’d been telling the truth all along.
‘What did Edward Lily do? Did he hurt her?’
She shook her head. ‘He walked away.’
‘And Gabriella?’
‘She was crying.’
I brought my voice down to a whisper. ‘What did she do?’
‘She came to me. Can you imagine that? She wanted to be with me.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I took her home.’
‘You took her home,’ I repeated.
There was silence. I pictured Gabriella crying and vulnerable, led away by Martha, the person she’d helped and championed. But now the tables had turned and Martha was helping her. She’d seized her chance and taken my sister into her house once again. How she must have loved bringing a friend home, like any ordinary girl, with ordinary parents, in an ordinary house. But Martha wasn’t ordinary, was she? She’d had a terrible life with a murdering father and a beaten mother.
‘She was a bitch.’
The blood rose and thumped in my head. I stared at Martha. ‘What the hell do you mean?’
‘She sent me for biscuits.’
I looked away, confused. ‘Gabriella?’
‘My mother. She was a bitch.’
Images flickered: this abandoned bedroom, the antiseptic kitchen, the sterility of the living room, all personality gone. The Ellis grave with the defiling marks across the stone. She hated her father. Had she hated her mother too? She’d seen her die. My God, what had that been like? The thought crept in again. Did she push her mother? I rubbed my eyes, pressed my palms into the sockets. Martha hated both her parents. Her father was a monster, that was clear, but her mother was a victim in this. Wasn’t she?
Martha was quiet. I leaned forward and let my hand rest on hers. She looked at the contact with surprise and this time she allowed it.
‘What happened when you went inside?’
‘She didn’t have her scarf,’ said Martha, lifting her fingers and touching her throat.
‘Your mother.’
‘Yes. And she was angry. Angry with me for being late and for bringing Gabriella home.’
‘But Gabriella had been before and your mother hadn’t minded.’
‘No, but . . . the bruises. They were . . .’ She paused.
‘Had your father . . . ?’
‘Yes. He’d beaten her the night before, and Gabriella kept looking at the new bruises and saying she had to go home. I tried to get her upstairs, I did, but the bitch persuaded her to go into the living room. She said she’d make her a drink. I didn’t know what to do.’
And now I imagined how Gabriella had felt when the door had closed and she’d seen Martha’s mother. The hall must have seemed darker, narrower. She must have looked about her and questioned why she was there. She must have wanted to come home to Mum and Dad. To me.
I clenched my fists, opened them again. ‘And your father . . . Was he at home?’
‘No,’ said Martha bitterly. ‘He was in the pub. He was always in the pub.’
I concentrated on levelling my voice. ‘So what did you do?’
‘We sat on the sofa.’
‘What did you talk about?’
She smiled, remembering. ‘Gabriella told me not to say anything to anyone about the man. She trusted me. And I forgave her for giving away the portrait.’
Her eyes closed with the effort of speaking. I forced myself to take her hand again and squeeze it. ‘Tell me, Martha. What happened next?’
‘She said she needed to go. She said she was meeting you at the shop and she was late.’
It was true. I’d been in the House of Flores, peering into the darkness waiting for Gabriella to come. If only I’d gone to look for her. If only I’d met her at school.
Now Martha spoke with malice. ‘I might have helped her if she hadn’t mentioned you. I might have led her out the house and taken a clip around the ear for letting her go.’
I released her hand, clamping my mouth shut. I mustn’t be angry, or stop her from talking. I’d take anything from Martha if she’d tell me what she knew.
‘She never would have found out if they hadn’t kept the newspaper.’
I stared at her. ‘What newspaper? What did she find out?’
‘The one with the picture of the girl. The one from Yorkshire. The one he killed. It was on the sofa and Gabriella picked it up. And then she came in. Put that down, she said. But it was too late. Gabriella was looking at the picture and staring and I saw what my mother had written on it. Bitch, it said. Scrawled there. Right across the page.’
I felt myself swaying, imagined collapsing on the filthy floor. I anchored my feet and forced myself to speak. I was so close to understanding now. ‘So what did your mother do?’
‘She got her bag.’
‘Her bag?’
‘She got her purse and took out the money and gave it to me. She told me to go and buy biscuits. She said we couldn’t have Gabriella over and not give her any biscuits.’
Biscuits. The hairs on my arms rose. ‘What did Gabriella say?’
‘She said she wasn’t hungry. The bitch didn’t listen. She told me to buy more squash. Milk too. She told me to take my time and that she’d entertain my friend. She pushed me out the door. The bitch pushed me out the door.’
‘Martha,’ I said, struggling for control. ‘Tell me what happened after that.’
‘I had no choice. You don’t understand. I thought it would be all right. Ten minutes. Nothing could happen in ten minutes, could it?’ She looked at me with pleading eyes as if willing me to reassure her.
‘And the newspaper article? Had Gabriella guessed?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. But I thought if I got back quickly . . . and then, when I got outside I saw him.’
‘Who?’ I said urgently.
‘Him. He was coming back from the pub.’
My head cleared as realisation hit me. Mr Ellis, violent and unpredictable, in the same house as Gabriella. Why had Martha denied his guilt? Why was she protecting him?
‘I should have gone back inside,’ said Martha. ‘But I was scared. So I ran as fast as I could.’
Martha was looking beyond me now, her eyes flickering as if she were watching herself, chasing through the streets. ‘I bought biscuits,’ she said. ‘I didn’t buy the squash or the milk. I wanted to save time, you see.’ She looked at me, her eyes appealing. ‘But by the time I got back it was too late. I tried to tell you. Don’t you remember? I told you about the biscuits.’
I looked away, trying to hold back the sob that was rising in my throat. For now I remembered that day; when I’d rejected Martha, bawled at her in the street. I’d thought she wanted to be my friend, but I’d been wrong. She’d been trying to tell me about Gabriella.
And since I’d been back, she’d watched me again, followed me, desperate to confess. And what had I done? I’d spurned her once more – stopped her from telling the truth.