As Roy had honoured Beth’s request that he stay away from her until the investigation was complete, she had no idea whether the police were any further forward. Steven felt they were still actively following up all kinds of leads, but he had no idea what direction they were taking. Being so much in the dark was playing havoc with Beth’s nerves; she couldn’t sleep at night, she had no appetite, and there had been many times when she’d been tempted to call Roy to find out what was going on.
But above all, her disquiet was caused by the feeling that she had betrayed her friend. She felt she must explain to Susan why there was a renewed police interest in her, and her own role in it, or have it on her conscience for all time.
She had an angry red spot on her chin, gripes in her stomach and she felt shaky with nerves. What she wanted more than anything was for Susan to convince her finally that she had no hand in, or knowledge of, the disappearance of those people from her past.
‘What have you come for?’ Susan said as she came into the interview room and saw Beth waiting for her. Her round face was tight with hostility. ‘To try and get some more stuff to pass on to your boyfriend?’
It was a few weeks since Beth had last visited Susan, and it was something of a shock to see how much weight she had lost. On her arrest she’d probably been a size sixteen, now she was closer to a twelve. Her navy-blue track suit was hanging on her. Women usually put on weight in prison because of the stodgy food and lack of exercise. Was she starving herself?
‘Don’t be silly, Susan,’ Beth said, trying to keep calm. ‘I don’t pass on anything to anyone that we talk about. Now, why have you lost so much weight?’
Susan shrugged and sat down, crossing her legs and folding her arms with a touch of insolence. ‘What’s it to you?’ she said. ‘Afraid I’ll get skinnier than you?’
That was the kind of sarcastic remark women prisoners often made to her, and it made Beth feel even lower to see that her old friend was picking up all the bad habits.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped. ‘I’m concerned, that’s all.’
‘Oh, right!’ Susan said. ‘Like you were so concerned about me you went sniffing around looking for other crimes I might have done?’
Beth’s heart sank, for clearly Susan had worked out for herself that. Roy’s line of questioning had been precipitated by her. ‘I didn’t go sniffing around for other crimes,’ she said. ‘I only went looking for Liam and Reuben to get them to be witnesses on your behalf.’
‘So they’ve gone missing!’ Susan retorted. ‘I told you they were both wanderers, didn’t I? As for that slag Zoë, she’s probably tucked up with some sugar daddy. That’s what she’s into. I can’t be held responsible for all the untraceable itinerants in England. What sort of a friend are you if you immediately think I must have bumped them off?’
‘I don’t think that,’ Beth said truthfully. ‘I would have to hear it from you before I’d ever believe it.’
‘But you were quick enough to grass me up, weren’t you?’
Beth sighed. ‘Grassing up is telling tales, Susan. I didn’t have any tales to tell. I still don’t. As you know, Detective Inspector Longhurst has been working on your case right from the start. He came with me to Luddington to try and find Liam because he’s become a friend. How could I not tell him about what happened in Wales? I only asked him to check out Zoë Fremantle in the hope that she might lead us to Reuben. When he found her on the missing persons’ list, of course he had to start an investigation.’
‘You haven’t changed, have you?’ Susan said with a sneer. ‘You dropped me all those years ago because some man came into your life, and now you’re doing it again. Don’t try to deny it either, the reason you didn’t want me coming up to London to share a flat with you was because of a man.’
‘That’s just not true,’ Beth exclaimed. ‘There was no man in my life, not ever.’
Susan grinned maliciously. ‘Okay, so it was a woman, and you’re a lesbian – you should come in here, the place is crawling with them.’
‘I’m not a lesbian either.’ Beth sighed. ‘I’ve just never really got it together with men.’
‘You were boy-mad at fifteen,’ Susan snapped back, jumping to her feet. ‘After that last holiday in Stratford that was all you used to write to me about. So if it wasn’t a man or a woman you got tied up with, what was it that made you dump me?’
‘I never saw it as dumping you,’ Beth said hotly. ‘Sometimes you just avoid contact with certain people because –’ She stopped dead, not knowing what excuse to give.
‘Because of what? They are boring? Too old-fashioned when you’re Miss Smarty Pants at university? Not clever enough any more?’
Beth’s stomach churned over. She got to her feet, wanting to leave immediately. But she knew she couldn’t leave Susan thinking that she’d abandoned her for any of those reasons.
‘No, Susan, it was because I was afraid I’d end up telling you what happened to me, and I didn’t want to do that.’
Susan made a kind of derisive snort and put her hands on her hips. ‘What sort of excuse is that? You pathetic bitch! You used to tell me everything, or so you said in those days. But you took me for a ride, didn’t you? I was just someone to hang around with when you were stuck up in Stratford for the summer. I never meant anything to you.’
‘That’s not true, Susan.’ Beth pleaded with her, backing away because the other woman’s expression was so frightening. She’d never seen her angry before. ‘You meant more to me than anything else. But what happened to me changed me, I couldn’t tell anyone, especially you. It was too bad.’
‘I’m in here for double murder. How much worse can “bad” be than that?’ Susan sprang towards her as if she was going to hit her.
‘I was gang-raped by three men,’ Beth blurted out. ‘Don’t attack me, Susan. I swear to God that is what happened.’
Susan stopped short as if turned to rock. Her mouth fell open in surprise.
‘Gang-raped?’ she whispered.
‘Yes, Susan. It was in January when we were seventeen,’ Beth said in a low voice and sank down on to the chair. She would tell her, get it off her chest, once and for all.
Surprisingly, after all the years of refusing to say the words aloud even to herself, and the struggle Steven had to drag it out of her, telling the story of what happened came much easier this time. But her eyes still filled with tears as she spoke and her voice was shaking. She was aware of Susan standing to her right staring down at her, but she couldn’t turn to look at her. ‘Would you have expected me to go on writing jolly letters full of trivia after that?’ she finished off.
There was utter silence for a moment or two. Then she heard Susan exhale. ‘You poor bitch,’ she murmured. ‘I never imagined anything like that.’
Suddenly she was clasping Beth tightly, her face buried in her hair, and Beth could feel the wetness of her tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Beth,’ she whispered. ‘But you should have told me.’
They stayed locked together for some moments, Susan rocking Beth in her arms, neither of them caring that if the officer outside the door should look in it would seem very odd. It was the way Serena had held Beth sometimes when she was just a little girl and it felt so safe and comforting.
‘I couldn’t, it was too awful,’ Beth said eventually and disengaged herself to blow her nose. She was embarrassed now, not so much by her revelations, but by being so unprofessional in a place that demanded she should be cool and collected.
Susan kissed her forehead and went to sit down again. She looked winded, all the fight which had been in her such a short time ago, gone.
Beth told her then how it was for her afterwards, without even her brother and sister knowing. ‘I was jealous of you,’ she blurted out. ‘I imagined you safe at home with your lovely parents, everything so clean, so bright and nice. My home was a tip, my father a pompous bully, my mother pathetic. I’d hidden all that from you, and it seemed best to move on so you’d never kno
w about it, or about the rape.’
‘You know, I was jealous of you too,’ Susan admitted. ‘You might have seen my home as bright and shining, but I wasn’t like that, and that is exactly how I saw you. You were what I wanted to be – brave, clever, tall and elegant. What was I? A short, fat girl with a moon face and no personality. Even if mother hadn’t had the stroke, I would never have set the world alight. I’d have stayed at home, got some dull little office job, and married the first man that asked me.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Beth said stoutly, even though she knew it was probably true.
Susan grimaced at her. ‘Oh Beth, don’t feel you’ve got to bolster me up. It took me a long time to come to terms with what I really was. I didn’t truly find out until Annabel was born. I was born to be a mother, nothing more. But in those four years with her I saw that as the greatest of roles, true fulfilment. I used to think about you, imagine you in a wig and gown, and all the envy was gone. Everything, hanging her nappies out on the line, playing with toys on the floor, cutting little sandwiches into animal shapes for her, was all so lovely. Motherhood is a true vocation, Beth. But I had to be punished and she was taken from me.’
Beth had watched her face as she spoke, saw the tender light in her eyes, her mouth curling into a smile, and felt a lump come up in her throat at the injustice of Susan being robbed of her one joy.
‘Why did you think you had to be punished?’ she asked curiously.
Susan shrugged and looked away.
‘Why, Susan?’ Beth repeated when her friend didn’t answer. Beth felt she’d made that remark in an unguarded moment for Susan suddenly looked shifty.
‘For being glad when my parents died. For not waiting for the right man to come along,’ Susan said hastily. ‘I lied to you about Liam being so wonderful, he was just a waster, and I was lonely. I knew it wouldn’t really work.’
Beth knew their time was up, and she felt they had gone as far as they could for one day. ‘I have to go now,’ she said, standing up, and she held out her arms instinctively.
Susan rushed into them and held her tightly, leaning into Beth’s shoulder as a child would. ‘That policeman is a good man, even if he does seem to hope I’m a serial killer,’ she murmured. ‘I hope he’s going to make things right for you.’
‘I’m not seeing him for a while,’ Beth said.
‘Why?’ Susan asked. ‘Because of me?’
Beth suddenly realized she couldn’t bring herself to admit that. It would frighten Susan into thinking Roy really did imagine she was a serial killer. ‘No, of course not. I’ve got to work on myself for a while. I can’t expect any man to free me from my past, only I can do that.’
‘I’m sorry I was rough on you,’ Susan said with tears in her eyes. ‘I don’t want you to come here again, Beth. Not until all this is over.’
‘If that’s what you really want,’ Beth said. She thought Susan meant prison was tougher still when you kept being reminded of what might have been. ‘Just tell Steven if you change your mind.’
As Susan walked back to her wing, waiting at each door for it to be unlocked by an officer, all her thoughts were with Beth. In a way it was like having a previously locked door opened and seeing another room for the first time. Everything made sense now – the change in Beth’s letters, the absence of real news, all the old humour gone. Maybe if Susan hadn’t been so wrapped up in her own family problems she would have realized something terrible must have happened to her friend.
A vivid picture came into her mind of Beth swimming in the river that last summer they spent together. Susan had watched from the bank as Beth did a faultless dive into the water; she was wearing a red swimming costume, her slender body so lithe and graceful.
Susan couldn’t dive, she was afraid to go in head first, she didn’t even like jumping in, but lowered herself from the bank inch by inch. That seemed now to sum up the differences in their characters. Beth plunged into everything with gusto, she liked challenge and even danger. Susan couldn’t leap into anything, she approached anything new with caution, and usually backed away, overcome by fear.
Yet she had learned after her parents died that she was capable of recklessness, that she could banish fear when circumstances demanded it. But poor Beth had that wonderful, inspiring spark in her, snuffed out by those evil men. It had clearly tainted her whole life, and as Susan walked back to her cell, she wept for her friend.
Chapter sixteen
Frankie was lying on the top bunk smoking a cigarette when Susan got back to their cell. Susan’s heart sank at the sight of the other woman, for she had hoped she’d be working. It meant she would get an interrogation, just when she was least able to cope with it.
‘More agro wif yer brief?’ Frankie asked, her small dark eyes scanning Susan’s face for tear stains or anything that might suggest some kind of drama.
‘No, not at all,’ Susan replied, struggling to compose herself. She had learned to her cost not to tell anyone in here anything that was important to her. She had believed when she told Julie about Annabel that she would keep it to herself, but by the next day it was right round the prison. At first everyone was kinder to her, but it didn’t last. She knew now that information about fellow prisoners was like a drug to most of these women, and they came back for more and more, getting nastier and nastier if they couldn’t get it.
Susan also knew now that because she was middle-class, naive and with no previous convictions, she was seen as an oddity. Everyone wanted to break her down, take her apart to see what she was made of. ‘Don’t make out you’re simple’ was something she had said to her almost every day. But she supposed she was simple. She had always believed what people told her, whether it was her father stating he’d put her mother in a home if she left; Liam telling her he loved her; or Dr Wetherall insisting Annabel only had a virus.
She supposed that being loyal was perceived as being simple too. She had never told tales on anyone in her entire life, and even though everyone in Eastwood Park passed on everyone else’s secrets, she wasn’t going to join them.
She had known right away when the police came back with more questions that it was Beth’s doing, and she just couldn’t understand how her friend could do such a thing. But simple she must be, because now after Beth’s visit she was convinced her friend had no choice. She also felt completely gutted by her revelations, and heart-sick that she hadn’t been given any opportunity to try to help her.
Maybe she was cut off from the real world by being at home with her mother, but she would still have understood the horror and devastation of rape. She would have asked her parents if Beth could come and live with them, and she knew they would have agreed once she told them how awful Mr Powell had been about it.
It was no wonder that Beth had lost that sparkle she used to have. To have to keep such a monstrous secret locked inside her was enough to send anyone mad. Susan knew the agony of hiding things herself, forcing herself to act as if she was untroubled by anything, when in fact her mind was a seething whirlpool of past mistakes and hideous memories. She lived in fear that one day they would all be discovered, slapped down in front of her and she would be compelled to explain them all.
It would be such a relief to let it all out to someone who cared enough about her just to listen and maybe hold her. There were plenty of people in here who would like her to think they were that person. They lay in wait like jackals for prisoners coming back from a visit with their solicitor or family member, hoping to be the recipients of some juicy morsel. How those women would love it if she was to reveal that the police were trying to pin more murders on her! Such succulent information would get a place saved for her at meal-times, they’d be offering her shampoo, hand cream, and drugs too. It would stop her being the butt of all the jokes for a couple of days.
Prison was a living nightmare, never knowing when the next nasty trick would be played on her, or when someone would attack her, physically or verbally. She couldn’t eat – after a co
uple of mouthfuls she just felt sick – and she was constantly having to keep herself in check so that she didn’t show how repelled she was by the personal habits of her fellow prisoners. The ignorance, the swearing, the wickedness some of them were capable of was very hard to bear. She ached to be able to walk outside, to feel the wind in her hair, the rain on her face, to have silence.
‘What did he want then?’ Frankie’s voice called her back to the present. She had sat up now and in her black sleeveless tee-shirt and jeans, with her inch-long spiky hair, she looked just like a man. Her huge muscular biceps with the barbed-wire tattoos around them stretched ominously as she moved.
‘Oh, just verifying something my brother told him,’ Susan said airily. She wasn’t so simple that she hadn’t learned to lie since she’d been in here. Telling the truth just got you into worse situations. She had believed living in Hill House had prepared her for most things, but not this place. Sometimes it felt as if she’d accidentally fallen down through a man-hole cover and discovered a whole new stratum of life. It wasn’t just the crimes they’d committed, drug-dealing, fraud, thieving or prostitution, they were a different class of animal altogether, and all so explosive and violent.
Frankie was typical of the women who dominated the place – ugly to look at, foul-mouthed, evil-minded, vicious and unpredictable. She got her kicks out of first befriending and protecting new prisoners, then bending their will to hers. Susan was already passing over her tobacco and her phone card to her. That was because Frankie stopped the woman who gave her the black eyes from hurting her again. Susan didn’t care about either as she didn’t smoke and had no one to phone, so she might have given them to Frankie anyway. But she did resent the constant grilling that ‘a minder’ subjected her to. She couldn’t have a conversation with anyone without the woman expecting her to pass on every last detail.
‘Verify what?’ Frankie asked.
‘The value of my parents’ house,’ Susan lied. ‘It was sold for two hundred thousand, I suppose you want to know that too?’