CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT #3
Sensing they weren’t going to get any further with that, at least for now, Cristy said, ‘Do you realize that Sadie’s father will be able to tell us whether or not he met you back in 2005?’
‘He’s not her father,’ Mia spat angrily. ‘You’re tricking Sadie into believing things that simply aren’t true. Her father died when she was a baby, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for bringing these imposters into her life the way you have.’
Quietly, Cristy said, ‘We know that he is her father.’
Mia twitched and huffed and started to scratch her arms. ‘They’re not real,’ she blurted, ‘they can’t be.
None of it is. You’re in cahoots with Lottie, aren’t you?
I know she’s not dead. I’ve always known.
I’m the one who died and she’s taken over my body.
That’s what she does … She takes you over and uses you like a puppet.
She makes you think and say things that she wants to be true even when they’re lies.
I keep trying to fight her, but she’s here, inside me, and she won’t let me go. ’
Having no idea how much she believed of what she was saying, Cristy said, ‘We want to help you, Mia, we really do, but you have to realize that what you’re telling us … None of it makes any sense …’
‘And Lottie’s story does?’ she cried angrily. ‘Except she didn’t write it, I did. She found my journals and changed around the names to make it look as though I am the devil incarnate and she was just an innocent bystander in it all.’
‘Except she didn’t paint herself that way,’ Connor pointed out. ‘She’s also blaming herself – for the abduction, the lies, the deception …’
‘But she doesn’t blame herself for what happened to Sadie’s mother, does she? Oh no, she’s laid that monstrous act at my door, but the way I wrote it proves that it was all her.’
‘How does it prove that?’ Cristy asked carefully.
Mia swallowed and let her eyes hunt around the room. ‘It’s not possible to prove it,’ she finally admitted, ‘but it’s what happened.’
‘Do you have your journals from that time?’ Connor asked.
‘No, of course not,’ she snapped. ‘Lottie burned them. She used them first then made a bonfire out of them. She used to do that with my things, it’s why I had to lock her up, to keep her from destroying what was mine.
She did the same to Sadie when she was growing up …
’ She began jabbing a finger towards them.
‘And here’s something else you’ve never considered,’ she spat, as if addressing imbeciles.
‘It’s been staring you in the face all along, me too, but I saw it because I see.
’ She poked hard at the skin beside her right eye.
‘I seeeee – and you, you, only know what suits you, what’s the easiest to know, and to hell with the truth because it doesn’t have a place in your rotten, interfering, made-up world. ’
Having no idea what she was talking about, Cristy was about to ask when Mia rasped, ‘Sadie wrote those journals. That’s what I see.
She’s tricked you all along, led you by the nose to do her bidding, feeding you bits of a story that weaves and dodges around the truth, picking it up like stitches and casting it off again.
She’s painted herself as the victim of two wicked women who killed her mother so they could keep her like a prisoner, and all we ever did was love her. ’
Stunned by the depths of Mia’s craziness, by how desperate she was to cling to invisible lifelines that were only drawing her further into her own fraught delusions, Cristy said, ‘You told us just now that Lottie killed Janina and you wrote the journals.’
‘That’s what Sadie wants you to think, that I ran that car off the road, that I deprived her of her mother, but I’m telling you it was Lottie.
It was my sister who wanted me to keep Sadie so she could be free to go off with that man.
She thought to make me the guardian of the child she had taken from the beach, who she had falsified passports and birth certificates for, who she lied to all her life and who she had no idea would kill her in the end. ’
Cristy blinked, as her head spun. What the hell was she saying now?
‘It was Sadie who changed the pills in Lottie’s bottles,’ Mia ran on savagely.
‘Who replaced them with placebos, sweets, and tiny white mints. It was the medication that kept Lottie alive, that allowed her to live the best life she could without him, until one day, out of the blue, Sadie challenged her over her parentage. She wanted to know the truth, but Lottie wouldn’t tell her.
Sadie wouldn’t let it go, so Lottie said if she didn’t shut up she’d change her will and Sadie would get nothing for being such an ungrateful little bitch.
The next thing we knew Lottie was dead on the tennis court and before anyone could check the bottles they’d been refilled with the real medication. ’
‘Why on earth would Sadie want to do that to her aunt?’ Cristy asked.
Mia gave a nasty laugh. ‘I’ve just told you. Lottie threatened to cut her off, so Sadie made sure she couldn’t. Except it took longer than she expected and in the end she got nothing.’
‘While you,’ Connor said quietly, ‘got everything.’
Mia smiled. ‘Of course. I told Lottie, I said, “Sadie’s grown now, so if you still want to leave us and be sure I never tell what happened to Sadie’s mother, you will make me your sole beneficiary.
” So that’s what she did. She made everything over to me in the event of her death and so when Sadie began putting her plan into motion she was already too late. ’
All too aware of the inconsistencies and conflicting claims, Cristy said, ‘How do you know that Sadie did it?’
Mia’s face twitched as she took her time to reply. ‘I saw her,’ she said in the end. ‘I watched her doing it … Emptying the bottles into small packages she’d already labelled, then filling them again with the concoction she’d put together.’
‘If you knew it was happening,’ Connor said, ‘why didn’t you stop her?’
Mia seemed puzzled by the question. ‘Why should I?’ she asked. ‘I had no reason to interfere.’
‘Meaning you wanted your sister dead?’ Cristy stated carefully.
Agitated, Mia said, ‘You’re putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say that.’
Cristy shook her head. ‘I can’t think of why else you wouldn’t stop her,’ she said.
Mia blinked and tilted her head. ‘Stop who?’ she demanded. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know why you’re here. I want you to leave now. Go! Go!’
Realizing that no matter how long they stayed they were unlikely to get any closer to a believable, never mind provable truth – and even if they could there was still the injunction – Cristy said, ‘Before we leave will you let us take that down?’ She gestured to the noose.
Mia looked up, as if she’d forgotten it was there. ‘No!’ she snapped. ‘It stays right where it is until I’m certain you will not publicize those journals.’
‘Your lawyers are making sure of it,’ Cristy reminded her.
Mia regarded her blankly, as if she had no idea what she was talking about.
‘You instructed your lawyers,’ Cristy said carefully, wondering now if she had. But she must have, the injunction had been issued by the court right here in Guernsey.
‘Yes! I did,’ Mia cried. ‘And I’m going to call them right now to tell them you’re harassing me.’
Cristy looked at Connor. Short of getting into a physical tussle with her over the rope there was no more they could do, so it was time to go.
At the door she turned back to find Mia staring absently into the heart of the chaos around her, clearly so deep in thought that she no longer seemed to know they were still there.
What was she seeing, Cristy wondered, what kind of madness was tearing through her now?
‘Tell me,’ she said gently, ‘was it you who forced Janina’s car off the road?’
Mia’s eyes narrowed as she glared back at her. ‘I guess you’ll never know the answer to that,’ she said tightly, and turned sharply away to stare out of the window.
*
‘Jesus holy Christ, what the fuck?’ Connor muttered, as they drove away from the villa.
‘You keep saying that,’ Cristy told him.
He glanced over at her. ‘She is completely batshit,’ he stated.
‘But still clever enough to know that we don’t have a definitive answer to anything,’ she said. ‘So I guess it’s down to the lawyers whether or not we get to use anything from the journals in the final podcast now they’re under injunction.’
Connor grimaced. ‘Are we going to tell Sadie what her aunt just accused her of?’ he asked, accelerating out of the gates.
‘I don’t see how we can avoid it.’ She turned to him. ‘How much of it did you believe?’
His breath expelled in a humourless laugh. ‘I don’t even know where to start with that,’ he confessed. ‘Sadie writing the journals? Sadie offing her aunt?’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘What are you thinking?’
Cristy gazed out at the passing landscape, wondering if they were anywhere near the spot where Janina had lost her life.
‘I’ll admit she’s got me as confused as she no doubt intended,’ she replied, ‘which has to make her one of the most deviously manipulative, not to mention cunning and calculating individuals we’ve ever encountered.
’ The ghastly image of the noose came back to her.
‘Do you think she really would hang herself if we got clearance to use the journals?’ she asked. ‘Or was it just an act?’
‘She’d never do it,’ Sadie declared when they returned to Papillon and put the question to her. ‘It’s the kind of crazy thing she does to get her way. Suicide threats, locking people up, acting insane … It sounds like she got really extreme today … I’m sorry …’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Anna jumped in. ‘You can’t be responsible for the way she is.’
Smiling her thanks, Sadie said to Cristy, ‘Did she let you record anything?’