Liar Read online

‘We’ll still be together, then?’ Amelia said, as she clinked his glass.

  He didn’t answer her for a bit: he appeared to be rummaging for something near the Christmas tree.

  ‘Yes, but only if you agree to marry me now,’ he said suddenly, and when she looked at him, he was wearing the pig’s snout and the false moustache. ‘I didn’t think to buy a ring. But I’ve got these.’

  Amelia shrieked with laughter. She hadn’t expected a proposal – and certainly not when he was wearing a pig’s nose. ‘Just as long as you lose that thing before we get married.’ She could hardly get the words out she was laughing so much.

  ‘More seriously,’ he said, whipping off the nose and moustache, ‘I love you, Amelia. Nothing in my entire life has felt as right as having you for my wife.’

  Later that evening, when Max had dropped off to sleep, Amelia smiled to herself. For the first time in her life she felt she had what Beryl Bentley had said she should aim for. She was in control, and she knew she wasn’t blundering into a nightmare. It was such a good feeling.

  But the happy and joy-filled Christmas vanished on 27 December when Max said he must leave the next day to spend New Year with his parents.

  ‘They couldn’t understand why I didn’t go to them for Christmas and now I need to tell them about you and how I feel, and I can’t do that adequately with you there. I’m sure you can see that.’

  She said she could but she was hurt that he’d even think of leaving her to see in the New Year alone. They both had the whole week off between Christmas and New Year, and she had thought they could go to the Victoria and Albert Museum one day, maybe to the pictures or to see a play in a theatre up west. It would be no fun doing any of that on her own.

  Amelia went to see him off at Shepherd’s Bush tube the next morning. She wanted to go up to Paddington with him, but he said he hated goodbyes, and at a mainline station it would feel much worse.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, turning to kiss her just before he went through the barrier. ‘I know you’re hurt, even though you’ve done your best to hide it. But it’ll be good for you to have some time alone. You’ve got to write one of those articles, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’m not hurt,’ she lied. ‘And, yes, I have got the article to do. Maybe I’ll ring the woman and ask if I can come and talk face to face with her. She’s only in Kew.’

  Max disappeared into the crowd, and she had to bite back tears. He hadn’t said he loved her before he left.

  It was very cold, and it felt as if it might snow. Amelia had never felt so forlorn and alone. She thought of calling on Kat for company, but then she remembered she’d be working, so her friend wouldn’t be at home.

  She telephoned Grace Meredith, the young woman she was going to write about, from a phone box in Shepherd’s Bush, hoping against hope she might ask her to come over to Kew straight away.

  However, Grace was busy, and suggested four o’clock the following day. Amelia agreed but the appointment was so late in the afternoon: she would have liked it to be earlier. She didn’t know Kew well, it would be dark by then, and it left her with nothing to do for most of the day.

  The next morning Amelia pulled herself together and decided to set out for Kew early. The shops there were interesting, and she would find a café to read her notes about Grace again, so she was sure of her subject.

  She first checked where Grace lived. To her surprise, it was a turn-of-the-century red-brick rather grand apartment block, not at all what she’d expected. Grace had been put into care at the age of ten when her mother died of cancer. Her parents were divorced, and her father’s new wife said she couldn’t cope with her. That was why Amelia had imagined Grace would live somewhere humble.

  Whether or not Grace had liked the children’s home wasn’t stated, but it had clearly had a profound effect on her, as she became a nursery nurse. She had also trained to counsel bereaved children. The main thrust of Amelia’s article would be about her counselling work.

  Amelia knew nothing about counselling, especially for children. She had read a bit about child guidance, which was basically a psychiatrist trying to find out why a child was disruptive, violent or withdrawn, purely because of her own bleak childhood. But Grace’s work appeared to be more specific. Furthermore she was working towards getting other people into this field: at Style magazine they had said she was passionate on the subject.

  The café she chose to wait in was just across the road from the apartment block, and as she sat with a pot of tea and a couple of hot teacakes, she watched for people coming in and out.

  She found it quite amusing that she’d imagined Grace to be a bit down-at-heel, a woman who had been treated badly as a child and wanted to rescue children in a similar situation. A rather dull and earnest person. Yet everyone she saw coming out of the apartment block looked elegant and well-dressed. It made her see that she should never make assumptions about anyone.

  At five to four it was dark, and she made her way across to the apartment block. As she approached the short path flanked by privet hedges, she had the oddest feeling that someone was close behind her. But when she turned no one was there.

  Flat six was on the first floor so she didn’t take the ancient wrought-iron lift, which was in the stairwell, the stairs going up round it. The first floor had four highly varnished front doors with equally well polished brass letterboxes and knockers. Number six was on the street side of the block.

  ‘I have an appointment with Grace Meredith,’ Amelia said, to the attractive and slender dark-haired woman who answered the door, assuming this was Grace’s landlady.

  ‘Hello, Amelia,’ she said. ‘I’m Grace. Do come in.’

  Within half an hour Amelia knew she’d made a major mistake in imagining Grace and she had a great deal in common. In fact, they had had very different experiences. Understandably Grace had grieved for her mother when she died, and was sad her father hadn’t cared enough to stay or look after her. But she had really liked the children’s home she had been sent to and was happy there. Grace had observed as she got older that many of the children who arrived there had had problems that needed to be talked out, which had resulted in her interest in child counselling. Even the lovely mansion apartment, with furniture that could have come from Heal’s, was hers, left to her by her maternal grandmother.

  ‘She was dead long before my mother went,’ Grace explained. ‘I didn’t know her because she was angry that Mother had married a man she considered beneath her. She left this apartment in trust for me because she didn’t want my father to get his hands on it. I was fifteen when I first heard I had an inheritance, though I had to wait till I was twenty-one to claim it.’

  ‘That was a lucky break. How kind of your grandmother.’

  ‘It was. I just wish I’d known her. She was clearly a strong, intelligent woman. Shame she died before my mother or I might have lived with her. But, then, had I done that, I doubt I’d have thought child counselling was necessary. It also struck me even then that it’s no wonder so many children are screwed up – it all comes from their parents. That was my reason and motivation to go into child counselling.’

  It was extremely interesting to learn how Grace structured her sessions, and of the high success rates. But while Amelia was listening hard, and taking shorthand notes, she wondered whether giving some of these disturbed children a cuddle would achieve the same result. Grace didn’t look like she cuddled anyone. Her straight back, her almost ballerina-like stance and her sharp, dark eyes, which appeared to miss nothing, were a little chilling.

  Style magazine had already been to photograph her, so when Amelia had finished her questions, she thanked the woman for bearing with her and said the magazine would send her a copy of the article. Grace closed the front door the second Amelia was through it. Another disconcerting glimpse into her lack of warmth.

  Out on the street again it was dark and cold. Amelia hurried along to the tube station, her shoulders hunched, and her thick wool scarf tied ti
ghtly around her neck. Once again, she had the strange feeling that she was being followed, but when she turned no one was there, except a couple of housewives with their hands full of shopping bags.

  She got out at Ravenscourt Park tube to save changing trains and made her way down Ravenscourt Road towards Goldhawk Road. Sleet started to fall, and she got her umbrella out of her bag, her teeth chattering with the cold, her mind turning longingly to the French onion soup she’d made the previous evening.

  Out of nowhere there was a blow to her head, and she was falling to the pavement …

  ‘Don’t move!’ a male voice cut through the darkness. ‘My wife has run to a neighbour to call an ambulance. Can you hear me? Do you know what happened?’

  ‘I think someone hit my head.’ Amelia tried to lift her arm to touch it.

  ‘Don’t get up. I saw someone running away from you as we turned the corner. I thought they’d gone to get help,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

  ‘Amelia White. I need to get home.’

  ‘Not yet, my dear. You need checking out first by a doctor. It’s too dark to see properly but I think that’s blood on the pavement. Ah, here’s my wife now! How long will they be?’ he called.

  ‘On their way they said,’ the female voice called back. ‘Is she conscious?’

  Amelia felt she might be sick, and her head hurt so much she was sure there must be a huge gash. Also, she was terribly cold. The woman leaned over her and smoothed her hair back from her face.

  ‘Her name is Amelia and she thinks she was struck,’ the man informed her. ‘Must have been the man we saw running off.’

  ‘You poor girl, you’ll soon be tucked up in the ambulance. Can we telephone anyone for you when we get home?’

  Max’s face swam in front of her, but as bad as she felt and however much she wanted him, she couldn’t get them to ring him. He hadn’t given her his parents’ number. Besides, even if she knew it, it was too late in the evening to get a train back and he’d be panic-stricken.

  ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine.’

  She heard the ambulance coming. She felt that if she had to spend another ten minutes on the cold ground, sleet striking her face like razor blades, she might just die.

  10

  ‘Who hit you?’ the young policeman asked.

  Amelia rolled her eyes with impatience. She had been asked the same question by different policemen five times already. She might be on a trolley in Casualty, but that didn’t mean she’d lost her marbles. ‘If I knew who’d hit me and why, don’t you think I would’ve told you by now? I heard nothing. I was given a crack over the head and I felt myself falling. I think I lost consciousness but I came to as I remember a man speaking to me. I think his wife called 999 and he said something about seeing a man rushing away. They assumed at first he was running to get help.’

  ‘Yes, but did you see what this person looked like?’

  ‘How could I? He came up behind me. But if it’s any help I had a feeling someone was following me at Kew. I couldn’t see anyone, and I didn’t sense anything at Ravenscourt Park station. I’m concerned now that it might be the person who killed the two girls locally. You see, I found the first body and I wrote articles for the local paper on both girls.’

  ‘So that’s why your name seemed familiar,’ the young policeman said, grinning inanely. ‘Do you think it was the same attacker?’

  ‘You’re the bloody policeman,’ she snapped. ‘Do your job.’

  Her head ached so much, yet despite the pain she was very aware that her attacker might have killed her, too, if the kindly older couple, whose names she didn’t know, hadn’t come on the scene.

  A nurse had said the wound only needed three stitches, but to Amelia it felt as if her head was split right open. She was still cold, even though the nurses had brought her more blankets. They’d told her she’d soon be moved to a ward upstairs.

  Amelia was positive it was the Creeper who’d hit her. She was so glad that the couple had arrived in the nick of time or she might have been stabbed too.

  The next morning, after a sleepless night – they kept waking her to check her blood pressure and such – Amelia was allowed home. She took a taxi to the newspaper office to tell Jack what had happened because she wanted some sympathy and she was nervous about going home alone. Her whole head hurt, not just the wound. It was literally the headache from Hell.

  She wished she could speak to Max: she so much wanted his reassurance and love. But she’d just have to wait till he got home on New Year’s Day.

  ‘Oh dear, Amelia,’ Jack said, shaking his head, when she explained what had happened. ‘Your face is very pale – it must’ve given you a terrible fright.’

  ‘It’s made me feel vulnerable. I’ll be looking over my shoulder all the time now.’

  He took her into his office and got her a cup of coffee. ‘I’ll ask Peanut to take you home in a minute, and I suggest you don’t go out at night again without your boyfriend.’

  ‘It wasn’t late when it happened,’ she said plaintively. ‘How did this man know I was going to Kew? Or did he follow me from home and back again? If that’s the case I’m not going to be safe there, am I?’

  ‘Have you asked your boyfriend to come home?’ Jack asked.

  ‘I can’t. I don’t know the number,’ she said, beginning to cry.

  ‘What sort of a boyfriend goes off at this time of year and doesn’t leave you some way of contacting him?’

  ‘Neither of us thought of that,’ she said defensively: Jack was implying that Max was careless with her. ‘Neither of us has a phone at home. We just don’t think of it.’

  ‘Well, the police should be watching your place,’ Jack said. ‘I feel responsible for encouraging you to write about the two murders. It looks as if this killer reckons you’re getting close to him.’

  ‘But I’m not. I’m as much in the dark as I was at the start,’ she said, crying in earnest now because she was overwrought from so little sleep.

  ‘Now, now,’ he said, patting her shoulder with unusual gentleness. ‘I’m going to ring the police myself and see that they station someone at your address. While they’re there, they can check the door locks too. But my instinct tells me he won’t be back. He’ll know he’s scared you and that’s probably enough.’

  It was good to get home. Peanut came in with her and checked the lock on her door was secure. He lit her gas fire and made her a pot of tea and some toast.

  ‘You just curl up in the warm and rest. If Jack said he was going to make the police put a man outside, he’ll do that. I expect they’ll change the locks too. We’d both feel happier if you were on the phone, but no one is in Bedsitter Land. I’m going to leave notes under the other tenants’ doors explaining they need to be observant, and not to leave the downstairs door open at any time.’

  Amelia smiled weakly at Peanut. He had managed to make her feel safe again. She scribbled a note for Kat, telling her what had happened, and asked if she’d come over if she wasn’t too busy. Peanut said he’d put it through her letterbox on his way back to the office. Before he left, the police arrived to tell Amelia they were putting an officer outside, and that a locksmith was on his way.

  In the morning, Kat came over, bringing with her some magazines and a big bar of chocolate. ‘I didn’t get in till late last night, too late to call then. I’ve got to go into work now, but if Max is away I could come again when I get home tonight.’

  ‘No, Kat,’ Amelia said. ‘I’m all right now. I’m not scared with the police outside. I shouldn’t really have sent you that message, but I was feeling scared and alone yesterday.’

  ‘That’s what friends are for,’ Kat said, and bent over to give her a hug. ‘You’ve had a horrible fright, and it’s going to take a little while to get over it. I was attacked once a few years ago in Hyde Park. They knocked me down, kicked me about and were obviously going to rape me. Luckily two other men shouted at them, so they just snatched my bag and ran away
. I had broken ribs and concussion from the blow to my head so I know how you feel.’

  ‘How awful,’ Amelia said. ‘We always tend to think we’re the only one who’s ever been hurt. I’m glad you’ve made me see it’s not just me.’

  ‘If you want some advice, don’t try to find out anything more about these murders. It might be the killer warning you off. Listen to that warning. If you need me to get you any shopping, or go to the launderette, just ask the policeman outside to drop a note through my door. Meanwhile, rest.’

  Amelia was in bed before the New Year of 1971 came in. She could hear music down the street from someone’s party. At the stroke of midnight people went out onto the street to bang trays and sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. She sniffed back a few tears because she felt so alone.

  Max arrived home on 2 January while she was having her stitches taken out. He was unable to get in as the locks had been changed so he’d gone back to his own room. Later, when he saw her get out of a police car, he came along to see her.

  ‘The key wouldn’t work,’ he said angrily, when she let him in. ‘Couldn’t you have told me in person that you didn’t want to see me any more? And what’s with the police anyway?’

  Amelia was hurt that his first thought was for himself. She pointed to the dressing on her head, which he hadn’t even noticed, and was tempted to shut the door on him. But she was so relieved he was back she told him what had happened. ‘If you’d given me your parents’ telephone number, I could’ve rung you,’ she added sharply. ‘The police are here to stay until they know whoever attacked me isn’t coming here.’

  He was contrite then, said he’d meant to give her the number but had forgotten. But he was oddly reticent about his stay in Devon, just said it had been ‘all right’ when she wanted to know his parents’ reaction to his news about her. He hadn’t wanted to talk about what he’d spent the days doing, whom he’d seen or any of the usual topics of conversation.

  Max was also weird about the police being outside. He kept peeping round the curtain to see if the car was still there and said a guard was unnecessary now he was home.