Page 120 of Don't Believe A Word

‘“Sunday twentieth of March, 2005. I know why Janina didn’t come now and I’m so horrified I’ve started to have palpitations. How could Mia have done this?”’

MIA: ‘What? No! No!’

SADIE: (reading) ‘“She confessed about an hour ago. I’ve had to come here to my rooms to get away from her. She is even crazier than I realized …”’

MIA: ‘I don’t understand. Why has she written this? My own sister …’

SADIE: (reading) ‘“She says no one will know that Janina was coming to see us. She must have forgotten about ‘the father’. He will know, and he’s sure to come looking. What are we going to tell him? Not the truth, we can’t do that or we’ll lose Sadie for sure along with everything else. How could she have done this? I’m so angry I could strangle her.”’

MIA: ‘I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what this is about.’

SADIE: (reading) ‘“Monday twenty-first of March, 2005. The father came earlier, as we knew he would. We told him that Janina didn’t show up – that at least was the truth. He wasdistraught, poor man. We mentioned Albescu, and it was clearly his greatest fear. Nevertheless, he wanted to search for Janina, so I went with him and eventually, as I knew we would, we came to the spot where Janina’s car had gone off the road –where Mia had forced it off the road –down onto the rocks below. There was simply no way anyone could have survived such a fall …’”

Sadie stopped reading as her aunt screamed her denial. It was painful to hear, wrenching gulps of fear and desperate pleas to be believed. Cristy was watching Sadie as she listened, her face ashen, her eyes so large and tortured it was as if she was seeing the crumpled car for real and could register nothing beyond it.

SADIE: (reading) ‘“Tuesday twenty-second of March, 2005. The car has gone. The police must have taken it away. They are as certain as I am that it would be impossible for anyone to survive such a fall, but as yet no body has washed up on any of the nearby shores. Sometimes they never do. Everyone is wondering about the driver – they’re certain it was a woman because of the bag found inside. It’s a notoriously dangerous spot, but still they wonder, was it suicide or a tragic accident? Maybe she was drunk or high on drugs. Who was she? What happened to the body and why has no one come forward to say they’re missing a loved one?

‘“The poor ‘father’ is distraught, hardly knows what to do. Should he go to the police, tell them what he knows, but if he does will his involvement with the traffickers, or his and Janina’s abandonment of Sadie, end up making things worse? I don’t try to answer his questions, what matters is that he seems to understand we must do everything in our power to keep Sadie safe and out of the news. He’s terrified now that if Albescu does have Janina, he might come back for Sadie. He is right to be so afraid, because there’s no knowing what a man of Albescu’s character would do with a child.

‘“Tuesday nineteenth of April, 2005. Mia’s terror seemsto be subsiding. She was certain for a while that the police were going to come for her, that someone had seen her using her car to force Janina’s over the edge.

‘“Luckily for Mia the ‘disposing’ of Janina seems to have gone very well. That’s how she refers to it, the disposing of a problem; she doesn’t refer to Janina by name. I am shocked, and I admit partly fascinated, to see my sister starting to show pride in the fact that she sustained no damage to her Golf when she swerved at Janina’s Fiesta. There wasn’t even the slightest collision, she tells me. Janina reacted so fast, maybe hit the accelerator instead of the brake and the next thing she’d gone and Mia simply drove on. I don’t think Mia is losing any sleep over this, if anything she’s becoming more buoyant by the day, and keeps making such a fuss of Sadie that I’m sure the poor child is feeling smothered.

‘“We’re not sure where ‘the father’ is now, if he’s left the island or still combing the shores hoping Janina’s body will turn up. Even if it does we have no need to feel concerned, there can be nothing to tie it to Mia’s murderous act, nothing at all. ‘I took care of it,’ she said to me earlier. ‘You should be grateful instead of sitting there looking at me like that.’”’

MIA: ‘I never said that. I didn’t take care of anything. It was all her.’

SADIE: (reading) ‘“Friday twenty-second of April, 2005. I need to get away from here, fromher. I detest her more as each day passes and am only saved from doing something rash by the need to protect Sadie. I don’t think Mia will harm her, physically, but I know now what she’ll do if I try to leave. She has guessed how important Robert is to me, and she has told me that if I see him again, or try to leave the island without her permission, she will make sure that he knows what I did. Not only the abduction, for that’s what it was no matter how gentle or well-meaning we were at the time, but how I –I –forced Janina’s car off the road to make sure she could never take Sadie away from us.”’

Mia was clearly beside herself as she started shouting.

MIA: ‘It’s not true, Sadie. You have to believe me. It was all her. Lottie’s the one who ran your mother off the road, who tricked your father into believing Albescu had returned, who kept the police from our door. She’s twisted it all round … Sadie, don’t go, please … Oh God, oh God … No, Sadie! Please, don’t do that …Nooo!’

Cristy looked at Sadie, certain she was going to explain what all the thudding and crashing about was, why Mia was screaming so hard, but Sadie didn’t speak, simply let the recording come to an end.

Finding herself assessing Sadie for bloodstains, scratches, bruises, ripped clothing even, Cristy said, very gently, ‘Sadie? Is your aunt OK?’

Sadie continued staring at the phone as if still trapped in the violence of those final moments. She gave a small shudder, but still didn’t speak.

‘I’ve spoken to Mia,’ David said quietly.

Cristy turned, unaware that he’d come into the room.

‘Is she all right?’ Connor asked.

‘I haven’t seen her,’ David replied. ‘She wouldn’t come out, but she told us she was fine and that we had to go away while she dealt with a private family matter.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Over the next twenty-four or so hours Cristy and Connor waited for something, anything to break. It felt almost surreal, as if they’d all entered a peculiar sort of holding state with no idea when they might land, or what would happen when they did. Had Mia been injured during the scene with Sadie? Why wouldn’t she answer that question? Why wouldn’t Mia show herself at the door?

Sadie stayed shut up in the lodge with Anna until Jasper returned on Friday morning, while Mia wouldn’t see anyone unless Sadie was with them. Sadie refused to go near her.

Needing to honour the promise to drop an episode ofHindsightbefore the weekend, they set up a small studio in David’s portside office and connected with Clove and Jacks who were now back in Bristol. The recordings with Lukas’s old friend, Natalie Irwin, and Lottie’s publisher, Felicity Green, were already edited, so ready to drop into the start of the interview with Lukas and Gabe. This they decided to run in its entirety and end with the cliff-hanger of Cristy being told by Connor that it was all kicking off in Guernsey so she needed to return pdq.

Mia’s lawyers had already slapped down an injunction – no surprise there, although very fast work. Sadie, as it turned out, was supportive of the ban, having now decided that she didn’t want her aunt to be named and shamed, and a whole lot worse, at least not yet.

‘It’s all happening so fast,’ she’d said during her last conversation with Cristy. ‘I know it’s terrible what she did, unforgivable, but maybe Lottie did twist things around to make Mia the guilty party when really, it was all her.’

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