Beautiful Liars. Isabel Ashdown
picnic shown in Alan Sherman’s old photograph, though Martha is less optimistic.
When they arrive at Regent’s Canal, Sally and Jay are already waiting on the footpath, drinking coffee from paper cups, there to film some background footage and straight-to-camera pieces. It’s a bright, sharp morning, and Sally and Jay are dressed in matching parkas and skinny black jeans, their hoods pulled up against the icy air.
“Can we do the distance stuff first?” Martha asks them, anxious to find her bearings, to mentally warm up before putting herself in front of the camera.
She feels strangely apprehensive this morning, having suffered a restless night’s sleep, as she went over things in her head. Who was Juliet writing to in that letter she never sent? Martha can see how the police jumped to the conclusion that it was David Crown—the secret relationship she talks of, the fact of her turning eighteen seeming important in their timing of coming into the open—but still, something doesn’t ring true. It just wasn’t in Juliet’s nature. Was it? As she lay awake in bed, Martha’s mind had kept lighting on snatches of forgotten conversations with her friends; nothing to do with Juliet’s disappearance, just murmurs from a past they once shared. She’d conjured up the memory of that trip to London Zoo in Year Ten, when Dippy Stephens had got his ankle wedged in the railings near the monkey kingdom and Liv had tried to work it free with a dollop of cherry lip balm. In the end they’d had to leave him to wait for one of the first-aiders to arrive, and Liv had whispered, “That’s the last time I do a good turn. He smells of wet biscuits and Dairylea.” Martha and Juliet had howled with laughter, and they’d all bought Twister lollies and lounged on the neat lawns of the picnic area, soaking up the sunshine and watching the world through their fringes. Dippy had plucked up the courage to ask Liv out on the walk back to school, and she’d said no as nicely as she could, careful to avoid Martha and Juliet’s teasing eyes. How the mind plays tricks, Martha thinks now, the way it effortlessly reveals useless snippets like this while so often concealing the memories we seek.
At the waterside, Sally and Jay stand side by side, sipping at their steaming cups. They’ve worked together for so long now, they’ve become androgynous versions of each other, beachy-haired late-thirty-somethings, casual in their easy confidence with the task at hand. Martha has worked with the pair for years, on and off, enabling the trio to bypass unnecessary small talk and get straight down to work.
“Why don’t you trail me and Toby along the towpath, and when I spot anything of significance I’ll give you a wave? See that yellow dinghy—the one near the bend in the path?” She points a hundred yards down the walkway. “Wait till we reach it, then start to follow. It’ll give a nice wide view of the location—set the scene.”
The camera guys get to work prepping their kit, and Martha and Toby head off along the path. The verges are muddy with winter rainfall, and Martha tries to recall if this stretch was always paved, or whether it ran to grass back in Juliet’s day. The quiet activity of the morning plays out around them: houseboat dwellers emerging from below decks, morning commuters cycling into town, groups of children on their way to school. There’s nothing sinister about the towpath in the bright light of a Friday morning, when all of life continues around them, everyday movements of everyday people. But everything changes after dark, and night and day are two different worlds. As children they steered clear of the canal at nighttime, afraid of its shadows, warned away by their parents and teachers fretful to keep them safe. What alters in those teen years to make us so reckless and brave? Is it a chemical change, something we have no control over that makes risk-takers of the most sensible of us? Makes us believe we’re untouchable—invincible—immortal, even? Martha pauses by the small yellow boat, a jumble of images throwing confused lines across her conscious thoughts.
“They’re on the move,” Toby says, turning to check on Sally and Jay, and Martha raises her hand to silence him.
She’s grasping for a thread: She sees Juliet on that dark night, not far from here, smiling and insisting I’ll be fine—reaching out to squeeze Martha’s forearm as she says good night. A reassurance, a gesture of affection. But there’s a feeling of wrongness about the exchange, because the reason Martha’s given for deserting her friend is a deceit, it’s all mixed up. She sees the frosty path again, through her own seventeen-year-old eyes, the path away from Juliet, back the way they came. She sees the flash of Juliet’s flowing hair as she heads away on her bicycle, and she feels relief as another Square Wheels volunteer passes in Juliet’s direction, mixing with the guilt of her lie. Now Toby stares at her, waiting for her to speak. But what can she say? I lied that night? I lied to Juliet—I lied, but I don’t recall how or why, or what it even means. She takes out her phone and photographs the cluster of bankside dinghies, turning in circles as she captures the street beyond, the footpath, the meandering movement of the canal.
“What are you thinking?” Toby asks, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. “Have you remembered something?”
“I told her I had to go back for my bag,” she says, more to herself than Toby. That was why she’d left Martha on the towpath alone, wasn’t it? “I’d left my bag in the Waterside Café.” Martha shakes her head, trying to bring her thoughts back, and sighs. “I don’t know,” she replies truthfully, turning back to wave at the camera guys. She points out the boats as worth filming and then she continues along the path below the flyover bridge. Something has shifted in her, and her discomfort is acute.
Her phone buzzes, breaking her concentration as she takes it from her pocket, checking the caller ID, crestfallen to see that it’s him again. She fumbles with the handset, trying to reject the call, failing to gain purchase through the thick fabric of those stupid spotty gloves, and the phone slips from her hands, skittering along the grass verge.
Toby is a step ahead of her, scooping it up before any real damage is done, and still the ringtone blares out as he returns it to her, stealing a glance at the screen as he does so, a question in his eyes.
“Who’s ‘D’?” he asks. “Is someone bothering you? Martha? What’s wrong?”
“I—” she begins, swallowing hard, but she can’t seem to get her thoughts into any kind of usable arrangement.
Toby puts a halting hand up to Sally and Jay, and he steers Martha to lean against the railings for a while. “You’re very pale,” he tells her. “Something’s upset you.”
If she didn’t feel so shaken, Martha would be furious with herself for displaying such open vulnerability. But right now she feels close to nausea, and there’s no point in pushing him away, in being the uptight cow she’s so comfortable with. “I just need a minute,” she says, running her hands up over her face, breathing deeply. “It’s something and nothing—it’s some memory of that night, here, and there’s Juliet and me and someone else—and it feels fine, unthreatening, but I’m leaving her on her own and—and—” She looks at Toby aghast and speaks in a low hush. “Was it my fault, Toby?”
To her astonishment he takes a firm grip of her shoulders and looks at her steadfastly, through eyes that are so familiar to her she’s rendered speechless. “No,” he says resolutely. “No, it’s not. You didn’t snatch her, did you? You weren’t to know what lay in store for Juliet. You were kids—and you need to stop this. You’ll never get to the bottom of her disappearance if you fall apart now, Martha. Come on, you’re tougher than that.”
All the breath she’s been storing up seems to leave her body in a rush, and she blinks, signaling for him to release her. It’s a strange dynamic; rather than feeling reduced by his strength, she feels strengthened. She had a moment of weakness, and he steadied her, that was all.
“Ready to carry on?” he asks, and he gives Sally and Jay the thumbs-up and they continue on their way. “So, any sign of that picnic location?” he says after a few minutes of walking in silence. He’s trying to lighten the atmosphere. “Or anything else?”