Beautiful Liars. Isabel Ashdown

Perhaps she saw something in him that she hadn’t seen in the lads of her own age? Perhaps she was attracted to his maturity. Girls often go for older men, don’t they?”

      Martha feels a rush of anger, hating Toby for what he’s suggesting about her friend—and more specifically what he’s saying about her. She knew he wouldn’t be able to resist a dig at some point or other, and she avoids looking up to see who else around the room has understood his meaning. She fingers through her papers and then slides another photograph into the center of the table. Backsides lift out of seats to lean in for a closer look, and noises of assent rise up into the room.

      “Thanks for that pearl of wisdom, Toby,” she says, delivering her best patronizing smile. “But, for the record, just being OK-looking doesn’t automatically make a man irresistible to every woman.”

      A ripple of laughter travels the room, which Toby deftly disregards as he brings his finger down on David Crown’s face. “Ladies, correct me if I’m wrong—but I’d say our Mr. Crown is a bit more than OK-looking, wouldn’t you?”

      And to Martha’s irritation there’s not a person in the room who disagrees. Yes, Martha thinks, David Crown was attractive—but she and her friends had soon got over that, she’s certain, once they’d come to know him better. After Martha’s first few encounters with him, he had been just David, hadn’t he? They’d stopped noticing how handsome he was, because—well, just because. He was just David.

      Glen Gavin reaches out and pulls the photograph toward himself, holding it up high, gaining the attention of all.

      “OK, OK, so we’re agreed he’s an attractive man. But Martha, I think it’s fair to say you’re not convinced that your friend ran off with this man?”

      Thank God for Glen Gavin and his brooding presence. “No, I’m not. Speaking as someone who knew Juliet better than most, I am absolutely convinced that she came to harm that night. Now, I don’t know if David Crown is behind it—up until that night I had always thought him to be a good guy too—but Juliet just running away like that, with no note, taking nothing, leaving her bike abandoned on the edge of the towpath? It’s out of the question. And even if they had run away together, surely someone would have heard from them or seen them together in the years that have passed. David Crown never made another withdrawal from his account, and his passport was never used, so it’s as if he vanished from the planet too.”

      “Of course it’s possible there’s no sign of him because he’s dead, right? I mean, it has been eighteen years,” Toby says, prodding away. He gives a shrug. “Just playing devil’s advocate.”

      Martha wants so badly for all these people to be on her side. Not just to make this documentary—but to at last find out what happened to Juliet. To find Juliet.

      “No, it’s a fair question,” she says, maintaining her calm, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “According to the original interviews, his wife believed that he ran away after the pressure of the police questioning—which she made a formal complaint about, by the way—because it brought back memories of a previous false allegation. It turns out that many years earlier he had lost his job as a teacher in Bedfordshire after a sexual assault claim from a female pupil. The girl’s claim was retracted completely, so no charges were ever brought against him, but Mrs. Crown believes this later suspicion relating to Juliet pushed him into taking flight. She said he was fearful that the police would wrongly put the two events together and try to pin Juliet’s disappearance on him. The last time his wife was interviewed was, what, five years ago?” Martha consults her notes. “Yes, five years ago—it was a local reporter doing a history piece on the Regent’s Canal. At that time, Mrs. Crown said she continued to believe her husband had simply run away—by himself—and was afraid to return. She still lives alone in the same house, and it seems she’s never quite got over her husband’s disappearance. In the interview she said she lives in hope that he’ll one day come home.”

      “So he was a teacher,” Toby says.

      Glen waves away Toby’s comment. “If he’s alive, surely someone would have heard from him over the years?”

      “Perhaps they have? It seems Mrs. Crown is fiercely protective over her husband’s reputation. If she still loves him, I doubt she would let on that he’s been in touch. Especially if in reality she suspects he did kill Juliet.”

      “But if she thinks her husband is a killer, surely she would have turned him in?” says Toby.

      Martha shakes her head, irked by his naivety. “People make all manner of bad choices in the name of love. She may have been in denial initially. Or she may have come to accept that he did kill Juliet but justified it in her own mind. Whatever the truth is, I suspect she knows more than she’s let on up to now.”

      “And what about the schoolgirl who made the allegation?” asks Juney. “Do you think David Crown was guilty of that assault?”

      Martha glances toward Glen, who is already familiar with her theory. She looks around the room, taking in the eight earnest faces—the researchers and assistants, Jay and Sally, the camera crew—and she says a silent prayer. Please, Liv, please answer my letter so I’m not alone in this. She nods in reply. “Yes. I think David Crown was guilty of assaulting that schoolgirl—and I think he was guilty of murdering Juliet—and I think he could still be out there right now.”

      3

      Casey

      This dressing table came from my old bedroom, a gold-leaf and cream piece from the ’70s, part of a matching bedroom set my mother and dad had bought when they were newlyweds, before passing it on to me when they updated their room. It has a swing mirror, with curling, swirling patterns up and around the glass, and even now I’m drawn to run my fingertip along it, traveling the meandering curves from one side to the other. It was one of the few pieces of furniture that I brought with me when I moved, along with Granny’s heavy crystal ashtray. As a child, I loved to watch its rainbow of colors on a bright day, when the sun would thread beams of light through the cut glass to dance upon the bedroom wall. The dressing table seemed to be the most important item of furniture to have, knowing how much it had meant to Mum, how many hours she had spent in front of it, rolling her hair, carefully applying her mascara and painting her lips. I would perch on the corner of my parents’ bed, watching each action with the greatest attention in case I might one day be asked to repeat the art, although now as I peer into it at my own reflection, the idea seems laughable. Once, when I was fifteen or sixteen, I borrowed Mum’s crimson lipstick and applied it, just as I’d seen her do so many times, on my way out for a wander in the park to spy on a lad I’d seen there a few times before. As I passed through the living room, my mother did a double-take and laughed, a hard, flat “Ha!” before calling my dad in to take a look. “She looks like she’s been eating jam doughnuts!” she told him, her hand covering her mouth, and although Dad didn’t reply, I could see in his eyes that he was furious with her. She was heading into one of her low moods, but that was no excuse for such cruelty. Dad saw my tears getting ready to spill over, and he put his arm around me and took me to the bathroom, where he helped me to blot the color down until it was merely a hint. “You look beautiful,” he whispered, and he indicated for me to go out through the back to avoid another confrontation. But I don’t want to think about that; I prefer the memory of sitting on the corner of their bed, the furrows of the pink candlewick bedspread soft beneath my fingers. I enjoyed the silence of those moments, but at the same time I think I yearned for her to speak, for us to talk and laugh together like all those mothers and daughters I’d seen on TV. I’d watch and wait for minutes on end, but so often she simply continued with her beautifying rituals and afforded me only the briefest of glances, an invitation in her immaculate raised eyebrow. “You look pretty,” I would tell her, and then the room would brighten with the radiance of her smile.

      Now, I lean in and pull down my lower lids, fascinated by the map of veins I can magnify if I blink hard and bulge my eyes wide. My face is round and pale—I’m nothing if not honest with myself—entirely absent of makeup or artifice. Lately I’ve been noticing the ever-increasing ratio