Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone (books for 6 year olds to read themselves txt) 📕

down on a chair. The sadness that comes into her eyes infuriates me. ‘Sit down, Catriona,’ she says. ‘Sit down, and I’ll tell you.’

But I don’t. I’m done doing what people tell me to do.

‘D’accord.’ She sighs again. Squares her shoulders. ‘My name isn’t Marie Bernard. I’m not from Paris. In the nineties, I paid a lot of money to come here from the Democratic Republic of Congo.’ She looks at me. ‘I loved my country. Very much. Its motto is “Justice, Paix, Travail”. I worked very hard for my life here, and once I had it, I finally found peace. So all that was left was justice.’

‘Justice?’

‘I help people. Women.’ She stares down at her scarred hands. ‘Anna saw El’s bruises. We saw the changes in her character, her habits. The fear in her eyes. How much her husband always needed to be in control.’

‘And that – that – was enough to tell you Ross was abusing her? Do you realise how—’

‘Non.’ She pushes up the sleeves of her shirt, exposing crisscrossing scars that carry on past both elbows. Pulls wide its neck where the skin beneath her collarbone is mottled and raised like the burn on her face. ‘What I left behind in the Congo told me.’ Her gaze sharpens. ‘Tells me.’

‘He isn’t abusing me.’ But those sickening scars have doused my outrage.

She smiles. ‘That’s what she said at first too.’

I shake my head. ‘How many times have you done this?’

Her chin goes up. ‘Many.’

‘You terrorise the terrorised. That’s how you help?’

Marie’s smile turns pitying. I want to smack it off her face. ‘After a while, it’s all they understand. As much as I wish it wasn’t so.’

‘El never knew, did she? That it was you?’

Marie shifts in her chair, for the first time looks uncomfortable. ‘She was frightened of him.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘She was going to run, and I was going to help her. But then she changed her mind. Said she couldn’t. Wouldn’t tell me why.’

‘Marie. I don’t fucking believe you.’

Her mouth flattens and she folds her arms. ‘You saw his text. I just wanted her to be safe.’

‘It didn’t work, though, did it? Your genius plan. So why the hell did you think the same threats would work on me?’

She smiles again. It’s a bad smile, maybe even a mad smile. It pulls taut her scarred skin. Turns her eyes sly. ‘The cards weren’t for you.’

‘What?’

‘They were for him. I wanted Ross to know that someone knew. That he’d killed her. That he’d probably kill you.’

I remember Rafiq’s the cards never explicitly threatened El’s life – or yours. If anything, Ross was the target.

‘Do you know how insane that—’

‘Abuse fears only exposure.’ She shrugs. When she gets up and starts coming towards me, I back up the hall towards the open door.

‘Have you done anything else?’

‘Que veux-tu—’

‘Have you been following me? Watching me? Have you done anything, do you know anything – anything – else?’

The look she gives me is confused. ‘Non. What—’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Her expression clears. ‘I lied only about my name and where I came from. Never once have I lied to you about anything else.’

I recoil as she reaches towards me, and only barely resist slapping her hand away. ‘He is not abusing me.’

She drops her hands to her sides. ‘Yet.’

‘I’m sorry for whatever happened to you.’ My voice wavers, and I turn around, step back down onto the path. If I don’t get away from her, I know I’m going to say something I’ll regret. ‘But you’re the one who needs help, Marie. Leave me alone. Leave us alone. Or I’ll tell the police what you’ve done. And that’s not a threat. That’s a promise.’

I march back across the road and into the house, stopping only to pick up the card before slamming shut the front door. I can already see what’s written in bold black through the thin envelope.

GOOD LUCK

CHAPTER 23

I go into the kitchen and shove the card down to the bottom of the bin. I try to calm down, force myself to sit. I look at the bottle of vodka, at Ross’s note. Okay. Since I was facing things, I’d face this. I pour out two measures of vodka, drink one of them.

Logically, it doesn’t make sense. He loved her. Why would he hurt her? If El was having an affair, he could have just left her. Ross has a good job, more money than she did. He never wanted to live in this house, this mausoleum, anyway.

And if he was abusive and controlling—

I drain the last of the vodka as I suffer through a montage of Ross touching me and kissing me, the warm slide of his skin, the warm welcome in his eyes. The bruises I dismiss out of hand. They were sex. Good sex. Great sex. And while I don’t like to think of him having the same kind of sex with El, the fact is that people like what they like. It’s in his nature to be passionate. It’s just the way he is. The way he has always been. I think of his grief and then his fury when the Coastguard gave up on the search. His sobs and desperation. What am I going to do without her?

If he was abusive and controlling, why didn’t El just leave him? This time I’m rewarded with a flash of Grandpa’s grinning, snarling face, but I dismiss that too. El was always stronger than me. She didn’t forgive, she didn’t forget. If Ross was hurting her, she would have left him. And if Marie is right, if Vik is right, if Mouse is right, and Ross is exactly what they say he is, he would have killed her in passion, in anger, like any other violent husband. He wouldn’t have orchestrated some elaborate plot to sink her and her boat in the Firth of Forth. And how would – could – he have done that anyway? Rafiq confirmed that Ross was in London