“Fuck. Fuck.”
“Quite. He’ll have come back and seen the windows all smashed up and jumped to the right conclusion. That Lena Abbott told us something.”
“And then what—he went to her house and took her and brought her back to his place?”
“How the hell should I know?” Sean snapped. “This is our fault. We should have been watching the house, we should have been watching her . . . It’s our fault she’s gone.”
JULES
The policeman—not one I’d met before—wanted to come into the house with me. He was young, twenty-five perhaps, although his hairless, cherubic face made him look even younger. As kind as he appeared, I insisted he leave. I didn’t want to be alone with a man in the house, no matter how harmless he looked.
I went upstairs and ran myself a bath. Water, water, everywhere. I had no great desire to be immersed in water again, but I could think of no better way to drive the chill from my bones. I sat on the edge of the tub, biting my lip to stop my teeth from chattering, my phone in my hand. I kept ringing Lena’s number, over and over, I kept hearing her cheery message, her voice full of a light I’ve never heard when she speaks to me.
When the bath was half full, I lowered myself in, my teeth gritted against panic, my heartbeat rising as my body sank. It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK. You said that. That night, when we were in here together, when you poured hot water over my skin, when you soothed me. It’s OK, you said. It’s OK, Julia. It’s OK. It wasn’t, of course, but you didn’t know that. All you thought had happened was that I’d had an awful day, been made fun of, humiliated, rejected by a boy I liked. And finally, in an act of extreme melodrama, I’d gone to the Drowning Pool and flung myself in.
You were angry because you thought I’d done it to hurt you, to get you into trouble. To make Mum love me more, even more than she already did. To make her reject you. Because it would have been your fault, wouldn’t it? You had bullied me, and you were supposed to be keeping an eye on me, and this had happened on your watch.
I turned the tap with my toe and let my body slip down into the tub; my shoulders submerged, my neck, my head. I listened to the sounds of the house, distorted, muffled, made alien by the water. A sudden thump made me jerk upwards into the cold air. I listened. Nothing. I was imagining things.
But when I slipped back down I was sure I heard a creak on the stairs, footsteps, slow and regular, along the corridor. I sat bolt upright, gripping the edge of the tub. Another creak. A door handle turning.
“Lena?” I called out, my voice sounding childish, reedy and thin. “Lena, is that you?”
The answering silence rang in my ears, and in it I imagined I heard voices.
Your voice. Another of your phone calls, the first one. The first one after our fight at the wake, after the night when you asked that terrible question. It wasn’t long after—a week, maybe two—when you rang late at night and left me a message. You were tearful, your words slurred, your voice barely audible. You told me you were going back to Beckford, you were going to see an old friend. You needed to talk to someone, and I was no use. I didn’t think about it at the time, I didn’t care.
Only now I understood, and I shivered despite the warmth of the water. All this time I’ve been blaming you, but it should have been the other way around. You went back to see an old friend. You were looking for solace because I rejected you, because I wouldn’t talk to you. And you went to him. I failed you, and I kept on failing you. I sat up again, my arms wrapped tightly around my knees, and the waves of grief just kept coming: I failed you, I hurt you, and the thing that kills me is that you never knew why. You spent your whole life trying to understand why I hated you so much, and all I had to do was tell you. All I had to do was answer when you called. And now it was too late.
There was another noise, louder—a creak, a scrape, I wasn’t imagining it. There was someone in the house. I pulled myself out of the bath and dressed as quietly as I could. It’s Lena, I told myself. It is. It’s Lena. I crept through the upstairs rooms, but there was no one there, and from every mirror my terrified face mocked me. It’s not Lena. It’s not Lena.
It had to be, but where would she be? She’d be in the kitchen, she’d be hungry—I’d go downstairs and there she would be with her head stuck in the fridge. I tiptoed down the stairs, across the hall, past the living-room door. And there, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A shadow. A figure. Someone sitting on the window seat.
ERIN
Anything was possible. When you hear hooves you look for horses, but you can’t discount zebras. Not out of hand. Which is why, while Sean took Callie to have a look at the scene at Henderson’s place, I’d been dispatched to speak to Louise Whittaker about this “confrontation” she’d had with Lena just before Lena disappeared.
When I got to the Whittakers’ house, Josh answered the door, as he always seemed to do. And, as always seemed to be the case, he looked alarmed to see me. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Have you found Lena?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. But don’t worry . . .”
He turned away from me, shoulders slumped. I followed him into the house. At the bottom of the stairs he turned back to face me. “Is it because of Mum that sh
e ran away?” he asked, his cheeks reddening a little.
“Why would you ask that, Josh?”
“Mum made her feel bad,” he replied sourly. “Now that Lena’s mum’s not alive, she blames Lena for everything. It’s stupid. It’s as much my fault as hers, but she blames her for everything. And now Lena’s gone,” he said, his voice rising. “She’s gone.”
“Who are you talking to, Josh?” Louise called from upstairs. Her son ignored her, so I responded. “It’s me, Mrs. Whittaker. DS Morgan. Can I come up?”
Louise was wearing a grey tracksuit that had seen better days. Her hair was pulled back, her face wan. “He’s angry with me,” she said by way of greeting. “He blames me for Lena’s running off. He thinks it’s my fault.” I followed her along the landing. “He blames me, I blame Nel, I blame Lena, round and round and round we go.” I stopped in the bedroom doorway. The room was all but empty, bed stripped, wardrobe empty. The pale lilac walls bore the scars of hastily removed Blu-Tack. Louise smiled wearily. “You can come in. I’m almost done in here.” She kneeled down, returning to the task I must have interrupted, which was placing books into cardboard boxes. I squatted down at her side to help, but before I was able to pick up my first book, she placed her hand firmly on my arm. “No, thank you. I’d rather do this myself.” I stood up. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, “I just don’t want other people to touch her things. It’s silly, isn’t it?” she said, looking up at me, eyes shining. “But I only want her to have touched them. I want there to be something left of her, on the book jackets, on the bedclothes, on her hairbrush.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I don’t seem to be making a lot of progress. Moving on, moving past things, moving at all . . .”
“I don’t think anyone would expect you to,” I said softly. “Not—”
“Not yet? Which implies that at some point I won’t feel like this. But the thing people don’t seem to realize is that I don’t want to not feel like this. How can I not feel like this? My sadness feels right. It . . . weighs the right amount, crushes me just enough. My anger is clean, it bolsters me. Well . . .” She sighed. “Only now my son thinks I’m responsible for Lena going missing. Sometimes I wonder if he thinks I pushed Nel Abbott off that cliff.” She sniffed. “In any case, he holds me responsible for the fact that Lena was left like that. Motherless. Alone.”
I stood in the middle of the room, my arms carefully folded, trying not to touch anything. Like I was at a crime scene, like I didn’t want to contaminate anything.