by Lisa Hall
I turn my gaze back to Wright as they return to the house, her eyes never leaving them, a slight crease between her eyebrows showing that perhaps she isn’t entirely happy with what she’s just witnessed. Kelly catches my eye, before looking away and gently steering a weeping Fran towards the stairs. Something about this TV appeal feels different to the last one, and not only because I watched the last one from the safety of the screen. I look back at DS Wright, where she stands still looking at the house, her hands twisting the lid on a bottle of mineral water. It’s almost as though the perspective has changed. I close the blinds on her, obscuring her from view, blocking out the camera flashes and baying calls of the press. It’s almost as though Wright’s eyes are now on us.
CHAPTER 19
It is early the next morning, so early the sun is barely over the horizon, when a thumping at the door rouses me from a restless sleep. The house is cold, the heating not yet kicked in, and I shiver as I pull on a dressing gown and head downstairs. Dominic is at the front door, his hair mussed on one side as he pulls the door open to reveal DS Wright and several police officers standing behind her. There is a clamour from the press that still congregate outside, flashbulbs popping as Dominic squints, one hand rising to shield his face. Drawing back, pressing myself against the wall of the staircase, I wonder if the press knew the police were coming, or whether they just didn’t go home after the Jessops’ statement yesterday. I hear a gasp behind me, and I turn to see Fran at the top of the stairs, her hand to her throat.
‘Is it . . .’ Her voice is shrill, sending a shiver down my spine as the chill wind blows in through the open front door, wrapping itself around my bare legs.
‘No, no news on Laurel.’ Wright steps into the entrance hall as Dominic stands to one side letting the officers file into the hallway. ‘Sorry to wake you.’
‘What exactly . . .?’ Dominic says, as Fran asks, ‘What the hell is going on?’ She pushes past me on the stairs and comes to stand beside Dominic. She looks tiny next to his six-foot frame, in her pyjamas and bare feet. While Dominic’s face is flushed, Fran’s is deathly pale, any slight colour she might have had in her cheeks draining away to leave her white and pasty.
‘Look, Fran, Dominic, I need your co-operation here, OK?’ Wright says, her voice firm. ‘We need to carry out a search of the property, and it would make things a hell of a lot easier all round if you could . . . well, be co-operative.’
‘What?’ Dominic raises his voice, and his cheeks flush an even darker red. I recognise the look on his face as anger, the same dark, stormy look I saw when he grabbed Fran by the arms in the kitchen. ‘What the hell are you talking about? You’ve already searched the house once and you didn’t find anything! You’re supposed to be out there looking for my daughter, not buggering around in here.’
I watch in silence, as Wright glances towards the waiting officers, who I now realise are only here to search through the house, to turn over everything that the Jessops own. To find out if there are secrets hidden in this home. Fran’s eyes are huge in her face, and dark circles stand out starkly against her white skin. Her hands shake as she pulls her flimsy dressing gown tightly around her.
‘Dominic, please . . .’ she says, with difficulty.
‘Please? Please, what?’ Dominic stands in front of Wright as though he is about to deny her access to the rest of the house. ‘Let them ransack our house again? They didn’t find anything last time, they won’t this time. They should be out there looking for her.’
‘Mr Jessop,’ DS Wright raises her hands, trying to make peace, ‘if you would please just let us do our job. We are doing everything we can to find Laurel, and this search is part of that. We have to make sure we haven’t missed a single thing that might lead us to where she is.’
‘Dom, please,’ Fran says again, resting her small white hand against his chest. He looks down at her absently, before shaking his head, but stepping to one side to let Wright and her officers in.
‘Fine. Do what you need to. I don’t need to be here for it, do I?’ Without waiting for a reply Dominic turns and starts back up the stairs. As I shrink back against the wall to let him past, DS Wright pushes past after him, telling him he’ll have to wait downstairs. I catch Fran’s eye and flick my head in the direction of the kitchen. It’s going to be a long day.
Fran stands in the window, peering through the blinds at the mob of press outside. Every time she parts the blinds even slightly you can hear the excited murmurs of the journalists outside, the calls of ‘Fran!’, the snaps of photographs being taken, and I wish she would come away and sit down, keep the blinds closed and give us the chance to shut out the outside world. Every time she peers out and the noise from outside reaches my ears I feel the tension in the room ratchet up yet another notch. It’s unbearable.
Finally, she comes to sit at the table, her face a ghostly shade of white, and I make her a coffee with extra sugar, in the hope that it might bring a bit of colour back into her cheeks. I’ve no idea if it works, but I remember the police officer in Scotland making me hot, sweet tea in the first moments after things went wrong. Before they decided I had something to do with it. Shaking away thoughts of before, I ask Kelly, who has now made an appearance, if it’s OK for me to go up to my room and get dressed.
As I pass the study at the end of the hall the door is ajar, and I can’t help but glance into the room, expecting to see a police officer rifling through the filing cabinet, or Dominic’s desk drawers, but it’s not a police officer in there. Glancing up from the screen of the computer, Dominic’s forehead is beaded with sweat as he slams the lid of the laptop and marches towards me. I back away, my heart starting to thunder in my chest, feet all ready to rush along the corridor to the stairs when he pulls the door open, jumping slightly when he sees me.
‘Oh! Anna, you startled me.’ He glances down the hallway. ‘I was only checking some emails. I’ll be at the hospital if anyone needs me. I might as well go to work while all this is going on, not much use being here, is there?’ He makes a show of glancing at his watch before snatching up his briefcase and heading out the front door.
I creep up the stairs, knocking on my own bedroom door before I enter the room, sweating slightly now that the radiators are warm. The police haven’t reached my room yet, and I allow myself a quick moment of relief, knowing that my secret is safe, for a few more minutes anyway. I think I’ve hidden things well enough that they won’t be found – and if I haven’t . . . well, I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.
I sink down on to the rumpled bed, not sure what to think. In addition to the stress of keeping my own secrets, am I now in possession of Dominic’s secrets? Why was Dominic on his laptop just now? Surely, he would know that the police would want to look at it? What is it that he has to hide? The suspicions that were aroused by my conversation with Pamela yesterday bubble to the surface again. Everywhere I turn, something seems to crop up that makes me think that perhaps Dominic hasn’t been entirely truthful about things since Laurel disappeared. He lied to Fran (and possibly to the police) about his whereabouts on the night that Laurel went missing. He was supposed to meet Pamela, but Pamela says he never showed, so, where was he? He’s never explained himself, merely asked me not to tell Fran he wasn’t at the hospital. He never wanted children – and was engaged to Pamela, although according to Fran marriage was never brought up. He cut Pamela off from her family, the same way Fran says he cut her off from her own sister. That on its own doesn’t seem all that suspicious, but when you factor in his reaction to having to do a police appeal to find his own daughter . . .
I pause for a moment in my thinking, remembering the way his voice had risen, they’ll think we have something to do with it. A cold finger runs down my spine as I face up to the fact that perhaps whoever took Laurel is closer to home than we first thought.
Kelly is alone when I re-enter the kitchen, the hanging copper lights bright overhead to counteract the dimness caused by the closed blin
ds. The kitchen drawer is open in front of her as she rifles through the old takeaway menus and school letters that fill the junk drawer.
‘Sorry.’ She stands upright, rubbing the bottom of her back with both hands. ‘I was only tidying these things away. They just searched these drawers, I didn’t think Fran would want to see the mess they made.’
‘Where is Fran?’ My skin prickles uncomfortably at the sight of Kelly rifling through the drawers. It’s been easy to slip into thinking of her as an ally, when really Fran was right. Her job is to keep an eye on us.
‘She’s popped out for some fresh air – she didn’t want to be here for the search. I think it’s all a bit much for her today, she looked ever so pale.’
‘She’s struggling, I think,’ I say, ‘she’s had a few nasty messages on the Facebook support page for Laurel. Really nasty, vile stuff. This isn’t going to help today.’ I wonder for a moment if I should mention my feelings about Dominic, but Kelly is talking again.
‘. . . she’s probably gone there.’
I look at her in confusion.
‘To the church. I said, she’s probably gone to the church. She gets a lot of comfort from being there these days. She said something about going there with Laurel for school harvest festivals and things. I think it makes her feel closer to Laurel.’
‘Yes. Right. Of course. Maybe I’ll go and catch up with her.’
Frowning, I snatch up my coat from the back of the kitchen chair and head towards the front door, not knowing what it was that Kelly did or said that made something itch away at the back of my brain, like a memory I can’t quite grasp.
I see Fran before I reach the gate into the churchyard, her bright red coat visible through the fine mist that has descended over the town this morning, a damp, drizzly fog that soaks the sleeves of my jacket and sends the ends of my blonde hair into frizzy spirals. She paces in front of the heavy oak doors, her mobile phone clamped to her ear. I wait a short distance away, not wanting to intrude on her phone call. She looks up, noticing me, and gives a small smile before she hangs up, shoving the phone into her pocket as she walks towards me.
‘You found me,’ she says, rubbing her hands together as if cold. ‘Sorry, but I had to get out for a while. That was my agent on the phone. He says he was calling to check up on me, but it was really to see if I wanted to go to an audition next week. It’s the perfect role for me apparently, but I told him I’m not ready.’ She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. ‘It’s easier for Dominic, obviously. He’s had no problem going back to the hospital.’
I don’t speak for a moment, anxiety about my suspicions regarding Dominic making it difficult to find the words.
‘Shall we go inside for a bit?’ I lead Fran towards the church doors, not wanting to say what I need to outside where journalists could be lurking, waiting to overhear our conversation. We sit in the front pew, the wood hard and unforgiving under my thighs. Fran lights a candle, like she did before, and I wait for a moment as she bows her head, eyes closed, lips moving in a whispered prayer for Laurel. After a few seconds her eyes open and she lays her hands in her lap.
‘Fran,’ I mouth weakly. I realise I am terrified of telling her what I think, especially as I don’t have anything concrete, no proof to back up my suspicions. She might sack you if you tell her, my brain blurts out, and I think for a moment, maybe that’s no bad thing. ‘Fran, can I talk to you about something? It’s . . . I’ve been thinking . . .’
‘Yes?’ Fran turns to me, her eyes bright. ‘Anna, what is it? You can tell me.’ A hint of the old Fran peeps back through.
‘I don’t have anything to back up what I’m about to say, I should probably tell you that first.’ My fingers knit together so tightly my knuckles go white.
‘Anna, please, whatever it is it can’t be worse than what’s already happened to this family, can it?’
‘I think Dominic might be lying.’ I blurt the words out, in a rush of relief. ‘I thought about things after we talked in here the last time and well . . . things simply aren’t adding up for me. The more I think about it the more I think that he might . . . he might have something to do with Laurel’s disappearance.’ I close my eyes for a moment, waiting for Fran to shout, storm off, anything . . . but there is only silence. When I cautiously open my eyes, she is staring at me, one hand covering her mouth.
‘Anna . . . what do you mean?’
‘He wasn’t at the hospital that night – you know that already. He asked me not to say anything to you, and he told me he spoke to the police, only I don’t think he did, and if he did I don’t think he told them the truth.’
‘So where do you think he was?’
‘I don’t know. But Pamela – I saw her after I read the text message from her on his phone, I asked her what’s been going on between the two of them – she said he was supposed to meet her that night, the night Laurel went missing, only he never showed up.’
‘Really?’ Fran is frowning, her neat brows drawn together in a deep V. ‘So, do you think Pamela is involved?’
‘Well, no, I don’t think so. I don’t know. But someone said they saw Laurel getting into a car, an SUV. Dominic has a Porsche Cayenne, couldn’t it have been his car? I know they said it was a dark-coloured car, and Dominic’s is silver, but what if they got it wrong? It was dark after all. And at the time, they weren’t actively looking for something out of the ordinary – people remember things wrongly all the time.’ I pause for a moment to take a breath, before I carry on. ‘And I know I said that there was a chance Laurel could have got into a car with someone she didn’t know . . . but if it was Dominic, then she knew him, didn’t she? There would have been no reason for her to not get into the car, if she saw her dad.’ I wait a second for her to digest what I have just said, her eyes fixed on the candle at the altar. ‘I saw him this morning, coming out of his office. He was on his laptop – what if he was deleting something that he didn’t want the police to find?’ I find I am shaking and tuck my fingers under my thighs out of sight.
‘And the TV appeal . . .’ Fran says quietly. ‘Remember how he responded to the idea? I remember thinking at the time why wouldn’t he want to do it? Why wouldn’t he want to do everything he possibly could to find Laurel? Oh God, Anna, do you really think that Dominic could have something to do with all of this?’
‘I don’t know. But whatever he’s hiding, I think we need to speak to DS Wright ourselves.’
Sliding along the back alleyway to the house, we hear Dominic shouting before we reach the end of the garden path, and Fran gives me a worried glance before she forges ahead, hurrying up the path that runs along the side of the house to where Dominic stands in front of the open garage door.
‘Dominic, what is it? Please, stop shouting.’ Fran looks back over her shoulder to where a group of journalists still wait, enjoying the spectacle, a couple of them with their cameras raised, snapping pictures of Dominic’s fury. My heart thunders in my chest, anxiety at being recognised making my breath come in short pants as I tug my hat lower over my face and turn away.
‘They’re taking my bloody car, that’s what it is!’ Dominic shouts again, shoving his hands through his hair. ‘How am I supposed to do anything without a car?’
‘It won’t be for long,’ DS Wright says calmly, ‘as I said this morning, Mr Jessop, it’s all part of the routine search. It’s important we get this done, and with your co-operation.’ I note the way she calls Dominic ‘Mr Jessop’, no longer using his first name in that easy way of that first day, three weeks ago. ‘While you’re all here, there is one other thing.’
We all stand in silence, eyes on Wright as Kelly shifts uncomfortably next to her, waiting to hear what she is about to say.
‘We’d like to take you all in to the station, just to go over a few things. It shouldn’t take too long.’ She turns on her heel, leaving Kelly to walk us all to the waiting patrol cars. I feel sick, my stomach churning and my palms clammy. What do they think they know?
/> CHAPTER 20
I am left waiting for what feels like an interminable amount of time, but in reality, is probably no more than maybe half an hour or so before a police officer enters the room. It is more formal this time than when DS Wright last talked to us all about Laurel going missing – it’s exactly as I imagined a police interview room to be, cold and stark, designed to make you uncomfortable in an effort to make you spill the beans. I shift in my seat, a hard, plastic chair reminiscent of school days, as she takes a seat opposite me, and I realise she is familiar to me – she is one of the officers called out on that first night.
‘Hi, Anna. My name is DC Bishop, I’ve been working with DS Wright on Laurel’s disappearance. I’m going to record this interview, OK?’ As she runs through the official stuff, like my right to legal counsel, she leans forward, pressing a button on the tape recorder that sits on the desk between us. Her blouse is ever so slightly too small, and I see the fabric at her shoulders pull at the seams as she stretches over. There is a hard, cold lump in my stomach, and I swallow. I am scared, there is no other word for it.
‘Would you like some water?’ DC Bishop pushes a glass towards me and I take it, careful not to spill it as my hands shake. ‘Anna . . . there are a few things we’d like to go over with you, with regards to Laurel’s disappearance. Can you tell me again exactly what happened that night?’
I go over everything again, the way Laurel and I left the house earlier than Fran, Laurel keen to get to the field. The way I called out to her as she skipped after Fran, the silver threads in her bobble hat reflecting the light. The way I looked down and she simply wasn’t there anymore. The words come slowly at first, my tongue feeling too big for my mouth, before I start to cry and then the words and the tears flow freely.
