Part of the Silence

by Debbie Howells

  “Then there’s the Leah Danning case.”

  “Yes.” Abbie was thoughtful. “I asked Charlotte more about that. She was cagey, but she’s protective toward Casey Danning. They were friends. So far, other than Evie, there’s no obvious link between Leah and Angel—”

  They were interrupted as Evie opened the back door. She looked better today, Jack thought.

  “Hi.” Did he imagine the flicker of pleasure across her face as she looked at him?

  “Evie, I hope you don’t mind that I asked Jack to come over. He has far more experience than I have, and I thought three heads are better than two.... Would you like a cup of tea?”

  Evie shook her head. “What did you want to talk about? Have you heard anything? I just thought, with the papers and the news and everything . . .” Clinging to hope.

  “We’ve had one or two leads,” Abbie said quietly. “After a press release, there are always leads. . . .” She hesitated. “You have to sift through the time wasters, all seeking their moment of glory. But there’s been nothing of any significance. At least, not so far.” Abbie sat at the table. “I hope you don’t mind, but Dr. Ghyllen’s coming to see you tomorrow.”

  Evie looked annoyed. “There’s no need. I’m really all right. The only thing I need to do is stop the pills.”

  And find her daughter . . . Jack said nothing. Everything was a battle, he could see that. He could remember the need to wrestle back some degree of control.

  “She did say she wanted to check you over again.... She also said she’d like to refer you to someone who specializes in memory loss. She said she’d come before she starts afternoon surgery. About three, she thought. Is that okay with you?”

  Evie sat down, shaking her head. “No. Cancel her.”

  Jack shook his head at Abbie. You could suggest, support, prompt, but you couldn’t force. Evie was firefighting. It wasn’t worth adding to her battle.

  “All right. If that’s what you want.” Abbie paused. “I spoke to Nick again.”

  “What about?”

  “He wants to see you.”

  Evie stood up. “I don’t want him here. This is my house. I don’t want anyone here.” She was shaking. “Tell him I don’t want to see him.”

  “I can’t do that.” Abbie looked troubled. “If we’re looking for a missing child, we have to explore every possibility.”

  “What do you mean, if? Angel’s missing, Abbie. I know that. You know that.”

  “Evie, it’s okay. We’re on your side.” Jack tried to reassure her.

  “What did Nick say?” Her voice was shaking, too. “You have to tell me, Abbie. It’s my daughter who’s out there, missing. What did he say?” Her voice was rising all the time.

  Abbie shook her head. “He said he doesn’t think there’s a baby, Evie. He said you had a breakdown. It looks like losing the baby brought the past back—your memories of Leah—though he didn’t know about her at the time. He couldn’t cope with it. You didn’t leave him. He left you. It’s what his mother told us, too.”

  Evie’s mouth fell open.

  “I wasn’t sure what to think. So I called where you used to work. The person I spoke to said they’d suggested you take some time off until you were feeling better. Apparently, you flew at them. They had to escort you out of the building. They were quite generous with your final pay packet. It’s probably how you could afford to buy your car.”

  “No.” Evie was shaking her head in disbelief. “Don’t you see? Nick’s set the whole thing up, just to get at me. It’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do. He and his mother are in it together. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where Angel is—with them.”

  “Sheila’s moving into residential care,” Abbie said quietly. “The police have been searching, but there are no records of an Angel Sherman or an Angel Russell. There’s no birth certificate, Evie.”

  “So I didn’t register her. Is it a crime?” Evie was defensive. “God.” She looked stunned. “After everything I’m going through, you don’t believe me.”

  Jack was uncomfortable with the direction this was going. He knew Abbie was doing her job, but when you were a parent, when you’re child’s life was in danger, didn’t she know how vulnerable that made you?

  “No one’s saying that,” he said, intervening. “They’re really not.”

  “Not yet,” Abbie added. “But you have to agree it’s bizarre that everything connected with Angel has vanished into thin air.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Evie looked at them in utter horror. “I’ll find something. Proof. Give me a minute.. . . Please . . .”

  She disappeared from the room. Jack heard her footsteps on the stairs, then upstairs, as she went from room to room, opening doors and drawers that had already been searched multiple times, before the house fell silent.

  “It might be a good idea to put Nick off coming here.” Jack looked at Abbie.

  “I was thinking the same. The problem is, there’s still a child missing—we think. We need answers, Jack. Right now Evie’s the only person who has them—” She broke off as Evie came back into the room. “Evie . . .” Abbie paused. “Come and sit down.”

  She waited as Evie pulled out a chair.

  The silence was broken when Abbie’s phone buzzed. “Yes? Now really isn’t a good time.” Looking irritated, she glanced at Evie. “Well, can’t you stop him?” She shook her head, then sounded resigned. “Okay.”

  She ended the call, but whatever it was clearly wasn’t okay. She looked directly at Evie. “I’m sorry. This isn’t my doing, but it’s Nick. He’s on his way here.”

  Evie’s face was stricken. What was she frightened of? Was it Nick? Did he have some kind of hold over her? Jack was trying to work it out as Evie stood up and started pacing round the room. “Someone’s trying to get to me. Someone who’s taken my child. Who knows how I’ve been living. The same person who attacked me.” She raised terrified eyes toward Jack. “What if it’s Nick?”

  35

  As Abbie glanced away, Jack could see that she, too, had concerns about Evie’s safety.

  “We’ll be here while you talk to Nick,” he told Evie.

  Abbie stared at her. “But if it was Nick, if he’d been to the house, don’t you think you would have remembered?”

  “I’ve told you everything I know.” Evie was desperate for Abbie to believe her.

  Abbie hesitated. “The trouble is, it’s all words. Words that anyone can make up, if we’re being brutally honest here. I wish we had more, Evie. I really do.” She glanced at her watch. “And you have to believe me when I say that I’m really sorry about Nick turning up like this.” She paused. “I suppose it was going to happen at some point. Maybe it’s a good thing it’s now—while we’re both here.”

  It was clear from Evie’s face that even with the police there, she didn’t want to see him. But there was the sound of a car door slamming, then, a few seconds later, a loud knock at the door. It was too late.

  “You didn’t tell me Helen had left you this place.” It was the first thing he said to her, slightly accusingly, as he looked around her kitchen. There was disdain in his voice, as though he couldn’t see beyond the dated interior to the heart and soul of the cottage.

  “I didn’t know about it before I left you.” Evie was obviously trying to keep calm. “And when you came to the hospital, I couldn’t make sense of anything. But you didn’t come here to talk about the house.”

  He smirked. “Don’t you mean before I left you? Actually, we probably do need to talk about it. What’s yours is mine and all that.”

  Bastard, Jack was thinking, biting back his anger.

  “I suppose the same goes for the farmhouse,” Evie said shakily. “Do you still live alone? Or has your girlfriend moved in with you?”

  Jack read Nick’s silence as surprise, but it was only momentary. “You’re forgetting it’s my house, Jen. I bought it.”

  “And Helen left this one to me. Don’t be a bastar
d, Nick. We both know it isn’t as simple as that. What do you want?”

  “That accident you had . . . how did it happen? Have they found who did it yet?” Jack couldn’t believe it. Nick sounded amused. There was another silence before he carried on. “What about your daughter, Jen? Is she mine? Or did you make her up?”

  “Stop it,” Evie cried out. “You don’t know anything, Nick.”

  “Really? After all that time we lived together? Suit yourself. But if I’m a father, why the hell didn’t you bloody tell me?”

  He was a piece of work. Several times, Jack had wanted to intervene, but Evie was holding herself together admirably, Jack thought.

  “Why the interest all of a sudden?” Evie’s clear voice cut through his bluster. “Oh, I get it. You want to absolve yourself of any responsibility to Angel. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Nick’s silence spoke volumes.

  “What is it, Nick? Are you getting married?”

  “God, no.” He smiled, but it only made him look more dangerous. “Actually, Maria’s pregnant.”

  * * *

  “That’s the real Nick,” Evie said bitterly after he’d left. She looked exhausted. “His mother is the same. She’d never admit to anything that didn’t make her or her son look like saints. When Nick and I met, he was engaged to Kirsten. I don’t even know if this is relevant.” She glanced at Abbie, then at Jack.

  “Go on,” he said quietly.

  “Sheila’s always been angry with me because I took her perfect son away from fucking brilliant, beautiful Kirsten, who could do no wrong.” Jack couldn’t believe the animosity in her voice. “She made it very clear from the start that she blamed me for breaking them up. I don’t think she ever got over it.”

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Abbie looked expectantly at Evie.

  “Soon after Nick and I met, he had a fight with his mother, and shortly afterward, he broke it off with Kirsten. He knew it would be a big deal for his parents, because they were best friends with Kirsten’s parents and the wedding was booked . . . but he knew he had to. ‘I don’t love her,’ he told me. ‘It’s you I want to be with.’ He looked triumphant, which I couldn’t understand, because love or regret would have seemed more appropriate.

  “But suddenly I understand, in a way I hadn’t before, clear as day. It wasn’t about either of those things. I was simply a pawn, used to outmanipulate his manipulative mother. She begged him not to call it off. Told him what a huge mistake he was making.” Evie looked incredulous. “Oh my God . . . It all makes sense.”

  “But surely,” Abbie said, frowning, “over time, if her son was that important to her, if she thought he was happy with you, she must have accepted you.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t think he ever loved me. He just used me. I can’t believe I’ve only just seen it.”

  Abbie looked confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “It was complicated,” Evie said, glancing away. “Sheila and I didn’t get on, but I don’t think she’d do anything to hurt me—or Angel—that’s if she even knew about her. And I don’t think she did.”

  “Maybe not.” Abbie was thoughtful. “But there was something else she said. . . .”

  “What?” There was a sudden flush to Evie’s cheeks.

  “She said you hadn’t been well, Evie.” Abbie’s voice was gentle. “She said . . . you had another breakdown. After the miscarriage.”

  “It wasn’t a breakdown.” Evie spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s Sheila’s way of saying that I left him.”

  Abbie stared at her. “Just now Nick clearly said he left you.”

  “Just more lies.” Evie was matter of fact. “Nick and I didn’t split up. I walked out while he was at work one day—without telling him. I couldn’t go through the motions of holding our relationship together when it was clear he was having an affair. I knew he’d been seeing someone. I couldn’t bear to always be wondering, waiting, imagining he was late because he was with her. . . . Mona’s face is murky, but it’s there, in my head somewhere. I knew who she was.

  “It wasn’t a good time. Winter in that place was hideous. The loneliness, the long, dark days in that enormous house, which at their worst felt like an endless kind of night—or nightmare, as I thought of it at the time. One that I escaped from only when I slept. I wasn’t working at that point. It was different for Nick, going every day back to his job and civilization, but I’d been stuck there, in that quiet, empty house, feeling more and more like a prisoner, my resentment building, until one day it got the better of me.

  “I packed enough clothes to last me a few weeks, left Nick a note, telling him not to come after me. I needed time to think, away from him. The first week I stayed with a friend, who lied for me when Nick called, and then I met Richard. After that, summer in the city was a blast. Smart restaurants, theaters, art galleries . . . I fell in love, not with him, but with what he represented—the buzzing city life I still craved. It was when I realized, too, that Nick had been a mistake.”

  She went on. “I didn’t go back to my old job.” Evie shook her head. “I’m not even sure why I said that. There’s still so much that isn’t clear.”

  “What happened with Richard?”

  “It didn’t last. All the time I was putting off what I knew I had to do, which was to face Nick and tell him. I left it for ages before eventually, I called him to arrange to meet. We had this awkward phone conversation and set a date, only then I discovered I was pregnant. At first, I assumed it was Nick’s baby, but I couldn’t be sure. My periods had always been irregular. I slept with Richard two weeks after I’d left Nick, so it could have belonged to either of them.

  “Already the pregnancy was obvious. My body remembered.” She looked mildly embarrassed. “Nick would have known instantly. There was no way I could face him, his scathing condemnation, the searing contempt on his face, when I told him I couldn’t be sure who the father was.

  “When I told Richard I was pregnant, he told me to get rid of it, or it was over between us. I left that evening, moved in with a friend for a week, while I found myself a studio flat. It was the last I saw of Richard. I neither cared nor was surprised by his reaction. I forgot him as I obsessively threw myself into impending motherhood, determined to do my best for my baby. It was a textbook pregnancy, ending in a short labor, followed by that life-changing moment when I first set eyes on my daughter.

  “Angel was my miracle, my new beginning. To me, she signified hope, a chance to start a new life and get it right. But when Angel was two months old, I bumped into Nick. I remember him staring at her, and me giving a flustered excuse that I was looking after her for a friend. I barely recognized him at first, but only because my blinkers had finally fallen away. Instead of the good-looking, outgoing, sociable person I thought I’d loved, I could see only self-obsession, greed, his constant calculating in the shifting of his eyes.

  “My heart was fluttering as I tried to walk past him, but he grabbed my arm, determined to talk to me. When I tried to wrench it away, he held on tighter, hurting me, until a passerby stopped to ask if I was okay. I told the man that I needed to get this baby home to her mother. I couldn’t meet Nick’s eyes. The man nodded, waited there as Nick let go of me. I pushed the buggy down the road, while Nick stood watching me, and then I went round the corner, out of sight. That was when I knew that in the bustling anonymity of the city, I wasn’t safe. Among so many who were harmless, all it took was one person.

  “I packed up my flat and, a week later, loaded everything I owned into the car I’d bought. As we drove away, I knew the future started right then. I knew also, it would change only if I made it change. Finding out I’d been left Jessamine Cottage had come at exactly the right time. I saw it as a sign.

  “I wondered how long it would take for Nick to give up on me and move on. He’d never liked being thwarted. That last time, when he’d grabbed hold of me, I’d felt the full force of his anger. I hoped time would defuse it, but I wasn’t tak
ing chances. You can’t change the past. All you can do is leave it behind and look forward.”

  There was silence; then Abbie spoke. “Are you sure that’s what happened? That you’ve really remembered everything this time?”

  “I’m sure.” Evie’s voice was full of angst. “But how is any of this going to help find Angel?”

  “It’s surprising how even the smallest detail can help,” Jack said. “Go on.”

  “Nick really frightened me,” Evie said. “After that, I decided it didn’t matter who Angel’s father was. It was no one’s business but mine. Richard ran, and Nick proved himself unworthy. It was about trust.... And I couldn’t trust him, least of all with a small child. As a mother, you have a duty to do what’s best for your child.” Evie gazed toward the window. “It isn’t always easy, but it’s like having another sense or an instinct.”

  Abbie folded her arms. “Evie, I don’t know what to believe anymore. You’ve told me all these different versions of you and Nick.” She shook her head. “Right now I don’t know which is the truth. You’ve completely lost me.”

  “They all feel real when I tell you.” Evie looked scared.

  Abbie continued. “If Angel is Nick’s daughter, he should be helping you financially—”

  But Evie interrupted. “It’s why he came to see me, isn’t it? Anyway, I don’t need his money.”

  Abbie paused, then went on. “Angel has family she doesn’t know. You may not like them, but they are still her family. What were you going to do when she asked you about her father. Lie?”

  “No.” Evie had clammed up again. “And that’s the least of my worries just now.”

  “Nick wants a DNA test. Even if he’s not the father, don’t you think Richard should know?” Abbie was staring at her. “Right now I’ve no idea what the truth is. But let’s just say that Nick found you and Angel. That he knew she wasn’t his child. Is it possible he’d do something like this to punish you?”

  Evie turned pale.

  Jack thought of everything he knew about Nick. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that he could have come here, marched upstairs, and taken Angel from her bed.