by Darren Young
There was a news bulletin on and the man was talking about the latest storm damage that had hit the country, flooding towns and cutting out the power. That sunny day was a rare break in the bombardment, the calm before the next storm, and the foul weather was coming back, the man warned. Then he read out some more headlines and I tuned out, peering through the gap between the curtain and the frame to make sure Stuart was still there.
‘And police have officially called off the search for Jessica Preston, who went missing five years ago …’
I didn’t hear the rest. I froze to the spot, the words dancing around my head like a playground song, taunting me. It was the worst news that I could have heard.
All the other sounds stopped; there was just me and the radio and the man reading the news, and my stomach flipped and churned and I retched so much that I had to run to the toilet to be sick.
They hadn’t even told me.
An hour later a police officer turned up to apologise that the news had been announced before they’d had a chance to contact me. A detective had been due to discuss the case with me before any announcement, but he had been diverted to an emergency and it had, as the officer described it, ‘slipped through the cracks’.
Not that it hadn’t been inevitable.
No one but me had been looking for her for a long time. I had called the local paper to say as much only a few days earlier, and tried to get them to support a fresh appeal, but they had made up their minds already and they edited my words to make me sound deluded. Our local MP promised to help, but he was a lone voice, and deep down I think he was just telling me what I wanted to hear.
I was officially now the only person who still believed Jessica was alive, and, even though I had a husband upstairs and a son I could literally see through the window, I’d never felt so alone in my life.
Even more alone than on the beach the day she disappeared.
But if anyone had told me that, six months from now, my son would be in care and Todd would be under the ground, I’d have never believed them.
Nor if they’d said I’d wind up in this place.
42 | Danni
Danni ordered her coffee and placed her phone down on the table in front of her. She sipped her drink and watched the device for the next thirty-five minutes, occasionally picking it up to check it was still working and the battery hadn’t run out.
‘Call her.’
Sam had come into the café, ordered a drink and crept up behind her without her even noticing.
‘Don’t do that!’ Danni smiled and shook her head, glad of the distraction.
‘You know it won’t ring if you look at it?’
She nodded.
‘So call! Find out what’s keeping her.’
Danni reacted as if the very thought was completely preposterous.
‘Text her, then.’
Danni looked at the device but didn’t touch it. Sam smiled and changed the subject.
‘So have you accepted the job offer?’
‘The what?’
‘Offer. Remember? It’s where a company says please work for us and you tell them you want to.’
Danni said nothing.
‘Why not?’
‘I’ll call them tomorrow,’ she promised, but without conviction. It had been the last thing on her mind; the letter was still in its envelope in her handbag. Besides, she hadn’t wanted to use the phone in case Laura called while she was talking to them.
‘They’ll think you don’t want it,’ Sam warned her.
‘I said I’ll call them.’
Sam frowned at her. ‘Do you want it?’
Danni shrugged. Her world felt as if it was going around in a washing machine and she was on the outside waiting for the spin cycle to stop. Adding another complication into the mix felt like the last thing she needed at that moment. Sam was trying to convince her that the extra responsibilities would be good for her, but they just sounded like more hassle she could do without.
‘Just think of the extra cash, then.’
Danni nodded, even though she wasn’t sure what she was nodding at.
‘I’m sure she’ll call if she has something.’
‘If?’
‘Or not. Either way.’
‘You don’t even like her.’
‘I just think you don’t know enough about her, Dan.’
‘Doesn’t mean she’s not right.’
Danni had told Sam about the phone call, but her friend had found it pretty far-fetched and hadn’t been slow in telling her.
‘Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘That’s easy to say when you know if your dad is your dad or not.’
As soon as she said it Danni winced. It was a comment born of frustration, and regretted at once, but she could see Sam’s expression change, her features harden instantly.
‘A lot of good it did me.’
‘I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean it like that.’
Sam finished her coffee and looked at Danni and her face broke into a smile. ‘C’mon. I’ve two bottles of wine in the car. Let’s go home and drink them while we wait for that phone to ring.’
Danni had limited herself to a glass and three-quarters, but she still felt the dull throbbing in her head when she woke the next morning and opened the curtains to drizzle so fine it all but blotted out the houses opposite.
Sam had polished off the rest of the bottles, but showed no sign of it when she came into the spare room with a black coffee for Danni. They had talked until the early hours, but Danni’s shift didn’t begin until lunchtime and she’d have been quite happy to stay in bed longer.
‘I thought we could go to your dad’s new flat.’
‘What for?’
‘You haven’t seen it yet.’
Danni looked at her phone on the chair next to her bed.
‘She hasn’t called yet?’
Danni shook her head. The idea of going to the flat didn’t appeal; the longer she went without seeing her father, the harder it became to force herself to do so. But she did need to get a photograph of her as a child.
‘He’ll think there’s something up if you keep avoiding him.’
‘There is something up.’
‘And hiding from him won’t help. C’mon.’
Sam threw Danni her jeans and left her to get dressed, and twenty minutes later they pulled up outside her father’s new apartment, nestled at the foot of the hill, right on the edge of the beach and facing the sea, although the misty, damp weather didn’t show it in its best light.
The inside, on the other hand, was immaculate, with expensive furniture and artwork laid out in minimalist fashion among grey carpets and walls with freshly painted brilliant white doors, skirting and ceilings. The place stank of newness, and neither Danni nor Sam could fail to be impressed by it. Thomas had shouted for them to come in when they knocked; he was hanging a large flatscreen television on to a plate attached to the wall. ‘Good timing,’ he said smiling. ‘I was just thinking I needed someone taller.’
Sam took hold of one side and they lifted it into position. ‘Lovely place, Mr E.’
Danni returned her father’s smile and walked up to the large patio doors that opened out to dark-lacquered wooden decking and a set of steps that led past the downstairs apartment and on to the sand. She peered out to where the grey sea lapped on the shore about sixty or so yards away.
‘I’d begun to think you didn’t want to see it.’
Danni snorted unconvincingly. She did actually think it was a lovely place to live, but without her mother it felt nothing like a potential home for her. ‘I’ve just been busy.’
‘Deciding whether to say yes to her new job,’ said Sam.
Danni glared at her friend. Her father looked at her inquisitively and started asking questions she had little option but to answer. ‘What’s to decide?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘It sounds like a great opportunity.’
&nbs
p; ‘That’s what I said,’ Sam added.
‘You two don’t have to work there,’ Danni said coldly, and stared at them each in turn. ‘So I’ll make the decision.’
‘But—’ her father began.
‘If that’s OK with you.’
‘Of course.’
Danni walked around, looking outside again. ‘Nearly every memory I have of Mum is in the village,’ she said softly, almost to herself. Her father looked down in the way he always did when she mentioned her mother.
‘It’s only an hour or so away,’ said Sam.
‘The memories won’t go just because you move,’ Thomas added.
Danni glared at her father. He began tightening the screws holding the TV to the metal plate so he could avoid looking at her. Then, when he was happy it was secure, he went into the kitchen and made them both a cup of tea. He returned with three cups on a silver tray.
‘What would your mum want?’
‘Huh?’
Danni tensed up. Sam looked up at Thomas, a slight shake of her head trying to warn him not to go there, but he ignored her.
‘She’d say take the job, I know she would.’
‘Would she?’ Danni said sharply.
Sam tried to change the subject by asking about the flat underneath.
‘Or is it you that wants me to take it?’
‘What?’
Sam looked horrified and Danni realised her friend was right: it wasn’t the time for this conversation. But, even as she tried to back down and stop herself saying more, it was already too late.
‘I’m sick of people telling me what Mum would think and say.’
‘Danni,’ her father said sternly, but she stared at him.
‘I know Mum wanted to tell me something before she died. Why don’t we talk about that?’
The silence seemed to last for ever. Sam shuffled uncomfortably, her eyes flitting between both of them as she tried to drink her tea. Danni’s father looked at Sam then back at his daughter.
‘This isn’t the—’
Danni cut him off. ‘I know it’s not.’ She stood up. ‘So I’m going. Before I say something we both regret.’
Sam got up too and they left.
Danni had forgotten all about the photograph.
43 | Laura
David Weatherall had a habit that Laura wasn’t sure he was even conscious of, where he looked at the door when he thought it was time for someone to leave his office.
He had just done it, and Laura blinked and looked at him, and at the brown folder in her hand. The editor sat back in his leather chair, like some City trader from the ‘80s but without the cigar, and raised his eyebrows in his trademark whyare-you-still-here? style, and she turned to leave, knocking a file off his desk with her thigh. She bent down to pick it up, apologising as his irritation with her visibly grew.
She had no idea what he had said to her in there as she got back to her desk and opened the folder. Her every thought had been about what had happened on the coastal path that morning; it was all she had thought about since it happened.
She hadn’t told anyone about it. It changed things; in fact, it changed everything. The only action she took was to open her laptop when she got to the office and order a can of handbag-sized aerosol defence spray from the website of a security company, paying extra for express delivery.
After that she thought about what to tell Danni, because now it was clear that someone had a lot to hide and that both of them, and her family, were now at risk. The email had been one thing, but it had just escalated to a whole new level. As she sat staring at her screen, she knew she had no option but to tell Danni everything.
It just wasn’t a conversation she could have on the phone.
She thumbed through the top half-dozen pieces of paper in the folder David had given her and made an assumption about the story he wanted. She looked over at him through the glass partition and for a split second she thought about confiding in him, but quickly dismissed the idea. Whoever said a problem shared was a problem halved had clearly never shared a problem with the Gazette’s editor.
The article he expected from her virtually wrote itself; it was as black and white a story as you got in journalism and it allowed her thoughts to continually stray back to Danni and that morning. Eventually she stopped typing and took her private notepad from her bag, turning to a blank page at the back and beginning to list her options. It didn’t take long. She could either carry on with her investigation, or listen to the warning and stop. She wrote STOP on her pad with a large question mark. After that, the only other consideration was whether to call the police. She’d almost done that when she’d got back to the house that morning, trembling and with a head awash with thoughts; she also considered telling Danni she couldn’t help her any more.
Luckily, she had managed to get ready and leave for work before her mother had got up; she knew that her fear and shock would have been impossible to hide. The office had been unusually full when she got in, and she had found it difficult to conceal her anxiety, so she had kept her head buried in the manila file and the article to avoid conversations. But when she looked up at the bustling environment, with Kelly holding court and the other reporters busy getting their pieces in for print, she knew that they would all give anything to be in her position, with a story that had the potential to catapult her into a different stratosphere. You don’t let go of a story like this, she thought. None of them would.
In the early part of the afternoon, she finished her article for David and emailed him a copy to check. A fish-packaging factory on the outskirts of town had allegedly been employing dozens of immigrant workers, and paying below the minimum wage. An employee in Human Resources had objected to being asked to turn a blind eye to the practices and become a whistle-blower, handing over a significant amount of irrefutable evidence to the Gazette, hence the thick pile of papers in her folder.
David had conducted an interview with the employee himself, and Sue had transcribed the notes for inclusion in the folder. With so much information, it was an easy article to write, and it was made even easier when her attempts to contact the factory to hear their side were met with a blockade of unreturned calls or a refusal to comment. When she emailed her draft to David she was feeling pleased with it.
With the clock approaching five o’clock, the editor called her back into his office.
‘This is good.’
‘Thank you,’ Laura said out of politeness while she waited patiently for the ‘but’, because David rarely left one out.
‘I must say I was impressed by the way you handled the missing girl story,’ he continued, motioning for her to sit down, ‘but I’m also worried about you.’
Well, there was the but, Laura thought, and it wasn’t so bad.
‘Worried?’
‘You seem a bit preoccupied.’
Laura looked at him. Worried, she thought, was a big departure from his usual mood, and she owed him some kind of explanation.
‘I really wanted to do that interview,’ she said, ‘and I was cut up about it. But I’m OK now.’
‘All right,’ he said, his discomfort at showing a caring side abundantly clear, and looked back at his screen. ‘Well, you’ve shown what you’re capable of. Let’s see more of it.’
She smiled and nodded. When she got back to her desk, as most of the staff were already making their way out of the doors, she felt taller and more confident; like a real journalist. She reopened her notepad and looked at her option list, crossed out the word STOP, and closed the pad.
Then she packed up her laptop and left, waving to David as she walked past his office, and when she reached the ground floor she took out her phone and called Danni, who answered just as Laura went out of the revolving doors and into the street. She apologised for having taken more time to investigate.
‘Did you find anything?’
Laura pictured the man on the coastal path, holding her dog up in the air. ‘You could say that.’
<
br /> ‘What?’
‘I’d prefer to tell you to your face.’
‘Tell me now,’ Danni begged. ‘Please.’
Laura wanted to. But she had no idea how she might react or what she might do next.
‘I can’t.’
‘When, then?’
‘As soon as possible.’
They arranged to meet early the next morning at a neutral venue halfway between their homes – to cut driving time down, Laura told her – but, if she was honest, she didn’t want to take the risk of being seen.
Any thoughts of an easy way out had gone.
There was no going back now.
44 | Laura
Laura left the house before anyone was up.
She broke up the two-and-a-half-hour journey by stopping to make a call to David when she knew he would be in his office. ‘Women’s problems,’ she gave as her reason for not being able to come to work, and offered no more, knowing he wouldn’t ask. She felt guilty, especially after what he had said the previous evening, but he and the Gazette would benefit when the story came out, and she used that thought to justify lying to him.
The services on the M5, near Cheltenham, were the perfect place for the two girls to meet and talk privately. There were more than half a dozen places to eat and drink and plenty of empty tables in quiet corners, so Laura bought two coffees when Danni arrived and they sat down. A member of staff cleared the table of two breakfast plates while they made small talk, and then Laura told her what had happened on the coastal path.
