The Downstairs Neighbor

by Helen Cooper

  Steph was sure a man used to live here with Emma. Or maybe still did? She’d never actually met him, only heard the muffled back-and-forth of their voices, and glimpsed them together sometimes on the street.

  “Were you at home yesterday?” she asked.

  “Yes . . .” Emma perched on her sofa and fiddled with the turquoise tassels of a throw, gesturing for Steph to sit down too. “I remember thinking the street felt quiet. The day seemed to drag.”

  “What about before that? Had you noticed anyone hanging around? Ever seen Freya with anyone who seemed . . . ?” She shut her eyes at the horror of the questions, the inescapable trains of thought.

  “No, nothing like that.” Emma sounded pained too. Steph wondered what she must think of her. Who could let this happen to her child? What kind of mother had to ask a neighbor, pretty much a stranger, whether she knew things about her daughter?

  “Who saw her last?” Emma asked.

  “We don’t know exactly,” Steph admitted, with another wrench. “She was in her final lesson of the day but the police can’t interview the teacher until first thing tomorrow.” It was excruciating having to work with other people’s schedules when she’d been catapulted into this new sense of time. Even the police search, which had been launched within half an hour of them registering Freya as missing, was at the mercy of daylight. Right now, Steph knew, the team was trawling the limited CCTV footage from around Freya’s school and bus stop.

  “And her phone’s off?”

  “Yes. She’s normally glued to it.”

  As if on cue, a phone beeped. Steph’s heart vaulted and she reached into her pocket before her brain could register that the chime wasn’t one of hers. Still she opened her messages, WhatsApp, emails. Emma sheepishly picked up her own mobile.

  “Sorry, that’s me.” She moved to put it aside without reading the message, but seemed to change her mind, tapping the screen and frowning with distraction. Steph felt a vicious slash of jealousy. What is it, Emma? Hair appointment canceled? Friend wants to meet at a pub you don’t really like? Boyfriend trouble? She knew she was being unfair, but even the worst of other people’s problems were enviable to her now.

  She leaped to her feet. She was wasting time with a woman whose Friday-night drink was going flat, whose phone was buzzing with her own life.

  Emma stirred, and jumped up too. “You don’t have to go!”

  “I should be out there looking for her . . .” Steph glanced toward Emma’s undrawn curtains. The night seemed to glisten and swell, like black water. Usually she loved night skies, the more vast and starry the better, but now she couldn’t stand the thought of it, dark and depthless.

  They were diverted by another ringing. Traditional this time, like a landline. Emma looked at the handset in the corner of the room, seeming surprised. Presumably her home phone rang as rarely as Steph’s did these days.

  “Answer it,” Steph said. “Just in case?”

  Emma hesitated, then walked over and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  There was a pause before she repeated: “Hello?”

  A chill touched the back of Steph’s neck. She became conscious of that rumbling, hamster-wheel noise again, gathering momentum.

  “Is anyone there?” Emma sounded perturbed now. “Hello?”

  She replaced the receiver but kept frowning at it, rubbing her lips together with their traces of coral gloss. “Wrong number, I guess.”

  Steph watched her for a beat longer. Emma’s face seemed to have paled. Her cheek was dappled by the moving shadow of a dream catcher that hung from the ceiling. Was there something she wasn’t letting on about the call? No, of course not. Why would there be? And even if there was, why would it be anything to do with Freya? It was already becoming impossible to distinguish between things that meant nothing and things she should seize on.

  And then there were the things that made her brain power down when she thought about them.

  Paul asking to speak to the police alone.

  Paul flinging his water glass onto their kitchen floor rather than answer her questions.

  “I have to go,” she told Emma again.

  “Please, let me—”

  “I really do.” Steph stumbled to the door. The hallway seemed to represent a fork: back upstairs, to do what, or back outside, to go where? She lurched toward the stairs, hoping she could collect her thoughts once she was in her own flat.

  “If you need anything,” Emma was saying behind her, “I’m—I’m just downstairs.”

  Steph stopped and twisted back. Emma seemed young again, framed in her doorway, her blue serrated fringe in her eyes.

  “Just keep looking out of your window,” Steph blurted. “Look for . . . I don’t know. Anything. Anyone.” Tell me what Paul’s face looks like when he comes home, she wanted to add, before he’s prepared himself to come back upstairs.

  Tell me what you think of this street, our neighbors, this place that was meant to be safe.

  Tell me, do you ever get the sense our house is being watched?

  9.

  PAUL

  Bright spots of fear starred Paul’s vision as he ran through Kingston’s lamplit streets. His feet thudded out the mantra of his opaque promise to Steph: I will fix this, I will fix this, I will fix this. He arrived, gasping, at Surbiton station, lathered in sweat beneath his coat and jeans, just in time for the last train.

  Other passengers shot him wary glances as he stumbled on. He suspected he looked wild-eyed, scarlet-faced, though his reflection in the black windows was translucent and featureless. Realizing his hand was still beading with blood, he pressed his mouth to the cut. He couldn’t forget Steph’s expression when he’d thrown his glass onto the floor. He’d just wanted to break the momentum of her questions, the shrill ringing they set off in his head. But her eyes had blanked with shock and she’d stared at him as if he were a stranger, as if she couldn’t predict what he might do next.

  She knew his favorite brand of coffee, his annoying habit of absentmindedly singing a different song from the one they were listening to, where he liked to be touched, and which politicians made him swear at the TV. But a black hole lurked behind all that familiarity, rarely acknowledged, and never in front of Freya, whom he’d always tried to shield from its shadows.

  Fix it, the train’s rhythm chanted. Fix it.

  Paul got off at Waterloo and paced through the Friday-night streets. Though the evening was chilly, people were drinking outside bars, eating late meals at small crowded tables. He peered at every young blonde woman, earning some outraged frowns, but none was his daughter—none jigged her leg beneath the table with the restlessness Freya got from him.

  He stopped dead in front of the police station. Cold blue light from its sign pooled over him.

  Could he do this?

  He had to.

  His body stiffened in resistance as he strode up to the automatic doors. They sighed open at the last instant and seemed to suck him inside.

  The foyer was quiet. A smell of cleaning products; a blast of hot air from the ceiling vents. Paul approached the desk, conscious of the sheen of drying sweat on his forehead. The officer behind the counter had a rugby player’s build but a doughy, almost babyish face.

  “I need to see DI Glover.” He was still based there, Paul was certain of that much. He sent Christmas cards, the odd email, though Paul usually threw away the cards, deleted the messages.

  The desk officer cocked his head. “Can I ask what this is about?”

  “Tell him it’s Paul Harlow. He’ll know me.”

  “Have you got any ID?”

  He slid out his wallet, offering his driver’s license. The officer picked up a phone. “I’ll try him. He may have gone home.”

  Paul glanced around as he waited, to divert himself from imagining Tom Glover’s reaction on the other end, but co
uldn’t help listening to the one-sided call. He didn’t say exactly . . . Shall I ask him? . . . Oh . . . Oh, I see . . . Sorry, Inspector. Should I tell him to come back another time? Paul thought about storming over and grabbing the phone, forcing Glover to answer to him rather than relay messages through this uncomprehending colleague. But the officer hung up.

  “DI Glover says he’ll see you.”

  Paul raked a hand through his damp hair as he was led along a route he already knew. There were only small changes: new names gleaming on doors, a fresh carpet. The more familiar details became heightened: the slippery wood of the banister, the glare of the strip lights, the creaking weight of Glover’s office door.

  As Paul entered, Tom Glover stood up from behind his desk and whipped off his glasses. His eyes looked aged, and unmistakably guarded, but his suit was as well tailored to his trim frame as it had always been. In contrast Paul was shell-shocked and clammy, specks of blood on his jeans. As if he was still the unraveling man who’d practically crawled out of this station twenty years ago.

  “Paul.” Glover’s tone was questioning. Freya’s case was obviously not yet on his radar, despite what Paul had disclosed to the two surprised PCs after he’d asked Steph for a moment alone with them.

  Unless Glover was pretending not to know. When Paul had been put on “indefinite leave” from his department, and had spent months self-destructing, then drifting, and finally recovering, he’d often got the sense that his former boss was keeping tabs on him. That he knew far more about his life than he would let on when he called to “see how you are, old friend.” But that feeling had faded as Paul had got himself together, found the dull safety of an office job, married Steph, had Freya, and finally allowed himself to be happy.

  Now that he was back in Glover’s office, though, watching him select a facial expression from his disturbingly cold to overly warm range, Paul wondered if he’d been foolish to assume he’d lost interest in him.

  “It’s been a long time!” Glover clasped his hand, clearly opting for warmth. “How are you?”

  “I’m not good. I mean, I have been. It’s not what you think . . .” Paul shook himself. Get to the point. “My daughter’s missing.”

  Glover slid his glasses back on, appearing genuinely startled. “Christ, Paul. When you say missing . . . ?”

  “Over twenty-four hours. Hasn’t used her mobile or debit card. Friends haven’t heard from her. No activity on her social media or . . .” He couldn’t finish. The facts were brutal kicks to his stomach. If it had been somebody else’s daughter, a case with no personal connection, he would have been working on the gravest assumptions. He saw Glover glance at a framed photo on his desk. Paul guessed it was a picture of his two kids, who’d been babies when they’d worked together. He hoped he could appeal to the fatherly side of Glover’s personality to get what he needed. His old instincts for other people’s motivations were waking, the subtle persuasiveness he’d once had in his toolkit.

  “How old is Freya now?” Glover asked.

  “Seventeen.” Paul heard the break in his own voice. Freya was feisty and smart, but there could be a naïveté to her when she wasn’t playing sport, when there weren’t clear-cut goals to compete for. She could punch a volleyball in a way that would make Paul think, That’s my girl, and she’d astounded him and Steph with her witty, charming acceptance speech when she’d won Players’ Player at the school sports awards last year. But she also constantly lost things, closed her eyes at upsetting animal sanctuary adverts, became pensive or wildly indignant when they watched the news, as though she couldn’t quite believe the things that happened in the world outside her safety zone. The thought of her out there in that world—in the parts of it he’d known—was terrifying to Paul.

  “I need to see the Sanderson file.” He flinched inwardly as he said their former target’s name. “Especially any . . . updates.”

  Glover sat back in his leather chair. Assessing something, though Paul wasn’t sure what. Always calculating risk.

  “I won’t do anything stupid,” Paul pressed. “I’ll keep you informed of anything I need to follow up.”

  “Follow up?” Glover’s eyebrows jerked. “You’re worrying me now.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a matter of . . . It’s my daughter, Tom.”

  Glover stood and walked to the window, looking out at the floodlit courtyard to the rear. It was such a familiar move of his—striding to the window for a “time-out,” keeping his back turned for just longer than was comfortable—that Paul shuddered with recollection.

  Delicate was the word Glover liked to use about what had happened back then. It conjured up images of thin glass on the verge of shattering, fragile bones on the verge of breaking.

  Tom turned back around. “I can’t give you access, Paul. You’re not a police officer anymore. There are no updates, anyway. You’ll find nothing in those files you can’t pull from your memories . . . if you choose to.”

  Paul swallowed. Something prickled the base of his neck—instinct, warning? Glover was standing straight now, hands in his pockets.

  “You must know where Sanderson is,” Paul said. “Whether he—”

  Glover held up a palm. “Paul. Your head’s all over the place. This is every parent’s worst bloody nightmare. But you have to let Missing Persons find Freya. There’s no point taking matters into your own hands, raking over things that are probably unconnected . . . things I know you don’t want to dredge up.”

  Paul felt the rise of fury only a split second before it burst out. “Well, what the fuck would you do?” He banged the desk, dislodging sheets of paper. “Wouldn’t you make the same assumptions as me, if it was one of your kids?” He seized the framed photo and held it toward Glover, who refused to look at it, his face shutting down. “Wouldn’t you do everything you could to make sure they weren’t in danger because of what we did?”

  There was a heated silence. Paul continued to thrust the picture at Glover, his grip so tight he was convinced either the frame or his knuckles would break.

  Eventually Glover snatched it from him. “What we did?”

  Paul stared at him, still trembling with rage, tasting it in his throat. He couldn’t believe he’d thought he could come here for help. He’d forgotten how smoothly his former boss could switch compassion on and off.

  Glover called after him as Paul strode to the door. Paul stormed down the stairs without brushing the walls or the banister, unwilling to touch another thing in this place. Then he was back in the night, the London fumes less poisonous than the air inside the police station. He wanted to go back to Steph but he couldn’t bear the hurt and confusion on her face. Something had been ripped open by Freya’s disappearance, and what if there was no way to repair it? What if this was only the beginning?

  As he collapsed onto a bench, his mind’s eye began leafing through the file that Glover had denied him access to. Its pages would crystallize in his head if he let them, like pictures developing in a darkroom. Before he got very far, breathlessness grabbed him by the neck. His throat closed and he gasped, clawing at his collar. It had been years since he’d had a panic attack. But now here he was, fighting to breathe, breathe, breathe, tilting forward on the bench as people passed with barely a glance.

  Even as the attack subsided, there was a slow swirling dread. That time, that place . . . He’d managed to free himself, heal himself, but what if it had come back for his little girl instead?

  He sketched Freya’s image behind his lids, testing himself with the detail, thinking of how people often said she had his eyes and how the cliché secretly pleased him, whether they really meant it or not. A falling sensation jolted through him as her face slowly dissolved into another. The girl from the pages of that file, the girl he had failed, and the mother whose dark hair and pale skin were emerging from the depths of his memory.

  10.

 
KATE

  Twenty-five years earlier

  There’s a knock on my bedroom door, and Mum’s voice: “Kate, you busy? Mind if we have a quick chat?”

  For a second I think the “we” is me, her, and him. Then I remember it’s Saturday morning and she’s got work in an hour. He won’t be coming round till later. I’ve got the day to myself but I don’t fancy going into town or to the park. I just want to hide in here and read my library book.

  “Come in,” I call.

  “Can you put my hair up for work?” she asks, walking in. “I’m so rubbish at doing it myself.”

  She sits down at my little dressing table, in front of the cracked mirror that Becca always deems bad luck. I stand behind her and brush the frothy dark waves I’ve only semi-inherited—my hair is light mousy brown with a halfhearted kink. Mum closes her eyes. She loves me playing with her hair, though I’m not particularly good at styling and she doesn’t really care what it looks like anyway. Becca’s much better, of course, especially now she’s finished her training. Auntie Rach wanted her to go to university and become a teacher, but Becca dreams of her own salon with gleaming surfaces and a galaxy of spotlights in the ceiling. “You’re not the boss of my brain cells, Mother!” she always says. “I can use them how I like!”

  I stick a row of bobby pins into my mouth, spitting them out when Mum says, “I know you’re not keen on Nick.”

  As I try to protest, she studies my expression in the mirror. “It’s okay, love.” She reaches back to put her cool hand over mine. “It must be hard for you, having a man around after all these years of just the two of us.”

  I shrug and blush, trying to focus on holding all her wild hair on top of her head. Strands break free, spill down to her neck. I notice again how narrow her back and shoulders seem.

  “I haven’t had a relationship since your dad left, have I? So I know it must feel strange.”

  I’m squirming now. I don’t like it when she talks about my dad—or lack of—at the best of times. Now she’s using the word relationship, sinking my hopes that Toyboy Nick’s a temporary blip in our lives. I wrestle a bobble around the thick ponytail and catch her reflected gaze.