by Helen Cooper
Breathlessness had swept across Paul’s chest as he’d begun to understand.
Nathalie hadn’t killed herself.
Nathalie was alive.
I wanted to tell you, Yvette had said. So many times, I almost did.
Paul had realized then what had been gnawing at him, almost subconsciously, for a long time. The fact that nobody ever went near Chainwell Woods anymore, not since what had happened to Billie, yet Glover had told him that Nathalie had been found hanging from a tree by a local dog-walker. It was a clichéd, lazy detail in the story. It had never sat quite right, but Paul hadn’t grasped why until now.
Glover knows? he’d asked Yvette.
She’d nodded. It suited him to get Nathalie out of the picture. One less person to expose the whole “scandal.” But I didn’t go along with it for his sake. It was for Nathalie . . . and you.
Me?
You had to let her go, Paul. I knew you never would as long as you thought she was somewhere out there.
The words echoed in his head now: somewhere out there.
And yet he didn’t know what to feel. Sadness? Relief? Fury? Deep inside, he knew that what Yvette had told him was huge. But he couldn’t bring his reaction to the surface alongside everything else. He just wanted to nuzzle his face into his wife’s hair, shut his eyes and open them to see Freya behind her, smiling and sleepy, in her polka-dot pajamas.
Imagine if he got home to find her there. If there was an explanation so simple he’d looked right past it. Looked in the wrong direction.
As he neared the house, he noticed Steph’s car wasn’t on the street. Two police cars were parked in its place. That wasn’t so unusual: Police had been there constantly over the last few days, but something about them suggested a flurry of activity. One had its doors open, leaking the buzz of a radio. An officer got out of the other and headed toward Paul.
“Mr. Harlow.” It was dark enough for him not to notice Paul’s injuries. Paul stood as upright as he could, braced. “There’s been an incident.”
Paul’s heart juddered. Would it be Freya? Before he could speak, the officer said: “An abusive note was pushed through your door.”
“Abusive? Saying what?”
“It’s been taken away for examination. But it said . . .” The man shone a light at his book and read awkwardly, without glancing up: “‘Mother of the year—question mark. Try liar of the decade. Innocent victim—question mark. Nobody but yourself to blame.’”
Paul labored to compute the words. Liar? Blame? Each one felt like a pendulum swinging hard in his skull.
Mother?
The officer cleared his throat. “Mrs. Harlow and your neighbor Miss Brighton chased a man—”
“Chased him? What? Are they okay?” He glanced to the left, where Steph’s car should have been, and felt the churn of alarm that had become a constant companion. “Where’s my wife?”
“We . . . don’t know.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Miss Brighton fell. An ambulance took her to hospital, and we arrived at the scene, but . . . Mrs. Harlow had gone.”
“Gone?”
“Somehow, among all the activity, she disappeared. Nobody’s answering the buzzer to your flat. Has she been in touch with you?”
Paul shook his head, cursing his smashed phone, his own distraction. The alarm was taking on a new color now. More sinister, bewildering. But awakening too. “Who was the man?”
“He fled, I’m afraid. We’re doing everything we can to track him down.”
Paul swore softly, turning toward his house. “I’ll check the flat.”
Letting himself in, he stopped and stared around him. There was a scattering of papers and photos on the floor of the shared hallway, a shiny red ball in one corner, a shoebox on its side. Paul crouched painfully to examine the items. Who were the people in these old photos? What was the significance of the newspaper clipping? Who had put these things here?
“Steph?” he shouted as he used the banister to haul himself upstairs. The flat was cold and still. His parents weren’t there either. He hollered Steph’s name again into the empty living space.
In their bedroom, he saw the wardrobe doors flung open, pairs of shoes and bundles of scarves scooped out from its bottom shelf. Paul stepped closer but still couldn’t make any sense of it.
What had happened while he’d been caught up yet again in the fallout from his past?
A drawer hung open in the kitchen. The drawer where they kept their knives. Paul’s heart kicked as he tried to work out whether any were missing. He was fairly sure their largest kitchen knife was absent. He checked the sink and the dishwasher, a chill taking hold when he failed to find it.
The memory of sinking a blade into Daniel’s shoulder turned him even colder. The idea of Steph doing anything like that was unimaginable, but perhaps she would have said the same about him before all this. Had she been tumbling through her own destructive series of events while he’d been miles away, diving headlong into his?
57.
EMMA
Emma lay on a trolley in a small curtained bay, surrounded by the hellish bustle of the late-night ER. The ache in her leg had been dimmed by strong painkillers, which also turned her brain swampy and her saliva to chalk. It wasn’t clear what she was waiting for—an X-ray, a proper bed, a doctor?
One thing was clear, though, even through the fuzz. The memory of lying on a cold pavement, pain splintering up her side, finally seeing the face of the person she and Steph had been chasing. Emma had still been convinced it was Robin as they’d pursued him. He’d seemed the right height, right shape. She’d been about to scream his name when she’d tripped. For a split second things had ground into slow motion. The figure had twisted back toward them and a streetlamp had shown her, unmistakably, who he was. As time had boomeranged back to normal speed, she’d landed on the concrete with a painful smack. Then the figure was gone and she’d been left winded, unable to believe it.
She remembered, too, Steph kneeling beside her as the blue lights of an ambulance had loomed. Grabbing her hand, putting her mouth close to Emma’s ear. “I have to go. I’m sorry.”
Emma had been groggy. “What?”
“I can’t come with you to hospital.” Steph had spoken quickly and quietly, her breath hot on Emma’s skin.
“Where are you going?”
She recalled the whites of Steph’s eyes, incandescent in the dark. Strands of sweaty hair plastered to one of her cheeks from their chase, the smell of the wax jacket she’d been wearing.
Emma had wondered whether she’d recognized the person they’d been following too.
“Are you going to that place? The address you gave me?”
“Don’t tell anybody,” Steph had begged. “Please don’t tell the police. Tell them they have to look for Paul, though. I can’t lose either of them. This is all my fault.”
“Steph—”
But a paramedic had arrived and Steph had leaped to her feet. A support had been slipped around Emma’s neck: She couldn’t move, couldn’t lift her head even to watch Steph dash away. It seemed as though she’d just melted into the night.
Now the blue curtain swished and a nurse poked her head into Emma’s bay. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay, but I really need to—”
“The police want to talk to you.”
“Oh?” Emma’s stomach fluttered.
“They’re at Reception. They’ll be here in a moment. Once they’re done, we’ll get you down to X-ray.”
Emma tried to sit up and compose herself as two uniformed figures approached. One of them was the man she’d started talking to about the hate mail and silent phone calls, before the sight of Zeb had cut the conversation short.
“Miss Brighton, the incident tonight—could you tell us what happened?”
“I . . . er . . .” She found herself acting more drugged than she really felt. Actually, her head was beginning to clear, and she realized she’d preferred the cushioning fog. “Steph and I heard noises. We found a note had been put through the door. Outside, we saw a person running away . . .”
One of the officers nodded. “We have the note.”
Emma nodded as well, glad of any information about how much they knew.
“So we chased him. Or tried to. I fell and I presume he got away.” She held her breath until the officers confirmed that they hadn’t caught him.
“Did you see the man?” they asked.
Emma winced as if she’d had a twinge in her hip, trying to distract their attention from her face. She’d never been a good liar. “It was too dark.” She mimed another pang of pain, hoping they’d take the hint and leave her to rest.
“Could you give any kind of description?”
“He was wearing a baseball cap.” She made her voice slow and dreamy. “Normal height. Sorry, I . . .”
They exchanged a glance. “No problem.” One of them laid a business card on her pillow. “Please call us if you remember anything else.”
Emma sank into the pillow, feeling it deflate around her head, the card sliding toward her ear.
Zeb’s words flashed back to her: Dad wouldn’t do that.
“Miss Brighton, do you wish to continue with the concerns you started registering yesterday?”
She stiffened again, staring up at the ceiling. “I . . . No. I got my wires crossed there.”
She heard them shuffle but didn’t dare look at them.
“You don’t think it’s connected to tonight’s events?”
“I don’t think so.” She spoke too sharply. Anxiety had slain any acting skills she’d had in the first place. She didn’t even want to think about the potential consequences of her lies. What choice did she have?
“Well, if you change your mind . . .” He nudged the business card closer, almost poking her jaw.
As they turned to go, Emma propped herself up. “One more thing.”
They paused. Another look flickered between them, perhaps questioning her now-lucid voice and surge of energy. She tried to slide back into her out-of-it act.
“Steph Harlow,” she slurred.
That seized their attention. But Emma’s words receded as quickly as they’d arrived. She recalled Steph’s urgent voice in the darkness, almost drowned by sirens: Please don’t tell the police.
“Is . . . she all right?” she substituted lamely.
“Actually, she disappeared from the scene shortly after you were taken to hospital. We’re still trying to ascertain her whereabouts. Do you have any ideas?”
Emma could remember the maisonette’s address exactly. Could picture it in Steph’s frantic scrawl. She didn’t know what was there . . . but Steph was Freya’s mother. Suddenly that seemed to dwarf everything else, seemed to give her, in Emma’s mind, the right to do whatever she felt she must.
“No,” Emma said. “Sorry, I don’t.”
The officers gazed at her for a few more seconds and then, when they realized she had nothing more to add, walked away.
As soon as they’d disappeared, Emma let herself cry. She kept replaying that moment, the figure turning back under the lamplight, the shock as she’d glimpsed his face.
Zeb.
She’d looked away and then back, as if it might have been a trick, and in that brief window he’d sprinted out of reach. But it had been him. The question was, had it all been him? Eggs and dog shit and parenting books and vicious notes?
Panic was stacking up in her chest. She needed to speak to Zeb. And what was she going to do about the Harlows? What if Steph was in danger and Emma was the only one who knew where she was?
The more she thought about it, the more contacting Paul Harlow seemed her only remaining option. I can’t lose either of them, Steph had said. This is all my fault. Was that true, Emma wondered. What about Paul’s shadow on the stairs that first night, Steph hunched on the bottom step with a bleeding ear? What about his raised voice the next evening, the smashing glass, the way he’d shaken off that woman on Kingston Bridge?
Were these images so vivid because Emma knew what it felt like to be threatened by a man? If she could just rinse Andy and Robin out of her system, would she be able to see clearly, know who to trust?
There had been plenty of strange behavior from Steph as well. But Emma had felt an inexplicable loyalty toward her. Perhaps she’d idolized her, in a way, because she’d seemed like one of the golden girls Emma had never been at school, with a golden daughter to match . . .
She felt a sudden wave of exhaustion, trying to understand her neighbors, to untangle her life from theirs. Maybe Steph and Paul were really just two parents in absolute crisis. Maybe the only thing left was to drop all judgments and allegiances, and give them the chance to make things right.
Then she had to figure out how to do the same with her own child. And hope that the two quests weren’t in conflict.
58.
PAUL
Paul thrust open his living-room window. A rush of night air hit his bruised face, widened his drowsy eyes. He slapped his cheeks to revive himself. His daughter and his wife were somewhere out there in this long, strange night. Paul had to expand his tunnel vision now, try to see the things his guilty conscience might have obscured.
Looking down at the newspaper cutting in his hand, he scoured the faded type yet again.
A poisoning, back in the nineties. The reporter had made a big deal of the controversial case: a young woman accused of murdering an older man.
He threw it down on the coffee table and flipped through the photos that had also been scattered in the hall. One showed a teenage girl with bobbed dark hair and a confident smile. The same girl was in another picture, standing between an overweight woman and a bearded man.
And then there was the birth certificate. The paper was thin as he lifted it, trembling slightly in the breeze from the window. This document was the most baffling, most troubling.
Because the date of birth was the same as Steph’s. And yet the name wasn’t.
Had somebody left these items, deliberately, to be found? Were they a clue, a warning?
Their family liaison officer stuck his head around the living-room door. Paul saw his eyes flicker again over his cuts and bruises. Since he’d called George and asked him to come straight over, Paul had managed to dodge all questions about his injuries. He knew he’d have to answer them sooner or later, but right now there were more urgent things.
“I’ve asked the team to look for any information about Kate Thomas or Rebecca Fielding,” George said. “They’re looking into the case described in the article too. And we’ve put out a search for Steph. The helicopter’s looking for her and Freya now.”
Paul stared toward the window, at the starless sky bearing down on the suburban rooftops. Was that the helicopter’s beam he could see, sweeping over the neighborhood, illuminating its nocturnal secrets?
Where are you, Steph?
Who are you, Steph?
He couldn’t help hearing Nathalie’s voice, asking that same question of him, like a reversed echo through time. Couldn’t stop seeing mirrors across present and past: Steph and Nathalie, Freya and Billie . . .
Steph and Kate?
Striding along the corridor into their bedroom, Paul stared at his wife’s clothes in the still-open wardrobe, touching familiar sleeves and collars. His marriage was in these textures: years of feeling this silk shirt brush against his skin as he kissed her, or hooking his fingers into the belt loops of these trousers to draw her close, or vaguely registering the softness of a sweater as he sat next to her on the sofa, Freya on his other side.
It wasn’t possible he’d been oblivious to something so big all these ye
ars. Yet fragments of memory were waking: questions that had stirred before, but had always been put back to sleep.
Paul had been obsessed with the life he’d had before meeting Steph and having Freya. The things he’d been forced to hide from them. Had that blinded him to the fact that Steph was evasive about her own past? Had he failed to see that he wasn’t the only one capable of wearing different masks?
If he’d learned anything these last few horrific days, it was that the stories he’d told himself about his life—or others had told him—couldn’t be relied on. They weren’t rigid but fluid, different perspectives flowing alongside one another. He hardly recognized himself anymore. Felt he’d changed as much in the last week as he had during three years undercover. But Steph was supposed to be the constant. His anchor.
“Paul?” George reappeared. “The team’s found some information.”
Paul whipped around. “Yes?”
George passed him his iPad and Paul scanned the email on the screen. Epilepsy medication . . . trial . . . disappearance from the record . . . His vision was fuzzy, like when he was tired and should be wearing his reading glasses, that film across his eyeballs.
But something was winking at him through the mist, like a single point of light.
George’s phone rang. He gestured apologetically and moved into the kitchen with it. As Paul continued to stare around his bedroom, the home phone also trilled. He broke from his trance and dashed into the kitchen to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Is that Paul?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“Emma Brighton.”
Their downstairs neighbor? She spoke softly, struggling to make herself heard over a background din that sounded, from Paul’s recent experience, very much like a hospital.
“You’re home,” she said, seeming relieved. “Steph was afraid you were gone too.”
“She’s gone.”
