I was allowed to watch television, but it was always on someone else’s terms. Either a limited set of channels, or one of the movies they had there. I could never choose myself.
I do now, hunting to find the 24-hour-news channel and waiting for the adverts to finish. I wonder whether what happened to Mum and Dad is news at all. Whether I’m featured, or if Martha is on there. Perhaps we’re a small snippet buried below everything else that’s going on? There’s always bombs going off somewhere, always men in suits babbling on about the who has the most money. That’s surely more important?
Except it’s not.
This is what they were trying to hide from me. Perhaps she’s done it on purpose by going out, but Martha has left me free to watch what I want.
My parents are the first story. A woman is staring seriously towards the camera, with pictures of Mum and Dad in the little box over her shoulder.
‘The hunt goes on for the intruder who killed Paul and Annie Willis in the early hours of Saturday. Police say they are following a number of leads, including reports of a suspicious red vehicle spotted in the area. Paul Willis was the host of such consumer shows as Today, Tonight and Ripped Off; while wife Annie is a bestselling author and frequent lifestyle contributor to Good Morning Britain. Bryan Manion reports.’
The screen changes to images of my dad from television. He’s young, probably in his twenties, wearing a cape and top hat. He’s presenting some sort of talent show with singers and dancers. The reporter says he was a fixture on British television for almost thirty years. Then it’s Mum’s turn. She’s thin and fit, dressed in skin-tight Lycra and stretched out into a yoga pose. It’s hard to judge her age, but she has a bob of tightly curled hair. I’m not sure I ever saw her looking like this.
The reporter is stony-faced, standing outside our house with a microphone, the police tape and car behind him.
And then he makes me shiver.
‘Police confirmed last night that the Willis’s youngest child, Charlotte, who is just thirteen, was present when the attack took place, adding that she was hiding upstairs as the horror went on below.’
It sounds like another person. Charlotte Willis, not Charley. Another me. Another life. Charlotte Willis is a thirteen-year-old child, Charley is me.
The screen cuts back to the woman in the studio, who has someone I vaguely recognise sitting next to her. The caption says it’s another television presenter, someone from Father’s past. They used to work on the talent show together, but it was before I was born.
‘It’s such a loss,’ the man begins – but this is all enough for me. It’s time to change the channel.
Seven
Now
Seth
Never join the neighbourhood watch scheme. That should be one of the first things you’re told when you buy a house. For some reason, people believe having a sticker in their window makes them less likely to get burgled. Either that, or that sticker is the only thing that will persuade a neighbour to call the police if someone is acting suspiciously.
In truth, people will call the police anyway and burglars couldn’t give a toss about some sticker. The neighbourhood watch scheme is simply an excuse for nosey sods to get away with being nosey sods.
I barely have a foot out of the car before Mr Cass from next door is bursting out of his front door. It’s not like I think everything’s about me, but he must’ve been sitting at his window all morning waiting for me to get home. He’s been living in the same house for seemingly all of eternity and is the head of the neighbourhood watch scheme. There’s every chance that’s by default as nobody else wants to do it.
He’s pleasant enough, I suppose. A retired widower in his early sixties. I can hear Charley in my mind telling me to be nice. He’s lonely, she’d say. He wants someone to talk to. That’s the thing with Charley. She makes you want to be a better person. She cares about others. Perhaps someone could believe she left me – but Alice? Little Daisy with all her questions? Dillon? She loves those kids and I can’t believe she’d abandon them.
Mr Cass is all smiles: ‘How are the newly-weds?’ He looks towards the car, where it’s clear there’s no Charley.
‘Not bad,’ I say, hoping to end the conversation early. I grab my bag from the back seat, but he’s still waiting on the pavement.
‘Where is Charley?’ he asks.
‘She wasn’t feeling well.’
He eyes me up and down and it’s only then I remember I’m still wearing my wedding suit. I’ve been in it all night, all morning. The legs are crusted with dirt and the suit is crumpled like a teenager’s school shirt come the end of the week.
‘Aaaah, one of those nights…’ Mr Cass chuckles to himself. That if-only-I-was-your-age laugh that old people have. There must be an age where you learn that. ‘Bit too much champagne…?’ he continues.
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, I hope she’s feeling better soon. When’s the honeymoon?’
‘We’re not having one – not yet anyway. Charley was talking about opening a second shop and then we were going to go travelling next year.’
There’s a short pause as I realise I’m talking in the past tense.
Mr Cass rocks back on his heels, either not noticing, or moving on. ‘Aaaah, that’s all the rage nowadays. My grandson’s off travelling at the moment. He was in Peru the last I heard.’
He smiles awkwardly and I can hear Charley again. The poor fella’s a little lonely.
Bloody hell, it should be lovely that he’s been waiting around for us to get home. If Charley was here, she’d have really appreciated it.
We stand awkwardly, neither quite knowing what to say. Mr Cass eventually takes a step back towards his house. ‘Well, if you need anything, you know where I am.’
‘Thank you,’ I reply. ‘And thanks for the card. It was lovely of you.’
He smiles and then we each head our separate ways.
As soon as I’m inside and the door is locked, I drop my bag. ‘Charley? Char? Are you here?’
My voice echoes around the house, bouncing off the walls and returning back to me.
No answer.
‘Char? You here, hun?’
Even though there’s no reply, I check the downstairs rooms anyway and then head upstairs. The bathroom is empty, as is the spare room. One room left – our bedroom. I pull down the handle slowly, holding my breath, the last hope. Except she’s not inside either.
She’s not here.
I head for the nightstand next to the bed, pulling out all my socks and dropping them on the floor. There’s a hidden compartment in the middle drawer and I lift it out, revealing our passports, birth certificates and a couple of other documents. It’s where we’ll put our marriage certificate when we get it… assuming it still means something now.
Charley’s passport is still there. I thumb through the pages, eyeing the holographic photo that doesn’t look much like her. She is dead-eyed, her greasy fringe slightly askew. She doesn’t even wear her hair like that any longer and there’s never an occasion where she’d be so emotionless.
I return everything to the drawer, put my socks back in and then head to the wardrobe. It takes up the entire wall opposite our bed and is plenty more than we need. All of my clothes are shoved to the right side, hers to the left. As far as I can tell, everything she owns is still hanging here. There are dresses, tops, a couple of suits, summer clothes, winter wear. Below are her shoes. She only has a few pairs, not like some of the lunatics you read about. One pair of big heels, one smaller, a pair of Converse, some walking boots, some leather knee boots, running shoes – and that’s it. Nothing missing that I notice. If she was planning to leave, surely there would be a sign?
Her purse and driving licence were left in the room she’d been sharing with Alice; her passport, clothes and shoes are all at home. Where could she be going without any of that?
The kicker is in the living room.
There is a framed photo of Dillon and
Daisy together when they all went trick or treating last year. Dillon is Iron Man; Daisy is that girl from Frozen. Charley dressed as Rey from Star Wars, lightsabre and all. She took them around the estate as they harassed the locals for all manner of sweets and chocolate. There’s no way she’d leave the photo behind. She loves that picture and she loves those kids.
There’s the other photo, too. The one of her and Martha. Charley is seventeen or eighteen, which would make Martha somewhere in her late-twenties. They look nothing like each other – Martha with her dark hair, sleeve of tattoos and paperclip drawer of piercings; Charley blonde and fresh-faced. It’s only the eyes they share.
They’re at a party somewhere, perhaps a nightclub. They’re both a little bleary-eyed, but their smiles… Even now, after everything from last night and this morning, it’s hard not to grin when I look at the picture. This is happiness: two sisters who’ve been through it all together and come out the other side.
She wouldn’t have left this either. There’s no digital version of the picture – Charley told me Martha had to buy the original from the nightclub photographer. If she’s left this, then it can only be because she’s planning on coming home… or she never planned to leave in the first place.
I head back upstairs and, for the first time since we moved in together, I go through the drawers on Charley’s side of the bed. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but there’s jewellery, underwear and socks. The usual stuff. Nothing hidden underneath and no secret valuables compartment on her side.
Except there is.
It’s well hidden, wrapped into a pair of socks, but there’s a small brown tub with a white lid. A pocket of small tablets rattle around inside and after googling the name on the label, I find out they’re antidepressants.
I wonder why she never told me.
They’re only available by prescription, so she must have been to the doctor at some point. We haven’t talked an awful lot about what happened when she was thirteen and the aftermath. I suppose I always assumed she’d have gone through therapy of some nature, perhaps a programme of medication. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Is this a throwback to that?
I really wish she’d said something.
If she needs her medicine, then she’s without that, too, wherever she is.
Back downstairs, I unfold the laptop and turn it on. There’s only eight per cent battery, which is entirely my fault. The cable isn’t long enough, so I end up sitting on the floor underneath the window, cradling the device. I load the browser window and go to the webmail shortcut. I know Charley’s email address but not her password. We’re not one of those snooper, let’s-share-everything couples.
Is this a step too far?
Charley doesn’t do social media, there are too many ghosts in her past to want to be found easily, so it’s only email. Perhaps there’s a clue? An explanation of why she disappeared?
I type her email address into the box and then click into the password field.
Would her password be something to do with me? Martha? Her niece and nephew?
I type ‘DaisyDillon’ into the box and press enter.
Red letters: ‘That password is incorrect.’
Of course it is. There’ll be numbers in there somewhere. Perhaps the years they were born… but would the digits go between the names? After the names?
Do I want to do this at all?
We’re not that sort of couple. We have a life together, but we do our own things, too. She has the shop, she spends time with Alice. She visits Mason and the children. I have my own work friends, I play football on Wednesday nights, sometimes I have to travel for a course. We don’t do jealousy, we don’t play games.
I close the browser window and then flip the laptop lid down. I rest my head against the window sill and close my eyes. I need to get out of this suit, to force myself to sleep. It’s been thirty hours or so since I last had any meaningful time with my eyes closed. Perhaps a few hours of rest will help me think of something, some reason, why all this is happening.
There’s a perfectly good bed upstairs, even the sofa in front of me, but the wall feels comfortable for now. It’s fine for a quick nap in any case.
Just a quick nap…
Then the doorbell rings.
Eight
15 Years Ago
Ian Hendry: Chief news correspondent, Langton Chronicle
‘Oi, Hendo, y’big bender. How’s it going?’
I turn into the biggest of man-hugs, not knowing who’s squeezing the life out of me until the bear of a man lets go.
‘Bloody hell, how long has it been?’ the man says.
I let out a long, deep gasp and recognise my assailant more by size than any facial features. Jack has put on a good few stone since we were at university together. He’s six-foot and plenty, the width of two men.
‘Twenty years…?’ I try.
‘Christ, it is, isn’t it? What a bunch of old bastards we are.’
The people around us are starting to shuffle away, partly because of Jack’s immense size but largely, I suspect, for other reasons, such as taste and decency.
‘We should probably keep the bender talk to a minimum,’ I say, lowering my voice.
Jack grins and then his face falls. He turns in a semicircle, almost wiping out a cameraman at his side. It’s only a swift bit of ducking that saves the man from losing an ear.
‘Yeah, sorry. Forgot where I was for a minute.’ He pauses. ‘Good to see ya, though. Twenty years? Bloody hell. I thought we’d all be unemployed by now, replaced by some kids copying and pasting off the internet.’
‘Don’t joke,’ I tell him.
‘Yeah, right… I know. They just announced a load more lay-offs at our place. I don’t know why they even bother to call it news nowadays.’ He waves a hand up to the steepling, beautiful church that soars above us. ‘This on your patch, then?’
I nod. ‘Not much happens here, if I’m honest. A wedding each week, that sort of thing. You get used to it.’
Jack lets out a low whistle. ‘They don’t build ’em like that any more.’
He shuffles in closer and then bears down over me. I think he’s trying to whisper but it’s still loud enough for everyone around us to hear.
‘Do you know if the kids are going to be here?’ he asks.
‘That’s what everyone’s saying.’
He whistles again. ‘Poor sods. That little girl…’
I press up against the stone wall that rings the church. It’s where the police have jammed all the media – written, TV and radio. There are half a dozen satellite trucks parked along the road, annoying all the locals; then all the celebrity newsreaders have shown up for a day in the countryside. They’re in a line on the other side of the road, each doing solemn pieces to camera with the church in the background. All very ‘Candle In The Wind’.
‘I didn’t know you were covering the patch where the Willis lot lived,’ Jack breathes. ‘You must’ve had one hell of a week.’
‘Something like that,’ I reply.
He’s not wrong. His badge tells me he’s working for one of the papers on the south coast. There’s no connection from there to Paul or Annie Willis, but that’s not stopped journalists from the rest of the country showing up. The nation’s first family and all that. Nobody mentions that neither Paul nor Annie had been on television in the past eighteen months. The TV channels had effectively pensioned them off, but that doesn’t fit the narrative of tragic loss. If there’s one thing we do well as an industry, it’s rank hypocrisy.
‘D’you know if that’s all three kids?’ Jack adds.
‘I don’t think anyone knows. I’ve heard rumours, but I guess we’ll find out.’
Everyone is eagerly straining over the wall, staring along the road towards the row of police cars. There’s a nervous anticipation after the week and a half of non-stop speculation and drip-drip-drip of police leaks. This is the first time that something is actually happening: real, concrete
news.
‘What’s your job for the day?’ Jack asks.
‘People-watch. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on the mourners, counting the flower bouquets, that sort of thing. You?’
‘Atmosphere piece. We’ve got an eight-page memorial pull-out in tomorrow’s edition. Gotta fill it with something.’
We catch each other’s eye and share that really? look. All that training, all this experience and this is what it’s come to. Neither of us wants to be here. It’s a funeral, for crying out loud. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said? This is the full stop to the endless narrative that’s been going on for twelve days.
‘You know who I blame?’ Jack’s in my ear again, talking too loudly. ‘The public,’ he adds. ‘They lap all this up. It’s a funeral and they’re broadcasting it live on Sky News. A bloody funeral!’ He nods across the road. ‘Look over there. Celebs trying to get their faces on TV again. They’ve probably never met Paul or Annie. I reckon half this lot are only here because they’re hoping the killer turns up.’
There are a couple of huffs from the surrounding reporters, but nobody bothers to speak up. He’s probably right. News-wise, what better time for the killer to show himself? Or herself, I suppose. It’s not as if the police have given up much information.
Before anyone can say anything else, there’s a collective intake of breath. A police car cruises past, followed by a people carrier with tinted windows. Both glide to a stop outside the church gates and then a man in a black suit hops out of the driver’s seat of the people carrier. He strides around the vehicle and slides open the door at the back.
If this was a film premiere, everybody would be talking at once, trying to attract the actor or actress’s attention. It’s a strange, sombre atmosphere. Like five o’clock on a Sunday morning in a city centre when there’s a silent anticipation in the air.
Martha is the first out of the car; the most well-known of the Willis children. She found the bodies and called the police. If she wasn’t so forceful at telling them to do one, she’d be a tabloid darling. Her black hair is straight and down, her tattoos covered with a long-sleeved dress. The red-tops love a famous young woman who looks like she might have a filthy mouth on her. For the broadsheets, she’s a potential wild child. Everyone in the media has heard the stories of multiple boyfriends and drug-taking in nightclub toilets. No one will dare print it, of course. Not yet. Give it a couple of weeks until after the funeral and then it’ll be open season. I wonder if she knows what’s coming. Or if she cares.
The Wife’s Secret: A gripping psychological thriller with a heart-stopping twist Page 5
