He looks at his watch. 5.30 a.m. He checks the bedside table drawer for the key, which he took from the socks last night while Barbara was making supper. He throws on the same clothes from yesterday, discarded on a chair, and puts the key in his right pocket. Then he draws the curtains, wincing at a sky much too beautiful for this day. This mood. This plan.
Henry listens to his breathing for a little while, staring out at the patterning of the clouds. Cirrostratus. His father taught him about clouds, too. Essential for a farmer to be able to read the clouds. Cirrostratus clouds are like thin, almost transparent sheets on a washing line. They mean rain is on its way, and he feels the familiar, involuntary pull inside. The need to crack on. Get going.
Henry heads downstairs, being careful to be as quiet as possible, avoiding the third step from the bottom, which creaks the loudest. He walks through the kitchen to the boot room, where Sammy is all bright-eyed enthusiasm, wagging his tail.
Henry feels a lurch in his stomach as he meets the familiar amber stare. He pets the dog’s head – stay – then heads through to the office, taking the key from his pocket. Henry chooses his oldest shotgun, takes ammunition from the back of the wooden filing cabinet in the corner (not strictly very safe but he has let things slip a little), relocks the steel cabinet and walks back through to the boot room, where Sammy still stands, head tilted, waiting for permission.
‘No. Not today, boy. You stay here.’
The dog looks bemused. Ears back. He stands proud and moves slightly.
‘I said stay – you hear? Back in your bed. Now.’
Their eyes meet again and Sammy slinks back into his bed where he sits all beady-eyed, staring and panting, tongue lolling, as Henry leaves the room.
Outside it is cooler than he expected. Henry looks across to the little lawn opposite the drive, remembering once more the tents and the trampoline. The girls shrieking with laughter from a den in the bushes.
He remembers how Anna loved to be swung around by her legs in the middle of the lawn when she was very small. How sad he felt when she became too tall for it to be safe anymore.
You’re too tall.
Oh, please, Daddy.
You’ll bang your head. I can’t.
He remembers the vigil, which had so surprised him. It was quite touching that so many people came. The candles. The singing. Barbara and Jenny standing with their arms linked together, too upset to join in. Their lips tight, so they would not cry.
He looks back up at the house, the curtains all drawn upstairs still, and moves as quietly as he can on the gravel to the adjacent barn. He uses the small side door, leaving the large double doors for the tractor bolted at both top and bottom. He moves into the far corner to sit in the midst of the spare straw bales from the vigil.
Henry places the gun on the ground and feels his heart rate increase. Is he afraid?
No answer comes back.
Instead, a whole album of images plays out in front of him. A pack of cards shuffled and spread. Barbara and him on their honeymoon. Such different people. The girls when they were tiny babies. Anna with her fair hair; Jenny so dark.
Henry wonders if his subconscious is trawling the sentimental memories so that he can convince himself to bottle out. But – no. Very soon the police will find out he was not sleeping in the car because he was drunk. Very soon they, and Barbara, too, will find out the truth.
And then a new thought.
You idiot, Henry.
They will hear the shot from the house. Damn. They will come and they will find him. And they will see. Maybe Jenny, first. Why on earth did he not think of this before?
Henry takes his phone from his pocket, trying to work out a strategy. He could ring the police. Tell them to come. Yes. He could bolt the doors from the inside also, so the police will deal with it. Will this work? Or should he walk some distance from the house? Maybe up to the ridge?
But then someone else will have to find him. Some other poor innocent.
Only now does Henry truly realise that he has not thought this through at all.
Quickly he feels in his pocket for a scrap of paper. A pen? He finds nothing but some old receipts, a small piece of wire and an empty chewing gum packet.
He closes his eyes and feels the frown as he thinks of Anna’s friend Sarah and her pills. Did she think it through? Mean it? Did she write a note? How will he explain himself if he doesn’t leave a note?
Henry’s heart is now beating so very fast that his chest is actually aching. He sets the gun ready – cocking it first with two hands – and then places it back on the floor, pointing at his neck.
For some reason he is thinking of a television drama in which the make-up artist said they used liver to create the blood and the mess of a brain, to make it look realistic. He imagines that he has already pulled the trigger and wonders what it will be like. Nothingness? Or something else? Henry is not at all religious so he does not know what he expects. But he is surprised to find that he is worried about pain.
Henry moves the shotgun slightly to face the ceiling of the barn, and makes a decision. No paper and no note, so he will have to ring. Yes. He takes the phone in his right hand again to make the call to the police.
He has the number of DS Melanie Sanders programmed into the phone, and decides he will speak to her first. He likes her. She seems straight. Decent. So much nicer than the guy from the Met. He hears it ringing. One ring. Two. Three. He prays she will answer. Five. Six. His heart continues to pound as he closes his eyes tightly, praying it will not be some recorded message.
CHAPTER 21
THE FRIEND
Sarah says nothing in the car on the way home while her mother chatters and chatters. She is to stay off school. Take as long as she needs. Build up her strength.
Her mother says she is glad Sarah has made up with her gang of friends, and that she must look to them for support now. No one is blaming anyone. There is to be no more nonsense. Why don’t they have a pizza night soon? Watch a film?
Sarah is surprised to feel unsteady on her feet as they walk through the front garden. Probably all that time in bed. She looks at the three rose bushes below the sitting room window and notices the large number of blooms. When she was taken from the house in the ambulance she remembers lying on the stretcher and passing the flower bed by the front door. There were no blooms then. Now there are five. No. Six. It feels odd somehow, for this to have changed so quickly.
‘Come on then, love. I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.’
She doesn’t want tea but says nothing.
Inside, she just stands in the sitting room in a kind of daze as her mother puts her small bag on the settee. Sarah looks at it. The tartan holdall. Inside is her make-up pouch, which she used so carefully in London. Eyeliner, mascara and her favourite lip gloss. She looks at herself in the mirror over the settee. No make-up today. Her eyes look small. Her lips dry.
In the reflection she can see photos in a variety of frames on the pine shelving on the opposite wall. There is a shot of her sitting in a paddling pool and blowing bubbles. Both of her parents are sitting alongside, smiling.
In another picture she is doing a handstand, her skirt flailing to show her white-and-pink spotted pants. She is frowning now, trying to remember who took the picture.
And then she scans along the shelf to see the picture of her sister Lily sitting on a bench on a holiday in France. She looks sad. No – not sad, that’s not the right word. She looks sort of distant and disconnected.
Sarah can hear the noise of the kettle through the archway that leads into the kitchen.
‘Why did Lily really leave?’
‘Sorry. Can’t hear you over the kettle.’ Her mother moves back into the sitting room, standing and staring at her.
Sarah keeps her eyes on the photograph of her sister. ‘Why did Lily really leave us?’
‘I don’t think this is the time to be talking about all of that. You need to rest, love.’
Sarah til
ts her head to the side and then turns to look her mother in the face. She can feel a prickle of tears coming and her bottom lip trembling. She knows how easy it will be for her mother to put the pin back in the grenade as she always does. As Sarah always lets her.
‘It was over Dad, wasn’t it? It’s why he left.’
The blood leaves her mother’s face.
‘Why do you say that? You know why your father left. We weren’t getting along . . . and when things blew up with Lily, it all got a bit—’
‘What things blew up?’
Sarah hasn’t seen her sister in three years. Sometimes Lily phones to check that Sarah is OK, but she hasn’t in a while. They are friends on Facebook, but when Sarah checks Lily’s page, she hardly recognises her. She is in some kind of hippy phase. Her hair dyed strange colours. Odd clothes. Living in Devon in some strange group set-up. Always posting stuff about crystals and healing. All yoga and candles. Reiki and spelt flour. Sarah still misses her; she cannot believe Lily has not been in touch lately with all this going on. Everything all over the news again.
‘I want to know the truth, Mum.’
‘Truth? You’re making it all sound a bit melodramatic, love. You’ve been through a lot. You’re upset. Your father and me, we just stopped working. That’s all. You know that we both still love you.’
Sarah holds her mother’s stare and tries very hard to read it, to burn her own gaze deep into her mother’s, to trigger the reaction she needs. But the kettle announces it’s boiling and her mother looks away.
‘I don’t want a drink, thank you. I’m going to lie down.’
‘How about a sandwich?’
‘I said I’m fine.’ Sarah grabs the overnight bag from the sofa and marches upstairs, where she closes the bedroom door, leaning her back against it with her hand still on the cold ceramic doorknob. She remembers that Lily picked them out – new doorknobs for the whole house. It’s amazing how much difference small details can make. It was in the phase when Lily was still talking about going to art college and was forever fired up about some project or another. Their tiny utility room was turned over to all manner of schemes. Felt-making or silk-printing one week; hand-dying of cotton sheets for rag rugs the next.
And then suddenly it all stopped. It was replaced by rows. Shouting and slamming of doors upstairs. Lily playing truant from school. Staying in bed all day. That sad look on her face from the photograph in France.
Sarah checks her watch and moves over to her desk to switch on the lamp, adjusting its arm so that it lights her work area perfectly. She fires up her laptop, impatient as it takes time to load and settle.
Her Facebook page is busy with new messages of support, wishing her well. Most of her friends seem to know she is home from hospital today. Word travels fast. She had to unfriend a lot of people who made unpleasant remarks when Anna first went missing. For a while she considered taking down her profile completely. She still gets the occasional nasty comment linked to a news report, but Sarah tries very hard to ignore them, banning anyone who oversteps the line. The truth is she can’t bear what some people say, but worries even more about what might be said behind her back. So she keeps the profile going.
Sarah clicks through to her sister’s page, where there is an updated profile pic – the ends of Lily’s hair dip-dyed pink now. There’s also a new batch of photos of some place she does not recognise: orchards and fields and soft-focus shots of yoga outside at dawn. A large group of people, arms linked, their faces turned away from the camera.
Sarah opens up a message to her sister and feels a lurch of sadness. The last time they chatted was not long after it all happened. She rereads all their messages. Lily had called a few times but Sarah was still in shock back then and had clammed up.
Now she feels very differently. She twists her mouth to one side and types. I need to speak to you, Lily . . . She is about to press send when she scans the message again, frowning and realising it is too vague; it’s not enough to provoke a response. She adds her new mobile number and then types some more . . . It’s about Dad. I’m worried he had something to do with Anna . . .
She leaves her finger poised over the send button, her heart pounding. For a moment she is not sure that she can do it. She doesn’t know whether she has the courage to finally pull the pin from the grenade. She puts both hands up to her mouth momentarily.
And then she lets out a huff of breath and presses send.
CHAPTER 22
THE PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
‘You seriously need to stop looking at me like that.’ Matthew’s wife is grinning at him, their new daughter sucking happily at her left breast. The baby, impossibly tiny but with an impressive mop of dark hair, has been gently lain on a pillow to shield Sally’s stomach after the caesarean.
Matthew cannot help it. His mouth is gaping, his eyes wide. It’s still all so . . .
‘I’m sorry. I just can’t take it in.’
‘I know. It’s a miracle, as you keep telling me, Matt. And I love that you’re like this, I really do. But you have to stop looking at me with that face.’
‘What face?’
‘The worship face. As if I’m suddenly some kind of goddess. It’s spooking me. Even more than your sex face.’
‘There is nothing wrong with my sex face.’ He pokes out his tongue.
Matthew is not about to admit that he actually checked out his sex face – in the bathroom mirror – in a fit of pique and paranoia, after his wife mentioned in the early days of their relationship that it was quite interesting. No one had ever mentioned it before. On reflection – namely the bathroom mirror’s – it was quite, not exactly alarming, but . . . intense.
‘Did I mention that I think you’re amazing?’ Matthew reaches out his hand to brush his wife’s arm and then stroke his daughter’s dark hair.
Daughter. He turns the word over in his head and takes a deep breath.
‘So, what are your plans for today then, Daddy?’
This question throws him. ‘What do you mean? I’m going to sit here with my two beautiful girls. What else?’
‘All day?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if you sit there with that face all day, I will get no sleep, your beautiful daughter will get no sleep and you will die of boredom.’
‘This isn’t boring. This is . . .’
‘A miracle. I know, honey.’
Now they are both laughing.
Matthew turns to glance around the room, and then stands and walks over to the bag on the spare chair containing all the baby’s things. Soft and impossibly pretty things in white and lemon, because they did not want to know the sex of the child in advance.
They have the privacy of this bright, single room on account of the emergency caesarean. Matthew keeps his face turned away from his wife as he thinks again of the awfulness of it all. Eight hours of the torture they call labour, and then the horror of being told that the child was both in the wrong position and in distress and that a caesarean was essential. It was not at all what Sal had wanted, and he will never forget the look of fear and distress and shock on his wife’s face as they wheeled her along to the operating theatre, Matthew clutching her hand and trying to reassure her.
It is probably the reason for this sheer elation. This worship face. The overwhelming tidal wave of relief.
‘Look – my suggestion would be for you to go home now for a few hours. Get a shower and some kip. You can pick up my list of things and come back tonight. My mum’s calling back again this afternoon, and to be honest, I’m exhausted, Matthew. I could do with just sleeping.’
He turns and moves to sit alongside her on the bed. ‘You sure? Doesn’t feel right to leave you yet.’
‘You’ve been here hours and hours, darling.’
‘Nothing compared to what you’ve been through.’
She tightens her lips, and Matthew fancies he sees a glistening in her eyes.
‘Scary, wasn’t it?’
He
just nods, afraid that his voice will crack if he speaks again too soon, coughing just to be sure.
‘Look, Matthew. I’m stuck here for days now, which we didn’t expect. So how about you work on your case a bit until I’m home.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about work.’ A lie.
His wife tilts her head. She knows him so well.
‘OK. Maybe just a little bit. But only because you see everything differently once this happens.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ He wishes he had not said this out loud; he doesn’t want to link his beautiful little girl with work, with the new haunting in his head. Doesn’t want his wife to make the link either. But the truth is that he cannot help thinking of so many things differently now. The image of Anna from her Facebook page, used in all the media coverage over the past year. Her mother, Barbara. Ella, too. He is thinking about all of it differently. There is a twist in his stomach and he finds himself swinging his right leg to and fro.
‘Well, I think it makes sense for you to get some work done in between visiting me, and then you can pamper me when I’m allowed home.’
Matthew bites his bottom lip. Sal had planned to campaign to be allowed home as soon as possible. He was hoping to wind work right down during the first couple of weeks. But the caesarean and the compulsory stay in hospital have thrown everything out.
‘OK. You’re right. I’ll go home, get your washing done, catch up on some work while I can and come back this evening. If you’re absolutely sure?’
‘I am absolutely sure.’
He kisses her very tenderly on the mouth, brushing his lips on his daughter’s head.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’
‘A miracle,’ she replies, her tone teasing but that glistening in her eyes once again.
Back at the house an hour later, Matthew finds himself pacing around. It’s so bizarre to think that very soon they are to be back here. A family. Not just him and Sal but the three of them. He glances around, wondering suddenly if the place is big enough. In the corner is a large wicker basket, containing a few new things, many of which seem entirely alien to him. Something called a baby gym, which requires some kind of construction. Changing mats and the like.
I Am Watching You Page 11
