by T. M. Logan
Why isn’t she here?
Haven’t you heard?
Oh, that’s just awful.
Can it be true?
I can’t believe it.
And then the abrupt silence as they realized we were sitting right in front of them.
Jennifer was not here. Of course she wasn’t. She was where she had been ever since the day it happened, in jail in Béziers, and she was not expected to get bail while prosecutors argued about the charges she should face. We had agreed on a story, a narrative of what had happened, to ensure that Lucy and Jake were shielded from blame—in exchange for our silence on everything else.
The thought of her made me cold with fury.
Ahead of us, a small coffin covered in white lilies was laid gently on a stand by the altar. Sean stepped back with the other pallbearers as they turned to the cross and bowed, as one. How he found the strength to do this, I will never know.
He returned to me, his face ashen.
Lucy cried quietly beside her father. She had finally opened up to me about Alex Bayley, about what went on between them and what he did to her. For today she has agreed to play the piano, a piece by Debussy, but I wondered if she would be capable when we reached that part of the service. I was certainly in no fit state to do a reading, or a tribute, or anything so private in such a public forum. Sean would speak for us both.
We had talked about what he will say. The words he will choose when he walks to the front of the church and stands at the lectern. There is so much to say, a world of emotion and experience and shared life, and yet words are supremely inadequate. Words are clumsy and blunt, hopelessly crude as a means of expressing our love, our loss, our heartbreak. But words are all we have now.
My mind drifts back to France, and I think of a boy. My brave boy, the day before that fateful day. I had found him with cuts and grazes on his hands and arms, mud and blood on his knees, tears on his face. His favorite T-shirt torn. Still shaking with adrenaline but refusing, steadfastly, to tell me what had happened. Only later did I find out about the dare: to jump across the crescent gap at the cliff edge.
An initiation ceremony to be part of an older boys’ gang. A jump that fell just too short.
A moment of pure panic, his hands scrabbling for a lifeline.
A thick looping tree root below the edge, just strong enough to hold a small boy’s weight.
It is this fragment of knowledge that saves his life the next day, in a thunderstorm, when I watch him disappear before my eyes at the very same spot. When Jennifer releases her grip and I watch him dropping into the gorge, turning at the last second as he falls, but he’s not turning to see me. He’s turning to grab onto that tree root, onto life. His scared eyes never leave mine as the two French policemen haul him back to safety.
Not bad for a nerd, Mummy, he’d said through his tears.
No, I’d said through mine, not bad at all.
Beside me, Daniel studied the order of service, his little hand tight in mine. The bandages were gone now. I squeezed it gently and he squeezed back, once, twice. Our secret code.
Chris, the new partner Izzy had been so excited about, sat next to him.
Or Christine, to use her full name.
Of course I had assumed in France that her new love was a man, but Izzy had never actually said that. I knew now why she had been cagey, not revealing too many details too soon—she had wanted to tell us at her own pace, in her own way. She had been so looking forward to starting that next chapter in her life, so excited to make the most of her second chance.
But that story will never be told. Not now.
The priest stood up.
“Dearly beloved, we meet here today to honor and pay tribute to the life of Isobel Margaret O’Rourke. Or, as most of you knew her, Izzy. Loving daughter, devoted sister, doting auntie, a true and loyal friend.”
My throat tightened and I waited for the tears to start again. But this time my eyes stayed dry.
A true and loyal friend.
78
An email arrived the day after the funeral, from an unrecognized address.
The subject line said simply: Reminder.
There was no text, just a link to a video. I knew what it was and who had sent it as soon as I saw the link, but I clicked on it anyway. Watched the video again, even though I knew it line for line, word for word. Every second seared into my brain.
You want him to have an accident?
Lucy’s voice in response.
Yeah. Yeah I do.
It was still secret, still password protected and private, only five of us now who even knew it existed. Me, Sean, Jennifer, and—of course—Ethan and Jake.
I read the subject line again.
Reminder.
A reminder of my promise, my oath to Jennifer to keep our secret. I had given her my word. And Jennifer knew she could trust me because of who I was, because she knew what I was like: straight as a die. Make a deal and stick to it.
But we had all seen what secrets did to people, even to the very best of friends. Even to a friendship that had endured for half a lifetime. The secret that now bound Jennifer and me together had also torn us apart. I had been thinking about that a lot, since returning from France, about secrets, and lies, and taking responsibility for what we’ve done. About the ghosts that follow us, the damage we leave behind.
About justice.
I thought about that now as I sat in my car, on a suburban street in Ealing.
In one way I was grateful to her for sending me the reminder email, because it helped to make the situation perfectly clear, in case I had been in any doubt: safety for Lucy meant justice denied for Izzy, for Alex Bayley. It meant this one careless comment would be hanging over my daughter forever, with the power to wreck her brilliant future, even though she was not the one who had got behind the wheel of the car.
It meant lying—for the rest of our lives.
Unless I took the initiative.
Jennifer had made her choice. She had been willing to sacrifice anything—even my son’s life—to protect her own children. She had shown me the way.
Now it was my turn to make a choice.
A true and loyal friend.
Two people were dead, their lives snuffed out. And if we allowed their deaths to go unpunished, we were all as good as lost. Their loved ones deserved to know why: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Most of it, anyway.
Izzy’s family deserved justice. Alex Bayley’s family, too.
And as I now knew, sometimes justice needed a helping hand.
* * *
Checking up and down the street one last time, I got out of my car into the morning drizzle. Heart beating wildly in my chest, I opened my umbrella and held it low over my head as I walked up the short drive to the house, through the side gate to the garden and the back door. I carried a clipboard and a shoulder bag, with a lanyard around my neck, in a trouser suit with a white blouse plus clear-lens glasses. To the casual observer I was just another anonymous charity fundraiser knocking on doors and generally making a nuisance of myself. Worse still, a local councillor looking for votes or a Jehovah’s Witness giving away copies of The Watchtower. All to be avoided, if possible.
The house backed onto a railway line and was not overlooked by the neighbors on either side. From my pocket, I pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves and plastic covers for my shoes.
No traces. No fingerprints.
From my other pocket I produced the back door key that I’d had for years. With one last quick look back to the street, I eased the door open and let myself in. The cats—Pickle and Maisy—were onto me straightaway, trotting into the kitchen and rubbing around my shins. To them I was just the person who fed them when Alistair and Jennifer were away. My arrival meant food.
“Not today, ladies,” I said, shutting the back door behind me. “Sorry.”
I went through the house quickly, double-checking all the rooms. I’d watched t
hem all leave this morning but wanted to be sure. The boys were at school and Alistair was at work, none of them due back for hours. I hated myself for what I was about to do, hated the creepiness of skulking around my friends’ empty house. But I had to do it, to protect Lucy. To protect my family.
There were two things that needed to be done.
First, the car.
From the hallway, I went through the connecting door into the garage. In the days after Jake’s hit-and-run, as they corresponded secretly on Messenger, Sean had counseled Jennifer against taking the car in for immediate repairs because he thought it would look too suspicious. Better to wait a few weeks until the lad’s out of the hospital and everything’s calmed down a bit. I was grateful, now, for his caution. Jennifer’s blue Volvo was here in the garage, still with minor damage to the front offside wing and the hood—dents and scratches in the bodywork where the car had hit Alex Bayley. It looked as if someone had tried to wash it down, but no matter: it was virtually impossible to get rid of every small trace of blood. I took my tools from my bag and chipped away some small flecks of paint from one of the damaged areas, sealing them inside a plastic evidence bag. I would make sure they found their way into the collection of physical evidence on the case.
Next, I went up to Jake’s bedroom.
Sean had explained it to me. Every file—every document, every video, every email—leaves a unique footprint, a trail. If you have the right tools, and you know what to look for, you can map out the whole life cycle of a particular file, its whole family tree, including how many copies have been made and where they’ve been sent or saved. He had followed the same process after hacking into Alex Bayley’s accounts to track down and delete copies of the naked video of our daughter.
But the video of her inciting a crime was far more important, the one Jennifer had uploaded to VideoVault. Sean’s investigations discovered only two additional copies: one on a PC and another on an iPhone. Cell phones were strictly forbidden at school on pain of a week-long confiscation, and I was relieved to find Ethan’s phone where I hoped it would be—plugged in to charge in his bedroom. I took out the device that Sean had given me, no bigger than a USB drive, purchased on the dark web. I plugged it into Ethan’s phone and watched as it wiped the device completely blank—every file, every photo, every video deleted—and returned it to factory settings.
I unplugged the USB device and did the same to the PC in the study, deleting every single file in its memory. One copy of the video left.
A few years ago, in a flap because she’d let her car insurance lapse while they were abroad, Jennifer had asked me to log into her account from this very same PC and renew her coverage before they made the journey back from Gatwick. She kept all her passwords on a couple sheets of handwritten A4 clipped into a black plastic binder.
I opened the second desk drawer and dug beneath a stack of bank statements, found the black plastic binder. Same place. Same old Jennifer. The username and password for her VideoVault account was the newest addition at the bottom of the list. I took out a cheap pay-as-you-go phone and sent a text to an identical handset—both of which would soon be on their way to a landfill site.
Ten miles away, in central London, my husband went to work at his keyboard. A text pinged on my throwaway phone two minutes later.
It’s done x
I took out my regular cell phone, went to the email with the subject line Reminder, and clicked on the link to the video for the second time this morning.
Error
File not found
I went back to the email and clicked on it again, just to double-check it was gone.
Error
File not found
No copies left.
Finally I checked the bedroom and the garage again, making sure to leave everything exactly as it was, before making my way back to the kitchen. The cats sat on the countertop, staring at me, still expecting to be fed. I put down a little bit of dry food in their bowls and sent a quick reply to my husband on the pay-as-you-go phone.
Same here x
Outside the back door, I took off the plastic overshoes and latex gloves and put them back into my jacket pocket. Umbrella up, clipboard under my arm, I shut the side gate behind me and walked back to my car. The rain was heavier now, a steady downpour signaling the end of summer and the beginning of a cold, dark autumn.
Turning the keys in the ignition, I drove away.
I knew what she would do when the video evidence of Lucy’s involvement in the crime was erased. Jennifer would take the fall for all of it, take all of the blame on herself for the deaths of both Izzy and Alex. Because admitting one would mean admitting the other—and to keep her son out of it, she would have to keep Lucy out of it, too. She would provide a human shield for her son.
But it would be justice for Izzy, at least.
I hoped that would be enough.
79
DS Foster
Detective Sergeant Hayley Foster pulled up and parked, squinting into the low September sunshine.
“OK,” she said. “What number are we on now?”
Her colleague, a brand-new DC she was babysitting through his first week out of uniform, ran his finger down the page of a file in his lap. The sheet showed a list of names and addresses, most with large ticks added in messy blue pen.
“This is the thirteenth,” he said. “Only three more to go after this one.”
“You know, Rob, thirteen is my lucky number.”
“Really?”
“No.” She sighed heavily, unclipping her seat belt. “Come on, let’s get it done.”
She got out of the car, taking the list from the young DC as they crossed the street and walked up the short drive to the house. It was their second day of driving around, knocking on doors, ticking names off a list. She was starting to suspect that their search area was not large enough. If these addresses were all duds, they’d have to expand to take in the whole of west and north London, and so on, and so on. The Bayley hit-and-run had been kicked up the priority list since the boy’s death, with more media attention and more pressure from the powers that be to get a result. Luckily, a closer reexamination of the victim’s clothes by forensics earlier this week had revealed microscopic fragments of dark blue paint that had been previously overlooked. Further analysis had matched the paint to a Volvo V40.
The paint fragments had been missed on first examination.
There were a total of sixteen matching cars registered in Ealing, Acton, and Wembley, in the immediate vicinity of the incident and the starting place for renewed police inquiries.
DS Foster consulted the list in her hand and rang the doorbell.
A bearded man opened the door, late forties, unkempt, and red eyed.
“Yes?”
“Alistair Marsh?”
“Yes?”
She held up her police ID in its wallet.
“My name’s DS Foster and this”—she indicated her colleague—“is DC McKevitt. Would you mind if we came in for a few minutes?”
“Why?”
“We’re carrying out an investigation into a hit-and-run. A teenage boy was knocked off his bike and killed not far from here. You may have read about it, seen it on the news?”
“Indeed.” He stood up a little straighter. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Are you the owner of a blue Volvo V40?” She read out the registration.
Alistair crossed his arms. “No.”
DS Foster checked her list again. “It’s registered at this—”
“It’s my wife’s car.”
“Jennifer Marsh?”
“Correct.”
“Is the vehicle here?”
“In the garage.”
“We’re going to need to look at it.”
For a moment she thought he was going to argue, but then he just gave a quick nod. “I see.”
“Is your wife here? We’d like to talk to her as well.”
“She’s … no, she�
�s not here. Not at the moment.”
“Can you tell us when she’s due back?”
Alistair shook his head.
“No,” he said, his voice lowering. “Jennifer’s … in France. It could be some time before she’s back.”
“A vacation?”
“It was a vacation, at least to begin with. But it’s turned into a rather extended stay.”
“Really? Why’s that, sir?”
Alistair looked from one detective to the other, his shoulders sagging.
“I think you’d better come in, officers.”
He ushered the two detectives inside and shut the door softly behind them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I remember when The Vacation started coming together. It was on my birthday, a long lunch with my wife talking about story and characters, plotlines and locations, when all the different elements that had been going around in my head for a while started to fall into place. So, to Sally—thanks, as always. A big shout-out also to her longtime friends Charlotte, Jenni, and Rachel: the fact that you four have been going away for long weekends together for years is a total coincidence (honest).
Thanks as ever to my excellent agent, Camilla Bolton, whose experience, guidance, and enthusiasm were crucial in the creation of this novel. And to her colleagues at Darley Anderson—Sheila, Mary, Kristina, Rosanna, Roya—you are the best.
My brilliant editors at Bonnier Zaffre, Sophie Orme and Margaret Stead, helped to make this story better in every way. Thanks also to Jennie Rothwell, Francesca Russell, and Felice McKeown, for all their hard work behind the scenes on this and my previous novels.
Massive thanks to you, for picking up this book in the first place. To everyone who has recommended it to a friend or had kind words to say about this or my previous two books—I really do appreciate it.
Likewise, to all the bloggers who have given time and space to my stories, the wonderful library staff who have asked me to come and talk to readers, the festival organizers who have invited me to speak at their events—sincere thanks. I’m very grateful to Dan Donson of Waterstones Nottingham, for providing a wonderful venue for my book launches and giving me the opportunity to meet one of my very favorite writers, Michael Connelly.
