by Emma Curtis
‘Did you get my message?’ he asks.
I sit up and drop my feet over the edge of the bed. ‘No.’
‘I spoke to Mrs Ritchie. She said she would pass it on.’
I close my eyes for a second. ‘She didn’t. What did you want to talk about?’
‘It was just a quick update. We’re following up a couple of leads and I wanted to let you know.’
‘What leads?’ My heart thuds as adrenaline shoots through my veins.
‘A possible sighting at Paddington station.’
‘Paddington? He must have been heading to Devon then, surely.’
‘Possibly. There’s plenty of CCTV, so we should know one way or the other soon. We’re looking into the information Evan Morgan gave us, trying to discover who the woman was he was talking to on the parade. We’ve talked to everyone on the class list you gave me, but none of them have admitted to being her. Do you have any idea?’
‘No. None. Did you speak to Anna Foreman?’
‘Yes. She said it wasn’t her.’
‘OK.’ I don’t know what else to say.
‘Are you certain that Nick wasn’t having an affair?’
‘Absolutely certain.’
He sighs down the phone. ‘OK. Call me if you can think of any reason why he might have met this woman. And I want you to think hard about Nick’s behaviour over the last month or so. He may not have walked out on impulse, he may have been building up to the decision for a while. If he’s kept quiet about that holiday, there may be other things that he’s been keeping from you.’
‘Then why propose?’
‘I can’t answer that.’
Neither can I. ‘Can you do me a favour? Next time you can’t get hold of me, don’t speak to either of the Ritchies.’
I walk slowly downstairs and stand at the kitchen door with my hands on my hips watching Cora leafing through a newspaper until she notices I’m there. She looks up at me over her glasses.
‘I thought you were taking a nap.’
‘I’ve just spoken to Marsh. Apparently, he asked you to pass on a message. Why didn’t you tell me?’
She sighs. ‘I would have done, but the shock of being asked to leave put it out of my head.’
She goes back to the article she was reading, and I stand at the sink, bristling with resentment, before saying quietly, ‘You went behind my back, Cora.’
‘I did no such thing. Will you please calm down? You’re beginning to sound mad. I meant to tell you earlier, obviously, but you started having a go at us, so I decided it would be tactful to wait until you were in a better mood.’
I only hear the word ‘mad’. It takes me flying back to the worst night of my life, to the flat I used to share with Douglas. To a woman screaming that word at me, to blood pumping from a deep wound. I screw my fists up tight and leave the room, sit on the stairs and call Nick’s number to hear the recording of his voice. I check In-Step to see if he’s moved. He hasn’t. There’s a big fat zero beside his cartoon bird, as there has been every day since that Saturday. Below, I see that Anna isn’t moving either. So she’s probably at home. I need to talk to her again about that Thursday evening. I still think she’s the woman Evan saw, and I’m determined to prove it. It’s too late to go round there today, and I don’t want to broach the subject with Kai in the house. I’ll talk to her in the morning.
NICK
July 2000
THE GAME HAS FINISHED, JESS IS BUTTERING CRUMPETS while Lorna sets out an assortment of chipped plates and mugs. The rain has finally stopped, the sun slow-winking in and out of view from behind fluffy clouds. Izzy hasn’t come back yet and he’s not sure what to do, whether to say anything. He doesn’t think anyone saw him come in.
He watches the three older girls through the door to the snug. Pansy and Freya are on the brown corduroy sofa, Taisie lounging on a beanbag at their feet while Freya plaits her hair. The twins are singing show tunes, Jess joining in with a little too much gusto from behind him. It’s like a scene from a painting transposed into modern life. Three nymphs. In the painting Taisie would be in the water. Then she turns her head, catches his eye and it’s not the same snarling hostility he’s become used to over the past week; it’s not the old Taisie either. It’s like she’s taken off her carapace. She looks lost and anxious and he’s suddenly sorry that he allowed himself to be targeted by Rosa, that he didn’t take the hint. He had kissed Taisie at the barbecue and then chosen to pretend it didn’t happen. He had been confused, a little repulsed, angry at himself, scared of starting one thing and destroying another. Shit. This is his fault. All he needed to do was apologize and none of it would have happened, the summer wouldn’t have been spoilt. Izzy would be sitting here eating crumpets with them, giggling, instead of sulking.
He’s getting really worried. It’s his fault she’s outside. He scared her. Should he have said something, done more, grabbed her hand and dragged her home, told her not to be silly? What if she isn’t playing a game, what if she’s punishing him? She won’t go in the water; why would she? But in that case, where the fuck is she? He doesn’t want to have to explain what happened, because they’ll look at him like he’s mad, but maybe he should say something. He opens his mouth to speak but is forestalled by Rory.
‘Where’s Izzy?’
‘Must be still hiding,’ Nick says, relieved.
‘One of you ring the bell,’ Lorna says.
Rory leaps up and dashes to the front door. The peal is loud and long, designed to call errant children in from the fields and woodland beyond the garden.
Listening to it fade out, Nick feels a knife-twist of guilt, though there is no reason why he should. Izzy kissed him, mid-nightmare. It was hardly his fault. He wishes she had listened to him, though.
‘Go and find her, would you, Alex?’ Jess says. ‘She won’t want to miss out on these.’
Alex pounds up the stairs and along the landing, shouting for his sister. His footsteps echo through the house. No one speaks.
‘I can’t find her,’ he says, standing in the kitchen door, panting.
Jess frowns and Nick’s nerves prickle. The three girls slowly stand up and come into the kitchen. Lorna smiles and says she’ll be around somewhere. ‘Perhaps she went outside. Why don’t you all go and look for her? Spread out.’
Rory and Alex glance regretfully at the crumpets, butter melting through their perforations, and Lorna offers them to Nick with a smile.
‘Take them with you.’
Within seconds the plate is empty. Nick sprints out of the back door with the others. They fan out across the garden, the younger boys towards the barn, Nick to the woods and the older girls to the swimming pool with its clapboard changing room.
He’s on his own, running along the path, deliberately obliterating his own footprints, rain dripping from leaf to leaf before landing on his forehead, his nose, his shoulders. He calls her name as he runs, then reaches the river and stops, short of breath. He’s going to address his fitness when he gets home. A six-pack by Christmas. He can hear distant shouts. The river has risen considerably. It must be a metre deeper than it was yesterday, swollen by the torrential rain. Out of the corner of his eye he sees something that looks out of place with the mud and trodden-down grass of the riverbank. He squints and walks towards it. A pair of trainers. He picks them up, turns them round in his hands and looks out across the water, and his blood pounds in his ears.
GRACE
Tuesday, 24 April 2018
OUTSIDE ANNA’S I TAKE A DEEP BREATH BEFORE RINGING the bell. I hear her footsteps, then the door opens. She stoops to pat the dog, then opens the door wider to let us in. In the kitchen she pours water into a plastic tub. Her hand shakes as she puts it on the floor so that it splashes on to the floorboards and dribbles through the gaps. Toffee sniffs around, whines, and comes to sit right up close to me, leaning against my leg. I rest my hand on his shoulder to settle him.
Anna holds the kettle under the stream of water. To her left
a regiment of different-sized black knife handles stick out of a bleached wood block. I try not to look at it. When she turns to me, she’s smiling.
‘Good timing. I needed a break.’
‘You’re not painting this morning?’ She isn’t wearing her overalls.
‘No. Paperwork, damn it.’ She screws up her face in an expression of disgust.
I look around. Anna’s kitchen smells of paint and linseed oil. In the small glass extension there are four child-sized wooden chairs – they look like IKEA – two of them completed, one not started, and the one she’s currently working on, sitting on a paint-spattered trestle table. It’s painted with the name Thomas and a selection of rockets and stars. The completed pair are for Sammy and Jenna. They’ve been painstakingly done, the images delicate and detailed.
‘What’s happened to this one?’ I ask, picking up a broken chair.
She takes it off me and inspects it, pushes the loosened rail back into its hole. ‘I tripped over it. Nearly broke my leg. It just needs a bit of glue and a hammer.’
‘I wish I was as practical as you.’
She smiles. ‘I didn’t use to be. I’ve surprised myself. It’s a good feeling, knowing that I can manage on my own.’
The kettle clicks, and Anna fills two mugs. She adds milk and puts them on the table. We sit down.
‘So, how are you?’ she asks. She pulls her hair back, twists it and lets it fall.
I keep my hands on my knees because they’re shaking so much. I’m scared of what comes next. On the way over, I scripted what I wanted to say, but I can’t remember how I proposed starting.
‘Not so good. It’s the not knowing that’s the worst thing. How can someone disappear without leaving a trace?’ I pick up my coffee and blow on it, then sip carefully, watching her over the rim. Toffee barks sharply. I press my hand on his muzzle to shush him.
‘Sorry, he’s been nervy since Nick went.’
‘I’ve got mice,’ Anna says. ‘I expect he can smell them.’
‘Probably.’ I drink some more of the coffee. She watches me, a question in her eyes. She wants to know what I’m doing here. I put my mug down and take a deep breath.
‘Anna, you remember I asked you if you’d happened to bump into Nick the Thursday before he disappeared?’
She frowns, but I don’t believe she’s forgotten. I wait, my eyebrows raised, until a red tinge begins to creep up her neck. I take a deep breath. I need her to believe I know more than I do. I decide to lie; after all, it may be the truth. ‘You were seen, Anna.’
‘What?’ Her mouth stays open. That and her flushed face tell me all I need to know.
‘Cassie’s husband saw you arguing with Nick.’
There’s a long silence, and I don’t fill it. I understand that she needs time to adjust.
‘OK. Yes. I did see Nick. We recognized each other from the school and said hello. We weren’t arguing. I don’t know what gave him that idea.’
Finally. I look directly into her eyes. ‘Did something happen between you two? Are you having an affair?’
She looks genuinely baffled. ‘No! Absolutely not. God, people are such gossips.’
‘So you do know him?’
The silence is long and painful. I can see the conflict in her face.
‘All right,’ she sighs. ‘Yes. I knew him a long time ago, but I hadn’t seen him in years, I swear. I wasn’t even sure if he was who I thought he was. I’d seen you two together and heard you refer to him as Nick, but I was confused because Lottie’s surname is Trelawney-Parr. I had no idea she wasn’t his daughter until Cassie told me.’ She holds my gaze. She seems sincere.
I push my fingers through my hair and groan. ‘How long have you known each other?’
‘Since I was two. But the last time I saw him, I was in my teens.’
‘Brilliant. Jesus, all these people crawling out of Nick’s past. Why don’t I know any of this?’
‘Why would you? We hadn’t been in touch since 2000. Does he tell you about all his old school friends?’
‘Sorry, that was a stupid question. Listen, do you know an Alex Wells? He would have been a little younger than you, but he went to Nick’s school too.’
‘No.’ She answers too quickly. ‘Well, I don’t think so. It was a big school. I wouldn’t have known the names of the boys in the years below me. Would you?’
I laugh. ‘Certainly not.’ We’re OK again.
Toffee starts to whine so I pick him up, looking round as I do so. A photograph on the dresser snags my attention. I get up for a closer look and feel a cold trickle down my spine. I’ve seen it before; or at least, I’ve seen part of it. This one is uncropped, and the person whose arms are so fondly draped around Izzy Wells’ shoulders is Anna. Younger but, unmistakably, her. I turn to find her staring.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Alex Wells showed me this picture. Why do you have it?’
She takes the frame from me and sets it back on the shelf. ‘You’re going to find out sooner or later,’ she says.
I tense. ‘Find out what?’ But I think I already know.
‘Alex is my brother. It was my sister who drowned. It was Izzy.’
My mouth drops open. ‘Why did you lie to me?’
Her face is stiff. ‘I don’t know. Habit, I suppose. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know my family. I haven’t spoken to any of them in years.’
I try to imagine what it would feel like if Lottie refused to speak to me. It would be devastating. Anna must feel the same about Kai; and yet she’s cut her mother out of her life, and her grandchild’s life. She had been through a trauma, but still, why add to their pain?
‘What happened?’
I go back to my chair and sit down, lean on my elbows and watch her. She pulls her eyes from mine and looks down, scratching a dried blob of paint from the knuckle of her thumb.
‘Do you want the short version, or the long one?’ she asks.
‘I have plenty of time.’
Finally, she looks up and shrugs. ‘Well, OK. I’m the oldest of four. Two girls, two boys. Alex, obviously, and Rory. It’s the typical thing, all the pressure on the first baby to be perfect, to speak early, to walk early, to achieve more than the other babies popped out by the women you’ve met at the NCT. Then two years later Izzy comes along, premature and fighting for life. I was a stroppy, spiky little thing, who didn’t like to be cuddled for too long, but Izzy, when she was tiny, would lie on Mum’s chest, like she was still inside her. Alex and Rory were princes and Izzy was Mum’s little warrior. I slipped between the cracks. So, anyway, I became a disgustingly attention-seeking child, and a filthy-tempered, equally attention-seeking adolescent and when the terrible things started happening – did Alex tell you that Dad lost his money thanks to Tim Ritchie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yeah, well. After what happened to Izzy, it almost killed him. I started counting the days till I could go. I finished my GCSEs, packed my bags and went back to London.’
‘Where did you stay?’
‘With my godmother in Hackney, while I did my A levels. Then I moved out. So what else did Alex say? I suppose he told you all about that holiday?’
‘Not much. Just what happened to your sister. It’s Nick I want to know about.’
She tilts her head, squeezes her eyes shut and rubs her fingers across the bridge of her nose. She takes a deep breath. ‘I gave Nick a really hard time.’
‘Why?’
‘He’d upset me. I’d caught him kissing a friend of mine and I wanted to punish him. It was one of the reasons I was so keen to talk to him. I wanted to apologize for being such a bitch that summer. It backfired on me big-time. Everyone started to hate me. I would have stopped it all and made friends with Nick again.’ She draws a long sigh. ‘But then Izzy died, and our family fell apart. I didn’t want to talk to any of them. I avoided Nick. I had little to do with my brothers – there was too big a gap between us.’
‘What else did you talk t
o Nick about?’
‘This and that. Our children and the school. I told him that I’d been married and was a widow. He was sweet about that. He said I should come for supper some time. He said you were always having little supper parties.’
‘Oh, not that often,’ I say quickly. Would Nick have said those things? I suppose he might have done. But then why baulk when I suggest exactly that? It makes no sense.
Her phone buzzes; she swipes and reads the message then glances at me. ‘It’s Susanna wanting to know how many cakes she can put me down for.’
I nod, not interested. ‘I wish you’d told me.’
She fiddles with her hair, rubbing the ends between her finger and thumb, pulling a strand taut across her lips, then curling it behind her ear. ‘I do, too. I just didn’t want that summer rehashed, to have to explain how appallingly I behaved. Meeting Nick brought it all back.’
‘For him, too, I’d imagine.’
‘Yes.’ She looks as worn out as I feel. ‘All I can tell you is that Izzy had a thing about him. She followed him round and she was the only one who refused to obey my rules.’
‘What rules?’
‘We pretended he didn’t exist. Didn’t Alex say?’
I think back and shake my head. ‘No, he didn’t.’
‘That is so like him. Well, it went on for days. But Izzy wouldn’t stick to the plan. Whenever she thought I wasn’t looking, she’d smile at him. She would talk to him if I wasn’t in the room. I’m glad of that now. My sister was a kinder person than me. She should still be here.’
‘Why was everyone so pathetic? Why didn’t they tell you to stop it or ignore you?’
‘Have you forgotten what it’s like being a teenager? Weren’t you ever so in thrall to someone that you’d do anything to be in favour? I’m not proud of how I behaved, but back then the sense of power it gave me was extraordinary. I look back, and I don’t recognize that girl as me; but it was. We do bad things when we’re young and ignorant, but it doesn’t necessarily make us bad adults. Stronger children gang up on weaker children; it’s human nature. And down in Devon, in that huge old house, cut off from London and real life, it was like we were on an island. Different rules applied. Nick began to rely on Izzy.’ There’s a glint in her eye when she says this. ‘Maybe the age gap between them became distorted or blurred around the edges.’
