My heart races with trepidation. ‘Jack. Please.’
He drains his glass, then stares down into it. I can see him weighing up his options. He knows I won’t let it go. ‘I was the one who convinced your parents to hold the press conference.’
‘Okay …’
‘Your mother’s been in denial. Even faced with the trashed bedroom and your passport being found there, she was adamant you were on a holiday. I thought that’s why she refused to appeal. I told her to do it, everyone did. She wouldn’t listen. Then, when I was at the house, I heard your parents talking in the kitchen.’
I am silent, waiting for him to go on. I can see we’re getting to the kernel of it. Jack’s mouth is pressed into a tight, reluctant line.
‘When I heard what they were saying, I saw red. I lost it.’ His knuckles have gone white around the glass. I lay an encouraging hand over his, and some of the tension eases. ‘We had a blazing row. Ada called the police. That’s when they hauled me in for questioning.’
For a second, the shock renders me incapable. ‘You fought with my parents?’
‘Yeah.’ He looks away, ashamed.
‘But why? What did you hear them say?’ Even though I have no idea what he’s about to tell me, I have a feeling everything is about to change. I squeeze his hand, silently telling him it’s okay. I want to know.
‘They said they were lucky it wasn’t Ada who’d gone missing.’
My skin shakes over my bones.
Lucky it wasn’t Ada who’d gone missing.
Jack is still speaking; his lips are moving quickly but I can’t hear anything over the sound of blood pulsing in my ears.
Lucky it wasn’t Ada.
He takes the empty tumbler from my hand and fills it with water from the sink.
Lucky it wasn’t Ada.
He is holding it out to me, but I can’t take it. Can’t move.
I never wanted to be in a competition with my sister, but my parents made it that way. They spent years piling the weight of expectation onto my shoulders. You’re the academic one. You’re going to succeed. You’re going to do more, be more. Then Ada married Ethan, and I gave up my London life and my parents made it clear: I’d lost the race. I’d let them down.
My friends have always shrugged off my concerns that my parents preferred Ada, reassuring me everyone felt their sibling was the favourite, and my parents, like all parents, loved us equally because that’s what parents do. They have a favourite colour, a favourite season but never do they have a favourite child. It’s an inconceivable notion to those of us without children. Everyone knows parents will never answer when questioned which of their children they would save in matters of life and death. But my parents have, haven’t they? No one even asked, and they chose her.
Jack was right: first born, most loved.
‘Elodie?’ Jack is pushing my hair back from my face. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘I got wound up hearing you feel sorry for them after everything they said. I told Meredith to wear something black, muted – it’s respectful, but she and Ada wanted bright. Bold.’ He snorts, as though disgusted by the memory. ‘You know they’re still going ahead with Ruby’s baby shower? It’s all they talk about. Yeah, they’re worried about you, but not half as much as I’d expected them to be. I don’t think it will do them any harm if we wait a while longer. Maybe they’ll give a shit if we drag this out.’
I am furious, which is better than unloved and wrecked. I take Jack’s glass from his hand. ‘You’re right. Fuck ’em.’ Then I knock back the burning whisky.
For the rest of the day and well into the evening, Jack works hard to bring me out of my stony mood, but I am Pygmalion’s wife; ivory-made. Cold. He tells me I am loved. He insists, but my ears are unhearing, marble shells. He gets Kathryn’s old record player and vinyl records from the loft. We sit on the rug in the lounge, drinking wine and listening to music from our youth. He’s trying to take us back to a time when things were simpler, when we weren’t faking an abduction and hiding out from the police. ‘My Girl’ by The Temptations is playing, and I feel myself become warm like candle wax. When I was little, me and Mum would dance around our living room to this song – just the two of us – my feet in her white patent stilettos.
I could cry.
He strokes my hair, and I close my eyes to trap the tears.
With Noah gone, Jack is the only person left in my life who truly loves me.
This thought rises, then floats; it is both comforting and sad.
Chapter Twenty-Six
25 Days Missing
Adaline Archer
Since the appeal, things have been unbearable intense. Mum and Dad get dozens of letters every day, ranging from kind to cruel. We had the option for them to be opened and read by police before being passed to us. Mum refused. She wants to read Every. Single. Letter.
Most are from people wanting to tell us we’re in their thoughts and prayers, one or two are from those who’ve also had a family member disappear, the odd few are from sociopaths who get a kick out of sending letters claiming to have you chained up in their attic. I pass letters like that on to the police. It’s strange to think that one of those letters could be a confession from your abductor and I’ve held it in my hand.
For weeks, I was desperate for Mum to rejoin reality and accept you were taken, and now she has, I think she was better off before. She cries and mithers and scrolls endlessly through the internet, reading facts about missing people, then spouting them at random.
A couple of days ago, over slices of cake at Kathryn’s house, she said, ‘Around 100,000 adults go missing in the UK every year.’
‘Oh gosh,’ said Kathryn, then we all stumbled through the resulting silence.
It made me think though. That’s a huge number. Missing people are like bobby pins; over time so many of them vanish, but where do they go?
When I popped over to our parents’ yesterday, she said, ‘Sex trafficking doesn’t just happen in foreign countries, you know, it happens in the UK too.’
Dad goes on long walks late at night. He says he’s thinking but I’m sure he’s looking for you. He came by my house the other night with his toolbox and walked around fixing things that didn’t really need fixing.
‘I’ve ordered you a security light,’ he told me.
‘I have one.’
‘This is better. Brighter.’
‘We don’t need it.’
‘It’s coming tomorrow.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘You don’t rent. You own. What’s the problem?’
‘No problem, but—’