It was an ordinary morning, not long after she’d turned sixteen. Toby, who was ten by then, was getting ready to walk to school. I was dressed in my nurse’s uniform in preparation for another shift and Doug was clearing the breakfast things away. I didn’t even look up when she came into the room, though I was surprised she was out of bed. She had finished school without a GCSE to her name and, having flatly refused to re-sit them, spent her days at home, rarely surfacing before noon as she slept off the night before. I remember I glanced at Doug, and my first hint that something was wrong was the expression of astonishment on his face. It was then that I turned and looked at my daughter.
Of all the awful things she had shocked us with over the past couple of years, nothing could have prepared me for how she looked that morning. Because it was an entirely different girl who stood before me now. Her usual rat’s nest hair was clean and neatly brushed. And though I had assumed she’d long ago thrown out all the nice clothes I’d bought her, today she was dressed in a pretty coral jumper and a plain, knee-length denim skirt. Her make-up was subtle, the black nail varnish removed, as was the nose ring and multiple ear studs she’d taken to wearing lately.
She didn’t look at us as she made herself some toast. Doug, Toby and I stared at each other in mute disbelief.
‘Hannah,’ I said nervously. ‘You look very nice today.’
She looked up then, but though she raised her eyebrows mockingly, she didn’t reply.
‘Going somewhere?’ Doug asked.
‘Nowhere special,’ she said. We watched as she finished her breakfast, and then she got up and left the house. I didn’t find out for a long time what she was up to. And when I did, it was far too late to stop her.
18
London, 2017
Clara closed the door to Mac’s spare room and sat down on the bed, listening as he moved around the flat turning off the lights, before going into his own room. On the table was a pile of books he’d left there for her, and she smiled at his thoughtfulness. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep. From the moment they’d said goodbye outside the bar, Emily had haunted Clara’s thoughts. Their meeting had done nothing to shed light on the mystery of her disappearance, leaving Clara more plagued by questions than ever.
She longed to see her again, yet nearly two days had passed and she’d received no more messages from Emily, leaving her with the nagging worry that she might have vanished as suddenly as she’d appeared, their meeting already taking on the unreality of a dream.
When she’d told Mac she thought she’d seen him that night he’d stared back at her blankly. ‘Of course I wasn’t there,’ he said in confusion. ‘You said I couldn’t come. I was right here, waiting to hear all about it.’
‘I tried to call you, though – it went straight to voicemail.’
He looked at her, mystified. ‘Sometimes my phone loses signal in this flat, but … Christ, there’s no way I wouldn’t have picked up if my phone rang, you know that!’
She considered this. The signal thing was true; his flat seemed to be in a bit of a black spot reception-wise – she’d experienced herself, several times, the frustration of pacing its rooms, waving her iPhone around, trying to pick up a signal. She gazed back at him. He was telling the truth, she could see that. She must have been mistaken – and no wonder, when she’d been so stunned by her meeting with Emily. Plus, the street had been crowded and dark, and they’d been so far away.
For the past two nights she had lain awake, going over and over every moment of her and Emily’s conversation. Had Clara scared her off by asking too many questions? Or was something, or someone, preventing her from making contact again? When she finally slept her dreams were plagued by visions of Emily in distress, trapped somewhere dark and terrifying, her face morphing into Luke’s. She’d often wake, her throat constricted with fear, too anxious and upset to go back to sleep.
Wherever she went, whatever she did, Emily was never far from her thoughts and she began to dread Rose’s calls, the guilt she felt when she heard her voice almost unbearable, knowing that with a few choice words she could put an end to so many years of uncertainty. Yet she couldn’t shake the suspicion that Emily was somehow protecting her parents by refusing to see them; that telling Rose and Oliver might put them in danger. And though Emily had said that her and Luke’s disappearances weren’t linked, Clara wasn’t entirely sure she had believed her. Also, she had given her word she’d let Emily go to them herself when the time was right. There was nothing she could do except wait and hope that Emily would get in touch again – and that the next time she did, Clara would be able to unravel a little more of the mystery of what happened to her twenty years before.
Next on her and Mac’s list of women to contact was Jade Williams, the girl Luke had dated while he was at university. She tried to remember what he’d told her about this, his next serious relationship after Amy, and recalled now that he’d been unusually evasive when she’d asked him about her, had wanted in fact to change the subject as quickly as possible. She had assumed at the time that things had ended badly between them and, not wanting to pry, hadn’t pressed him further.
It was the twelfth night without Luke, and she and Mac were sitting at his kitchen table, half-heartedly playing a game of gin rummy and listening to music. She had phoned her parents earlier, and after that Zoe had called, as she did almost daily, but though it was always comforting to talk to her best friend, still it felt as though she and Mac were alone in this nightmare, bound together in a hideously tense waiting game, jumping each time the phone rang, talking incessantly in painful, circular conversations about what might happen next. Through the open window the evening sounds of the Holloway Road drifted up to them; a siren’s wail, the rumble of buses, a man shouting into his phone outside the kebab shop below.
Clara eyed Mac above her hand of cards. ‘So what was she like then, this Jade? Luke never said.’
He frowned, trying to remember. ‘Bit of a party animal, good looking, quite posh. I only met her a couple of times though; me and Luke were at different unis.’
She picked up a card from the pile. ‘Why did they split?’
‘As I recall, she finished with him. He was quite cut up about it.’ He thought for a while, brow furrowed. ‘Actually, there was something odd about their break-up, now you mention it. I remember him calling me upset that Jade had ended it out of the blue. Said she’d accused him of something that wasn’t true.’
‘Accused him? Of what?’
‘That’s just it, he wouldn’t say. He was really down for a while. I saw him in the holidays and he wasn’t his old self at all.’ He picked up a card then shrugged. ‘The next time we spoke, he was over it.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘You know Luke, not one to dwell on things too long.’
Jade Williams – now Spencer – lived in a smart Georgian townhouse in Lambeth. Pinning her down to a time she could meet had proven tricky, and when at last a day was agreed, Mac had to work, so Clara went alone. She stood on the front step after she’d rung the doorbell, taking in the freshly painted olive green door, the pots of well-tended geraniums and the antique glass lantern that hung above her head. It was a quiet, leafy street with expensive cars parked outside each carefully renovated house.
The woman who answered was tall, attractive and blond, immaculately dressed in a chic trouser suit that made Clara instantly conscious of her own jeans and trainers. From behind her a red setter came bounding on to the step, wagging its tail and enthusiastically sticking its nose into Clara’s crotch. ‘Clara? How nice to meet you,’ Jade’s smile was sincere but distracted as she ushered her inside.