She led Clara down to an enormous basement with an open-plan kitchen, tasteful and expensive looking with duck-egg blue units and white marble worktops. Clara perched at the rectory table and watched as Jade flew around making tea, talking in rapid, breathless flurries as she told Clara about the interiors company she’d started with her husband – ‘Honestly we’ve been working like dogs, our poor baby barely recognizes us, though luckily we’ve got the most wonderful nanny’ – and the alterations they’d had done to the house – ‘That’s the thing about buying around here, anywhere bigger than a shoebox and you have to expect to completely gut the place …’
Clara tried to imagine what she would have been like when she was younger and dating Luke. It was a strange idea. Had she always been so intimidatingly self-assured? She couldn’t quite picture them together.
‘So what can I do for you?’ Jade asked, suddenly businesslike now that two delicate cups of ginger tea sat on the table between them. ‘Your email said you wanted to talk about Luke Lawson.’ She leant forward, her eyes wide. ‘So awful, isn’t it? Though, as I told the police, I’m not sure what I can possibly do to help …’
‘I know this must seem strange,’ Clara said, ‘the police, as you probably know, haven’t come any closer to finding him …’
‘Yes. So I gather. I heard they’d found a van? So odd. Dreadful. You must be out of your mind.’
Clara nodded. ‘I am, we all are. My friend Mac and I are trying to find anyone who might have held a grudge against Luke. You were close to him once, and if there’s anything you can think of, anyone he might have got on the wrong side of, or who might have something against him …’
‘Hmm,’ Jade said, as though mulling it over. ‘People who might have disliked Luke.’ She pursed her lips. ‘He was a very popular lad at uni. Lots of friends, so …’
‘You were together a couple of years?’
‘More or less.’
‘Do you mind me asking why you split?’
Jade’s smile remained exactly the same, it was only her eyes that became a touch cooler. ‘It’s rather personal, actually. And a long story.’ She took a sip of her tea.
Clara nodded. ‘Of course. I’m sorry …’
She must have looked desolate because Jade sighed. ‘The thing is, Claire—’
‘Clara.’
‘Clara, sorry. The thing is, Luke Lawson … all that, was a long time ago. I really don’t think I can help you.’
‘I understand, and I’m sorry for bothering you.’ There was a silence, and Clara felt her spirits sink. This was hopeless. The whole thing was hopeless. She shouldn’t have come – it had been a stupid idea to think she’d find anything out by sticking her nose into Luke’s past like this. She was about to get to her feet when a thought struck her, and because she had nothing else to lose, asked, ‘Did you love him?’
For a moment Jade’s poise slipped a little, and someone younger and far more vulnerable took her place. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, I did, at first, very much.’
‘At first?’
She dropped her eyes. ‘As I said, it was a long time ago. Nearly a decade, in fact.’
‘I know. I’m just trying to get a picture of him, to work out why anyone would want to hurt him. If there was a side to his character I didn’t know, it might help track down whoever has done this to him. I don’t know where he is. My boyfriend has disappeared, possibly murdered, and no one has a clue where he is or what’s happened to him.’ She pressed her fingers to her eyes, forcing back her tears.
Jade got up to fetch her a tissue. ‘Look, please don’t upset yourself,’ she said, and then, as if she’d suddenly come to a decision, she went on: ‘The fact is, Luke cheated on me. We were very young, and you know what it’s like at uni, all the parties, everyone drunk most of the time. Luke and I got together in our first term and it was great for a while. But halfway through our second year I found out he’d slept with someone else.’
Clara looked at her in surprise. ‘Who with?’
‘A friend of a friend. I didn’t believe it, not at first. I went to find the girl myself. And as soon as I confronted her, I knew it was true.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ She remembered how she’d felt when she’d found out about Sadie, and she winced in sympathy.
Jade stared down at her cup. ‘It wasn’t just that he’d cheated on me,’ she said very quietly. ‘The girl was telling everyone that he’d pressured her into it, that they’d kissed but then she’d changed her mind and he’d pestered and pestered her until she gave in. And afterwards, Luke started harassing her …’
‘Harassing her?’
‘She said he turned up the next night, and when she said no and showed him the door, he began bombarding her with texts, turning up at her place, trying it on with her. She said he was a nightmare, and in the end she reported him to the university. God, I felt so ashamed – you can imagine the gossip.’
Clara’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Did you talk to him about it?’
‘Of course. He was very upset, burst into tears in fact, admitted that he’d got hammered at a party and kissed the girl, but denied everything else. Said she was lying, insane, that she’d come on to him, had wanted to take things further, then made it all up about him harassing her because he’d turned her down.’
‘Jesus. And did you believe him?’
She paused. ‘I didn’t know what to believe.’
‘But … didn’t this girl show you the text messages she said he’d been sending her? The missed calls and so on. I mean, did she have the evidence?’
‘No. No, she didn’t. She deleted it all. She said that as soon as he sent her a message it freaked her out so much she got rid of it, that she didn’t want to give him headspace.’
‘Well … she could have been lying,’ Clara said desperately. ‘She could have made it up.’
‘Yeah, she could have.’
‘OK, so …’
Jade shrugged. ‘Why would she lie about it? She was so certain, so sincere. You can usually tell, can’t you, when another woman’s lying to you. In the end the uni let him off with a warning. Typically, he got no comeback, apart from me dumping him of course, and a reputation for being a pest, but the general feeling was “naughty old Luke, boys will be boys” sort of thing. He continued to swear blind that the girl was lying, and he certainly had no trouble getting another girlfriend. Let’s be honest, it’s the sort of thing that happens all the time, just the sort of shit women are expected to put up with, be flattered by, even.’
Clara thought about it. About a time at a party when she was a teenager, a lad she’d fancied buying her shot after shot after shot, then, later, things going too far, too quickly, him not taking no for an answer until she finally managed to push him off. She’d told no one, worried it had been her fault for leading him on. Jade was right that it happened all the time, in different forms. A friend who often slept with her boyfriend when she didn’t feel like it because she couldn’t stand his endless moods if she didn’t, the time Zoe had been hit on by her flirty boss, who’d then made her life miserable when she’d turned him down. They were ordinary men, not monsters leaping out of bushes: friends, boyfriends, colleagues, getting drunk, getting carried away. A bit selfish. A bit entitled.
She remembered the emails Luke had been sent: Women are nothing to you, are we, Luke? We’re just here for your convenience, to fuck, to step over, to use or to bully. We’re disposable. You think you’re untouchable. Think again.
‘Did you tell the police about this?’ she asked.
Jade shifted in her seat, looking slightly uncomfortable. ‘No, it’s not something I like to dwell on. And there’s no way it would have anything to do with Luke going missing now, so I didn’t think it was relevant.’
‘Can you remember the girl’s name?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Her name was Ellen. Ellen Michaels. We have a few Facebook friends in common from our uni days and I saw that she’d got married recently, in fact. She’s living in Hong Kong now.’ Jade was silent for a bit. ‘I wonder if she thinks about it ever, about what happened with Luke.’
‘So what did Jade say?’ Mac asked her later that evening ‘Anything interesting?’
They were slumped on his sofa, picking at a stir-fry she’d made for them. And to her own surprise, Clara found herself saying, ‘No. Not really. Bit of a waste of time, to be honest.’
He nodded. ‘That’s a shame. So who’s next on the list?’