There was complete silence. Clara looked across the room to Oliver, who was still slumped in a chair, his head in his hands as his wife talked.
‘I thought,’ Rose continued, ‘or rather I hoped very much that would be an end to it. But it wasn’t, of course.’ She looked up and met Clara’s eye. ‘Because Hannah had been there all along, in the kitchen where we were talking, was hiding in the next room, listening to our conversation. She had heard everything Beth and I said. She was seven years old and she knew everything – who her real parents were, how her mother had died. Everything.’
Clara put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God, that poor kid.’
Rose glanced at her with the smallest flicker of confusion, almost, Clara thought, as if Hannah’s suffering hadn’t occurred to her in all of this. ‘I didn’t find out for many years that Hannah had overheard us, not until I saw Beth again,’ she went on, ‘and by then it was far too late. In the meantime she grew up, becoming more and more disturbed, fixated on what she’d learned. She became obsessed with Oliver and me, with all of us – her “real” family as she thought of us. She knew the hospital Beth used to work in and tracked me down there. After a while she began to skip school, getting the train over here and following Oliver to work, or standing outside the children’s school, becoming more and more resentful.’ She turned to Tom. ‘She saw you kids as having the perfect life, the life that she should be living.’
‘Didn’t you confront her?’ Tom asked angrily. ‘Talk to her?’
‘We didn’t know!’ Rose cried. ‘Even Beth had no idea until years later. Hannah always kept her distance, never approaching us, or letting herself be discovered. We had no clue that she even knew about us! And then, when she was sixteen and Emily had just turned eighteen, she engineered a way for the two of them to meet. They became friends.’
‘And you still had no idea who she was?’ Clara asked.
‘No! She told Emily her name was Becky, and she never came here to the house, not that I’d recognize her if she did. We knew Emily had a new friend but I didn’t make the connection. Why would I? The Jennings lived miles from us in Cambridgeshire, I had no idea Hannah knew about us all, I had no reason to suspect.’
‘So how did you find out?’ Mac asked.
At this Rose began to cry again. ‘One night Hannah told Emily. She told her everything. Who she really was, that Oliver was her father, that she and Emily were half-sisters, that we’d given her away to near strangers to be rid of her.’
‘My God,’ Tom said.
‘But it was worse than that. Hannah knew I’d been the only person present when her mother died, and over the years she had convinced herself that it was I who killed her, that I’d pushed her!’
‘And Emily believed her?’ Tom asked.
Rose wiped her eyes. ‘I don’t think so, thank God. I told her it wasn’t true of course, that I’d seen Nadia jump, but it didn’t stop her being furious with both of us. Furious that Oliver had had an affair, that we had kept from her that she had a half-sister, that I’d “covered up” for her dad. She said we disgusted her, that she’d never forgive us. You know what she was like, how principled she was, so sure of what was right and wrong. There was nothing we could say to make her stay, she was such a stubborn, headstrong girl. She said that she was leaving, that she never wanted to see us again. What could I do? She was eighteen! I couldn’t force her to stay!’
‘So you just let her go?’ Tom said.
‘Oh, darling, she was so, so angry with us. I thought she would go away for a few days, a week or so, and then she’d come back once she’d calmed down. And she was legally an adult, I couldn’t stop her. But she didn’t come back. We tried to look for her, but it was no use. And the next day Hannah called us, taunting us, telling us that she knew where Emily was, saying we deserved it, that she’d make us pay for the rest of our lives, that she’d drive each of you away from us, one by one.’
‘You should have told me!’ Tom cried. ‘You had no right to keep this from me!’
‘We wanted to spare you …’
‘But you didn’t! You didn’t! Are you that crazy? Did you not think I suspected something? That I didn’t hear you and Dad talking in corners, whispering away when you thought Luke and I were in bed? Then one night I heard you say it outright. I heard you telling Dad it was his fault she had left, that Emily would never forgive him for what he’d done, that she’d left because of him.’
Rose’s face fell. ‘You heard that?’
‘Why do you think I couldn’t bear to be around you any more? I knew you knew why Emily had gone. Guilt was written all over your faces. I didn’t confront you because … well because I was fifteen, it was easier to just get drunk, take drugs, stay out all night, bury my head in the sand. But I hated you, I bloody hated you for lying to me, for pretending you had no idea why our family had fallen apart.’ He turned to his father. ‘I knew it was your fault, that you made her go. I just didn’t know why.’
Clara stared at him, suddenly everything that had confused her about him making sense, and she felt a rush of pity.
‘And then when Luke went missing,’ Tom continued, ‘again your reaction didn’t add up. Just like when Emily left, I could tell you were hiding something. It wasn’t shock or bewilderment I saw on your faces, it was guilt. I saw the looks that passed between you, and then I overheard you, Dad, begging Mum’s forgiveness, promising that Luke would be OK. And when I asked you outright in that fucking kitchen, the day Clara and Mac came round, when I asked you if you knew where Luke was, you denied it! You lied! I knew you were lying. And now I know why. It’s her, isn’t it? The person who has Luke, it’s this fucking woman! Hannah, my half-sister.’
Rose nodded miserably. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘And does she know where Emily is?’
‘We don’t know. Sometimes she likes to taunt us, telling us she does, other times she denies all knowledge. We’ve never known what to believe.’
‘What does she want from us? Why did she approach me in Manchester all those years ago?’
‘Revenge,’ said Oliver quietly. ‘And money. Once she’d made contact with you in Manchester she phoned us constantly, telling us that she’d seen you, that she was going to tell you everything, that there was nothing we could do about it. That once she’d finished with you you’d never want to see us again, would disappear from our lives like your sister. She told us it was all going to come out … my affair, giving her away as a baby, the ridiculous lies about her mother’s supposed murder, all of it. She knew she couldn’t prove any of it to the police, so hurting us through you kids was the best way she could think of to punish us. We were trying to protect you from it all!’
‘Jesus fucking Christ! And you didn’t think to tell me about it? You didn’t think I had a right to know about the nutcase who was hanging around me?’
Oliver hung his head. ‘We paid her a lot of money. Thousands and thousands of pounds to leave you alone. She was broke, homeless, a drifter, she’d … been in a lot of trouble throughout her life, drugs, prison …’
‘Prison?’ Clara asked.
‘We paid her the money and it worked. We didn’t hear from her for ten years. I hired a private detective to track her down, keep an eye on her. Her life … it spiralled, she was a junkie, a prostitute, constantly in trouble with the police. She was in no fit state to continue to wage her war against us, so she left us in peace for a time.’
Clara couldn’t keep quiet any longer. ‘This is your daughter. Your daughter! As much your flesh and blood as Emily! Didn’t you care? Didn’t you feel any guilt, any responsibility for this woman? Jesus, Oliver! I can’t believe what I’m hearing!’ Oliver kept his head bent, unable to meet her gaze. She felt a burning dislike for him.
‘But why after ten years did she get it together to go after Luke?’ Mac asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense. Why now?’