Rose shook her head. ‘We don’t know.’
Tom drained his glass of wine. ‘When did you guess that Hannah was behind Luke’s disappearance?’ he asked.
Oliver glanced at him. ‘Hannah sent us a picture of him, saying he was with her. She said that she wanted more money, that if we didn’t give it to her, she’d hurt him. So we gave her what she asked for, then she said it wasn’t enough. She said if we paid her more she’d let Luke go. We’ve been going out of our minds, Tom. We know it’s not money she wants, she wants to torture us, this is her revenge, that’s why she’s keeping it going, the longer she can cause us pain, the better she likes it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’ Tom asked next. ‘Surely that was the first thing you should have done?’
‘We didn’t dare!’ Rose said. ‘She seems to know everything about us. Every move we make – when we speak to the police, what we talk about with them, our conversations or meetings with Clara, you name it, she somehow knows about it. We couldn’t work out how she was doing it, even if we used public telephones, she’d know what we talked about, it’s terrifying. She said if we told the police about her, she’d know and she’d kill Luke immediately. We couldn’t take that risk. And then …’ her voice faltered and she took a gulping breath. ‘And then she sent us pictures of Luke, to warn us what would happen if we did.’
‘Pictures?’ Clara asked, feeling sick. ‘What pictures?’
Oliver pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘This is the last one that Hannah sent us.’
‘Let me see that.’ Tom’s face drained of colour as he took the phone from his father and stared down at its screen. Wordlessly he passed it to Clara. It was a picture of Luke. He had a large and vivid bruise across his face, a split lip, and his skin behind his scars was horribly pale, his eyes staring glassily at the lens.
Clara gasped in horror as she swiped to the next photo. It showed Luke’s bound arms, covered in hundreds of small, weeping knife wounds. ‘Oh no,’ she whispered, ‘oh God.’
‘We’ve been waiting to hear from her, to tell us what to do next,’ Rose said. ‘We’re so frightened.’ Fresh tears fell from her eyes. ‘She’s dangerous, Tom. She’s so very dangerous.’
A coldness spread through Clara. ‘How dangerous?’ She looked at Oliver. ‘When you said she went to prison, what was it for?’
28
Cambridgeshire, 1997
They say that personality disorders, including sociopathy, can come about due to a mixture of biology and circumstance. A neurological malfunction, often inherited, that can be exacerbated by trauma in childhood. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it over the years, in fact I’ve thought of little else, but I still don’t know why Hannah became the person that she did. Perhaps she did inherit her mother’s psychiatric issues, perhaps the discovery of where she came from that day, aged seven, detonated a bomb that been sitting idle, waiting for its touchpaper to be lit. I guess I’ll never know for sure. I try my hardest not to dwell on the reasons why any more. I last saw Hannah – I no longer refer to her as my daughter – over twenty years ago. I never want to see her face again.
After I overheard Hannah on the phone to Emily that day, pretending to be ‘Becky’, I was thrown into a panic. I didn’t know what to do for the best. I knew I should call Rose to warn her, but I felt paralysed. Should I talk to Hannah first, try to dissuade her from her plan, whatever that might be? I needed to find out what she was intending to do. When she ended the call to Emily, I waited in the kitchen for her to come down, my head in turmoil, until I heard her door open and, a few seconds later, her tread on the stairs.
She glanced at me as she entered the kitchen, but as usual said nothing, coldly ignoring me as she went to the cupboard and started rooting around for food. I can still see her now. She was wearing black leggings and a T-shirt that might once have been white, her face a mess of last night’s make-up that she hadn’t bothered to wipe off. Yet still her beauty made me catch my breath. I thought again of the strange, fake voice she’d used on the phone, how she’d called herself ‘Becky’, and I shuddered. At last I steeled myself and cleared my throat. ‘Hannah?’
She straightened up, a packet of biscuits in her hand. ‘What?’
I swallowed hard and braced myself. How had I become so afraid of my own daughter? ‘I know you’ve been meeting Emily Lawson,’ I said. ‘I overheard you on the phone with her this morning.’
I saw surprise register on her face. For a few seconds there was absolute silence, and then she did something I hadn’t expected her to do in a thousand years: she started to cry. As I looked on, amazed, at the tears rolling down her face, she put the biscuits down and came over to where I was sitting at the table. She took the seat opposite mine, put her head on her arms, and began to sob.
Funny to think that I still loved her then, that the sight of her in pain could make my heart twist in sympathy as though it were my own that was breaking. ‘Oh, Hannah,’ I said. ‘Oh my darling, what is it?’ I reached across the table and took hold of her hand. It was the first time she’d let me touch her in years. ‘Tell me, please, tell me what this is all about.’
It took her a while to compose herself. When she did, she wiped her eyes and said in a voice so small and desolate that it brought a lump to my throat, ‘I just want them to love me – my real family, I mean. I want to know them, to understand where I come from.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears again. ‘Ever since I found out about my real mother and father, I’ve felt so confused.’
I was astonished. This was the first time she’d ever brought up what she’d overheard all those years before. ‘I had no idea you felt like this,’ I stammered.
And then, suddenly, and to my horror, a wide smirk broke across her face. ‘Jesus, you’re stupid,’ she said.
As I recoiled she snatched her hand away and slowly shook her head as though dumbfounded. ‘You actually bought that, didn’t you?’ She laughed loudly, a harsh, ugly sound. ‘I always knew you were a fucking idiot, Beth,’ she went on, ‘but I didn’t know you were quite this retarded.’
She got up and, walking around the table towards me, leant down and put her face so close to mine that I could smell the cigarettes on her breath. ‘What I actually want to do is to fuck them up,’ she said quietly. ‘And not just the Lawsons – all of you.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, my voice shaking.
‘I’ve been watching them,’ she said. ‘Watching them for years. My brothers and sister, my father and his dear wife. Sometimes I’d go every day, catching the train over there, following them to school or work.’ She paused, raising her eyebrows at me. ‘They have a nice life, don’t they? A lovely, happy life. While I’ve been stuck here in this shit hole with you.’ I flinched, and she laughed. ‘How did my mother die, Beth? I heard you talk that day to Rose, I heard her say that she was with my mother when she died, about her body being found in the sea. Rose pushed her, didn’t she?’
My eyes widened in shock. ‘No! No, Hannah,’ I cried. ‘Of course not! Your mother jumped, she committed suicide.’
‘I don’t believe you. Rose killed her. Because my mother slept with her husband. Rose murdered her.’
I shook my head in shock and pity, that she had convinced herself of such a dreadful thing. ‘Hannah, your mother was very unhappy,’ I said firmly, ‘she was ill, she died by throwing herself into the sea.’
‘No! She wouldn’t have left me. I was her baby. I was all she had. Rose murdered her. My mother would never have left me alone like that.’
‘Hannah, that’s not true,’ I cried. ‘Your mother jumped, she took her own life. I’m sorry, but it’s true. It was suicide.’
A look of infinite hatred flashed in Hannah’s eyes then. ‘Rose did it, and then she and my father gave me away like I was a fucking stray puppy.’