Her face changes. “Are you the police?” she asks.
I’m suddenly at a loss for breath and reach out surreptitiously to steady myself against the porch wall.
“Y-yes,” I say, unconvincingly.
“You’ve just missed her,” she says.
“Ah, that’s a shame,” I say.
“Is there any news?” she asks, sensing an opportunity to get the inside scoop. “Have they found Michael yet?”
I shake my head. “Nothing I can reveal at the moment, I’m afraid.”
She wipes her hands with the tea towel, as if it gives her something to do. “You never think it’s going to come to this, do you?”
I raise my eyebrows questioningly. “Meaning?”
“Well, we always used to hear raised voices through the wall,” she says. “Her screams would send shivers down my spine.”
My stomach lurches.
“Though my husband and I used to say that if it had happened to us, we’d probably be at each other’s throats as well.” Her eyes glaze over. “I mean, how do you get over something like that?”
My phone shrills in my hand, demanding my attention. “I’m sorry,” I say, seeing that it’s Detective Robson. “I need to take this.”
“Mrs. Chandler?” she barks.
“Yes,” I say wearily.
“I’ve just come from the Royal Garden hotel.”
My legs wobble beneath me as I imagine her scouring the CCTV footage, desperately searching for the indisputable proof that I was there, drinking with Jacob, flirting with him; luring an innocent man to his death.
“I spoke to Andy Kerridge, the General Manager there,” she goes on.
I stay silent, not trusting myself to speak.
“He says that you were at the hotel.”
My head feels as if it’s about to explode as I try to second-guess what she knows and what she doesn’t. Is there any point in me continuing with this charade, if she’s just biding her time, ready to pounce with the ace up her sleeve?
What if I hadn’t wiped all the incriminating scenes from the CCTV? Had I been clever enough to leave no trace of Leon and me whatsoever? Not even a lingering suggestion in the corner of a frame; perhaps the back of my head, or a flash of his booted foot. Even if I had, there’s every chance that Andy would have it all backed up onto a hard drive. His anger, confusion, and ultimately disappointment in what I’d done when he’d trusted me leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
“He says you asked to see the CCTV from the night of June twenty-first—the night Michael Talbot went missing.”
“Yes,” I squeak, terrified that I might give something away that Andy hasn’t.
“So why did you think he was going to be there?”
“I didn’t, but it’s a place I advise my clients to go to if they ever feel in danger. So I made the assumption that he might have done.”
She’s giving nothing away. No sign of what she saw on the CCTV and no clue as to what Andy has told her.
“Mr. Talbot took a call that evening that lasted forty-five seconds.”
I know. I’d seen him on the CCTV, looking terrified as he no doubt listened to his wife telling him what she was going to do when she tracked him down. The sickening realization that the real danger might have been there in the bar with him threatens to wind me.
“Do you want to know where the call was made from?” she asks.
I wish I could say no.
“The burner phone we found hidden in your house,” she goes on, without waiting for me to answer.
It feels as if the sky is closing in on me. I fall heavily onto the closed door of my car.
“And do you want to know what else was on the phone?” says Robson, her voice sounding as if she’s underwater—or maybe it’s me that’s drowning.
“Message after message from you to Michael. And message after message from him telling you that it was over and to leave him alone.”
I gasp, desperate for air.
“But here’s the interesting thing; the messages stop on the night Michael Talbot went missing.”
“I told you,” I rasp. “I’ve never seen that phone before.”
“I’m going to need you to come down to the station first thing in the morning,” she says. “We’re running some tests on items recovered from your house and I expect to have the results by then.”
“Is it true that you’ve found some prints at the flat?” I ask, seemingly unable to stop myself from putting my foot in it.
“That’s not information I’m able to share with you at this juncture,” she says.
I want to say, But you can share it with Vanessa Talbot? but thankfully stop myself. If she finds out I’ve been stalking and hounding Michael’s wife, it’ll not work in my favor.
I get into the car and bang my hands against the steering wheel. There’s no way out of this, someone has made sure of that. I’m being forced further and further into a corner, the damning evidence building against me with every passing hour.
My chest hurts and my brain is heavy with convoluted theories of who’s behind this. As much as it pains me, Leon most definitely has the means; in fact he’s the only person who could possibly have filmed us having sex in my office and put it on my computer, who could have hidden a phone in our house. And as insane as it sounds, I’d like to think that only he could have put my sister’s bunny rabbit on my pillow, because if it wasn’t him …
Jennifer, on the other hand, may not have the means, but she’s most definitely got the motive. A tear falls onto my cheek as I wonder how far she’d go to avenge her sense of abandonment. Had she recruited Jacob to take me down? Had his whole character and backstory been created specifically for me? Has she played the part of his puppet master, expertly leaving breadcrumbs with my name on them, leading the police right to my door?
I unfold the piece of paper I’d written her phone number on and look at it, my fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Are these digits all that I need to unravel what’s going on? Do they hold the key to everything? It’s too much of a coincidence that my sister has just happened to turn up after twenty-six years for them not to.
My hands are shaking as I tap her number on the screen. After all these years spent imagining how it was going to be, this is not the conversation I thought she and I would be having. But I can’t ignore the very real possibility that she’s behind what’s going on.
I imagine her surprise when she hears my voice. She won’t be expecting it for sure; certainly not this soon. Though if she’s innocent in all this, she’ll no doubt be keen to talk to me. But if she’s got something to hide, I might be about to catch her off guard.
“Hello,” she says, her accent instantly taking me back across the pond. I try to picture her as the thirty-five-year-old woman she now is. But try as I might, all I can see is the nine-year-old child indelibly printed on my mind’s eye.
“Jen, it’s me,” I say shakily.
“Hi,” she says, hesitantly. “Wow, thanks for calling me back.”
There’s a moment of silence as we both feel the weight of what needs to be said hanging between us.
“What are you doing here, Jen?” I ask, needing to cut to the chase.
“I … I wanted to see you,” she says. “I got your contact details from Aunt Meryl—well, not directly, but she gave me enough to go on.”
“So, you know where I live?”
“Well, I know you’re in … Whitstable, is it? Is that how you say it?” She attempts to laugh.
“So, you’ve seen him?” I cut in, still unable to refer to him as my father, our father, all these years later.
“Yes,” she says quietly. “We met a couple of weeks ago.”
I can hardly bear to ask. “And?”
“And—he’s very sorry,” she says. “For everything. He says not a day has gone by when he hasn’t wondered what had become of us and how his actions had impacted our lives.”
I scoff.
“And every night,” she goes on, “just before lights out, he kissed a photo of Mom and begged for her forgiveness.”
An unexpected tear springs to my eye.
“He would love to see you,” she says. “But he’s not holding out much hope.”