‘So, do you think it was that bloke Sophie was with?’ she asks, sensing that I don’t want to say any more. ‘That did it, I mean? You were talking to him, weren’t you?’
‘We chatted for a bit, that’s all,’ I say, careful not to sound too defensive. ‘He seemed nice. I can’t imagine him… doing that. But then I can’t imagine anyone doing it, but somebody did, didn’t they? It makes you realise, all these things you see on the news, in the papers – they’ve happened to ordinary people like us. They aren’t special, they were just going about their everyday lives until something turned them upside down.’
‘What about Matt Lewis?’ she says. ‘He always had a thing for Sophie, didn’t he?’
For someone who wasn’t part of our crowd, Esther is certainly very well informed. ‘Well, yes, I think he did, but that hardly means he’s going to murder her twenty-seven years later, does it?’
‘I suppose. You don’t think…’ she hesitates. ‘The Facebook request, the birthday presents?’
‘I don’t know, Esther. That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve had some more messages from her.’
‘Saying what?’
I outline the content of the messages briefly. ‘But Esther, are we actually saying that she could still be alive? Where could she have been?’
Esther stops and leans against the railings, gazing over the river towards St Paul’s, resplendent in the sunlight. ‘I don’t know. They never found her body, did they? But why come back now? How, even?’
‘I don’t know. But what Tim said, talking about her in the present tense… I saw him, you know. Outside the reunion. He told me when I saw him in Sharne Bay that he was going to go on her behalf, but then he didn’t show up. Except… he did, sort of. I saw him outside, talking to someone.’
‘Tim was there?’ She looks at me questioningly.
‘Yes. Well, not actually at the reunion. I saw him at the top of the drive, when I was outside smoking.’
‘That’s weird. I wonder why he didn’t come in. I suppose maybe he changed his mind when it came to it? It’s a pretty weird thing for anyone to do, when you think about it. Go to a school reunion, I mean. If you really cared about any of those people they would still be friends, and if you don’t care about them, what on earth are you there for? Curiosity?’
‘You went,’ I say, stung by her words.
‘Yes, and I wish I hadn’t now. For starters I wouldn’t be mixed up in all this. And it would have meant that I was able to leave the past in the past, but I couldn’t. I can’t. I had to show everyone – look at me now with my great career and my husband and my children. How bloody stupid. I should have just put it all on Facebook like everyone else.’ Her hands tighten on the railings.
‘It’s not stupid, Esther. I didn’t find out about the reunion until months after it was organised. Nobody had thought to let me know, and I felt crushed. If anything’s bloody stupid, that is. Why should it even matter?’
‘It shouldn’t. But it does,’ Esther says. ‘It all matters. Part of me feels hurt that if she is still alive, she hasn’t let me know. We were close, you know, before she died. She talked to me about a lot of stuff. Do you know about what happened to her at her old school? Did she ever talk to you about it?’
‘She tried once, I think.’ Slatted wooden sunbeds in the dark, breath rising in the night air. Two little fingers, linked.
‘That boy that was obsessed with her – it was pretty bad. You’d call it stalking now, there’d be restraining orders and all sorts, but back then there wasn’t much they could do unless he physically hurt her.’
She turns and we walk along the river in silence for a while.
‘What is it you want, Louise? Why did you call?’
I want a night of untroubled sleep. I want to change the past. I want to stop looking over my shoulder on the tube platform, stop thinking about jumping or being pushed every time I cross a bridge.
‘I’m frightened, Esther. I just want to know what happened to Maria; what happened to Sophie.’ I want to know how much of it is my fault; if I’m next.
‘Shouldn’t you leave it to the police?’
She doesn’t know I haven’t told the police about the friend request from Maria. There’s so much she doesn’t know that it overwhelms me. I realise I have no idea what I’m doing here.
‘Yes, you’re probably right. Look, Esther, I’ve got to go, I need to get back to pick Henry up from school.’
‘Oh. Right, OK. I’ll see you sometime… maybe?’
‘Yes, that’d be lovely.’ I sound fake, as if I’m leaving a dinner party where I’ve had a really terrible time but am putting a brave face on it. ‘Bye then.’
I turn back the way we’ve come and stride along, trying to look purposeful. The wind, which had been pushing us along from behind is now biting into my face, making my eyes water.
I am thinking about Tim, at the top of the school drive. Tim, whose adolescence was rocked and the fabric of his life changed for ever by the disappearance of his sister; Tim, who must have worked so hard just to attain an ordinary life: a home, a wife, a plump-cheeked baby. How has he carried on? How do you get over something like that? Or has he never had to get over it? Has he been pretending to grieve for a sister who is alive and well, and living under a false identity? And if that is the case, then what has she told him? How much does he know?
Chapter 27
He may have saved her, but that doesn’t mean he has to keep on saving her. He tells her to stay quiet, not to rock the boat, live the life she’s got. But she’s not living, not really. She’s just existing, getting through one day, and then another. But eventually those days will run out and what will she have to show for them?
Sometimes she wonders if maybe she could survive on her own. Throw off this dark, heavy cloak of secrecy that she has been wearing – just put it down and walk away, become the person she should have been all along.
Could she let someone else in? He knows the truth, and maybe that should be enough for her; not to be alone with it. She never could have got through it without him, she knows that much. Her faithful companion. Her partner in crime, forever complicit in the events of the night that changed everything.
She has lived her life in shadow, running and hiding. Yes, she can put a good face on it when she needs to, but inside she is still that girl. She’s torn between the gut-twisting fear of anybody knowing who she really is, and the contrasting desire to be truly seen. Isn’t that what we all want, really?
She wants to step out into the light and live the life she should have lived. She wants to be heard. She wants to be known.
Chapter 28
2016