‘You haven’t been charged,’ the duty solicitor said, placing a reassuring hand on Connor’s arm as Alex finished reading him his rights. ‘They’re buying themselves time, that’s all. It’s a cheap shot.’
‘Interview terminated at fourteen fifty-three,’ Alex concluded, glancing at the clock on the far wall.
‘Rachel Jones,’ Connor said quickly. ‘She knew about me and Sarah, I’m sure she did. She’s jealous. I bet she was the one who sent me that message about telling my wife.’
‘Jealous?’ said Alex. ‘Quite the stud, aren’t you, Connor? Must be difficult to focus on much else, with all this female attention you attract.’ She looked to Chloe. ‘Would you show our guest to his room, please?’
Chapter Thirty-Four
It had been easy to find out whether the weekly group meetings were being held in the same place at the same time, and sure enough, there they were: on the same day on which they’d been running for as long as Chloe was able to remember. Her parents’ lives – her own childhood – had been shaped by routine and schedule; by commitments and responsibilities. The fact that her parents were still so predictable gave Chloe a two-hour window when she knew neither of her parents would be home, although she allowed herself less than that, not wanting to run the risk of being caught by them if they were to return home early.
It was like being twelve years old all over again.
She always found that the time to get things done was when you weren’t thinking about all the possible things that could go wrong. It felt strange to be standing again in the house where she had grown up. Memories clung to the walls, faint and yellowing like old nicotine stains. There was an eerie silence about the place: something other than the stillness brought about by an absence of life.
In the hallway, a framed picture older than Chloe hung on the wall that led upstairs, taking pride of place at the entrance to the house, as it always had done.
God is the head of this house, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener at every conversation.
When she was a child, those promises had filled her with fear. Did God really see everything that happened? Did he hear their conversations… could he hear her thoughts? A part of her now wished that she was able to believe in God. She understood why so many people did. He offered comfort in a world filled with sadness and despair. He offered the promise of stability to lives otherwise shrouded in uncertainty.
It was a bleak thought that this was all there was.
If He really was all-seeing, all-knowing – if He was able to speak to her now – what might He be able to tell her?
She shook herself from her thoughts. They were silly. Futile. Glancing into the living room, Chloe felt a pang of sadness. The room looked the same – the same crimson sofa, the same beige carpet; the same bare walls that bore none of the usual family photographs or memories – and it was exactly this that filled Chloe with a sense of despondence.
What had she been expecting?
She opened the top drawer of the sideboard, aimlessly rifling through pens and paperclips, bills and receipts. She wanted a trace of Luke, of something, but the house was bereft of any reminder of the other people who had once resided there.
Chloe sighed, sat back on her haunches, and closed her eyes. If she thought hard enough, she could still picture Luke sitting on the rug in the middle of the carpet, his chubby little fingers intertwined with hers. As a child, she had loved having a sibling. She had relished the secret language that had existed between the two of them, codes passed through looks and gestures that only the other would understand. She had loved his smile on dark days, knowing that he invented happiness for her sake, even at such a young age. She had needed her brother to share the weight of everything she had been unable to bear by herself.
She missed him with a pain that was physical.
Chloe stood and went back into the hallway and down to the kitchen. As always, the place was spotless. Cleanliness was next to Godliness, and for a while – whilst still a student – Chloe had revelled in chaos, finally able to rebel against the orderliness that had been enforced upon her all those years. She let coffee cups fester on window sills until their abandoned remains grew fur coats. She allowed her clothes to form piles on the floor of the bedroom, wearing them dirty once she’d run out of clean. She let the dust accumulate until it was thick enough to write in.
For a while it had all felt so liberating.
The kitchen smelled of lemon-scented kitchen cleaner. She felt the urge to open the fridge and empty the contents of every carton over the newly mopped tiled floor.
Chloe went back down the hallway towards the front door. She trod the stairs tentatively. This was the part she had been dreading. How would it feel to stand in her childhood bedroom again? And to look upon the shadows left by Luke in his?
At the top of the stairs, she stopped on the landing. She could almost hear the house holding its breath, its heart pumping as loudly as her own. Facing your fears was supposed to be good for you, wasn’t it? Do something every day that scares you. She had already stood in front of Superintendent Blake with the knowledge that he was aware of her attachment to two cases he would otherwise have considered forgotten. She found his moodiness intimidating, but he was nothing compared to the dread she felt at the top of her parents’ staircase.
The room to her left had been hers. The door was shut, as were all the others. Her brother’s room was straight ahead: the small box room at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. She stood at the closed door, a tentative hand waiting to open it.
She knew when she opened the door that what she’d been scared of was exactly what she was confronted with. The room had been stripped completely. There was a single bed pushed against the far wall – not the bed that had been her brother’s, but a cheap self-assembly frame made up with crisp sheets, their straight-from-the-packaging creases still evident – and on the wall to her left hung a long mirror. Other than these, there was no furniture. The blue walls had been painted magnolia. The carpet had been changed. The curtains had been changed. Every trace of Luke was gone.
Chloe felt a surge of anger that tasted like sickness in her throat. She closed the door and went to what had once been her bedroom. For plenty of other children, their bedroom represented a place of sanctuary and escape. But Chloe only ever had one dream, and that was to be as far from the place as she was able to get.
Yet there she was, twenty-six years old and back in the place she had longed to escape from; still trapped by the same feelings of inadequacy that had been forced upon her as a child. She didn’t have to do this any more. She didn’t have to allow herself to feel this way.
And yet she knew she did. For him.
In her bedroom, Chloe found the same awaiting her. She hesitated as memories of what this place had once looked like filled her vision. All of it gone.
As if she and her brother had never existed.
Chapter Thirty-Five