Jessie swallows. Her throat is sore from shouting earlier. “I . . . I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
Will stares at her searchingly, longer than is comfortable. “But I thought you said that . . .” He looks confused, then something seems to dawn on him. Or maybe he reads the guilt in her face, the way she’s staring down at her hands, cursing her eagerness to tell Will only what she thought he wanted to hear about Bella’s friendships.
“She normally comes home after school, if there’s no school club,” she says quietly.
“Right.” Will is frowning.
She can tell he feels duped, lulled into believing things about their weekday life that are not exactly untrue, just tangentially true, a version of a life that hasn’t quite happened yet. “I’m sorry if I misled you. I . . . I didn’t want you to worry about Bella while you’re in London, that’s all.”
A moment passes. “Right,” he says again, only more tersely, and she feels it like a physical thing, the way distrust slips between them. She stands up quickly, the chair rocking back. “There’s a class list somewhere.”
“I’m going to check the pub. Call me if you hear anything.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Desolate, Jessie stares out of the window as Will’s car roars away. So it wasn’t Romy, she thinks, covering her nose and mouth with her hands. It wasn’t Romy who was going to vanish—Romy is happily asleep upstairs, bottom balled in the air like a baby. It was Bella herself, of course, Bella reenacting the past. She must tell Will this. That it’s about the girl, the vanishing girl, the story planted like a pip in Bella’s head, a true story, not a Squirrels myth. Full disclosure now. She is picking up her cell to call him when the doorbell rings. The police, she thinks. Oh God.
But it is the most wonderful sight: sodden, mud-sprayed, black-eyed, like a girl who lives in the woods. Jessie reaches out to hug her. Bella steps back, leaving Jessie swiping at air.
Out of the shadows, emerging from a dripping umbrella, a tall woman in a mackintosh. “I’m afraid I kidnapped her.”
The voice. So soft. So well-spoken. So familiar. Jessie is unable to believe her eyes. “It’s you!”
The woman smiles uncertainly, trying to place her. “I . . .”
“Sorry, I come to your café,” Jessie explains, trying to collect herself. “With my little girl? I come and eat cake with my little girl.”
“Of course. Sorry.” The look of recognition is swiftly followed by astonishment. “And it was you . . . you bought Applecote Manor? My goodness. I had no idea.”
Jessie looks from Bella to the woman in confusion. “But, Bella, how . . . ?”
Bella moves awkwardly from one foot to the other, her trainers making a squelching sound. “I was actually completely fine,” she mumbles.
“It’s just that she didn’t look particularly fine, that’s all. I was driving back from a friend’s, and there she was, this determined young thing, marching along the lane in the storm. She refused to get into a car with a stranger, sensible girl. But I begged her to make an exception this once. That lane is no place for a young girl at night . . . I insisted she get in. Absolutely my fault, not hers.” She smiles, firm but kind. “You mustn’t be cross with her.”
Cross? Jessie can only imagine what Bella’s said. “I’m just pleased to have her home. Thank you, thank you so much. I’m immensely grateful.”
The café woman touches Bella lightly on the arm, says softly, in an easy maternal way, like Jessie isn’t there, “You sure you’re quite okay now?”
Bella nods, mutters thanks, and pushes past Jessie into the house. A well-timed flick of her wet hair stings Jessie’s cheek as Jessie texts Will to tell him the wanderer has returned.
“Pop along to the café sometime,” the lady calls after her. But Bella’s gone. Somewhere a door slams.
Jessie sticks out a hand. “Jessie.”
The woman hesitates, unsure about revealing her name. “Margot. Margot Waters.”
Margot. The woman looks like a Margot. “Would you like to come in? Warm up with a cup of tea?”
Jessie sees her hesitation, the familiar twitch: Margot knows about Applecote, Jessie realizes. Her spirits sink.
“I better get back. But thank you for the kind offer.” Margot peers curiously over Jessie’s shoulder into the hall. “You’ve made it very beautiful,” she says in a tone of quiet appreciation.
“Oh, it’s just a lick of paint, really,” says Jessie, wondering what Margot’s comparing it to, how well she knows the house. “It was always beautiful.”
“It was,” Margot says, lighting up.
Jessie has the odd sensation of being in the way, standing between the house and Margot, as you might two ex-lovers in a crowded room.
“Are you sure you won’t come in?” she asks again.
“No. No, I won’t,” she says more firmly. “I must go.” With one hand, Margot pulls up a leopard-print scarf from her hood, settling it over her mink-gray hair.
Jessie starts. Seeing the scarf, she thinks of the woman she spotted that day in August as she hung from the orchard wall, that woman with the two black Labradors, walking away from the house. No, too much of a coincidence. There must be dozens of women in the Cotswolds with leopard-print scarves.
“I hope you’re happy here, Jessie. Bella, too. She’s a very spirited girl.” Margot lowers her voice into something more conspiratorial. “A good thing in the end, I promise.”
Jessie’s throat locks. She fights the urge to throw herself at the older woman and tell her everything about the agonies of trying to mother Bella, stepping into a dead wife’s shoes, but she has a funny hunch that somehow Margot has guessed it all anyway.
“Well, good night,” Margot says, more briskly now, withdrawing.
“Thank you again.”
Margot steps out of the shelter of the portico and stops, turns around once more. “The drain at the back, it’s blocked. It always blocks this time of year.”
“Sorry?” says Jessie, bemused.
“If you don’t clear it, you’ll get damp in the top floor bathroom.”
“Oh. Okay. Thank you,” Jessie says with a small puzzled laugh that soon stops. “But how do you know . . .” Her voice trails off.
Margot is already walking down the path to her car in the rain. Jessie stares after her, puzzled. As she drives away, Jessie sees them, just for a brief second, in the puddle of light thrown by the lamp at the end of the drive: the two noses pressed against the car’s rear window, a gleam of black fur, the two dogs’ eyes glowing like lamps, then gone.
10