“No need. I know exactly where I am going,” Margot says quickly, winking at Jessie.
Twenty minutes later Margot slips out of the garden by the side gate. Jessie hears the put-put-put of a car and runs to the hall window. She watches the car’s headlights illuminate fragments—a gatepost, a snowy hedgerow, the iced sinew of the lane—then slide back into the opaque darkness, just like Margot herself.
Two days later, the police call Will to confirm that the remains are those of the missing girl, Audrey Wilde; relatives have been informed; there will be a press conference in the morning. Jessie and Will say nothing to Bella and curl up by the fire, holding each other very tightly, discussing in muted voices how they should break the news to the girls in the morning. They don’t know what it might trigger in Bella. Jessie sleeps badly—a nightmare about a tunnel, a headlamp like a car headlight bouncing off wet, slippery stone walls, no way out—and wakes early. Wanting to ensure they get to Bella before schoolgirls start texting for gossip or Romy wakes up, she makes her a cup of tea and shakes Will awake, and they rush nervously upstairs.
Bella is already awake, resplendent in Mandy’s gray silk dressing gown, sitting up in the sleigh bed, the bed Jessie’s very glad no one mentioned to Margot, just in case it was Audrey’s. Despite the early hour, Bella looks rested, radiant even, her dark hair coiled, twisted over one shoulder. Seeing their solemn faces, she rolls her eyes. “I’m not about to have a breakdown or anything.”
Will sits gingerly on the side of the bed. Jessie hands Bella the tea and perches a little farther away, eyes soberly lowered. “Very sad news, I’m afraid, Bella,” Will says gently. A shaft of winter sunlight crackles through the round porthole window, smudging lilac across the wall. “The police have confirmed that the remains are Audrey’s.”
Bella blows out, relieved. “Thank God. She’d want to be found.”
“That’s one way of looking at it, I guess,” says Will cautiously, exchanging a puzzled glance with Jessie.
“Audrey can have a funeral now. Her mother can finally say good-bye,” Jessie says, then immediately kicks herself for reviving the subject of mothers and good-byes. She waits for Bella to pounce on her clumsy comment, as she normally would. But Bella only nods and mutters, “Yeah.”
Although the exchange is minimal, opaque to anyone who didn’t know them, maybe even to Will, it feels significant to Jessie. She relaxes a little, lets her weight rest on the mattress, not just the tips of her toes.
“It is okay to feel upset about this, Bella,” Will says softly.
“Dad,” Bella groans.
“We realize Applecote Manor is . . . tainted now, not the fresh start we’d hoped,” Jessie says. “And we want you to have much more say in where we go next.”
Bella bolts upright. “Next? What do you mean next?”
“We’ll put Applecote on the market.” Jessie waits for Bella to smile, or at least look triumphant. That is what Bella always wanted, after all. “Remember what you said the first time we saw this room? ‘Even if we move in, this house won’t ever belong to us,’ I think it was. Well, you were right, Bella. You were right about many things. To borrow Margot’s words, I stand corrected.”
“We,” says Will, smiling at Jessie. “We stand corrected.”
“What are you two banging on about?” Bella looks appalled by both of them, then starts to laugh, as if they can’t be taken seriously. “You want to move house because of a body from the dawn of time in the garden? Oh my God. What are you trying to protect me from? Death? Hello?” She shakes her head at their immaturity, then smiles at them both with a look of weary affection. “I’m not moving anywhere. You can if you like.”
A shrine grows steadily beside Applecote Manor’s gate: flowers from elderly villagers and old school friends of Audrey’s; teddy bears from young village children who can’t comprehend death but understand the terror of being alone and lost in the dark; an exuberant floral wreath from Joe Peat and his family. Among the cellophane and ribbons, cutouts of the photograph that’s been splashed across the papers, grainy black-and-white, the tragedy somehow sealed in her innocent prettiness. Jessie studies Audrey’s face, tracks traces of Margot in those lively bright eyes, the curl at the corners of her smile.
But it’s hard not to see everything through the prism of Audrey now. Even Bella’s bedroom feels different, airier, rinsed clean somehow, and the top floor landing less narrow and dim, as if the house is not caving in but opening up.
Obviously, this change in atmosphere—perception, of course—comes from Bella’s lifting spirits rather than any release of Audrey’s. But Jessie senses the two things are deeply connected: as a seismic tremor deep in the earth can nudge something on the surface, the discovery of Audrey has shifted things for Bella. Jessie has no idea how Bella—connecting disparate things as the young do naturally, like artists—has turned another girl’s terrible fate into a catalyst for her own change. But she has. Bella is still Bella, of course, complex, contradictory, stubborn. But the high wall that surrounds her is cracking, small gaps Jessie can peer through and see, for the first time, Bella as she really is, the girl she was, moving behind it like a streak of brilliant light.
The explanation, Will believes, is more straightforward. Bella saved Romy’s life, a heroic act that made her realize not only did she love her little sister, but that she has a vital role to play in this family, her family. Something, resisted for so long, clicked.