‘Yeah, I guess.’
It was Saturday afternoon, May, a week before GCSEs. They were in Ellie’s bedroom, taking a break from revision. Outside the sun was shining. Teddy Bear the cat lay by their side and the air was full of pollen and hope. Ellie’s mum always said that May was like the Friday night of summer: all the good times lying ahead of you, bright and shiny and waiting to be lived. Ellie could feel it all calling to her from the other side of the dark tunnel of exams; she could feel the warm nights and the long days, the lightness of having nothing to do and nowhere to be. She thought of all the things she could do once she’d finished this chapter of her life, all the books she could read and the picnics she could eat and the funfairs and shopping trips and holidays and parties. For a moment she felt breathless with it all; it overwhelmed her and made her stomach roll over and her heart dance.
‘I cannot wait,’ she said. ‘I cannot wait for it all to be over.’
Ten
The police investigation into the burglary at Laurel’s house all those years ago had come to nothing. They’d found no fingerprints of any distinction anywhere on the property, checks of CCTV footage from the two hours that Laurel had been out of the house showed no sign of anyone meeting the description of Ellie, or of any teenage girl for that matter. The ‘thief’ had taken an ancient laptop, an old phone of Paul’s, some cash that had been tucked into Laurel’s underwear drawer, a pair of art deco silver candlesticks that had been a wedding present from some very rich people who they weren’t friends with any more and a cake that Hanna had baked the day before that had been sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be iced.
They hadn’t taken any of Laurel’s jewellery – including her wedding and engagement rings which she’d stopped wearing a few months ago and which had been sitting in plain sight on a chest of drawers in her bedroom. They hadn’t taken the Mac, which was newer and more valuable than the laptop they had stolen – and they hadn’t taken her credit cards, which she kept in a drawer in the kitchen so that if she was mugged on the street they wouldn’t get stolen.
‘It’s possible they ran out of time,’ said one of the police officers who arrived at her front door ten minutes after she’d called them. ‘Or they were stealing to order and knew what they could sell and to whom.’
‘It feels strange,’ Laurel had said, her arms folded tight around her middle. ‘It feels – I don’t know. My daughter disappeared four years ago.’ She looked up at them, eyed them both directly and uncompromisingly. ‘Ellie Mack? Remember?’
They exchanged a glance and then looked back at her.
‘I could sense her,’ she said, sounding mad and not caring. ‘When I walked into the house I could sense my daughter.’
They exchanged another glance. ‘Are any of her things missing?’
She shook her head and then shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve been in her room and it looks exactly as it was.’
There was a beat of silence as the police officers moved awkwardly from foot to foot.
‘We couldn’t see any broken locks or windows. How did the burglar gain access?’
Laurel blinked slowly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Any windows left open?’
‘No, I …’ She hadn’t even thought about it. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Do you leave a key out?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Leave one with a neighbour? Or a friend?’
‘No. No. The only people who have keys are us. Me, my husband, our children.’
As the words left her mouth she felt her heart begin to race, the palms of her hands dampen. ‘Ellie,’ she said. ‘Ellie had a key. When she went missing. In her rucksack. What if …?’
They stared at her expectantly.
‘What if she came back? From wherever she’s been? Maybe she was desperate? It would explain the fact that only things we don’t care about have been taken. She knows I don’t like those candlesticks. I was always saying I was going to take them on the Antiques Roadshow one day because they were probably worth a fortune. And the cake!’
‘The cake?’
‘Yes. There was a chocolate cake on the counter. My daughter made it. My other daughter. I mean, what sort of burglar takes a cake?’
‘A hungry burglar?
‘No,’ said Laurel, her theory solidifying quickly into fact. ‘No. Ellie. Ellie would have taken it. She loved Hanna’s cakes. They were her favourite thing, they were …’ She stopped. She was going too fast and she was alienating the people who were here to help her.
No neighbours had seen anything out of the ordinary: most of them had not even been at home at the time of the burglary. Nothing stolen from the house had ever been recovered. And that was that. Another dead end reached. Another gaping hole in Laurel’s life.
For years though, she’d stayed close to home, in case Ellie came back again. For years she’d sniff the air every time she returned home from her brief sojourns beyond her front door, looking for the smell of her lost daughter. It was during those years that she finally lost touch with her remaining children. She had nothing left to give them and they grew tired of waiting.
Then three years ago Laurel had finally given up on Ellie coming home again. She’d accepted that it had been a simple burglary and that she needed to start again, in a new place. Three years ago she’d stepped backwards out of her lost daughter’s bedroom for the last time and closed the door behind her with a click so soft that it nearly killed her.
For three years she had put Ellie from her mind as much as she was able. She’d strapped herself into a new routine, tight and hard, like a straitjacket. For three years she’d internalised her madness, shared it with no one.
But now the madness was back.
She climbed into her car near the police station and as she put the car into reverse she stopped for a moment, stopped to suck the madness back down, suck it as far inside as she could get it to go.
But then she thought of her daughter’s bones being placed at this very moment into plastic bags by strangers in rubber gloves and it burst back up and emerged into the silence of her car as a dreadful roar, her fists pounding off the steering wheel, over and over and over again.
She saw Paul then, across the road, walking towards his own car, the terrible hang of his face, the sag of his shoulders. She saw him stare at her, the shock in his eyes as he registered her fury. And then she saw him begin to walk towards her. She put the car into gear and drove away as fast as she could.
Eleven
Then
Ellie had not thought too much about Noelle Donnelly since their final lesson.