Where the Memories Lie
By: Sibel Hodge
She didn’t get on with them and they were threatening to throw her out anyway, so she left. Her running away wasn’t unusual under the circumstances.’
I looked down at the carpet, feeling the weight of guilt crush-ing down on my shoulders again. I should’ve done more. Done something. I’d called myself her best friend, but I was the worst friend in the world. I’d let her down.
But you were only young, too. You can’t know everything when you’re that age, even if you think you do.
I shook off the inner turmoil and tuned back in to what Mr Cook was saying.
‘I found myself being glad that she’d run away in the end. I’m sure she would’ve had a better life on her own, without her parents.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. Maybe Katie really had run away. Maybe she’d just disappeared like the thousands of people who are never heard from again. But an uneasy thought hovered in my head and refused to go away. Something bad had happened to my friend: I was sure of it. ‘It’s . . .’ The room swam before my eyes and I suddenly felt stiflingly hot. I needed air. ‘I have to go.’ I shot up and made my way to the front door.
111
Sibel Hodge
‘If you ever find out anything . . . if you ever hear from her, will you let me know?’ he asked as I turned the handle.
But I had a horrible feeling no one would ever hear from her again.
112
Chapter Thirteen
I had a hard time keeping everything straight in my head as I drove to Mountain View Nursing Home, hands gripping the steering wheel. I got blasted with a horn from the driver behind when I failed to notice some traffic lights had changed from red to green. Then I had to swerve to avoid a mum with a pushchair at the zebra crossing that I swear I didn’t see in the middle of the road until the very last minute. What the hell was I doing? I was a liability.
I sat in the car park in my Mini, staring at Tom’s window on the ground floor, chewing on my thumbnail. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be reassuring a patient, or walking Poppy.
Mucking around with Anna, having sex with my husband, or at home making dinner. OK, not making dinner, but I wanted to be doing something normal. Something a world away from asking my father-in-law exactly where he’d buried my best friend’s body.
It was mad. Crazy. Insane. It couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t real.
And yet it was.
Kelly made conversation about something as I signed the visi-tors’ book, but I couldn’t tell you what she said. I just smiled and Sibel Hodge nodded automatically and headed down the corridor in a daze, fighting to keep the anxiety and dread inside.