Checking in on Lily as I leave, I see she’s asleep in her chair, and pull the curtains closed, so the sun’s not shining on her face. I’m not in a hurry now, so I’ll walk down the drive – fewer insects, and branches – rather than the cut-through between our houses. And I am about to turn left, back down to my house, when I pause.
Instead I turn right, following the rest of the drive up to Parklands. Because what if there was someone in my garden, and they were heading this way? You hear all sorts about squatters. I’ve an idea that’s normally in cities, not places like Vale Dean, but I just want to see for myself, in broad daylight.
It just another fifty metres perhaps, but I feel almost like I’m trespassing as I walk up – I’ve never come up here before, close as it is. It’s even quieter here than at my house; further back from the road, with the trees around blocking out the sound. You could be anywhere at all, really.
There’s the iron gate, a big chain clasping the bars closed. But I simply walk over where the wooden fencing’s collapsed to one side of it, and then back onto the driveway.
It’s even bigger than it looks from further away: solid and imposing, the overgrown garden making its grand proportions look too big for its plot. It must be what: three, four storeys? The front lawn’s like a meadow now, the long grass brushing my hands.
I shiver. What am I doing here? What do I do if I find that there is somebody coming in here, a squatter or – what? Some confused junkie, jumpy and aggressive when he’s disturbed? I don’t know what I’d do. I should leave this to the police.
But still I keep going, my feet crunching up the path, stepping over a smashed purple-grey slate that’s fallen from the roof. Up close I can see how old and tattered the plastic sheeting is up there, the remaining legs of scaffolding looking less like a support than some structure simply abandoned by builders. Someone probably stopped paying them. It’s still beautiful though, the soft Cheshire brick banded with pale stonework that runs round the building, carved with rosettes. There are hundreds of these shapes – roses, not rosettes, I realise – spiralling over the brickwork.
And now I’m going closer still, up the stone step into the roofed porch where the air is cooler, old leaves filling its tiled corners and piled up against the heavy double doors. It’s still impressive up close: the stone door arch carved with more of the pretty floral motifs, each with its neat little inner ruff of petals. But the paint on the doors has bubbled and warped, the paler wood showing through in places.
I reach for the brass door knob on the right and twist gently, then harder. Of course it’s locked. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been through for years, judging by the drifts of leaves everywhere, but I reach for the one on the left and—
I whirl around. ‘Oh!’
The man’s a dark silhouette against the sunshine, black against the green of the trees and the yellow grass behind him. Then I place him: Nicholls, incongruous in his suit and tie.
‘God, you scared me.’ I didn’t hear anything, I don’t know what made me turn round. I start to laugh nervously, my hand to my throat. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wouldn’t want to scare you.’ He’s not smiling. ‘I heard there might have been an intruder round this way. Last night?’
‘Oh, of course. That’s quick.’ I didn’t think a detective inspector would be that interested. The officers last night seemed much more junior. ‘Have you found anything?’
‘There’s no evidence of any break-in here. It seems secure. But all the same,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t suggest you start trying to find any trespassers yourself.’
‘Ah no. Of course not.’ I put my hands behind my back guiltily. A thought occurs to me. ‘Is your car down there on the road then?’ I didn’t pass it coming up.
He shakes his head. ‘Turns out you can park in the lane, that way,’ gesturing to behind Parklands. ‘There’s a little path that cuts through to the road behind.’
‘Oh,’ I say uselessly. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘I can walk you out, if you like.’
I bristle a little at being dismissed. ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you – what’s happening now, with Danny, now you’ve got Sophie’s diary? So, would he be out on bail now?’
‘No, he’s not out on bail.’ I close my eyes, relieved. ‘Because he hasn’t been arrested, or charged with anything.’
‘He wasn’t? I assumed from the way you were treating the diary that …’ I trail off.
‘We’ve no reason to do so, Mrs Harlow. There’s no suspicion of a crime.’
‘So are you even talking to him still?’ I say sharply. ‘And what about the call, have you got anywhere with the charity?’
‘When I’ve information I can share with you, I will of course do that.’ His face is a blank.
‘I see.’ So Danny’s out and about, to do what he wants. And they haven’t traced the call, I’d put money on it.
Suddenly I want to go home again. ‘Right I’d better be off,’ I shake my keys, a meaningless gesture. ‘I’m just back down the drive. Bye.’
‘Goodbye, Mrs Harlow.’
I can feel his eyes on me as I walk away, my footsteps loud on the gravel. It’s stupid, I know, but for some reason, I feel like I mustn’t turn round, or hurry – like it would be a mistake, somehow. Just act normal. Everything is fine.
But my heart’s still thumping in my chest as I get back into my house.
I don’t know why I feel like I just escaped something.
19
I spend the afternoon inside, with the study blind drawn against the sun, trying once more to get into the email account from Sophie’s diary. I’m optimistic at first. Surely inspiration will strike, it can’t be that hard.
But I still can’t do it, locked in a cycle of getting the answer to her security question wrong and freezing the account. After that, I focus on trying different passwords, typing in different variations of her ‘loopysophie’ password, before starting to randomly type in words that she might have chosen instead. Amberton, for her school. Charlotte, her middle name. Lilac, her favourite colour. What bands did she like? Pop stars? I start typing in names, and then names with numbers – 2000, for the year she was born. 99, just because. Eventually I break, my eyes gritty and tired.
I will sleep on it. And then if I can’t get into it, I will tell the police.
I groan, my head in my hands. I can just imagine Nicholls, polite as ever: ‘And what exactly do you think it means if a teenage girl has more than one email address, Mrs Harlow?’
He’ll think I’m looking for a way out. That I just can’t accept that Sophie went through all this alone. That she would rather run away than confide in me. Which is true, I suppose. I can’t.
I’ll sleep on it, I tell myself. And then I’ll decide.
I’m winding down for the night, pottering about the kitchen and wiping down surfaces that are already clean – there’s less mess with everyone gone – when the phone rings. I consider letting it ring out.
‘Who the hell’s this?’ I mutter to the cat. Charlotte and I used to say this to each other if anyone rang after dinner, parroting our favourite Peter Kay sketch. I check the oven clock: 9.35p.m. Even by my family’s standards, I’m keeping old lady hours. I reach for the phone.
‘Hello?’
For a heartbeat, the faint crackle on the line catches at me, casting me back to the other night, at the charity …
‘Mrs Harlow?’ The woman’s voice is soft, American vowels. I relax, a little. It’s not Sophie again.
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘It’s Olivia Marnell. I got your message, about the house.’ It still takes me a second to place her, then I do. Not American, Canadian. ‘I used to be Olivia Corrigan.’