by Camilla Way
“Yeah, that’s us!” Amy’s smile lit her face once more. “Think it was my eighteenth.” She took the picture down and handed it to him. “Still a nutter—see her all the time!”
Clara listened while they reminisced about a club they used to go to in Ipswich. When there was finally a break in the conversation, she asked, “Do you have any of Luke and you? Pictures, I mean?”
Something passed across Amy’s face and she turned away. “No, I got rid of them years ago.”
“Oh,” Clara said. “Right . . .”
Amy shrugged. “Past is past. Ancient history, isn’t it?” She looked at Mac. “Sorry, can you keep an ear out for the kids? Just going to have a quick ciggie in the garden.”
When she’d gone, Clara and Mac glanced at each other, eyebrows raised. “Maybe we should go,” Mac said. “We’re not going to find out anything here. Guess it was a bit of a long shot. . . .”
But had there been something strange about Amy’s expression just then, Clara wondered, her desire to leave the room so quickly? “Hold on,” she said.
Following Amy into the garden, she found her standing next to a trampoline strewn with toys, shivering while she puffed on a roll-up. Clara smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry about this,” she said. “I know you and Luke were a long time ago—it’s just . . . no one knows what happened to him. He’s completely disappeared. The police don’t seem to be getting anywhere, or not that they’re telling me, anyway. I’m trying to work out if there’s anyone from his past who might know something.” She paused and then, her voice catching, added, “We’re all so worried about him, his mum and dad, Mac, we’re getting desperate.”
Amy’s face softened. “Look,” she said. “I’m sorry he’s disappeared, I really am, and I hope he’s okay. But it’s not like we kept in touch. I don’t exactly have great memories of my relationship with Luke.”
Clara looked at her in surprise. “Really?”
The other woman stared at her for a moment, and then she turned decisively away, her face closed again. “I don’t really want to talk about all that, to be honest. And like I said to the police, there’s nothing I could tell you that would bring them any closer to finding Luke. I don’t know anything.”
Clara’s despair hit as if from nowhere, like a bus slamming into her at full speed. After the shock of him vanishing, the news about Sadie, the ridiculous hope she had felt to be finally doing something proactive, she realized now how stupid she had been, how pointless it all was. She sank down onto a rickety garden chair and put her head in her hands.
“You all right?” Amy’s voice was suddenly near.
She looked up. “Sorry, I’m sorry. We’ll leave you in peace. I don’t know what I’m even doing here, to be honest. You must think we’re mad.”
Amy sighed and sat down next to her. She thought for a moment, then rolled herself another cigarette. “You want to find out what he was really like back then? Behind his perfect image, I mean?” Clara glanced at her in surprise to hear the note of bitterness in her voice. “Well, look, I’m sure he’s probably changed by now, grown up a bit, but okay. I’m not sure it’ll help, but I’ll tell you if you want me to. But come on now, stop crying.”
Clara nodded and wiped her eyes. “Thank you,” she said.
Amy sighed. “I got pregnant when I was sixteen and he dumped me, leaving me to have the abortion on my own. I was really far along in the pregnancy when I realized, and the whole thing was horrendous. I was devastated.”
Clara stared at her in shock. “I’m so sorry,” she faltered. “I had no idea.”
Amy shrugged.
“Did anyone else know about it?” Clara asked.
She laughed. “Everyone thought the sun shone out of Luke Lawson’s arse. No one would ever think badly of him—in fact, everyone always acted like I was bloody lucky to have a spoiled posh lad like him.” She grimaced and added, “He was a selfish little shit, all said and done—I’m sorry, but he was.” She glanced at Clara. “Perhaps he’s changed. But all he cared about then was what people would think, especially his parents, how it would fuck up his plans to go to uni, how a baby wouldn’t fit in with his perfect bloody image. He dropped me without a backward glance. But no, I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I guess I felt . . . ashamed, somehow.” She sighed. “Now I’d like to go back in time and give my head a wobble, tell myself to have more self-esteem and then give Luke Lawson a good kick in the nuts.”
As Clara listened, shock reverberated through her. Her tone was so disparaging, painting a picture of a man she barely recognized. “Anyway,” Amy said, throwing her cigarette butt away. “That’s all I’ve got to tell you, really.” She got to her feet. “I’m sorry, but I better get on now. Kids’ tea and that.”
Clara thought of the pictures of the chubby, smiling groom in the hall. “Will your husband be home soon?” she asked.
Amy snorted. “Probably. I wouldn’t know.” Clara stared at her in confusion and she laughed. “He lives two streets away with someone else.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought—”
Amy made a face. “I just keep the pictures up for the kids’ sake. They’re still a bit messed up from it all.” She wrapped her cardigan around herself and headed for the door. When she reached it, she paused. “Funny,” she said, “how it’s always us women who are left to deal with the shit men leave behind, isn’t it?”
* * *
—
Later, as they began the drive home, Clara told Mac what Amy had said.
“Jesus,” he said, “I had no idea.”
“He never said anything to you?”
“Not a word. I . . .”
“What?”
He shook his head. “I thought I knew everything about him,” he said quietly. “I really thought we told each other everything. Obviously not.”
She stared out the window at the passing countryside and thought about Luke at sixteen, how he’d been little more than a kid himself, how panicked and scared he must have been at the prospect of becoming a father. But if Amy was telling the truth—and she was certain that she was—there was no excuse for the way he’d behaved toward her. She realized that for the first time since they’d met, she felt ashamed of him. She remembered Zoe saying how quickly and how deeply she had fallen for Luke, and it was true, but had her infatuation made her blind? If he was capable of behaving so badly toward Amy, whom else might he have crossed? If Amy wasn’t responsible for Luke’s disappearance—and a gut feeling told her she wasn’t—then some other woman had sent the e-mails, stolen a van to take Luke off to God knew where. But who was she, and what had Luke done to provoke her?
When they finally joined the motorway, she sighed and picked up her phone. After a moment’s thought she wrote her reply to Emily. I need to know you are who you say you are. You sang a song with Luke when he was little, before he went to bed every night. Do you remember what it was?
She forced herself to put her phone away, telling herself that she needed to be patient, that Emily probably wouldn’t reply for ages. Her willpower lasted less than fifteen minutes, however, and to her surprise, when she next looked, there was already a message waiting for her. “Five Little Monkeys,” it said. Where do you want to meet?
There’s a bar called the Octopus on Great Eastern Street, Clara wrote, her heart thudding with excitement. Would that suit you? I could meet tomorrow, any time.
The reply was instant. I’ll be there at six. Please, Clara, it’s very important you don’t tell anyone. I’m trusting you.
Clara looked at Mac. “Bloody hell,” she said. “We’re on!”
FIFTEEN
CAMBRIDGESHIRE, 1989
After Doug told me to leave, I ran blindly through the streets of our village, barely aware of my surroundings as I made my way toward St. Dunstan’s Hill. When I got to the top, I sat on a bench and looked out across
the darkening fields. I don’t think I’d ever felt so desolate, so frightened. All I knew was that Hannah had pushed Toby. I knew she had.
I thought about her as a newborn, how tiny and beautiful she’d been. Doug and I had treated her as though she were made of the finest glass. We had barely been able to contain our happiness in those early weeks. We had waited so long for her, we’d been through so much, and then there she was, so utterly perfect, we could scarcely believe our luck. And then little by little, as the months and years had passed, the doubts had crept in.
I must have sat there for more than an hour, watching as the lights of the scattered villages grew gradually stronger as the darkness gathered. From a distant church I heard a bell toll nine. My thoughts chased each other. My rage toward Hannah had been instantaneous, the thought of her hurting Toby triggering something primal and instinctive within me. I didn’t know how we could continue now, how I could ever trust her around my little boy again.
At last, cold and exhausted, I turned back toward home. When I reached my street, I hesitated at our gate and took a gulp of air to steady myself. There was nobody about, no sound from the other houses, an eerie stillness in the air. When I let myself in, the hall was in darkness. I stood and listened. Had Doug gone to bed? Suddenly I heard a faint sound coming from the kitchen. A creak of a chair, perhaps a sigh. I crept nearer and pushed open the door. There, sitting at the table, was Doug. The only light in the room was the one that glimmered dimly from the oven’s hood.
I whispered his name, but he didn’t look up, so I edged a fraction closer. “Doug?” Filled with a sudden, nameless fear, I asked, “Has something happened? Is it Toby? Talk to me!”
He shook his head. “Toby’s asleep.”
Quietly I sat down next to him. I saw that he had been crying and instinctively I put my arms around him. I think it was the first time we’d touched in months.
At last he began to speak. “When you left the house, I looked around at Hannah, and the expression on her face . . . she looked so . . . happy. She was smiling, Beth. Actually smiling. And when she caught me looking at her, it was as though she flicked a switch.” He put his head in his hands. “Toby told me, he told me that she’d pushed him.”
I noticed that his hands were trembling and I reached over and took one in my own. “He said she told him to go and find you, and when he got to the top of the stairs . . .” He looked at me, his eyes full of horror. “She could have killed him.”
“I know,” I said.
“But why?” he said desperately. “Why is she like this? Is it something we’ve done?”
I chose my words carefully. “From what I’ve read, people like Hannah have no empathy, no conscience. I don’t know why she is the way she is, but she’s dangerous, Doug.”
“Then we need to get her the best psychiatrist we can find!” he said. “We can turn this around. I know we can. She’s eight years old. . . . We can get her help, can’t we? We should never have canceled that psychiatrist. Can we get another appointment? Maybe we could go private, get seen sooner.”
I closed my eyes, knowing I had to tell him the truth. “Doug,” I said. “We can’t do that. We can’t let her talk to a doctor.”
His eyes shot to my face in surprise. “Can’t? Why?”
I had no choice but to tell him. I could barely look at him as I described how I’d made the phone call behind his back all those months ago, how I’d discovered Hannah in the kitchen, how she’d overhead everything, knew everything. “I’m sorry,” I cried when I saw his horrified expression. “Oh, Doug, don’t look at me like that! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. I was so frightened—I thought it would help. I needed to talk to someone.”
“But, Beth, if Hannah tells anyone—if she tells . . . oh Jesus, Beth, we’re in it up to our necks!”
I nodded. “I know.”
“But what do we do?” he asked.
“We keep Toby with us at all times,” I said. “We never, ever leave him alone with her. We’ll . . . just have to try to manage her, watch her. . . .”
He sank back into his chair and we stared up at the ceiling, to where Hannah lay sleeping in the room above. Around us the night settled into the corners of the house, the darkness outside our window growing denser, the moon hidden now behind thick clouds. From somewhere in the fields beyond our street came the solitary scream of a fox, before it, too, lapsed back into silence.
* * *
—
The next day was a Saturday. When Hannah came down for breakfast, Doug and I were already up and waiting for her. She froze in surprise to see us sitting at the table together. She turned to Doug. “I don’t want her here!” she said. “She’s going to hurt me again! Don’t let her hurt me, Daddy.”
“Hannah,” Doug said calmly. “Stop this. Stop right now. We know that you pushed Toby.”
Her eyes darted to me and then back to her father. She folded her arms. “No, I didn’t!”
“Yes, Hannah,” he said. “You did, and I know you’ve hurt him before.”
She looked like the child she was at that moment. Thwarted. She stood, barely four feet tall in her Winnie-the-Pooh slippers, her little hands balled into fists. She screamed, suddenly, running to him and pounding at his belly. “Stop it, Hannah,” he said, holding her at arm’s length, his face red. “Stop it right now. I want you to tell me why you’ve done this. Why did you want to hurt Toby? Hurt us? We’re your mummy and daddy and we love you.”
“Well, I don’t love you. I hate you! I’m going to tell everyone what you did! I know what you did and I’m going to tell on you! I’m going to tell the police!”
Doug flinched at her words and I saw the triumph that flashed across Hannah’s face. I stepped toward her. “Good,” I said, as calmly as I could. She stopped and stared at me in astonishment. “You do that. You tell the police what you know, and your father and I will be put in prison—and you will go into care. Do you know what that means?”
She hesitated, watching me intently, the look in her eyes so familiar, so eerily old beyond her years: assessing, calculating.
“It’s where children go when they don’t have a mummy or daddy to look after them anymore,” I continued. “You will be sent to a children’s home, with lots of other children, where you’ll have to do what you’re told. You won’t have any of your things, none of the nice food you like to eat. It’ll be like school, all day every day, with grown-ups making sure you follow all their rules. Do you want that, Hannah? Really?”
“I don’t care,” she said, but I could hear the uncertainty in her voice. “I hate you. I hate you and Daddy and Toby. I don’t want to live here anyway!”
“If that’s what you want, then go ahead,” I said quietly. “Go ahead, Hannah—tell whoever you want.”
There was complete silence for a moment; my eyes met Doug’s across the room. And then, all at once, I saw the fight go out of her. She sat down at the table and sullenly filled her bowl with Shreddies. We had called her bluff, and for now, at least, it seemed to have worked.
* * *
—
And so began an uneasy truce: a watchful, distrustful coexistence, during which we stuck to our promise, never leaving Hannah alone with her brother for a moment, using a constant, exhausting cycle of punishment and reward to get her to go to school and keep her behavior under control. And there was peace for a time. For five years, in fact, until she was thirteen.
At the age of eleven she went to the nearest secondary school, the same one all the kids from the village went to, and though she had no friends, nor were there any more incidents of bullying or violence. She had no hobbies, no connection with the world beyond her love of television, something that I would worry about incessantly—I still loved her, you see, back then. So when she showed an interest in computers, we were pleased, saving up to buy her a PC for her bedroom. I thought it could d
o no harm; when she spent more and more time alone in her room, I told myself that it was a good thing that she’d found something she liked doing.
We never gave up trying—I want to make that clear: we never stopped trying to reach her, to make her feel loved and wanted. But the truth was she didn’t want our love. And when you’re met with hostility or indifference over and over, it becomes almost impossible to keep on trying. My priority was my son, to make sure Hannah never had a chance to harm him again. Her spending her free time in her bedroom made that easier, I’ll admit.
I’ll always wonder, I suppose, if she was secretly planning what she went on to do. I like to think not; I like to think that she was happy, in her own way, or at least content during that time. But, truthfully, I think I’ve always known that my daughter is only ever really happy when she’s hurting others. If I’m honest, I think, back then, she was just biding her time.
* * *
—
Our one joy during those years was Toby. Our funny, sunny little boy. As a preschooler, despite what she’d done, he would follow Hannah around like a little duckling, his face lighting up whenever he saw her. But her active, clear dislike of him eventually took its toll and by the time he was five and she was eleven, he barely acknowledged her.
We rarely went out as a family; instead, either Doug or I would take Toby by ourselves, but despite everything, he grew up to be a happy, kind, and loving little boy. We were extremely close, he and I. He told me he loved me every day, made me little presents while he was at school. I loved him so much.
I remember him saying once, “Hannah hates me. She hates you and she hates Daddy.” By then my heart had started to become less sensitive. “Well, Hannah is Hannah,” I said. I didn’t try to hide it or deny it anymore. “Her eyes are funny,” he said. “They scare me.” There was nothing I could say to that. He was right: there was a quality there, an absence, I suppose you’d call it, that you didn’t want to dwell on for too long.