Part of the Silence

by Debbie Howells

  “Did he come here that night, Evie? Force his way in and go upstairs to get Angel?” Abbie asked. “Maybe you knew where he was going, and you went running after them, across the fields, trying to catch up.”

  Evie’s face was ashen with shock.

  “He’d have been furious, wouldn’t he? More so because for the past three years, you’d lied—by omission, if nothing else.”

  Evie gasped. “I don’t know.”

  Abbie carried on. “Maybe you threw yourself at him to try to get Angel from him. He could have lost his temper. Do you think he could have attacked you? If he’d been angry enough?”

  Evie stared back at her, horrified. “Oh God. It must have been him.”

  36

  “No, Evie. That wasn’t what happened.” Abbie spoke firmly. “Nick has an alibi for that night. We know for sure that he wasn’t the one who attacked you.” There was a long pause. “I’m afraid we still can’t trust your memories. Not about any of it.” She paused. “Now I need you to listen to me just for a moment. You know, don’t you, that for the past month, we’ve had as many officers as possible involved in the search for Angel? But now . . .”

  Jack couldn’t sit still and listen to this. He got up and walked over to the window.

  “You can’t stop. You can’t. Oh God, Abbie . . . Don’t do this. . . .”

  Jack folded his arms, dreading what he sensed was coming. The truth was, he didn’t share Abbie’s uncertainty. Okay, so the evidence was lacking. It wasn’t conclusive. All that meant was that they had to keep looking until they found it.

  “You lost a baby, Evie. You were a teenager looking after Leah Danning when she disappeared. That on its own was a major trauma. Then you were attacked. There’s no question about it—and we’re continuing to investigate that. But it’s looking more and more likely that your head injury has affected your memory in a way that your past is confused with the present.”

  “But you’re wrong!” Evie was outraged. “What about Angel? Where does she fit into this?”

  Abbie sighed. “The truth? It’s possible that in your mind Angel’s the baby you lost, Evie. The baby you miscarried. You were six months pregnant when it happened. You would have had dreams about her growing up, about the future. It was another traumatic loss for you, especially after what happened to Leah. Losing her was like losing the future you’d pinned all your hopes on. It would be understandable if all this time, you’ve kept her alive in your head.”

  “No.” It came out a whisper.

  Jack frowned. He hadn’t been as involved with this case as Abbie had, but even so, he knew that the mind could play the cruelest tricks. After Josh died, he was sure he’d seen him, several times. Abbie could be right. Angel could be the baby Evie lost years ago. Then he found himself doubting it again. If it was true, how could Evie’s emotions still be so raw? But it was possible, too, that the fear and the trauma had brought them back.

  “I want to see Charlotte,” Evie said suddenly.

  “She’s at home, as far as I know. When did you last hear from her?”

  “A couple of days ago.”

  Jack made a mental note to call Charlotte Harrison. It was clear Evie needed a friend, now more than ever.

  * * *

  “That was necessary,” Abbie said briefly as they walked down the path toward Jack’s car.

  He didn’t reply.

  “I can’t help thinking,” Abbie went on, “that in some way, the attack is linked to Leah’s disappearance. Did Evie see something that day? Or during the days before? Something her mind has blocked out, because she was too traumatized. When she moved back here, she could have lived in this cottage for months without anyone seeing her. But what if, one day, completely by chance, her path crossed with whoever abducted Leah?”

  Jack frowned. It sounded too far-fetched, but anything was possible. “There’s no proof.”

  “Right now there’s no proof of anything. I think the intention was to kill her,” Abbie said quietly. “On that particular path through the maize field at that time of year, no one was likely to find her for some time.... The attacker took everything that might have identified Evie, covering their tracks, knowing that because of the way she lived, no one was likely to report her missing.”

  “And knowing that within a couple of weeks, the maize field would be harvested and the evidence destroyed.” Jack was thoughtful. “You think someone was watching her?”

  Abbie nodded. “It’s likely. I think they came to her house and somehow lured her outside. Maybe Tamsyn saw what happened, and that’s why she had to die. Whoever did this hasn’t left anything to chance.” She frowned. “What I’m not sure about is how Angel fits in—assuming she exists. Was she the reason for the attack?”

  “Whoever took her must have carried her some way.”

  “It’s occurred to me, too. We just don’t know. There’s so much we don’t know,” Abbie said quietly.

  Jack glanced toward the house. From an upstairs window, he could see Evie watching them.

  “This time last year, I found a dog.” The image was imprinted on Jack’s mind. “A black-and-white dog. Its throat had been cut, and its eyes gouged out. It was in a shallow grave covered in leaves and twigs. It was my dog that found it.” Beamer had barked persistently until Jack had gone to see what the noise was about. “Okay, so it was a dog. But what kind of person does that? I’m mentioning it only because Evie’s cat’s gone missing. It’s probably nothing.” But he wasn’t sure.

  He shivered. The temperature had dropped while he’d been talking.

  “We need to handle Evie carefully.” Abbie spoke quietly.

  “I know.” Jack completely agreed. She was already torturing herself. She was fragile. It wouldn’t take much to tip her over the edge. There was something else he’d been meaning to ask the DC.

  “Did Miller ever mention what happened that night in the woods?”

  Abbie stared at him. “The night you saw the lights? No.” She was silent. “He definitely didn’t.”

  “Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  Abbie frowned. “Yes. Very.” She looked at Jack. “Especially as he was on duty and you weren’t.” She looked puzzled. “Have you read about Xander Pascoe? He was interviewed when Leah Danning went missing, but there was no proof he had anything to do with it. On the day Leah disappeared, he had alibis that put him nowhere near the scene of the crime. Alibis that some people believed were false . . .”

  Jack nodded. “His father was convicted of murder. He’s still inside.” And his mother, Janna Pascoe, was tough as old boots.

  * * *

  For the next couple of days, Jack was buried in paperwork, breaking the monotony by venturing out to walk Beamer, so he heard via the grapevine how over the following week, the searches were cut back, then withdrawn completely. When he called Abbie, she sounded regretful, guilty, sad.

  He made a point of calling round to see Evie and found the house locked up and the curtains drawn. Eventually, he saw her face at an upstairs window, and he waved at her. When she came down and opened the back door, he was shocked. The little strength he’d observed coming back to her seemed to have ebbed away.

  “I came to see how you were.”

  Evie shrugged. “They’ve stopped the search.” She always said “they,” as though she didn’t associate Jack with the police. “They think I’m confused and inconsistent.”

  “The investigation is still open,” Jack told her. “You mustn’t give up.” For a moment, he wondered if he saw a spark of something, but then she turned blank eyes toward him.

  “Maybe they’re right. My mind is shot to pieces. Maybe I just made everything up.”

  But Jack knew she hadn’t. However unlikely it was, however lacking the evidence, he’d seen the strength of her emotions. It had reminded him of Louise when Josh died. It had been real. The police had done everything by the book, and the investigation had been fruitless and inconclusive. But the fact remained, as far as t
hey were concerned, without paperwork or forensic evidence, there was no child.

  “I have an appointment with a counselor who specializes in memory disorders. There’s a card somewhere.” She glanced behind her, into the kitchen. “Abbie did say to call her if I found anything new, anything conclusive. So I looked, Jack. And I did find something, something everyone else missed.”

  He stared at her.

  “A picture.” Her eyes filled with tears as she whispered it. “It’s a picture Angel drew for me. It had slipped behind the fridge. It must have got caught in the back of it somehow. It’s the first actual proof. . . .”

  “Did you tell Abbie?”

  She nodded. “It’s just a child’s drawing, done with colored pencils, of a person with a triangular body and stick legs, with a round yellow sun in the top left corner. Do you know what she said?” She paused. “She said, ‘It’s not enough, Evie. I know what my boss will say, that anyone could have drawn it.’ ” Evie was sobbing, back on the knife-edge. “God, what will it take? Her body?”

  He knew the turmoil she was feeling, her need for some kind of closure. When you can’t rely on your own mind, you’re fragile, and each day is uncertain. That was how Evie’s life was right now, all the time. Anything she remembered was potentially no more than a dream.

  Her body was shaking with her sobs as she grieved for the baby who had died before Evie could give birth to her. The baby her body had failed to sustain. Her memories of a pink-cheeked child, alive and smiling, were no more than wish fulfillment. Images that had comforted a mind that had suffered too much.

  The trouble was, Jack was thinking, he knew how grief could take you over. The counselor had explained it to him after Josh died. It could delete the most painful times, the heartbreak, eventually leaving you memories to hold forever, to embellish, to alter, painted crystal clear on your mind.

  He knew that had happened to Evie, but he also believed in the intensity of her pain. This was a recent loss, one that time had not yet softened. He was sure of it.

  “Listen. Never mind what they’ve said to you. You have to trust your gut, Evie. If you know you have a child, you can’t give up. So you didn’t register her birth. Do you know how often that happens? Maybe she was born here in Cornwall. We don’t actually know, and we haven’t yet been able to check all the hospital records in London. But this isn’t about the police. It’s about someone very clever who’s made them think you’ve lost your mind. You can’t let them get away with it.” Jack paused. This wasn’t professional, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t here on police business. He was here as a friend.

  He watched for some response from her, but Evie had frozen. Then she looked at him. Jack couldn’t stop himself. He stepped forward and put his arms round her.

  CASEY

  2004 . . .

  The world’s an accessible place. A career, fame, happiness, dangled like the proverbial carrot. There for the taking. As if we’re all born equal, each of us with a right to the best there is in life. Another lie. We’re not all born the same.

  Even without Charley, I was going to travel. After that, I wasn’t sure where I was going, but that would wait. First, I knew I wanted money. If a career and happiness came with it, I wouldn’t turn it away, but money was the clincher. Without it, you weren’t going anywhere.

  Natural talent can take you far, on the stage or in politics, for example, but thanks to my parents, I’d stumbled across my own niche market for making money. And it was easy.

  You have to find your own way, and I’d found mine. I became this person who, if you looked closely, resembled me in height and eye color and the shape of my nose, but who, for as long as it took, wasn’t me. Who wore a bold-print dress cinched at the waist and tight black boots. Whose dewy skin wasn’t natural but was squeezed out of a tube and applied with a soft brush, whose eyes were wide between her eyelash extensions. Her hair was her best feature, I always thought—long and thick, a glossy black. Did you know that money makes your hair shine?

  Her lips were painted to match the red oblique stripes on her dress, and she wore a gaze that lingered that extra second, a smile that showed even white teeth. A smile that, once she was in her car, dropped its brightness as she drove the seven miles. I always took the same route, imagining who I was going to be, half anticipating, half not wanting to arrive. Sometimes I pretended I was Charley. Someone I hated, who’d hate what I was going to do.

  The man paid me mostly just to peel off my clothes while he sat in the corner of the room and watched me. Pervy bastard, I thought the first time. A bigger fool than most of them, paying me just to watch. That was all he wanted, to start with.

  Being paid for a man to look at you was no big deal. It was what we’d agreed. That was why the first touch broke the rules, electric-shocked me. The next just sparked. After all, his eyes knew every inch of my body. Was touching so different? And it was worth more. I didn’t even have to ask. There was more money in the envelope he gave me that time. And the time after.

  Only a matter of time before he wanted sex. Thanks to Anthony, then Alistair, I didn’t feel. It was a good lesson—learning to switch feelings off—one everyone should learn. And I had a good body, which I was prepared to use to my advantage. At least I had something to show for letting him have me, not like the indiscriminate couplings among other people I knew. The drunk one-night stands, which were so pointless. Or the affairs my father had, which had upset my mother and driven my family apart. This affected no one. And it was no one’s business. Sex was always a transaction, all the more satisfying for money, instead of gratification or love.

  Eventually, I found my own kind of love, if you could call it that. One that temporarily assuaged the emptiness. Not the gentle, bland couplings that held some people together, woven into their lives alongside their meaningless jobs and crippling mortgages. That wasn’t for me. With that kind of love came pain; I’d found that out the hard way. Love—with its meaningless words and eloquent declarations so fervently, too easily spoken one moment, only to be withdrawn the next—was for other people.

  You couldn’t trust it. And what I sought was more carnal, brutal even. It left me with the same feeling I used to get when I cut myself. I wasn’t alone. There were plenty of men who wanted the same.

  While it lasted—in a hotel room or somewhere less private—it added to the thrill, I’d found. I could forget the hurt, the betrayal, the loneliness, lose myself in the brutality of the act. It had to be brutal. Then, after, there’d be no sentimentality or exchange of numbers that would later be forgotten. We existed in the moment. Then we were gone.

  2005 . . .

  People were all the same. All using me, drawing me into ever more complicated games, wringing out of me every last drop of my blood, sapping me. Leaving me with the same emptiness.

  It didn’t matter that I tried. Take Ed, for example. Hadn’t I done everything for him? I’d turned his characterless flat into a cozy home. Cooked him proper meals. Made him cut his hair, too, getting rid of those curls I hated. Short, straight hair looked so much better on a man. Yes. I was good for Ed. It was because of me that he got the promotion he wanted. I’d coached him, pushed him way further than he’d ever been able to push himself. But that was what it was about, wasn’t it? Knowing what was best for someone? Even if they swore at you or called you a nagging cunt.

  He’d known I was right. He’d thanked me, too, with that diamond ring, which I’d been so touched by, the same one that, when I came to sell it, turned out to be a cheap fake.

  That had hurt, then angered me. It had shown me how little he thought of me, how I wasn’t worth more than that, how stupid he thought I was. I wasn’t, though. I’d proved, too, that he needed me. I was an integral part of what he’d become. Just as I’d built him up, I could as easily bring him down.

  It hadn’t taken much. So many people are vindictive, I discovered. Only too willing to bad-mouth their so-called friends, always ready to believe the worst of someone.
Everyone’s looking for a fall guy. Too bad it had happened to be Ed’s turn.

  I’d almost finished with him, dismantling his life piece by piece. I’d begun with his home, giving his landlord notice, forging his signature, just as I’d forged it on a check made out to myself. His status had been next: a few carefully worded social media posts, untimely gossip to the right people. I’d watched his friendships start to crumble. Then I’d moved on to his career. I’d listened enough to him to know which people would make the difference between repute and contempt, success and failure. It had taken only a few well-timed words, and I’d felt a savage pleasure in his downfall. But by then the darkness had caught up to me.

  * * *

  So many times I’d questioned why. Why, just as I was rebuilding myself, finding strength in being alone, did I meet someone who loved me for what I was? Hadn’t I learned enough from all those past hardships—those broken hearts, the betrayals, all those fuckups—not to trust?

  I didn’t meet him like I met the others—during a clandestine rendezvous, arranged solely for sex, in some cheap hotel room or other. Never at someone’s home, since just as questions were never asked, no picture could be drawn of the other’s life.

  From the start, it was different with him, uncontrived, our meeting sheer coincidence: my missed train and his canceled appointment. I sat drinking my latte, aware of the irritation that festered inside me at having to wait, my eyes flitting, uninterested, my thoughts elsewhere.

  I saw him come in, instantly pigeonholed him into the category of arrogant and smug, like my father, who didn’t know what it was to struggle. It was in his unlined face, the expensive shirt, the way he spoke into his cell. But there was warmth in his eyes as he listened, smiled. He seemed happy in his own skin. It never ceased to amaze me how people could be like that, living charmed lives that had effortlessly fallen into place. They weren’t my kind of people, though. Not people like him, which was why the flash of jealousy I felt shocked me.