Part of the Silence

by Debbie Howells

  * * *

  It doesn’t take long to pack enough for a week. Only as I drive away do I realize what I’m losing. Not just a friend and companion. He was there when I needed him. My safety net.

  38

  JACK

  October 22 . . .

  He remembered that feeling, when there was no peace. Not in the quiet moments or the bittersweetness of memories or the dead of night. Just a restlessness, a constant searching, a clinging to the most fragile hope.

  The police search had wound down. Jack had caught sight of Evie once or twice, walking through the woods alone, slightly lost looking. Respecting her privacy, he’d kept his distance, until the morning he lost Beamer—and Evie found him.

  As she walked toward him, he could see how thin she still was, just skin and bone under the clothes that swamped her.

  “Sorry.” He stopped as Beamer came bounding up to him. “Once he gets on the trail of a rabbit, there’s no stopping him.”

  “I thought he might be lost.” She spoke quietly, her voice flat.

  Jack hesitated before asking, “How are you?”

  “Okay.” But her voice was trembling.

  “Any news?” Kicking himself for asking, because if there was, the chances were he would know before she did. Anyway, he could tell from her demeanor that there had been no good news. And if there had, whether he’d been into the police station or not, he would have heard.

  “No.” She paused before looking up at him, her eyes filled with tears. “There are still these different versions of my life. So many people have told me things I don’t recall. I still don’t remember what happened to Leah—only what they’ve told me. But it’s there. I remember being frantic with worry, the police coming to interview me. . . .” She looked desperate.

  Jack didn’t know what to say to her. The focus had switched from a missing child to an attack on a woman suspected of having mental health problems, as if one precluded the other, as if the two were mutually exclusive. They were no nearer finding out who had attacked Evie, so she at least still had a police guard.

  “So, you’re just walking?” he said.

  “Yes.” Her voice wavered. “I needed to get out of the house.”

  He paused. “Do you mind if I walk with you?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  Jack let her lead the way. However muddled her head, there were clearly places she wanted to seek out. Every so often Beamer lunged after a rabbit or a squirrel gathering winter fodder, but halfheartedly, for the most part trotting along with them.

  “I might get a dog,” she said suddenly. “Now I don’t have a cat. . . .”

  “What happened to him?” A dog would be a good idea for her. Company, a pair of sharp ears.

  “He’s gone,” she said briefly. He didn’t want to ask why.

  For a while they didn’t speak. Then, as the path widened enough for them to walk side by side, she said, “I’m sorry about your son.”

  Jack was taken by surprise. She had enough on her mind without worrying about him. Most people didn’t know what to say, choosing instead to stay silent. But Evie wasn’t most people. She understood.

  “How do you cope?”

  There was honest compassion in her voice. She wasn’t prying, but it made Jack suspect that whatever she told him, a small part of her still wasn’t sure.

  “Day by day,” he said briefly. “But also, you have no choice. When someone’s life is taken so suddenly, especially a young person’s, it makes you want to make the most of every second you have. Not to waste it, because you’re here and they’re not. But, God . . . it’ll never make sense. He was fifteen. Had everything to live for . . .” Familiar emotion overcame him as his voice cracked. There was more he wanted to say, like how he wanted to talk about Josh all the time. It was other people who couldn’t cope with it. You got fed up with the looks of pity and the platitudes. “It takes time,” was a favorite. He’d lost count of how many times people had said that to him, as if they knew. They didn’t, of course. It didn’t matter how much time you gave it. You didn’t get over the loss of your own child.

  She was silent. “I can understand,” she said at last. “How it completely changes everything.”

  They fell into silence as they kept walking, farther than he normally went. Evie said little, her head moving now and then as she took in their surroundings. No matter what she said, she was still looking. It wouldn’t take much for her to question what she’d been convinced of. Jack watched her, aware of the confusion that must be clouding her mind, wary, also, of making it worse for her.

  Eventually, the woods thinned out. Ahead of them were fields edged with stone walls, dozens of sheep grazing in them. She looked unsure.

  “We could keep going,” he suggested. “Unless there’s anywhere you need to be?”

  She shook her head. “Not really.”

  “If we keep walking, we can pick up the coast path. Over there.” Jack pointed, and as her eyes followed, he saw them light up when she saw the sea in the distance, a shimmer of blue.

  “It’s a long way,” she said quietly.

  He’d forgotten how frail she was. “Maybe too far.”

  “I think so.” She stood there, staring toward the horizon.

  “I still haven’t found any of her things.” As she whispered it, there was a blankness in her eyes. Jack frowned. He knew from experience how much clutter came with small children. You wouldn’t have thought it was possible to remove everything a child left in its wake. Not just clothes, but the detritus of toys and tiny treasures children collected.

  “What about photos?”

  She shook her head, a sadness in her eyes.

  Jack was silent, trying to imagine how she was feeling.

  “I found a pebble,” she said suddenly. “Under the sofa. All of a sudden, I felt hopeful, because I could remember the day Angel found it. We’d been planting bulbs last autumn, her little hands next to mine in the crumbling earth, when she’d pulled it out, brushed the soil off. I even remember our conversation. ‘It’s a bone, Mummy.’ ‘Is it? Shall we wash it and see?’ ‘It might be a dinosaur’s,’ she told me as she turned it this way and that.”

  She went on. “It wasn’t really a bone.” Her voice was distant again. “Just shaped enough like one to spark her imagination in a hundred directions. She brought it inside, added it to her other treasures—the black-and-white feather of the lesser spotted woodpecker that visits now and then, the shell of a blackbird’s egg, set incongruously on her windowsill, alongside her collection of gaudy little-girl hair clips and plastic bracelets. And they’ve all gone.” Her eyes were filled with tears. “At least, that’s what I remember. I guess I made it all up.”

  “But surely . . .” Jack was confused. “If your memories are that clear—”

  She interrupted. “You know what you said to me, about trusting my gut? I’ve really thought about that. I wish it worked for me.”

  “It may yet.” Jack was still convinced she shouldn’t give up.

  She wiped her eyes, then turned to look at him. “It’s as though everything’s there, in my head, but my brain puts the wrong things together. My memories are stories.” Her voice shook. “Stories I want to believe, because they feel so real. I have to keep reminding myself, they’re not.”

  “People often tell different versions of the same story,” Jack suggested. “And yours aren’t so very far apart.”

  “They’re far enough apart. And there’s what happened with Leah. I’ve seen photos of her. In my head, she and Angel . . .” She looked scared. “They’re so alike. I don’t know what to think.”

  “No.” It was beyond anything he’d experienced. He knew that memory could be unreliable, that false memories could be implanted. But that wasn’t what this was. He’d never seen anyone so confused.

  “Everyone tells me I need time.” She was silent for a moment. “But the more that comes back to me, the less I trust.” She paused for a moment. “I just wa
nt it all to go away.” There was anger in her voice. “I wish I could go back to before. Don’t you wish that? That you could go back?”

  “Yes.” Of course he did. He’d give anything for Josh to still be here. His death had changed Jack. He wasn’t the same person he used to be. It had changed his marriage, too, in the worst way. Nothing was the same, but that was life.

  Talking about Josh brought a wave of painful nostalgic memories flooding back. It still got him, a melancholic yearning for something lost forever.

  “It’s no good just remembering, is it?” Anxiety flashed in her eyes. “It’s not enough—for the police and for me, too. If Angel’s real, she’s got to be there, Jack. In my brain. If only someone could splice it out, that sliver that holds her face or a moment from her childhood, so that we had something tangible. And if it wasn’t there, then we’d know.”

  Sensing her desperation, her frustration, he could only nod.

  “If I had her things . . .” Evie shook her head. “You know how they make you think of a particular time? Like I can remember the day I gave her Pony. And when she put on the little bracelet I gave her for her birthday . . .”

  Suddenly, Jack thought of something. He got out his phone, scrolled through the photos until he found what he was looking for. “Do you recognize this?”

  Evie stared at the photo of the pendant the bird had dropped the day he’d found Tamsyn’s body, recognition dawning on her face. “It’s Tamsyn’s.” She looked at Jack. “I’m not making it up.”

  He didn’t think she was. He didn’t tell Evie where he’d found it. “You’re sure?”

  Her face was pale as she nodded. “I gave it to her.”

  * * *

  “Evie befriended Tamsyn, by the sound of things.” Jack had called Abbie to let her know. “She says she used to leave Angel with her occasionally, when she had to go out.”

  “It could explain why no one saw her with a child.” Abbie was silent for a moment.

  It explained a lot, Jack was thinking. Evie hadn’t left her daughter alone. She’d timed her deliveries to the farm shop and any shopping she needed to do so that they coincided with Tamsyn’s visits.

  “According to forensics, Tamsyn died before the attack on Evie,” Abbie told him. “It completely blows our theory about Tamsyn seeing what happened.”

  “Maybe she was staying at Jessamine Cottage. And whoever is behind this wanted her out of the way.” Jack was thinking that it would have been so easy for whoever had done this. Everyone was so used to Tamsyn disappearing that no one missed her.

  39

  October 24 . . .

  That winter wasn’t far away could be seen in the shortening days and the falling of the leaves, in the stormy autumnal gloom giving way to night frosts and cold sunshine. Jack thought about Evie often, walked with her now and then, when he wasn’t working, her eyes still pinned to the ground for anything that the searches may have missed, only occasionally flickering elsewhere, along hazy lines of long-ago planted trees or upward, through the tangle of branches, toward the sky.

  He wished he could have given her some answers. Words of wisdom that would have helped her when she most needed it, but who was he to explain what the grand plan was. There were two certainties in this life. You were born, and you died. The bit in between, either you embraced it and made the most of it, or you sat back and let it happen around you. Either way, it was brief.

  He had a suspicion that Evie fell into the latter category. Life was too short to waste by being in the wrong places, in stifling situations, with the wrong people. She hadn’t been sure how she’d like living here, but over the months, the surroundings had crept under her skin and taken root. Or maybe it was the ghosts, she’d told him, because she could almost feel them, the ghosts of the people who had been born and had died during the centuries that had passed while the woods grew up. It made you wonder how many people had walked where they had, because an oak tree could live for a thousand years.

  Jack thought of the stag. Then Josh.

  There were many paths. They took a different one every time, kicking through last autumn’s leaves, scanning low branches for a ripped shred of familiar fabric, finding none. During one of their walks, she’d told him that the isolation, which she’d come to love, was now her enemy, because there were too many places to hide.

  On that particular walk, the weather had made no difference. He had heard the rain in the distance, before it caught up to them, had felt the first cold drops, then pulled his collar up higher as Evie did the same, and had whistled to Beamer before burying his hands in his pockets.

  * * *

  A few days passed, during which he didn’t see her. Then one gray, damp morning, from deep in the woods, he heard a scream. Without thinking, he broke into a run. There was another scream. Jack ran faster.

  Somehow he knew it was she. “Evie?” His voice echoed through the trees as, beside him, Beamer barked. “Evie? Are you there?”

  She was crashing through the woods, not far from them.

  “Evie? Wait . . . where are you?”

  Suddenly Beamer ran off ahead. The crashing stopped, and he heard her call him.

  “Jack?”

  He followed the sound of her voice, was shocked when he caught up with her. Her eyes were wide and red with crying; her breath was coming in gasps.

  “I found something. Quick! Follow me. . . .” He couldn’t get a word in. “This way. I need to show you.”

  He followed her.

  Then she stopped suddenly, turned round, a look of panic on her face. “I can’t find them. I don’t know where we are.”

  “Find what?” Jack had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Graves, Jack. In the trees. Two graves.”

  A shiver ran down his spine. He could see why she was so upset. “Think, Evie. Which way were you walking?” They were on one of the main paths they both knew well.

  “I-I’m not sure.” It wasn’t just her voice that shook. Her whole body seemed to be shaking uncontrollably.

  Jack took her arm. “Come on. Let’s keep going straight on.”

  They walked only a few yards before she veered off to the left and follow a different path. This path was narrow and overhung by brambles, so that if you didn’t know it was there, you’d walk straight past it.

  “Are you sure this is right?” he asked, then watched the back of her head move as she nodded her reply.

  Then, a few yards farther on, she stopped, pointed directly ahead of them. “There.”

  He tried to see where she was looking, and then he walked past her to take a closer look. At first, under the covering of fallen leaves, it was hard to make them out, but after focusing for half a minute, he could see what she’d found. Side by side, unmistakably, were two graves. One of them was filled in, scattered with a covering of leaves; the other, empty.

  * * *

  It took two hours for Miller and Evans to find them on one of the main paths so that they could lead them to where the graves were.

  “Thanks for showing us. We’ll get a team out to see what we’ve got here. Are you okay to escort Evie home?” Miller was clearly aware of how vulnerable Evie was.

  “Of course.” Jack wanted to stay, but it was his day off. “Call me when you know more,” he said to Miller. “Evie? Shall we head back?”

  He could see that she, too, was torn between staying and going. Between logic and fear that the daughter she wasn’t sure she had might be lying under the mound of earth, the fallen leaves. No way should she be here when they dug up the grave.

  “Come on.” He took her arm. “I’ll walk you home.”

  As they walked, she didn’t speak. Jack could imagine the scenarios she was running through her head. She must be in impossible turmoil—and limbo.

  Who knew what was in the filled-in grave or whom the open one was intended for? God, he hoped it was an animal in there. But Evie’s daughter was still unaccounted for. He couldn’t bear even to think it, but wh
at if they’d found her? When they reached her house, Evie barely said good-bye to him. Jack could see fear eating away at her. She’d seemed so accepting, but as he watched her, suddenly he realized that like him, she hadn’t given up on finding her daughter. Not deep inside.

  “Will you be okay?” He was worried about her. The house was unlit, and it was too early for her police guard to be here. As far as he knew, she’d be alone.

  She nodded, then turned to go in. He stood watching until she’d gone inside and closed the door.

  * * *

  At home, he couldn’t get the image of her out of his mind, haunted by what she had probably been thinking since they’d found the graves. In the end he decided to go back and check on her.

  It was dark by the time he knocked on Evie’s door, carrying a dish. Concerned that she might not be eating, on the spur of the moment he’d brought the casserole he’d made for his own dinner. There was no answer. She clearly had nothing left, not even a polite hello for whoever had come to intrude. Intrusions into her small, desolate world—that was what people became when they continually arrived without warning, especially given that Evie was a private person. He pushed the door open and walked in.

  “Hello? Evie? It’s Jack.”

  There was no reply.

  After placing the dish on the kitchen table, he carried on through to the sitting room. She was tiny, curled up on her sofa, as though finding the graves had somehow diminished her size. Looking around the room, he noticed that it was untidy, clothes thrown over the back of a chair, dirty plates on the low coffee table. A manifestation of her life now.

  “I hope you don’t mind.” He paused. “I thought you should eat.”

  Her head came up, as his voice had startled her.

  Jack stood there, awkwardly. “I brought you food. I hope you don’t mind. . . .” He hedged, suddenly unsure how she felt about him letting himself into her house like this. “It’s just a casserole.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, her response automatic. Her eyes drifted away from him.