‘I just . . .’ She swallowed and blinked her eyes hard, trying to conjure tears. ‘I was just so angry at Luisa, because . . . because Luisa didn’t know Katie at all and yet there she was, trying to get attention, trying to get everyone to feel sorry for her, and I just had a go and then Sorcha, who is supposed to be my friend, was pulling me up in front of this idiot, trying to make me look bad, and I just . . . I don’t know, I just wanted to show them both up.’ She blushed hotly. ‘I mean, I’m not stupid. I know it looks bad.’
‘Her father could read that.’ I folded my arms. ‘Did you not even consider that?’
‘Her stepfather . . .’
‘Her father to all intents and purposes. Don’t try to excuse your behaviour on those grounds.’
She glanced up, her eyes red but dry, despite her best attempts, and I have to confess I did, in a warped way, understand her, even if it was an unforgivable way to behave. In the same way that Luisa was a slave to attention, Amber was a slave to her status. Sorcha had challenged her while she’d been in the process of putting Luisa down, and Amber had had to prove that she feared nothing and no one and could not be ruled by mere beta females, which meant not appearing to care what she said.
Neither she nor Luisa cared about Katie. Katie was a cypher, an alibi, something they could hang their interpersonal politics upon.
The girl herself remained missing, a footnote in their lives, just as she would become a footnote in a dreadful book like Snatched in Plain Sight.
Like Bethan Avery had.
I felt very tired suddenly.
‘We’ll need to discuss what we’re going to do with you, Miss McGowan.’ Ben stood up. ‘And contact your parents.’
For the first time Amber’s eyes grew round, and then pooled with genuine tears.
‘No! You can’t tell my parents . . . you don’t understand. They’re very . . . stressed right now . . .’
A flicker of sympathy shot through me. Amber got all of this from somewhere, after all.
‘Come on, you,’ I said, guiding her towards the door. ‘It’s no good crying now. What do we tell you in pastoral care? About the Internet?’
She screwed her lips tightly together. ‘Don’t post anything anywhere that you wouldn’t be happy to repeat on television.’
‘Hmm. So you do listen to me sometimes.’
After school that day I decided to follow Martin’s advice. I took the second letter with me, and half an hour later I was parked outside Narrowbourne Hospital.
The hospital made me cringe like no other place could. I had spent two weeks in an institution like this during my breakdown after university. I could still remember what it felt like to be totally dehumanized – mashed down to my lowest common denominator – with very little effort. I could taste the never-ending rising panic of those wretched days on the tip of my tongue.
Maybe, if someone here recognized the letters, something good might come out of it, and with this in mind I climbed out of the car.
I had come to this particular hospital again as an outpatient three years ago, after a series of misunderstandings that would have been comedic in other circumstances. I accidentally overdosed on my medication – it’s one thing to take too much aspirin, quite another to take too much Zoriclorone. No one at the school ever found out about that – about me being a Narrowbourne patient, that is.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Is Staff Nurse Marriott on duty?’
The receptionist looked up. I remembered her. ‘What’s it in connection with?’
I pulled out the ID card Iain had provided me with shortly after I started work at the Examiner. ‘I just need to ask her advice on something for the paper.’
‘Do you know which ward she works on, love?’
‘Chamberlain,’ I said, and waited as she dialled through. I was wasting my time and I knew it. There was no way Lisa would instantly recognize the writer of these letters, even if it was one of her patients. But what else was there? Even if the letters were genuine, finding Bethan was going to be a huge, huge task. And, anyway, I had to be able to tell Martin that I had completed this errand.
For some reason his good opinion mattered.
I was trying to think of a fresh approach to the problem when Lisa appeared.
‘Margot, how are you? I haven’t seen you for ages! How’re you keeping?’
‘I’m fine,’ I replied, perfectly truthfully. I’d never felt better. ‘I’m actually here on business. You knew I did some work for the local paper, didn’t you?’
Lisa nodded. ‘I gathered there was some reason for all those secretive phone calls requesting leaflets and so on. What were you up to?’
I laughed. ‘I must have surprised you a few times – sterilization one week, alcoholism another.’
‘The one that got me was Sickle Cell Anaemia,’ remarked Lisa drily.
I smiled. ‘The thing is, I was wondering whether you knew if someone in here had written this,’ I said, producing a photocopy of the first letter. ‘We’ve been getting a few of these at the paper.’
She scanned it, tiny lines crinkling the corners of her eyes. ‘I’ve not the faintest,’ she said after a long moment. ‘Spooky, isn’t it?’
I took the letter back.
‘You could ask around,’ she suggested. ‘If these things are a real nuisance. But I don’t think it’s from here, to be honest.’
‘I thought as much,’ I said.
‘I’m on my break now,’ she said. ‘Coming for a cup of tea?’
The place made my skin crawl and even Lisa’s pleasant face brought back unpleasant memories.
‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ I said, smiling right through the heart of my fear.
Perversely enough, I went to the Examiner before I went home. I turned my office key in the lock and was surprised to find Wendy there, even though it was Tuesday and seven o’clock at that. She was bent over a piece of paper.
‘God, Margot, you’re efficient. This has been every day this week.’
‘I was passing,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Thought I’d call by for my post.’
She eyed me curiously. She reached behind her into the cubbyhole. It occurred to me that she never let me check the cubbyhole myself if she was in the office. ‘Here you go.’
I glanced through the letters. I was wasting my time, I told myself. Then the familiar shaky, childish handwriting leapt out at me.
I was on the brink of asking Wendy when it had arrived and only just stopped myself. I shoved the bundle of letters into my bag. I could feel her staring at my back. I daresay she thought me very strange. But then, what the hell was she doing here?
As I straightened she looked away.
‘Working overtime?’ I asked, hefting my bag over my shoulder.
She nodded ruefully.
‘Well, I’ll probably see you tomorrow, then.’
‘Bye.’
Her eyes bored into me through the office window as I walked down the steps of the building. Perhaps she’d realized that something interesting was happening in my correspondence.
Dear Amy,
I hope you’re getting these letters. I can’t let myself think about what it would be like if you weren’t. I think I would just lay down and die.
There isn’t much time left. I’m sure he’s going to kill me soon. He gets angrier and angrier all the time.
I realized that I’ve never described him – well, not what he looks like. He has blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t know his age, but he might be something old, like over thirty.
He told my nanna and me when he came to visit us that his name was Alex Penycote and he was my social worker, but I think he was lying. He says he is part of a gang. I’ve never seen anybody else but I believe him, because he knows things about me, and about my mum and my nanna. When I was at the hospital visiting my nanna after her accident, he said I had to come with him. Now he says that he is very rich and powerful and anywhere I go in the world he will be able to find me, because he can pay p
eople to kill me and they will.
Yesterday I tried to run away again. I got as far as the steps but he caught me. I was sure he would kill me, he just kept kicking me and kicking me and now I can barely move for the pain.
He keeps saying that I must be grateful for all he does for me, but I will only be grateful to see him burning in Hell.
Please look harder. It’s not that I’m not thankful for all you do but I have to be rescued soon.
Love,
Bethan Avery
P. S. Be careful because he’s very sly and I don’t think he’d have a problem hurting people other than me. Don’t let anyone in your house you don’t know.
P. S. again – I’m being very serious.
The next day, my enquiries were getting me frankly nowhere. I’d gone through my back files and, as expected, there’d been no other letters comparable to Bethan’s. The other psychiatric units in the district were no more help than Narrowbourne.
In the days that followed, there had been no more letters.
Perhaps there’d be nothing else now . . . Maybe we’d had our lot.
I was thinking about this possibility, funnily enough, when the doorbell rang.
I was cutting up vegetables for a wickedly spiced peanut stir fry, and musing to myself that even the deepest emotional wounds can have an upside – Eddy had never been able to stand the stuff.
‘Hello, Mrs Lewis?’
Two people were on my doorstep, a man and a woman, lit only by the lamp on my hall porch, so it took a second or so to make them out. The man wore a casual suit and raincoat and was youngish, with thick, gelled hair and a petulant, rosebud mouth; the woman had on a dark dress and dogtooth jacket. Her hair was short and white-blonde, to set off her aggressive permatan, and she had soft cheeks and large grey eyes.
I had a sudden flashback to the scrawled postscript on Bethan’s letter – ‘Don’t let anyone in your house you don’t know.’
‘We’re so sorry to bother you – I’m Detective Inspector Hayers and this is Detective Constable Watson. Would it be possible to have a word?’
‘I . . .’ I was stymied by the warrant card he held up before my face.
He’d glanced down at the knife in my hand, and my own gaze followed his.
‘We can see that you’re in the middle of making your tea, and I promise it won’t take long.’
The knife. In my distracted state, I’d carried it to the door. I blushed hotly. ‘Oh, God, sorry! Yes, I was cooking. Come in.’
I hurried into the living room as they followed me, remembering to put the knife down on the kitchen counter. I turned the fire under the pan down. (‘Something smells nice,’ said the woman. She had a broad Essex accent. ‘I love a bit of Thai myself.’)
They took a seat on the squashy leather sofa while I perched on the edge of the armchair, and tried not to look a) guilty or b) nervous, my default settings when confronted by the police.
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ said the man, whose name I had already forgotten, it being lost in the alarming prefix of his job title. ‘But we understand that you’ve received some letters that have since been entered as evidence in a crime.’
I blinked. Had they? ‘I spoke to a man, an academic, who took them away to be analysed . . .’
‘Yes, Dr Forrester, we know,’ he said, and smiled, a brisk professional expression, designed solely to reassure the fretful. ‘We don’t want to alarm you, but this is now quite a serious matter. We know there’s a limit to how much you can help us and that you’ve already spoken to our colleagues at the station a couple of times now, but we just need to get a statement from you about these letters.’
The woman nodded, watching me, ‘And there are things we’d like you to do if you receive any more of them.’
‘What? Oh, yes, of course, whatever you need. What do you want to know?’
The man, the detective inspector, did the talking, asking me once again to tell the story of how I’d received the letters, what my job at the paper was, who I had spoken to about them, whether I had any idea where they had come from or why they were addressed to me. As he’d predicted, it was all material I’d covered before, but I didn’t have the same undivided attention focused on me then as I seemed to merit now. The man’s pen scratched quickly over the pad, while both of them kept nodding encouragement at me.
‘So,’ I said, once they seemed to finally be satisfied. ‘I suppose the letters must have turned out to be real?’
They exchanged swift looks. ‘I’m afraid I really can’t tell you anything about that, Mrs Lewis,’ he said.
‘Are they going to reopen the cold case on Bethan Avery?’
‘I’m sorry . . .’ he said. ‘I just can’t . . .’ He paused, as though reconsidering. ‘The investigation you’re referring to was never closed, because of the serious nature of the crime.’
I frowned. ‘But if Bethan Avery is alive, how is it . . .’
‘But Peggy Avery isn’t,’ interjected the woman gently. ‘And we suspect this crime might be linked to others.’
The man nodded, as though in agreement.
Of course. Of course. There were other girls.
Possibly even Katie Browne. Katie who had been missing for nearly five weeks now.
‘Mrs Lewis, are you all right? You look a little pale,’ asked the man. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’
The woman was peering at me with concern, as though I might faint.
‘Me? No, no, I’m fine. I’m just – I’m just a little shocked at how everything has accelerated.’ I was shaking, I realized. ‘So what do I do if I receive any more of them?’
The man put his pen back in his jacket, secreted the notebook into his coat. ‘If you get another letter like this, we’d like you to let us know and we’ll come down to get it. Even if you’re not sure, but think it might be from the same person, still tell us. We’d rather a wasted trip than see evidence be impaired. If you see one in your post, try not to touch it, and just let us know.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’
Wendy will be beside herself with all of this drama, I thought. I’ll never live it down.
‘Thanks for your time,’ he said, rising.
‘Enjoy your dinner,’ added the woman with a quick grin. ‘God, the smell alone is making me starving.’
I closed the door after them and returned to the kitchen.
I considered switching the heat back on under the pan for a long minute, the knife clutched in my hand once more.
Instead, I picked up the phone.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Hullo, Margot,’ Martin Forrester sounded a little breathless, as though he’d just come in. ‘I was about to call you.’
‘The police were here.’
‘Were they now? Who came?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember their names, I was stunned that they showed up at all. I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘Well, this is a bit of an emergency,’ said Forrester. He sounded brusque, distracted, as though he were talking to me but paying attention to something else. ‘Are you free this weekend?’
I blinked. For a ridiculous moment I thought he was trying to proposition me. I pulled up one of the pine chairs and lowered myself into it.
‘What?’
‘Listen to this, it’s what Mo Khan sent back: “It is my opinion that Bethan Avery’s journals and the letters submitted to me by Margot Lewis were written by one and the same person.”’
‘One and the same? Are you sure? There’s no mistake?’
‘Oh, there might be a mistake . . . at the end of the day it’s just his opinion. None of this stuff is cut and dried. But it’s an opinion that carries more weight than mine does.’
‘Jesus,’ I said. I was lighter than air. ‘Where are we going?’
‘If you can get away there’s a DS who worked on the Avery case when it happened. He lives in London. He was running the review of the cold case.’
‘The what?’
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br /> ‘The cold case – well, not so cold any more – I told you this. He can tell you about the other girls. He might be able to offer us some help in tracking down our mystery correspondent.’
At these words a cold thrill shot through me, numbing my hand as it curled loosely around the telephone receiver.
‘Can you make it this weekend?’ he repeated.
‘I . . . I don’t know. I think so. I’m involved in rehearsals for a school play but I’m pretty sure I can wrangle something.’ I trapped the phone under my chin. ‘Listen. I’m thinking of putting an appeal to whoever is writing the letters in the Examiner tomorrow.’
‘An appeal? What sort of an appeal?’ he asked sharply. I could almost see his dark brows drawing together.
‘Nothing very exciting. Just a line inviting Bethan to get in touch.’
‘A line?’ he asked. ‘Just that?’
‘Yeah, along the bottom of the column. In caps, usually. I do it when I think someone is in danger – the last time, someone wrote to me in the midst of planning their suicide and we got him to speak to the Samaritans. Runaways get in touch sometimes, wanting to pass on messages to their family . . .’ I tailed off, uneasy with this line of questioning. ‘When we can’t contact someone directly we use it. We never get specific about their issues, though, to preserve their confidentiality. Nine times out of ten, the reaction of the people around them to their problem is ten times more worrying to them than the problem itself.’
‘You couldn’t make this appeal bigger?’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘Bigger how?’
‘I . . . look, I think this is a great idea, but I need to check in with a few people. Let me call you back.’
‘OK, take care.’
‘I will. You too.’
He hung up.
The next day at school, when I came out into the corridor, buried beneath a massive stack of grammar textbooks I was trying to hold steady with my chin, someone was waiting for me.
Sorcha Malone was standing in the corridor, her freckled face pale and her wiry red hair twisted up untidily at the back. Her nails were in her mouth, her white teeth worrying at their tips. Nail polish is forbidden at St Hilda’s but the girls get around this by having meticulously buffed and shaped nails.
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