A couple run past, following the path to a more wooded part of the heath surrounded by trees. It would be easy to get lost if you didn’t know where you were going. Finding my way around is a skill I’ve developed over the years, out of necessity as a child, when I was forever on the move. I’m tramping down a path through piles of amber leaves when my phone rings. It’s Jamie.
‘Hello.’ The link clicks and Jamie’s voice cuts out. My phone rings again, but cuts out immediately. I check the signal but there’s barely any reception; thick trees are forming a roof overhead. I walk a bit further and the phone buzzes with a text. Jamie again. I stop and read it:
I’d have preferred to tell you this in person but you need to know. I’ve found out who the other woman is. Be careful. Here’s proof.
The text is followed by a photograph. I haven’t spoken to Jamie since the party. He doesn’t know I’ve met her already. Still, I’m curious, struck by the masochistic desire to torment myself by studying her model-pretty face. The photograph takes forever to open, the signal is still patchy. I walk quickly up the track, until I’m practically running. As I emerge out from under the trees, I hold the phone inside my coat but the signal bar is still low.
I hear a rumbling in the distance. Thick raindrops land on my head, sliding into my eyes, and I brush them away. My breath quickens. I trip over a loose paving stone and my foot twists under me. Forced to stop, I rub my ankle and hobble the last few steps. The white facade of number 46 glows against the dark sky, swathes of rain battering against it. On the doorstep I take out my phone again as the pixels flicker and finally form a photograph. It’s a shot of Chris’s office door. Chris with a woman who has dark hair. Confusion cascades through me. The woman at the party was blonde. Who is this? I grab hold of the doorpost to steady myself, rain slithering down my arm.
I zoom into the woman’s face. The woman with him is Alice.
Diary
31 JULY 1997
He was sitting in the front room, smoking. The wallpaper was yellow from the number of cigarettes he sucked on, one after another while he listened to the radio and read his newspapers and drank his whisky. He lives in that room, eats in there too. He shunned the dining table months ago, leaving his discarded tray on the floor for me to deal with. Smoke spiralled up to the ceiling, where our daughter paced up and down, making the cord holding the light bulb swing.
When I asked him where she was, where he’d taken her, he didn’t answer, so I raised my voice a little. He jumped up from the lumpy sofa, ash spilling onto the carpet, and seized my wrists. His smoky breath was hot on my face and made my eyes sting. He knows I knew nothing about the pregnancy until it was too late. Melissa was so terrified I had to wring the word from her. My wrists burned with pain as his big hands covered mine, fixing me in place. His words chilled me. ‘I’ve dealt with it, like you should have done months ago, before it was too late.’
Sobs burst from my throat and he pushed me to the ground like a rag doll.
He sneered, ‘I was going to do it anyway. She saved me a job. Never mention it again.’
* * *
Edward moved the rest of his things into the spare room this afternoon. I hope it means I won’t have to suffer his monstrous body sweating over mine any more. He’s getting so fat I find it hard to breathe, but I have no choice in the matter. The spare room is adjacent to the kitchen so he’ll be down there all the time. He said he wants to ‘keep an eye’ on everything. He’s drinking more than ever: dark, evil-smelling spirits which knock him out and make him snore like the fat pig that he is. I wish he was dead. There, I’ve said it.
He still won’t talk about the poor baby, about what he did to her. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since she was born. My fingertips are red raw where I’ve chewed at my nails and the skin around them. I should go to the police, but I’m too terrified. When I think about my granddaughter an uncontrollable shaking takes over my body and all I can do is wrap my arms around myself until it goes.
I didn’t see Melissa for the rest of the day. I sat for hours outside her room, calling to her, and when it became clear she wasn’t going to respond I just spoke in whispers to her every now and then to let her know I was there. I heard her pacing around, crying; there was a terrible bang and I feared she was doing harm to herself. But her door remained locked.
That night I didn’t even pretend to try to sleep, I just sat in the chair in my room, rocking, wishing I had the courage to take my life, but I can’t leave my children, and Melissa needs me now more than ever. I must have dropped off eventually as a noise woke me: a thud and the creak of a door. But I stared down at the garden and I couldn’t see him. Though I swear he was there.
* * *
1 AUGUST 1997
He got up early today and clattered about in the kitchen, dropping something that smashed on the floor. He wouldn’t let me clear it up. I waited until I heard him go back into his room before I crept downstairs. I made a decision during those long hours in the night: I’m getting Melissa out of here. Today. And I’m going straight to the police to tell them about the baby; it’s the right thing to do, and we owe her a decent burial. If she’d been in hospital, as she should have been, maybe she’d have stood a chance.
Thirty-Nine
ELLA
I stumble into the house, tears blurring my vision. Alice and Chris? It can’t be true. I thought Alice was gay. Was she lying the whole time, about her, about Olivia? Was she just playing a game?
In my mind I run through the possible meetings between Chris and Alice. She wasn’t here when he came round – she expressly said she didn’t want to see him, because she hated him on my behalf. She disappeared at the party when he turned up.
I drop down on the sofa, sinking into the cushions, wishing they would swallow me whole. But if Alice is his girlfriend, then who was the blonde at the party? My head throbs and my cheeks flush with shame when I think about the kiss. Has she been playing me all along? How could she?
Feeling the sting of betrayal, I decide I need to find out what she’s been up to. Is Chris somehow behind her being in the house? Suddenly, her guilty look when I saw her on the phone in the garden makes sense; her sleepwalking takes on a different meaning. I jump up from the sofa, energised.
Answers to what Alice is up to have to be here somewhere. I’ve looked in her room and the shed. What about the cellar? I collect the cellar key from the kitchen drawer and switch my mobile’s flashlight on as I open the door, wrinkling my nose at the smell: more damp, which isn’t surprising, given the proximity of the pond. I descend the cold wooden steps and another familiar aroma mingles with the damp, woody smell. Peering at the scene before me, what I find makes me stop dead.
The boxes that Chris left down here have been ransacked. Papers lie strewn across the floor, discoloured from the damp. I grab a half-open box to move it out of the way and a spider runs across my hand. I cry out in surprise and stand up, shaking. My hands tremble as I riffle through the contents. I come across a school letter detailing the poor attendance record of Christopher Rutherford, dated 1995. He would have been fifteen. I look around the rest of the space, clutching my arms around myself. But it’s not the cold that is making me shiver, it’s the sight of a pair of flowery gardening gloves. Alice’s. As much as I don’t want Jamie’s evidence to be true, the reality is sinking in. A space has been cleared away from the spilled contents of the boxes and a row of plant pots and a bag of soil rest against the wall. The familiar smell I noticed on coming down the steps is stronger here. Chanel No. 5, Alice’s perfume. Alice has been down here. Why hasn’t she said anything? I recall the conversation in the kitchen where I pointed out the key, telling her where I was going to store it. I didn’t make a secret of it. What was there to hide? My skin prickles with unease at the feverish searching that has gone on down here. What is she looking for? Suspicion creeps into my mind along with cold dread. What if they are planning to drive me out together? Images assault me. I can’t bear the thou
ght of them being a couple. Kissing. Sharing a bed. My bed. Then flashes of the meat and the mangled mouse torment me. Another spider scuttles in front of me and I can’t get out of there quick enough. I lock the cellar and slip the key into my pocket. There’s another place I can search: the box room.
All of Nancy’s paperbacks are on a shelving unit in an alcove. I’m looking for a sign that Alice has been in here, but everything is as it was last time I was here. As well as the books on the shelves there are a couple of piles on the floor. I sort through those first, then try the bookcase, where the books are double-filed with another row behind. I don’t know what I’m looking for. On the top shelf, some of the books are stacked higgledy-piggledy so I tidy them up a bit, arrange them as Nancy would’ve liked them. The row at the back isn’t flush against the wall and I stick my hand behind; something is stuck there, another book. I squeeze my fingers into the gap and push until it lifts, pulling it out. It’s a notebook with a black cover. Inside the pages are full of sweeping, swirling handwriting. Small with loops, written with a fountain pen. Nancy’s Parker pen. I gasp. She wouldn’t write with anything else. My hands tremble as I sink back down on the bed, push the books aside, no longer interested in stacking the shelves neatly. Nothing else matters. My pulse quickens as I turn to the front of the book, delicately handling the thin white pages. The black ink bursts from the page. A date is inscribed on the inside cover: 1997. The date 30 July 1997 flashes into my head.
Maybe she wrote it down.
This will take me closer to Nancy than any work of fiction ever could. This is her story. A sheet of paper is tucked inside the cover. It’s typed, no address.
So you’re back at 46 Heath Street. I might have known you’d return. Back to claim the house, which is rightfully mine. But I forgot, he brainwashed you, girls don’t count, right?
I’ll never forgive you for abandoning us. She needed you as much as I did. But unlike me, she would never escape. I always knew you’d get away, but I thought you’d take me with you. First you told him about my boyfriend – that was the beginning of the end for all of us. Second, you abandoned me to him, knowing what he was capable of. You condemned my child to death, and for that I will never forgive you.
You’ll never be able to leave 46 Heath Street, because she is there, your niece. And you can’t run the risk of anyone finding her, because you let it happen, and I’m watching you.
* * *
Your sister,
* * *
Melissa
* * *
It doesn’t make sense to me at all. Chris told me he tried to find his sister, but he never mentioned a child. Plus he denied ever hearing from her. More lies. I turn to the first entry in the diary but a loud banging makes me jump to my feet, and the doorbell rings: the continuous sound of a finger holding the bell down. I shove the diary under my pillow and run to the top of the stairs. The shape of a head pushed up against the glass makes me recoil, even though I know you can’t see into the house through it.
‘Ella, are you in there?’
Chris. I sink down onto the top stair and hug my knees to my chest. He can’t see me up here. I close my eyes and count my breaths as I wait for the noise to stop. I can’t face him, knowing about him and Alice, how they’ve fooled me. I feel so stupid. The incessant ringing suddenly stops.
‘Fuck you, this is my house.’ Something thuds against the door and I hear footsteps heading down the path, away from the house. I peep out through the blind and see Chris walking away. The image of him with Alice shimmers in front of my eyes, making me feel sick. I run upstairs and peer out at the garden.
The area where Alice has been digging is awash with mud, and the spade lies across a hole as if it was abandoned suddenly. Mr Mortimer mentioned she was digging a series of holes. What is she looking for? Despite the full-blown storm raging outside, I want to see for myself. I put my coat back on along with some wellies and go out into the rain. Wind blows the long grass which swishes back and forth, but further back the grass has been mown and Alice has been digging a large area in front of the shed. Mud squelches over my boots and I lose my balance as my foot sinks into one of the holes. My hands slide into the slimy brown mud as rain pelts me from above. Something pink stands out against the dark earth and I scrabble around to grab hold of it. It’s made of wool but it’s too filthy, too sodden to make out what it is. I shove it in my pocket and extricate my feet from the mud before heading back inside.
I rinse it in the sink, hands shivering, a realisation gradually dawning. It’s a knitted baby’s blanket, and I have an identical one upstairs. Knitted by Nancy. But when did she make this, and who for? The child in the letter creeps into my mind. I wring the damp blanket out, wishing I could squeeze the answers out along with the water.
Forty
ALICE
I needn’t have worried; I didn’t have to cajole Ella into drinking at all. She drank eagerly as I abstained, unsure how long it would take. At first she was talkative but when it happened it was quick. A slowing of her speech, a look of bewilderment, then suddenly she was unconscious.
I only needed a few hours. I could have waited until she was at work but my need was too pressing. A frantic, urgent pulse drove me forward. She’d sleep through the night and she’d never know it wasn’t the wine. I left her on the couch and went up to her bedroom.
Straight away I saw the box. Had she been in the shed and taken this one? An icy finger tickled my neck. Did she suspect me?
But the box only contained paperwork belonging to Chris, and my pulse returned to normal. I was overreacting.
There was nothing under Ella’s bed or hidden in her wardrobe. Mum must have left me some clue as to what he did with her. I made sure not to disturb anything. Under a neatly folded pile of T-shirts in a small plastic bag I found the embroidery Ella showed me. I couldn’t react then. Who would have thought a piece of embroidery could cause such pain? Mum was always sewing or knitting, making things while she sat downstairs in the evening when he was out. It kept her calm, I realise now. At the time my head was full of my baby and what was going to happen to us. Mum gave me the square I now held in my hand after she was born, a tiny piece containing the date of her arrival – 30 July 1997 – the day of her death. I thought I’d packed it when I left, but I’d been in such a hurry, taking my one chance of getting out and running. I felt bad leaving Mum, but what choice did I have? I had to get out after what he did. To me, to my baby girl. Seeing the piece of fabric again, it’s as if the needle Nancy used to embroider it is digging straight into my heart.
* * *
After a thorough search, I turned up nothing else. Only one option remained: my twin brother. He would know where she was.
Kit was the one person who could help me. Chris, not Kit; he no longer deserved that old, affectionate name, a gift from his kid sister. Chris, who betrayed me by telling our father my secret, who went abroad to escape, leaving me behind to suffer under our father’s reign of terror. His chest was puffing in and out from where he’d run down the stairs to answer the bell: an action he clearly regretted by the way his face dropped at the sight of me.
‘What are you doing here again?’ he said when he saw me outside his office. ‘I told you not to come here – we shouldn’t be seen together.’
‘You shut the door in my face last time, which I don’t take kindly to. I’m not the kid sister you can push around any more. I’m coming in. We need to talk.’
‘You’re right about that. I know what you’ve been doing.’
It was still a shock for me, seeing my twin brother like this again, but of course I didn’t show it. I’d had glimpses of him when he came to the house, then at the farcical party, but on both occasions I had managed to keep out of sight. Boy, he looked rough. His shirt was crumpled and spattered with tea, and his hair needed a good cut. His beard wasn’t the carefully crafted type cultivated by hipsters, but neglected stubble. A pang of sympathy came from deep inside for the brother I used to kno
w, the brother who was born just minutes after me, but I tossed my hair back and threw the treacherous thought out of my mind. This was Ella’s husband, the man who had made her so unhappy and who’d threatened to take the house away. Our house, my house. And I wasn’t finished there yet.
After Nancy died they didn’t try hard enough to find me. She always said she would change her will and leave the house to me; she used to whisper it to me on those occasions when Dad had one of his rages and had stormed off, giving us a few hours’ respite while he downed Guinness at the pub on the corner, before coming back for round two. We’d huddle by the fire and she’d stroke my hair, she said they’d both get their comeuppance, because Kit was already taking sides and he hadn’t chosen the right one. Although he made a mistake when he copied Dad and tried to bully me. That was the point at which he lost us. Nancy and I huddled under a blanket and she told me she’d get her own back, she would bide her time and leave the house to me. But that depended on Edward dying first. She always seemed convinced he would; after all, he was considerably older than her and he was killing himself slowly with drink.
‘Shall we go up?’ I asked Chris, who had clearly lost the power of speech. We walked into an open-plan office space. Me following behind, feeling a pang of emotion at seeing his oh-so-familiar gait, just like when we were kids. But I was no longer in awe of my brother. Quite the opposite. Through an open doorway to a room at the back I could see a suitcase on a bed. Chris pushed the door to when he saw me looking. A smell of tomato soup hung in the air.
The Woman at 46 Heath Street: A twisty and absolutely gripping psychological thriller Page 20