by D. S. Butler
I took a step forward, ready to knock on the door, when Dawn turned around. Her coarse features were illuminated by the light from the computer display. She scrambled out of her chair, a look of surprise mingled with panic on her face.
I had no idea why she would react that way. She retreated, disappearing from view, and I expected her to come straight to the front door, so I didn’t knock or ring the doorbell.
A few seconds later, when the door didn’t open, I grew restless, shuffling from foot to foot and wondering why I was wasting my time.
“For goodness sake,” I muttered under my breath.
I pressed the doorbell and heard the cheerful chimes coming from inside the house. I waited for a good two minutes, but no one came to answer the door. I glanced back at the window in confusion. What was her problem? She clearly didn’t want to see me and had decided to hide and pretend she wasn’t home. It was ridiculous. She’d seen me watching her.
My mind started to work overtime, coming up with theories and possibilities as to why Dawn didn’t want to see me. Maybe she knew something about Jenna. Maybe she was scared that if she talked to me, she would blurt out the truth.
I stepped back from the front door, tilted my head back and looked at the windows upstairs. There were no lights on and no sign that anyone was moving about inside.
Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation was often the right one. Perhaps Dawn was still upset with me. I accused her of being involved somehow in Jenna’s disappearance and insisted the police look into her, so it would certainly be understandable if she didn’t want to talk to me. But if that was the case, why did Mrs Parsons ask me to come and talk to her daughter? If Dawn still held a grudge over my behaviour from two years ago, surely her mother wouldn’t have suggested I talk to her.
Feeling irritated, and frustrated, I stepped off the garden path and onto the lawn before tiptoeing carefully around the flowerbed in front of the bay window so I could peer into the room that Dawn had recently vacated. The faint blue light from the computer screen gave the room an eerie feel, but I couldn’t see anyone inside. From outside, I couldn’t even make out what she’d been looking at on the computer – I saw a blue header and some text and photographs and guessed it was Facebook.
I was just about to step back when a sudden movement directly behind the window made me jerk backwards. A strangled cry left my throat as I staggered backwards, trampling the geraniums in the flowerbed.
My heart was still pounding when I realised it was just the Parsons’s tabby cat. He’d leapt up onto the windowsill to take a look at the nosy person peering in. Wiping my sweaty palms on the legs of my jeans, I exhaled a deep breath and shook my head. I was jumpy tonight.
I took one last look at the upstairs windows and shrugged. Fine. If she didn’t want to talk to me, I was okay with that. I’d done my best to talk to Dawn as Mrs Parsons had requested so I wouldn’t feel guilty anymore. But when I began to walk away from the house, I felt a prickling sensation on my skin, just like last time, and I was convinced Dawn was peering out from one of the windows, watching me.
By the time I was halfway down the lane, I’d managed to calm down. I was paranoid. Dawn’s strange behaviour probably had nothing to do with Jenna’s disappearance. It was far more likely that Dawn didn’t want to talk to me because she held a grudge, which was understandable really. We’d never been friends in the past, so why did I expect her to want to see me now? She was never going to welcome me back to Woodstock with open arms.
I rolled my shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension that had built up steadily during the day. Meeting Luke for a drink had helped. I relaxed enough to smile briefly when I remembered how I’d reacted when the tabby cat startled me. I’d almost jumped out of my skin.
When I reached the gate to Mum’s house, I saw the tall metal gate was already open. That was unusual. Mum only left them open when she was expecting somebody to visit or she had a visitor with her at that time. I had my keys with me so she wouldn’t have left the gate open for me. Was Daniel still there?
I pulled out my mobile phone and checked the time. It was just after eight o’clock.
After I had passed through the gate, I saw a car I didn’t recognise parked in the driveway. It wasn’t Daniel’s car. I increased my walking speed, marching up the driveway, wondering who the visitor could be. I was halfway up the driveway when a man, dressed in a tight navy blue suit, exited the front door. He had closely cropped fair hair and glanced at me dismissively as he reached out with his key fob to unlock the car.
I broke into a jog, trying to reach him before he slipped into the driver seat.
Was he a police officer?
“Hey!” I called out. “Just a minute. I want to talk to you.”
Why hadn’t mum told me the police were calling round? I’d had my phone with me all evening. I hated the idea of the police coming to deliver bad news when I wasn’t there.
The young man in the tight blue suit turned around and looked me up and down. “And you are?”
“Beth Farrow. Mrs Farrow’s daughter.”
“Oh, I see.” He pulled out his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket, plucked out a card and handed it to me. “If there are viewings scheduled, it would be a good idea to make yourself scarce.”
“I don’t understand.” I read the card he’d handed me. Blyton & Morrison Estate Agents. Underneath the name of the company was the word valuations.
“Valuations? Why are you valuing Mum’s house?”
The man gave a little huff and then waved his hands to indicate I should get out of the way so he could open the car door. “I think you should ask your mother about that…Client confidentiality and all that.”
“Client confidentiality? You’re an estate agent.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it?” And with that, he slipped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.
Cheeky sod. I clenched my fists, scrunching up his card in the process. Then I walked briskly up to the front door and let myself in.
“Mum?”
Mum appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Oh, Beth, you’re back early. I was just about to make a cup of tea. Do you want one? I have a couple of lamb leg steaks to put under the grill if you haven’t eaten yet. I thought they would be nice with some new potatoes.”
I shook my head. “I’ve just seen an estate agent outside. He said he has valued the house.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Why is the house being valued? Are you going to sell? Why didn’t you mention it?” I followed Mum into the kitchen. “Did you think I’d be upset?” We had a lot of memories tied to this house, memories of Dad, Kate and Jenna, but that didn’t mean I expected Mum to live there forever. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made for her to downsize if that was what she wanted. Although I couldn’t imagine how she would cope without her garden.
“I was going to tell you,” Mum said.
“It was a surprise. I didn’t realise you were thinking of moving.”
Mum sat down at the kitchen table, pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and closed her eyes. “I don’t want to move, Beth. If I had my way, I would stay here until the day I die, but needs must.”
“Is it money?” I was surprised. After dad had died during surgery, his life insurance policy had paid out and left Mum comfortably off. “Is there anything I can do to help? I’ve got a bit put by, about ten grand, if that would help?”
Mum made a noise that was halfway between a sob and a chuckle. “Oh, Beth. Thank you, love. But I’m not going to take your money.”
“I don’t understand. I thought the mortgage was paid off, and you got the insurance money after Dad died.”
Mum took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, well, it’s a long story.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
She took a deep breath, folded her arms and leant her elbows on the table. “Fine. I’ll tell you, but I don’t want you to do anyt
hing rash.”
I didn’t like the sound of this.
“You remember when Kate and Daniel moved in with me because they were having financial problems?”
I nodded. “Yes, they moved in here with you and paid you a small amount of rent each month.”
“That’s right. But things were worse than you thought. They were in quite a lot of debt. They were in negative equity with the house they’d bought, and Kate told me, they’d run up a great deal of credit card debt, spread over a few different cards.”
My eyes widened. That was news to me. Kate had always been so careful with money.
My mother nodded. “Kate came to me for help, and I did what I could with the savings I had, but it wasn’t enough. I had the council tax to pay every month, and the heating bills for an old house like this cost a fortune. The savings wouldn’t cover their debt, but I did still have the equity in the house.”
I didn’t need Mum to continue. I could guess what happened. “So you remortgaged?”
She nodded. “It seemed the best thing to do at the time. I remortgaged to get a lump sum to pay off their debts, and the idea was that Kate and Daniel would move in with me and slowly pay me back. So, in essence, they were giving me the money, and I was paying it back into the mortgage.”
I nodded. “Right. But if you’re looking to sell, I guess something went wrong with that plan.”
She nodded again. “For a while, it worked well, but after Jenna was born, there were a lot of missed payments. I paid the mortgage from my savings. What could I do? You know Jenna needed new clothes and new shoes. And Kate was working as hard as she could. She went out and got a full-time job to make sure there weren’t any more missed payments.”
“I thought Daniel had a good job? Where did his money go?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t every month that he missed the payment. But it was enough that I had to cash in my ISAs to cover the difference.”
I felt sick.
I wrapped my arms around my middle and leant forward. “Has he kept up the payments after Kate died?”
Mum wouldn’t look at me as she shook her head. “No, after he moved out of here, he said he couldn’t afford his own rent and to pay me back. He said I gave money to Kate, and he had nothing to do with it.”
Mum shifted her gaze to look at me tentatively, and I knew she was waiting for me to explode in anger. But rather than red-hot fury, a cold rage trickled through me. “I could kill him.”
“Beth, this is exactly why I didn’t tell you. It’s just money.”
“How can you say that? He’s cheated you out of thousands. You could lose your home. We both know Kate was good with money. She was never in debt. She was always the one that would have pocket money left at the end of the week, not me.”
“I know. But nobody could have foreseen this happening, and to be honest with you, if it happened all over again, I’d do the same thing. Not for Daniel, but for Kate.”
I clenched my fist on the rough surface of the scrubbed pine table. I hated Daniel.
“Right, well, we will get this sorted out. But I think right now we need to buy ourselves some time so we can focus on Jenna. So I’m going to transfer some money to your account, and you can keep paying the mortgage for as long as that money lasts, okay?”
Mum shook her head.
“No arguments, Mum. I am not letting him screw you over.”
“I won’t be able to pay back, love.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
I was already thinking about what I could do in the future. It would take years to pay off the mortgage. But we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. After we’d found Jenna, we would sit down and work out a repayment plan we could afford.
“And after this is all over and we’ve found Jenna, then we can report him to the police because Daniel owes you that money.” I jabbed a finger on the table to emphasise my point.
Mum looked tired as she shook her head. “No, Beth. I’m not going to do that. It’s his word against mine.”
“It’s not. There will be financial records,” I insisted. “The police will see you transferred money to them.”
“Beth, please stop. This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I can’t deal with all this now on top of everything else.”
Tears pricked at the corner of my eyes, and my throat felt raw. I’d never hated someone quite as much as I hated Daniel Creswell at that moment.
Chapter Twenty
Mum was proud and didn’t want to accept my money, but I insisted. We could worry about how we would make future payments later, but the ten thousand pounds should give us a nice period of breathing space. I felt thoroughly wrung out and was sure Mum felt the same.
“We can talk about all this later,” I said as I walked out of the kitchen. “Can I borrow your MacBook? I’ll transfer the money now.”
“It’s on the table,” Mum said following me through to the sitting room and nodding at the coffee table.
I sat down and pulled the MacBook towards me. Opening the lid, I noticed a mobile phone I didn’t recognise beside the computer. I picked it up and turned back to Mum holding the phone up so she could see it.
“Whose is this?”
Mum’s shoulders slumped. “It’s Daniel’s. He must have left it here earlier.”
I tensed but tried to control my reaction. “He’ll probably come back for it then.”
“Probably,” Mum said. “I’m going to make a hot drink. Do you want anything?”
“No thanks,” I said and turned my attention back to the computer and logged onto my bank’s online banking website.
It took less than a minute to transfer the money.
“It’s all done,” I said to Mum as she walked into the sitting room cradling a cup of tea. “You should probably check it’s gone into your account.”
Mum set her cup of tea down on the coffee table, sat next to me on the sofa, and I handed her the MacBook. Before she had a chance to type in her details, I heard the front door open.
“He’s got a cheek,” I said. I couldn’t believe Daniel still let himself into Mum’s house as though he lived here.
“Beth.” The warning tone was clear in my mother’s voice.
I stood up as Mum put the laptop back on the coffee table. She picked up Daniel’s mobile phone. When Daniel entered the house, he looked tense and irritable. His eyes narrowed slightly as he saw me standing beside Mum.
“We were talking about you earlier, Daniel.”
Mum shot me a warning look, but I wasn’t going to mention the money just yet. “When I saw you in the city centre this morning, you must have known about the article with Robin Vaughan. So why didn’t you bother to tell us? Mum had to find out from the newspaper article.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes. “We’ve already discussed it. And I’m not going to get into it with you.”
I opened my mouth to say something else, but Mum quickly cut me off. “Beth, please, just give Daniel and I a moment to talk alone.”
A flush of red stained my cheeks. I felt like a child being sent away while the adults had an important conversation.
“Fine,” I said stiffly and turned away from them before walking down the hallway towards my bedroom.
I opened the door, flung my jacket on the bed and shut the door behind me. This was ridiculous. It reminded me of the times my Mum and Dad would send me to my room for misbehaving.
The house, even this newer extended section, had solid walls, which provided good soundproofing. Right now, I would have preferred a modern plasterboard wall so I could hear their conversation. Their voices were muffled, and I had no idea what they were saying.
Mum was probably right to send me away. After I’d learnt how badly Daniel had treated her when she had remortgaged her house for him, I wasn’t sure I would be able to control my temper.
Daniel was a lowdown sponger, but Mum was right, at this precise moment, the only thing that mattered was finding out wh
ere Jenna was and who was keeping her from us. Everything else was a distraction.
I sighed and walked away from the door, sitting on the edge of the bed and wondering how long their conversation was going to take. A headache was building behind my eyes, and I longed for a coffee.
We were due for another update from the police at nine AM. I wanted to encourage them to put all the resources they could into this investigation. Sometimes I was convinced they were trying everything they could to get Jenna back, but I had moments of doubt where I wondered if they believed I had made the whole thing up and somehow forged the photograph.
I kicked off my shoes and yawned as I picked up my mobile phone and tapped on the Facebook app. Then I heard raised voices.
I froze. I couldn’t hear them clearly, but I was sure I heard my mother mention Pippa’s name. Her voice was shrill, and she sounded upset.
Screw it. I wasn’t going to just sit around while Daniel upset her. Yes, Jenna was our priority, but I wasn’t going to let Daniel treat my mother badly any longer. I yanked open my bedroom door and stormed down the hallway.
I could only see Daniel’s face in profile as he loomed over Mum. His face was flushed, and spittle gathered at the edge of his mouth as he growled, “It’s none of your business, Rhonda.”
He hadn’t seen me.
“I think you should leave. Right now,” I said coldly.
“Oh, it’s Beth. She’s come to moralise,” Daniel said mockingly as he turned to face me.
I’d heard far worse insults in my time and wasn’t going to let him get to me.
I stood my ground and folded my arms over my chest. “Didn’t you hear me? It’s time for you to go home.”
“This is none of your business, Beth.”
None of my business? It was my mother he was shouting at.
“Well, if you’re going to stick around perhaps you can answer some questions. Firstly, when are you going to pay Mum back?”
Daniel flushed, his cheeks darkening even further. Like many bullies, he only thrived when people kept his bad deeds secret. He hated the fact I knew what he’d done.