Last but not least, many of you have been in touch to express concern for our well-being after the intimidation we reported. Thank you all, and please rest assured, we are taking precautions and working closely with police.
Here are two clips that give you a flavor of what to expect in our next episode. This is crime reporter Owen Weston:
“The drive from Paradise Casino to the Glenfrome Estate would have normally taken about ten minutes on a Sunday night. What the hell was Jessica Paige doing for the extra hour, and why and where did she swap vehicles?”
This is forensic psychologist Professor Christopher J. Fellowes, speaking by phone from his office at Cambridge University:
“There are a number of scenarios that present themselves in a case like this, and one of them could point to a mother losing control, perhaps intending just to punish a child but going too far, as one example. Teenage mothers with no support can develop complicated relationships with their babies, as they are children themselves when they give birth. Resentment can set in, particularly when the child grows old enough to challenge their parent. A child on the cusp of adolescence can be very challenging for a mother who has not had time to grow up herself.”
Chapter 17
Jess drops Erica at rehearsal with a packed suitcase and instructions to offer to help Olly’s parents with the dishes, not to spend too long in the bathroom, and to hang up her wet towels while she’s staying at their house. Erica gives Jess a warm hug and tells her to have fun in Morocco but doesn’t look back once she’s got out of the car. As Jess drives home she wonders if she should feel uneasy that she hasn’t met Olly’s mum in person, but tells herself to get a grip.
Jess wants to leave her car in the driveway while she’s away—it might fool any nosy reporters into thinking she’s home, and frustrate them further—so she orders a cab to Bristol airport for her flight to Marrakech. Once she is through security, she sits at the gate with her carry-on bag tucked against her legs and listens to a voice mail from Felix.
“Hello, it’s me,” the message begins, and the familiarity of his voice and that phrase give her the goose bumps, as if she’d unexpectedly turned up an old keepsake. “Everything’s fine. Like I said, I don’t want you listening to the podcast, so please don’t, but you should know that the most recent episode unfortunately did focus on you, which is why I’m calling because I don’t want you to find out from anybody else. It is not what we wanted, but I have it in hand and I’ll keep you posted. If Cody Swift or anybody else tries to approach you in the meantime, keep it zipped, okay? Talk to nobody. That’s the message. Have a good holiday, darling.”
Jess hangs up and takes a moment to think. She’s rattled, for sure, but also relieved. Relieved that she can rely on Felix and relieved that she doesn’t have to worry about this alone any longer. She made the right call contacting him.
To try to get herself into the holiday mood, she buys and flips through a magazine where one of the actors she used to work with on Dart Street has a six-page color spread about his new wife and his new baby. Would I have wanted a life like his? Jess wonders as she flicks through the glossy pictures. Plastered over a magazine for everybody to judge? She rests the magazine on her lap and looks out of the window. Planes and trucks taxi across the tarmac outside, and her reflection is faintly visible on the glass. You’re all right, she tells this version of herself silently. You have a quiet, safe life and a chance to be a good mother and a good wife. You have a husband who loves you and a daughter who loves you. You are lucky. She closes the magazine and can’t suppress a familiar throb of panic. But would Nick love me if he knew everything? Would Erica? Nick knows almost everything about her, but not that she felt relief when Charlie died. It wasn’t for long, but it was there, undeniably there. A few days of relief that she no longer had the responsibility for him, because she knew she couldn’t handle him. But what kind of mother feels that? Only a monster. And Erica has so much to learn about me. If everything comes out, they might both think they’re better off without me.
All of this circles painfully around her head until she has boarded the plane and ordered a vodka and tonic to take the edge off. She soon drifts into a fitful sleep and doesn’t wake until the pilot makes the descent announcement. She texts Erica as soon as the plane touches down because her sleep was plagued by scrappy nightmares she can’t remember in any detail, but they have left her feeling anxious. Sod the roaming charges. As the aircraft door opens and she’s buffeted by the Moroccan heat, she hears a reply come through. Erica is fine and about to head out shopping with Olly. She tells Jess to stop worrying and finishes with a row of helicopter emojis to remind Jess that this style of parenting is not appreciated. “Have fun, darling,” Jess texts back. She turns her face to the sun, feels the heat on her skin and in the air she breathes in, and tells herself to relax.
She takes a taxi to the hotel where the film crew is staying. It’s just outside Marrakech. The hotel’s surroundings are dusty and plain and Jess prepares herself for disappointment, but it’s lush inside and more luxurious than she expected. There are palms and other exotic plants everywhere. In the reception courtyard, water trickles through a fountain and into a little pool where rose petals float. The receptionist offers her fresh mint tea. “Lovely,” Jess says, but when the woman’s not looking she adds three spoonfuls of sugar.
Once they’ve shown her up to Nick’s room, she inspects his things, including a quick check of his pockets, and finds nothing untoward. She picks up a call sheet Nick has left on the vanity table. The day’s filming is scheduled to end at seven-thirty, and travel time from hotel to set is noted on the sheet as twenty minutes. That gives her a little time to relax and plan the best way to give him a nice surprise.
Jess changes into her new bikini and dons a hotel robe. She hopes her fake tan, hurriedly applied last night, doesn’t rub off on it. She texts Erica again to let her know that she’s arrived at the hotel, but this time there’s no quick response. Jess can see the message has delivered, though, so she tells herself to be patient. She puts her phone in her handbag and heads downstairs to find the pool area.
She orders a coffee from the barman and sips it as she sits on a sun lounger. She wishes she’d had time for a pedicure before traveling. It’s not as warm as she expected, so she keeps her robe on and watches a man plowing lengths up and down the pool.
She can’t get Felix off her mind, even here in Africa.
She and Felix bonded because they were both young and scrappy, she thinks, and willing to fight for better.
A few months after their first meeting, when Jess was in so deep a word or a look from Felix could electrify her, she began to struggle to get people to sit for Charlie while she went out. She was going to the club two or three times a week. Felix was paying for drinks, but not for child care. Charlie was her secret at that stage and Jess wanted to keep him that way. Her neighbor was getting fed up of being asked to help, and nobody else was volunteering. Jessy Paige wasn’t a popular girl amongst the sort of people you’d want to babysit.
One night, she left Charlie alone, sleeping. When she made it back to her flat the next morning, Charlie was awake and dressed in his school uniform, sitting at the table with a bowl of dry cereal. His eyes were red and puffy, the imprint of a creased pillow slip looked like a scar on his cheek. “Where were you?” he said. “I didn’t know where you were.” The reproach in his voice and his eyes shamed her. Claustrophobia and the squalor of the flat settled on her shoulders like a heavy cloak and she screamed at him. “Shut up!”
Charlie stared at her. He was beautiful, she thought. Why was she shouting? Light came through the kitchen window and framed the back of his head, turning his mat of hair golden. His forearms were slender and strong. His face was bursting with feelings she couldn’t cope with. He rushed past her and out of the flat, his face set hard to hold back tears. She called after him, but only her voice tracked him out onto the balcony. The rest of her was so exhausted she let hers
elf fall onto her bed as if from a great height. When Charlie got home after school she cooked him something nice for tea and told him she wouldn’t stop hugging him forever and she wouldn’t go out again without a babysitter. A sweet smile made its way across his little face eventually, and his feisty limbs relaxed, but even so he had a way of looking at her after that night that felt as if it might suffocate her.
She began to leave him alone more often, but only after she was sure he was asleep. Going out stopped her losing her mind.
It was around that time when Felix first introduced her to a man he described as a “gentleman” in the bar at the Swallow Inn in the city center. She was addicted to Felix because he was the cord that connected her to the sort of life she thought she wanted. When the “gentleman” put his hand on Jess’s thigh, she glanced at Felix, surprised, expecting him to stake his claim, but he averted his eyes. When the man said he needed some company upstairs for a while, Felix gave her a nod, and she knew what to do. She understood she had no choice if she wanted to escape the estate. When it was over, Felix was waiting for her downstairs. He handed her some cash and drove her home. It wasn’t so bad, she thought, though it wasn’t good either. But she liked the cash and she liked being wanted.
After that, nobody bothered with the bit in the bar downstairs. It was straight to the bedroom. She always walked into the hotel with Felix to look respectable, but he would leave her at the room door after making sure she went in. Felix sometimes gave her presents: her favorite a bracelet with a sparkling heart dangling from a silver chain. Once it was a new dress with a designer label. She got brave enough to tell him about Charlie eventually. “You’re a dark horse,” he said. He gave her a few extra notes. “Buy something nice for the kid.” She got Charlie a popgun.
The night of the first sex party changed Jess. Felix took her to a private home for the first time, a mansion sitting squat as a toad behind electronic gates, lights on in all the downstairs windows, a fountain out in the front where no water flowed but a sheet of ice had cracked into shards. Inside, Felix parked Jess on a velvet sofa with a vodka and Coke in hand while he pressed palms. Strips of cocaine were being hoovered up from the low glass table in front of her by a pair of large nostrils. Their owner looked up with bloodshot eyes and sniffed deeply. Jess breathed out shallowly in disgust but knew not to let her revulsion show.
“You’re a lovely girl,” the man said. “What do I have to do to make you mine?”
She said nothing. Across the room, Felix had half an eye on her as always. The man stood up and offered Jess his hand. His breath stank and his paunch sagged. Felix inclined his head slightly toward her. The look in the man’s eyes was frightening, but once again Jess knew what she was supposed to do. The man led her into a private room where he did things to her that she didn’t consent to until somebody banged on the door hard because they heard her sobbing. The man didn’t apologize. He told her it was what she deserved.
“Excuse me?” Jess’s eyes snap open. The voice comes from a man-shaped silhouette hovering over the sun lounger. Instinctively, she throws her hands up over her face and rolls her body away from him. She is braced for violence. This happens occasionally when she’s startled. Nick makes light of it. He calls it her “ninja response” and holds her carefully until she feels safe again.
“I’m so sorry!” the man says and his flip-flop-clad feet back away a little. She wonders why she has a mouthful of white toweling and remembers where she is. She props herself up on her elbows.
“Are you okay?” the man asks. He perches on the edge of a sun lounger opposite her. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I’m fine!” she says. Her hands grab at her robe as she tries to make sure she’s decent.
“I just . . . I only wanted to ask if you were Jessica Paige?”
Crap, she thinks, a groupie. They appear now and then, though it’s rare nowadays. He doesn’t look old enough to have watched Dart Street. “You’ve got the wrong person,” she says.
“Really? You look just like her.”
“Really.” Jess extracts her sunglasses from one of the pockets of the gown and puts them on. They’re very large and very dark: a barrier. She hopes he’ll get the hint, but he doesn’t move. There’s something off about him, she thinks, but she can’t put her finger on it, though she doesn’t always trust her judgment. She starts to count slowly in her head. If she gets to ten and he is still there she’ll tell him where to go.
On eight he says, “I could have sworn . . .”
She doesn’t reply. Nine, Mississippi, she counts in her head. Ten, Missi—
He stands up and clears his throat. “Okay, then. Sorry to bother you.”
She doesn’t react. Keep engagement to a minimum. As soon as he’s gone, she gathers her stuff and walks smartly to the bank of elevators in the lobby. The heels of her sandals clack on the tiles. As she crosses the space, Nick enters through the main entrance doors. He stops in his tracks when he sees her. His jaw drops. Behind him a young woman barrels into the back of him and drops an armful of papers.
“Jess!” Nick says. “Is that you?”
The young woman giggles and touches Nick’s elbow to get his attention. Jess assesses the moment, then delicately moves so one foot is in front of the other, toes pointed. She opens her arms wide and lets the gown part to reveal her bikini and her newly bronzed midriff.
“Surprise!” she says.
Nick crosses the lobby in three strides and lifts her up in a hug. Over his shoulder, Jess sees a little flicker of disgust—or is it disappointment?—cross the young woman’s face. Jess gives Nick a kiss and then a lingering hug that doesn’t end until the elevator doors have parted. Don’t ever leave me, she thinks as they embrace. Please.
Chapter 18
“Annabel Collins would have to be willing to undergo a DNA test for us to prove she was related to Peter Dale. That’s assuming she doesn’t already know who her dad is, or think she knows.” Danny is thinking out loud.
Fletcher hands him a mug of coffee, and Danny receives it with hands pressed together in a gesture of prayer. The bags under his eyes have developed folds since yesterday.
“Baby still teething?” Fletcher asks.
Danny nods. He’s on his second wife and family and it’s taking its toll. “I’m too old to do this again,” he says, but Fletcher knows the photograph Danny keeps in his wallet—of his new, young wife and their beautiful baby son—tells a different story.
“For what it’s worth, I think Rhonda Street could be in it up to her neck.” Danny’s voice is lowered. The office is busy around them.
“She didn’t need the money.”
“Is that what you think really, or is that David Tremain’s line?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Hey! Relax. It’s just a question.”
“Do I look like somebody’s stooge to you? Have I ever been? Don’t insult me with such a stupid question.”
Danny reacts as Fletcher knew he would: a deep blush rises. Danny has hated being called stupid since school days, when his dyslexia scrambled every line of text he ever tried to read or write and all the world except John Fletcher assumed he was as thick as two short planks. Fletcher feels unrepentant.
They turn their backs to each other. Fletcher is about to delve back into the Peter Dale files when his phone buzzes. It’s a message from an unknown number giving a time and a place and no other information. There is only one man who ever contacts Fletcher that way. He stands and grabs his jacket. “I’ve got to go out,” he says. Danny ignores him.
Fletcher follows the Feeder Canal toward the city center. He puts on the latest episode of the podcast as he drives. It’s a hatchet job. Target: Jessica Paige. Even Smail’s gotten in on the act all the way from the edge of the world, or wherever he’s exiled himself to. Fletcher feels sorry for her.
The harbor water in the city center is glassy, reflecting the Bath stone and pastel-painted houses o
f Georgian Bristol terraced up the opposite side of the gorge. Fletcher loses the view to a concrete underpass, and when he emerges, he sees parkland ahead and makes the turn up a driveway into the Ashton Court Estate.
He parks beside the entrance to the deer park and walks toward the mansion house. He wonders when he last came here. It must have been over fifteen years ago, with his young family, on a visit to the hot air balloon festival. He and Mrs. Fletcher drank scalding tea and ate bacon butties while they watched the balloons go up en masse in the dawn rise. That was an almost perfect few hours, marred only by the baby grizzling on his mother’s shoulder. Andrew was a toddler, and Fletcher remembers how wide the kid’s eyes got at the sight of the balloons crowding the sky like a host of multicolored baubles.
Beyond the mansion Fletcher sees a pickup truck pulled up onto a flat area of tufty grass at the base of a steep incline. As Fletcher approaches, a man-sized basket is lifted from the flatbed of the truck, followed by a burner and gas cylinders. Two men have laid a folded balloon on the grass and are unfolding it methodically.
When Fletcher spots Felix Abernathy, he feels the usual boost of adrenaline and a crawling sense of trepidation. He trudges through the mud and tussocks, fighting the suction under the soles of his office shoes with each step. He’s struck by the thought that his relationship with Felix has lasted longer than his marriage, and just like his marriage, has morphed into something different over the years.
Felix is observing the activity around the truck. He is wearing a waxed jacket and Wellington boots. Fletcher can’t help admiring how the other man looks as if he was born to stand in the countryside and survey his surroundings, even though Fletcher knows the roots of his childhood were sunk deep into both concrete and disappointment.
Felix extends a hand as Fletcher approaches him. “Long time, my man,” he says.
I Know You Know Page 20