by Kate Medina
Jessie couldn’t afford to lose him, not now, not yet. She forced a semblance of calm into her voice. ‘Where has she gone, Roger? She’s out there, alone and stressed.’
He muttered something.
‘What? A city? Did you say, a city?’
Without raising his head, he nodded. ‘She said that we should go and hide in a city. Somewhere anonymous.’
‘London?’
A shrug.
Or was London too close to home? Birmingham perhaps? Manchester?
‘Birmingham? Manchester?’
Another shrug.
‘If you don’t give me useful answers, you know that DI Simmons will be over here in a heartbeat. Surely I’m the lesser of two evils.’ Even as she said it, she was sure that it wasn’t true. With her out-of-control OCD, the electric suit hissing and snapping and the runaway emotional juggernaut that was her pregnancy, DI Simmons would be a pushover compared to her.
‘Roger. Roger!’ He was still shaking his head and there was a distant look in his grey eyes, as if his mind had closed down, moved out.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, have it your way.’
As she fished her mobile out of her handbag, Reynolds roused himself. Pulling something from his pocket, he held it out to her.
‘What’s that?’
‘Carolynn’s wallet. I found it on the floor under the hall table. She has no money, no cards, nothing.’
‘How much petrol was in her car?’
‘I last filled it up for her three weeks ago. She doesn’t drive far, but I can’t imagine there’d be much left.’
So not Birmingham or Manchester. London was seventy miles away. Did she have enough to get to London? She wouldn’t risk running out of petrol and being stranded on the side of the road, would err on the side of caution.
‘Does she have any friends left in London?’
‘No one she would trust.’ His gaze met hers directly, for the first time since she’d entered the house. There was an odd look in his eye, something intense and unsettling. A slight, sick smile crept across his face. ‘The only person she trusts is you, Dr Flynn. Where do you live?’
73
Though she hadn’t had cause to pick a lock for years, Carolynn opened Jessie’s back door with ease, the lock cheap and flimsy, no secondaries to back it up, lax security that only someone who never felt at risk in their own home would choose. Picking locks was a useful skill that she had learnt from the boys on the estate where she’d grown up. It was about the only useful thing that she had taken from her upbringing, with the exception of resourcefulness and resilience. And the knowledge of how to kill.
Stepping into the kitchen, Carolynn pulled the door closed behind her and wiped her feet thoroughly on the back doormat. The kitchen floor was pale grey limestone, matching the dove grey units, and she knew that Jessie wouldn’t wear dirty shoes inside, not with her OCD. She wanted to respect her new friend’s house, behave as she would.
The sitting room’s decor, as with the kitchen’s, was straight out of World of Interiors. Cool and stylish, it was everything she had hoped it would be: two cream sofas and a reclaimed oak coffee table, white bookshelves bare of clutter, show-home spotless. Only the photograph of the little boy on the cream marble mantelpiece was jarringly out of place, chocolate ice cream smearing his idiotic grin. She was tempted to lay the photograph flat, erase him from her view, write him out of the serenity that was Jessie’s home, but she knew who the boy was, knew his and his older sister’s history. She had researched her psychologist’s history well, chosen her because she had known family tragedy in her past. She had wanted someone who would feel an innate, subjective sympathy for her plight, who wouldn’t judge her, as she had been so judged and condemned in the past. She had wanted to see a psychologist on her own terms this time, to help her reclaim her stability, her sense of self, to help her see a way through to rebuild her life after all that she had lost. She had researched her psychologist’s background far better than her psychologist had researched hers.
Mounting the stairs, her shoes sinking into the plush pile of the cream carpet, Carolynn found Jessie’s bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking the garden and the field of sheep beyond. A crisp white duvet covered the oak-framed bed, a faux silver-fox-fur throw draped the single white chair, and the chest of drawers and built-in cupboards that lined one wall were painted the same soft white as the woodwork throughout the rest of the house.
A second photograph, on the bedside table closest to her, caught Carolynn’s eye. But unlike the one of Jessie’s dead brother downstairs, this photograph fit. The couple pictured were arrestingly attractive. Jessie and a man – her boyfriend – must be.
Is he hot?
Beautiful. Truly. I’m very lucky.
Jessie was right. He was broad-shouldered and long-limbed, blond with the most unusual amber eyes, far more attractive even than Carolynn had imagined from Jessie’s description in the surf café. The photograph was a relaxed, fun selfie, Jessie sitting on his knee in a garden, leaning back against his chest, holding the camera in an outstretched arm, both of them laughing. One of his arms was curled around her shoulder, his other hand resting on her thigh, underneath the sky-blue silk of her dress. She could tell from the way the material clung to Jessie’s breasts that she hadn’t been wearing a bra. Knickers? Perhaps she hadn’t been wearing those either. That would account for the smile on his face.
Looking at the photograph, Carolynn experienced a sense of acute envy. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt that happy, that carefree. The photograph was a vignette of the relationship she wanted, how she wanted to feel, the life she wanted. She looked at Callan’s hand on Jessie’s leg and imagined it on her own, his fingers stroking the soft skin of her inner thigh and felt a fizzing hotness in her groin, sudden and intense. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in years.
Unclipping the back of the frame, Carolynn extracted the photograph and stroked her hand across Jessie’s celluloid face. Her fingers lingered on Callan’s, moved to his chest, caressed the muscled arm that led to the hand hidden under the blue silk. She tore the photograph in half, half again, tore and tore until she was holding little more than threads. Opening the sash window, she stretched out her arm and watched the fragments of the photograph scatter on the wind.
74
So Workman had verified the gargantuan black hole in his logic that could swallow his career. Jamming his phone between shoulder and ear, Marilyn sunk his head back into his hands.
‘I’ve run another search on the DNA database to see if Zoe’s DNA matched anyone else,’ Workman continued. ‘Because nowadays, now that pregnancy out of wedlock isn’t frowned upon, young girls who get pregnant accidentally tend to keep their babies, don’t they? It’s often only marginalized people who give up their children for adoption, or have their children forcibly removed. I thought, in that case, that one or both of Zoe’s biological parents might have a criminal record and that their DNA might be on the database.’
‘Good thinking, Workman,’ he muttered into his palms. ‘And …?’
‘And, I was … I was right.’ Was he imagining the hesitant delicacy in her tone?
‘What is it, Workman?’
‘You’re not going to like this, sir.’
Marilyn sighed. ‘Ruby Lovatt,’ he said. ‘Ruby Lovatt was Zoe Reynolds’ biological mother, wasn’t she?’
‘How on earth did you know that, sir?’
‘Just call me Uri Geller.’
75
Carolynn ran her hand across Jessie’s dresses, feeling the roughness of cotton against her palm, the slickness of lycra, the warm bobbliness of wool. The last dress, the pale blue silk dress that Jessie had been wearing in that laughing selfie shimmered as she took it from its hanger. At the bottom of the cupboard, she found a matching pair of pale blue stiletto-heeled sandals.
In Jessie’s bathroom, she pulled off her dirty jeans, yanked her stained T-shirt over her head, peeled off
her bra and knickers and dropped them into the dirty clothes bin. She tucked her shoes neatly, side-by-side, behind the door. The silk dress was waterfall soft against her skin as she slid it on. The pale blue set off her blonde hair and contrasted stunningly with her dark eyes. In the bathroom cupboard, she found Jessie’s make-up bag and made herself up carefully with medium-beige foundation, blusher and coral lipstick. She wouldn’t have chosen the blue eyeshadow, but it was all that Jessie had, it matched the dress and at least it wasn’t neat, reliable, dowdy, playing the role. She had no intention of ever playing the role again. It was another woman’s turn to play that role now.
Planting her hands on her hips, Carolynn twisted left and right, pouting at herself in the mirror, ignoring how the straps of the dress sat awkwardly over the coat-hanger ridge of her collarbone, how the skirt bagged over her bony hips. She looked good, almost as good as she had used to. Before.
A sudden voice, calling up the stairs. A man’s voice.
On bare feet, Carolynn tiptoed to the bedroom door and listened. The man again, calling for Jessie. Callan?
Smoothing a hand down the dress, fluffing up her hair, Carolynn stepped on to the landing. She had no bra and no knickers on, but who cared? Jessie hadn’t had either in that photograph and her boyfriend, Ben Callan, had looked to be enjoying every second.
Jessie would doubtless love her looking like this, would see her as an equal. And Callan? He would love her looking like this too, wouldn’t he?
76
From the upstairs bedroom window, Roger watched Dr Flynn spin her car around in the narrow lane and roar off towards the main road.
The only person she trusts is you, Dr Flynn. So where do you live?
He had always been convinced of Carolynn’s innocence, hadn’t been able to let his mind go to a place where the woman he had lived with for twenty years might have wrapped her hands around a little girl’s neck – their little girl, she was still theirs, irrespective of her biology – and squeezed the life out of her. He would never have stood by Carolynn if he had suspected, for one millisecond, that she was guilty. But had he been in denial? Jammed his head, ostrich-like, firmly into the sand. He had let her dominate him for years, he realized that now.
Who’s in control in your relationship?
Carolynn, unequivocally. Though when Dr Flynn had asked him so baldly, he had bristled, ashamed to voice that reality. Why had he let Carolynn dictate their lives so comprehensively, when his family’s wealth had paid for everything? God, when he looked back, really thought about it, he realized how pathetically impotent he had been.
He had watched some programme years ago on animal behaviour. He’d forgotten most of it, but the frog had stuck in his mind. Toss a frog into a pan of boiling water and it will leap straight out, save itself, but put a frog in cold and turn the temperature up slowly and it allows itself to be boiled alive.
He had been that frog. The only time he’d railed, tried to climb out of the saucepan, had been when Carolynn had snapped with Zoe, told her that she wasn’t their child. He couldn’t even remember what the poor little girl had done to precipitate Carolynn’s vicious outburst. He’d said something then. He had said something. But she had wheeled around and screamed at him: ‘Go fuck yourself, Roger.’ Her accent had been different too, all wrong, slipping in that moment of extreme aggression.
Slumping down on the edge of the bed, he put his head in his hands. I did say something then. Would that be his moral defence if it turned out that Carolynn murdered Zoe? I did say something. Once. I DID. A moral pygmy of a voice, lamely protesting a giant’s actions.
If Carolynn really was innocent, why had she snuck out last night while he’d been sleeping?
He didn’t feel as if he knew anything any more. Which way was up, which down, what was right, what wrong, who was good, who evil.
77
Past
Queen Alexandra Hospital, Cosham, Portsmouth
Ruby felt desolate. As depthlessly sad as it was possible to be. Her tummy ached and between her legs throbbed, and she sensed the wetness of blood on her thighs and none of that mattered. Twisting on to her side, she curled her knees up, wincing in pain at the movement, hugged the doll that she had retrieved from the bin to her chest, and tried not to cry. An unbearable loneliness engulfed her. She had been alone for her entire life, and yet she had never felt so overwhelmingly alone as she felt now. She had made the most terrible mistake of her life, believing that this baby would signal a change in hers, that she would be able to keep her, look after her, love her. Of course not. Good things never happened to girls like her. Girls like her never got what they wanted, never won. They just got what people wanted to give them, and more often than not what they got given was shit.
The sound of the door opening and Ruby fixed her gaze on the wall. A soft click and the nurse moved over to the bed on silent feet. The mattress tilted as she settled herself on its edge.
‘I’m so sorry, love,’ she said, sliding an arm around Ruby’s shoulders.
Ruby raised her hand to block the movement. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that. I’ll be OK, so long as no one tries to give me hugs or anything like that.’ She tried to smile, couldn’t muster one. ‘I’ll get over it. I’ve got no bloody choice, anyway, have I? Just give me another half hour to get my stuff together, then I’ll leave, get out of your hair.’
‘There’s no hurry, love. You stay as long as you need.’
Ruby nodded. She couldn’t meet the nurse’s eye, knew that if she did, her resolution not to cry, all that fake strength she had built up inside herself would fracture. Shatter into a gazillion pieces, each fragment so small that she would never ever rebuild herself.
‘Like I said, I’m fine. I’ll be gone before the hour’s out.’
‘You’ll find her,’ the nurse said gently. ‘You’ll find her again, or she’ll find you. When she’s old enough, eighteen, she’ll come and find you, find her mum.’
Staring hard at the wall as if her life depended on it, Ruby shook her head. ‘No,’ she managed.
She didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t bear to hear it. Eighteen years. Two years longer than she had been on this planet and already her life felt interminable. She couldn’t bear another whole lifetime of misery before she had any prospect of seeing her daughter again.
And she couldn’t bear not knowing where her daughter was, if she was happy or sad, if the people who had her were kind or cruel, if she was playing in the park and riding her bike with friends, or crouching in a corner trying to make herself invisible, terrified of being shouted at, beaten or abused again. She just couldn’t bear it.
78
Jessie’s cottage looked, as she had expected, deserted. No lights on inside, no cars parked outside, not Callan’s or any others. She looked each way down the lane, staring hard into the soupy darkness. Nothing, no one, no signs of life at all.
And yet, she remained motionless in the middle of the lane, listening, feeling a tense tug in her stomach. A stiff breeze brushed clouds over a sliver of moon, intermittently stealing what faint light the moon cast and returning it, rustling the leaves on the hedges hemming the lane.
A sudden, louder rustle in the darkness and her heart rate rocketed. But it hadn’t been loud enough to be human, she realized a millisecond after. Just an animal then, a badger or fox, confirmed by eyes shining low to the ground in the lane a hundred yards away, a shine that subdued her pulse, but also brought to her mind the gelid eyes of that doll found in Carolynn’s loft.
The only person she trusts is you, Dr Flynn. So where do you live?
A table lamp shone from Ahmose’s sitting room, throwing a pale yellow rectangle on to his narrow garden. But when she shifted sideways, so that she could look in through his front window, she saw that he wasn’t sitting in his usual reading chair. Pushing his gate open, she walked slowly up the front path, glancing left and right, listening, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, hearing nothing jarring or unexpect
ed. But as her fist connected with his front door to knock, it swung open. Though strangers rarely came down their narrow country lane, Ahmose was careful by nature and he never left his door unlocked unless it was to pop next door to her cottage. Odd.
‘Ahmose?’ Her voice echoed in what felt like a deserted house, but it couldn’t be. He was never out at this time in the evening, hadn’t been for years, unless it was to visit her, or Callan if she wasn’t there.
‘Ahmose?’ she called again, angling her face so that her voice carried up the stairs. Still no reply.
She stood in the hallway, recognizing the benign sounds that met her ears: the whispered creaks and groans of an old cottage amplified by the silence and her own apprehension; the hiss of water in the radiators, programmed to come on in the evening, even though it was summer, Ahmose, born and brought up in Egypt, hyper-sensitive to the cold; her low-heeled sandals tapping on the wooden floor as she made her way from the hallway into the sitting room – his reading lamp illuminated, a book on gardening spread open on the coffee table – to the kitchen; the creak of the kitchen door as she pushed it open to expose another empty room; the sound of her own breathing, rasping with suppressed tension.
Back in the hallway, she tiptoed up the stairs, flicked on the landing light and checked both bedrooms, empty, the bathroom, also empty. All three rooms upstairs, like those downstairs, deserted. So where was he? Where was Ahmose?
79
Roger Reynolds walked slowly upstairs to his and Carolynn’s bedroom and sat down on the end of the bed. The duvet was cold, the room cold and empty. The whole house felt cold and achingly empty, a reflection of what his life had become.