Missing Molly

by Natalie Barelli

  My heart is thumping in my ears. I’m suddenly scared he’ll just leave but when I see him come out, he walks briskly to his car, turns on the ignition, and waits. Seconds later I’m in the passenger seat.

  “Go go go!” I urge him. I don’t think the ‘pillow under the blanket’ trick will give me cover for very long, and if I could I would reach out with my foot to push down on the accelerator.

  Jacob is shaking. “I can’t believe you made me do that. I’ve never done anything like that before. Never,” he says.

  “Thank you. I mean it,” I say. But he just shakes his head.

  Whitbrook is a couple of hours away from London. That’s enough time for a lot of questions. He wants to know everything. He bombards me with questions. Where did I go? Did I try to contact someone? Anyone? How did I survive?

  “I slept in doorways and in back alleys. I stole stuff. The first thing I stole was a pair of garden clippers that had been left near a hedge. I used them to cut my hair as short as I possibly could. I found a beanie. I looked like a boy. I took a train and no one stopped me. I ended up in London. I figured that it would be easier to be invisible in a crowd. I joined the hundreds of homeless children who live on the street because they can’t go home, sometimes, because they’re neglected, sometimes because they have parents who simply don’t want them.”

  “Jesus.”

  “But mostly because they’ve been abused and it’s got too dangerous for them to stay at home.”

  “How did you eat?”

  “I met a girl not much older than me. Homeless kids can pick each other out, and I’d only just arrived, but they look after each other. Especially young girls. She took me to a shelter. There are a few, as well as hostels, for homeless children. They don’t ask you for ID; they don’t ask for explanations either.”

  “Didn’t people figure out who you were?”

  “I became adept at hiding who I was. I coloured my hair. I even used make-up sometimes. I wore hats as much as possible. I lost a lot of weight very quickly. Street kids always do. It doesn’t take long before we look nothing like our former selves. Going without sleep or food will do that to you.”

  “Did you go to school?”

  “Eventually.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I stole someone’s identity.”

  “That’s when you became Rachel Holloway?”

  “No. That’s when I became Susan Bishop.”

  “Oh. Wait. So Sneddon did find you.”

  “Yup.”

  “Why Susan Bishop?”

  “It was my friend Gabriel’s advice. Pick someone real, someone dead, someone around your own age.”

  “I didn’t think that worked anymore. The tombstone thing.”

  “It doesn’t, I almost got caught.”

  “How did you get into school?”

  “There’s an organisation called Railwaykids that help street children get into school. They helped me. They really thought my name was Susan Bishop. They vouched for me.”

  I have never told that story to anyone before. It feels liberating, cleansing even. Like peeling away years of dirt and grime from my skin.

  The phone rings in my pocket. I’ve been expecting it but it still makes me jump. It’s Matt.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m sorry, love, I can’t tell you. But I promise you that I’ll be back tonight. I just need to do something and then I’ll be back, okay? I love you.”

  I hang up. “Can I have your mobile please?”

  “Why?”

  “Because this one is Matt’s and I’m going to turn it off.”

  “It’s in my bag, in the back seat.”

  I pull the sim card out of Matt’s mobile. I’m about to do the same with Jacob's but he reaches across and snatches it from me. “Don’t take my sim card out of my phone! What’s the matter with you?”

  I struggle to get the phone back but he drops it under his seat, on the door side. “I can’t risk it, Jacob. They can track our location with those sim cards.”

  “So let them!”

  “I’ll get you another one. I promise.”

  “I’m not giving you my phone, Rachel. Deal with it.”

  I let out a huff, but I don’t argue.

  “Do you think you could go faster?” I ask.

  “I’m driving at the speed limit.”

  “You call that the speed limit?”

  “Rachel!”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “Why are we going back to Whitbrook anyway?”

  “I need to get something. Something that belongs to my sister. I just assumed it was in the house, but something Matt said made me realise that it couldn’t have been.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if that had been the case, Hugo Hennessy would have been caught.”

  “Where is it?”

  I don’t answer the question exactly.

  “I think I’m right. I never had the guts to go and check before, and if I don’t do it now, it will be gone forever.”

  We drive in silence for a little while, then he asks, “What prompted these people to hire Sneddon?”

  I look out the window and think for a moment. “I had such a normal life, by my standards, you see? I was happy, I wanted it to last forever. Gabriel was talking about us moving back to London. I wanted to be free, not to have to look over my shoulder all the time. So I did something incredibly stupid.”

  “What did you do?”

  I take a breath. “I called the Whitbrook police station from a payphone. I spoke to a policewoman and I told her who I was, that Hugo Hennessy had murdered my family and his father had covered it up.”

  “What did she say?”

  I shrug. “What could she say? She asked me for my name, my phone number, as if. She said it had been a long time since anyone had called to say they’d seen Molly Forster. I told her, I am Molly Forster. She said I was welcome to come in and make a statement. She said that Hennessy was the Mayor of Whitbrook now, and as it happened he was right there. I hung up.”

  “Do you know if she did anything about it?”

  “She didn’t believe me. I could tell. All I know, as I found out a few short weeks ago, a private detective was hired to track me down right after I made that call. They got very close, and Gabriel died.”

  “But why? If they could find you through Gabriel, why would they kill him?”

  “He tried to warn me. He called me, he told me to run. I guess they wanted to stop him.”

  Jacob gives me an odd look. It’s almost a look of pity. Maybe he’s beginning to believe me.

  “After that,” I continue, “I was more careful. I had to change identities, and let’s say I chose more carefully.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “That’s a long story, Jacob. I’ll keep it for another time.”

  I don’t want to tell him about Rachel Holloway. Not so much because of what she tried to do to me, sell me like a piece of meat to the highest bidder, but because of what I did. I’m afraid that Jacob won’t help me if he knew.

  After running away from her place, I huddled into another, different doorway, and spent the next few hours feeling sorry for myself. I was cold, I didn’t have a coat anymore, but I didn’t even care. I could always steal another one. There was only one thing I wanted from that backpack I left behind: my memory book. I’d just lost Gabriel at that point, and I had a photo of us in there, that we took in a Photo Booth in a train station. The goofing off kind. It flashed four times and the strip of four photos came out from the slot. We cut it in half, he got the two snaps where we were laughing, goofing. I got the one where he kissed the side of my face and I look at the camera straight on, a smile on my face that told of my happiness. The other one I had, our lips were locked and our faces in profile.

  I didn’t care what happened to me, I just wanted those photos back.

  When I returned, it was without a plan. I was going to tell her she could keep it al
l if she wanted, but I was taking my memory book with me.

  I banged on the door and she yelled from the other side, “Go away!” But I kept at it, anger making my teeth gnaw and my pulse race, until she opened the door.

  “What the—?” She looked over my shoulder, as if she couldn’t believe I’d come alone back to this dump.

  “What do you want?” she slurred.

  “My things.”

  “Your things?” She laughed an ugly laugh. “You see this?” she pointed at the red mark on her cheek that was already turning blue around her left eye. “That’s what he did to me after you pushed him. So you can fuck off, I’m keeping your junk. Not that there’s much to look at there by the way, but if it pisses you off, then I’m glad.”

  She closed the door but I had my foot wedged in already. It wasn’t hard to push the door open. She was completely stoned.

  Inside she had a little setup going. You could smell something burning. I’d been around plenty of drug addicts. I knew what the paraphernalia looked like.

  “What’s this?” I asked anyway.

  “Don’t fucking touch it, you hear me? Get the fuck out of here!!”

  Her eyes were darting all over the room, wild and scared. I could have taken my things, they were right there, on the floor. She had turned my backpack inside out, looking for something I didn’t have by the look of it. Drugs, probably.

  “Don’t worry. Whatever you’re taking, I don’t want any part of it.”

  “Oh, miss goody goody, are you?” she cackled. “Enjoy it while you can babe, one day you’ll get a taste and trust me, you won’t be so uppity then!” Then she burst into tears. “I was like you once, you know. Before … before all this!”

  It all came out of her like a river of pain. She told me more stories of hardship, and how nobody cared for her, nobody was looking for her, and this, she added with a sweeping gesture toward the drugs on the table, was all she had. All the while I just picked up my belongings and put them back in my bag, as if it was the most natural thing for me to do. She watched me, and she rambled on.

  “Don’t you have any friends? There must be someone who misses you.” I almost added, what about that man who was here before? He seems nice.

  She cried some more, about the unfairness of it all and I was thinking that if she didn’t shut up soon I was going to slap her. What did she know about ‘unfair’? I watched her with mounting disgust until I couldn’t bear it anymore. She was trying to knot the rubber tourniquet around her arm. Her veins were so damaged she couldn’t get hold of a good one to shoot up in.

  “Don’t just stand there, help me!” she hissed.

  I tied the knot for her and watched her fill the syringe. I guided her hand until the needle found a vein, and she immediately went into a kind of a slump. Like the air had been let out of a balloon. Her eyelids closed, and she let out a sigh. She looked disgusting.

  I didn’t know she would die. She was slumped back in her chair and I didn’t check to see if she was still breathing.

  I saw her handbag on the floor and I took a peek inside. Among the assortments of make-up, condoms, keys, and tissues, was her wallet. A cheap plastic thing with fairies drawn on it that would look more at home with a ten-year-old than a grown woman. I checked her ID.

  Rachel Holloway.

  I didn’t know how long I could use her cards before they got cancelled, but then I saw her photo a few days later, with a small item in the Daily Mail. They had described her as a prostitute who had died of an overdose, and police were trying to identify her. She had gone by the name of ‘Lilly’ but so far police had been unable to make a positive identification. If no one came forward she would be buried as Jane Doe.

  I could have told them who she really was, but I didn’t. I needed a name, so I claimed hers as my own.

  Memories, unpleasant ones, are like a scab. You hate them but you pick at them anyway, and when Jacob says, “Do you think Matt will call the cops?” I almost resent him for interrupting.

  “Because I’ve left the hospital? I don’t know. I hope he waits until tomorrow, like I asked.”

  I fiddle around with the buttons on the dashboard until I find a working radio station.

  “—Mayor of Whitbrook where the Forster family was murdered twelve years ago, has made shocking claims at a press conference earlier today. Our correspondent Suresh Chaudhary was in Whitbrook: ‘Today, Edward Hennessy is the Mayor of Whitbrook, but back then his title was Chief Constable Edward Hennessy. As such, he was in charge of the investigation into the terrible murders of the Forster family. Dennis Dawson was arrested at the scene and remanded in custody, but he committed suicide the next day and the case was closed. As we now know, thanks to the hugely popular podcast Missing Molly, it’s now highly likely that Dennis Dawson was not the murderer after all, in spite of his alleged confession.”

  Jacob looks at me. He’s smiling, and he expects me to do the same, because we did it! Didn’t we. But I just look at my hands on my lap and listen to the thump of my heart, and I already know what’s coming next. Edward Hennessy’s voice fills the car.

  “—Justice was denied, in this case, because of the suicide of Dennis Dawson. His culpability or innocence was never tested in court, and we had every reason, and I stress this here, back then we had every reason to believe that Dennis Dawson had murdered Jack and Mary Forster, and their daughter Grace Forster, in a fit of jealous rage.

  “There was however another person of interest at the time, someone who has remained a person of interest and frankly we never put that theory forward to the public because of the ramifications. But we have in our possession some credible evidence that Molly Forster may have brutally murdered her entire family.”

  Forty-Eight

  Jacob has stopped the car, opened the door and now he’s standing outside, banging on the roof.

  “What the hell? What the hell is going on here!” he yells.

  Bang! Bang! With every one of his thumps I flinch further into my seat. I unfasten my seat belt and slowly get out of the car. The traffic whizzes past us.

  “You can’t believe him,” I say, “They’re trying to discredit what we’re doing on the podcast, don’t you see that? They’re trying to pin it on me.”

  “All I can see is that everywhere I turn, there are dead bodies and you’re in the middle of it!”

  “I will prove it to you, if you could just trust me a bit longer!”

  “Trust you? You must be joking. I don’t even know who you are! One minute you’re Rachel Holloway, nut job, escaped from the asylum thanks to yours truly, the next you’re Molly Forster, professional identity thief and accused murderer!! Which one is it?”

  I’ve come this far. We are maybe half an hour away from Whitbrook and I’m frightened that I won’t get there. I won’t be able to finish what I started, and I won’t be able to bring justice to my family because everybody is against me. I’m not giving up without a fight.

  “My name is Molly Forster and Hugo Hennessy killed my family. That’s why his father is putting out these lies. He is trying to distract any investigation away from the real killer. He will stop at nothing. Get back in the car, Jacob, please.”

  “What if you really are a crazy killer? Why should I get in the car with you?”

  “Jacob, if there was any possibility that I was the monster he says I am, don’t you think he would have mentioned it before? Why keep it quiet until today?”

  “How should I know? Maybe the cops thought they had the right guy with Dawson!”

  “But you don’t suddenly come up with a new suspect out of thin air, all these years later? Either they had some evidence, or they didn’t!”

  He bangs on the roof of the car again. “I don’t know what to think!” he yells.

  “I was a kid! Do you really think I could physically bludgeon my father, my mother, and my sister? Without any of them stopping me? Think about it!”

  “How would I know? Maybe they were asleep!”

/>   “You know that’s not true. You know everything about the case. No one was asleep. Hennessy is going to try and pin it on me because we’ve come too close. We’re about to expose them.”

  He keeps shaking his head and making frustrated sounds. I’m still wearing his parka. I make a move to take it off and give it back to him but he gets back in the car.

  The radio is still on. Hennessy’s voice still spinning its ugly tales.

  “We also have reasons to believe that Molly Forster returned to Whitbrook on the night that Mrs Dawson died. She may be implicated in Emily Dawson’s death.”

  I reach across and turn it off. We both stare straight ahead. I want to speak but nothing comes out.

  “Where did you go?” he asks. He’s not yelling this time, but his voice is cold.

  “When?”

  “The night Emily Dawson died?”

  “I went to look at my house again. I walked around the roads we used to walk together, my sister and I. Then I went to the old railway station.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was the first time I’d been back since I left that night.”

  “I meant, why the old railway station? What’s there?”

  “It’s where we’re going now.”

  Seeing the old railway station in daylight makes my heart weep. I spent my childhood years—the few I had—playing here with my sister. When we were little, we’d bring along a pot of lukewarm tea and some cake, and lay a pretty tablecloth on the floor for our feast. We thought of it as our secret home. We decorated it with drawings taped to the walls and small bouquets of primroses from our garden. Once, when we found an old tin of lavender paint in our garage, we armed ourselves with brushes and rollers and tried to give the inside a coat of paint, but it wouldn’t stick on the old flaky surface. I can still smell it sometimes.

  She hadn’t been coming with me much those last few weeks. It was as if overnight she’d grown into a teenager, and I was left behind. If I tried to play our old games, tempt her to come with me to the old station, she’d shoo me off. I annoyed her, she’d say. I should go and make some friends, instead of latching onto her all the time. Even our mother, who thought Grace walked on water, chided her for being so hard on me. Now, I think she did it to protect me. I think she was scared, and she was shielding me.