by Lizzy Barber
Kind regards,
Jane
I read and reread the email, unable to believe this is really it: the first step. A bombardment of questions invades my mind. Why is she so convinced that Hank Wilson did it? Why, if she’s so certain, does she think he hasn’t been convicted? The answer to it all seems so tangibly close.
I am suddenly very, very nervous. I have spent so many years avoiding the search – and now Mum has emphatically warned me against it. Promise me, darling. Promise. What if they’re all freaks and lunatics, like she says?
My index finger hovers above the reply button.
But then, isn’t it Mum I’m doing this for? The thought of that time, of her going away again, rises like bile in the pit of my stomach.
There are two paths on the road in front of me: one the same flat line I have always been on; the other a steep hill, with who knows what on the other side. I have already stumbled partway down one, but if I want to turn back, the way is clear; I can go back, forget about all this and take the easy path. Or I can begin to climb.
As if some invisible hand is guiding me, a breeze blows through the open window in front of me and ruffles the piece of paper with Jane’s alias written on it.
Three emails later, a date is set: in two days’ time – 1st May – officially one month to go – I will meet MissMarple63.
I arrange to see her, with Keira in tow, at the cafe in the British Library at five. Mum thinks I’m at a netball match.
I couldn’t believe it when Jane told me she’d be travelling down from Edinburgh, so eager is she to meet me.
It’s really not a problem, she said in one of her later emails. I have a brother in Clapham I can stay with overnight; it’s a good excuse to see him and the kids.
Keira insisted on coming along, not so much in a detective capacity but in fear that this woman is going to turn out to be a psychopath. ‘You might need me for backup,’ she said, forming her fingers into an imaginary gun. Thinking of Mum, I allow her.
We took the bus to King’s Cross, sitting for so long in the painfully slow traffic on the Euston Road that I was convinced Jane would think we were a no-show. By the time we got here I’d chewed my nails down to the quick.
‘Are you nervous?’ Keira asks now as we stare up at the library’s monolithic red-brick facade. I am as tightly coiled as one of Keira’s curls. I say nothing, but she loops an arm into mine all the same. ‘Don’t be.’
We’ve been to the British Library before, but I’ve forgotten how vast it is: all polished white stone that ricochets the sound of footsteps around the entrance hall, and light streaming through from the balconied tiers reaching skyward.
I can’t help the rising thud of my heart as we head up the escalator to the first-floor cafe, the excited voice whispering in my mind, This is it. The thought of Mum, when I tell her the news: I’ve done it, I’ve found the answer!
Jane spots me before I’ve even stepped onto firm ground, shouting ‘Rosie!’ from across the hall, so that the other people in the cafe turn around and stare. ‘Sorry,’ she whispers exaggeratedly when she reaches us. ‘I just can’t believe it’s really you. I’ve seen pictures, and that interview a couple of weeks ago, but it’s so strange seeing you here in the flesh.’ I see her taking me in. ‘It’s true, you really are like your dad.’
‘Sorry we’re a bit late; the bus got stuck in traffic,’ I mumble, trying to move off the subject, and stretch out my hand to her. ‘This is my friend Keira.’
She gives my hand a hearty shake. ‘Don’t be silly – you’re here now. Come, sit down. I have tea.’ She stretches an arm around each of us and steers us to a table in the corner. MissMarple63 turns out to be a very short, very fat Scotswoman, with hair the exact rusty shade of red as my nan’s old cocker spaniel. She’s originally from Glasgow, she tells us, but now lives in Edinburgh where she owns a bookshop and café near Princes Street.
‘Hence my love of the great British Library.’
Her lilting accent and incessant need to mother us, fussing as we settle and insisting on getting the full blackboard’s worth of cakes, gives her the air of a nursery school teacher, rather than the discerning sleuth after which she has named herself. I can’t quite work out how she became so invested in my family, and she must read my mind, because it’s the first thing she tells us once we’re settled at the wooden table with our coats barely off.
‘I remember the day it all hit the news,’ she says, pouring tea in a steady stream from one cup to the next. ‘It was just so awful. That pretty little girl, and your poor, poor parents. My sister lost a child when she was young.’ She swirls the milk slowly into her cup. ‘Thirty years ago now. I don’t think she’ll ever get over it. Having seen her go through it all, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for your parents, the not knowing, the constant publicity. And for you, for that matter, growing up under it all.’ I look up, my teacup poised at my lips. ‘Agatha’s other daughter, Kirsty, was only a baby when Laura died. It was very difficult for her, growing up with the testament of her older sister to look up to. It was always “Laura was so beautiful”, “Laura would have been so clever”. It’s hard on the ones left.’ She puts it into words so succinctly, the constant pressure of being number two. It makes me warm to her.
But she doesn’t hang about: as soon as our cups are drained, she unzips the suitcase that has been sitting beside her chair, spreading the contents out in front of us – reams of files and paperwork – running her hands across it all like she’s presenting the opening of a magic trick. ‘There we go: this is everything.’
I hesitate. This obsessive cataloguing of my family seems just a little bit creepy.
But I pull a lever arch file from the stack, wary of unsettling the whole lot. If I’ve come this far, there’s no point turning back now. It’s full of newspaper cuttings, I see as I flip through the pages. Neatly folded, and pressed into clear plastic envelopes, like some sort of black-humoured school project. The first is an article about the case from one of the national papers, with a sentence marked out in neon highlighter. Investigators are looking into reports of a nearby construction site for a possible link to the disappearance.
‘At first, they wanted to search the site for a possible location for a …’ Jane catches herself, and gives me an awkward look, mashing her lips together in a grimace so that the red lipstick she’s wearing blends over her Cupid’s bow.
‘A body,’ I finish. ‘You can say it. I’ve heard it enough times before.’
‘A body, then. But, as you know, they didn’t find anything. So, instead, they obtained a list of all the construction workers on site that day and interviewed them one by one. However, nothing unusual came up.’
She flips to the next page, a local Floridian paper. It looks as if it’s been photocopied – I can see where the sentences have been cut short, where the paper hasn’t quite fitted in the machine. The words ‘CONSTRUCTION WORKERS CLEARED IN KIDNAP CASE’ are splashed across it.
‘I had it sent to me from a library in Jacksonville,’ she explains as she sees me running my fingers over the truncated phrases. ‘They’ve been very helpful, over the years, feeding me bits of information that might be useful. The head librarian and I have built up quite a friendship.’
On and on the story goes, each one revealing a tiny piece more of the puzzle: there’s a gap of several years, and then, five years after Emily first went missing, a man is being questioned over his involvement in the case. Then, finally, his name and face are revealed: Hank Wilson, construction worker and now a convicted child rapist.
I want to throw the file away from me when I see those words. It’s a shock, even though I knew it was coming. Instead, I politely close the file and move it to the side, then ask in a wavering voice, ‘What’s in the others?’
Keira jumps in, ‘This one looks like it’s in some sort of code?’ and I know she can sense my distress.
Jane takes the book from her. It’s a notebook, li
ke an ordinary school book; a faded red cover of mottled, recycled card. The lined pages are filled with words and scrawled signs in hastily written pen. ‘Transcripts,’ she says, opening it up. ‘From conversations. Conversations I had with Hank.’ She gives me a guilty look.
‘You spoke to him?’ I ask as Keira speaks over me: ‘What language is it in?’
‘It’s shorthand.’ Jane looks gratefully at Keira, happy to explain the easy question first. ‘I was a journalist many moons ago.’ I can tell she’s stalling, running her fingers over the pages. She catches my eye, speaks through a sigh. ‘Yes, I spoke to him, Rosie. Still speak to him.’
I say nothing.
‘Like I said, I’ve always had an interest in Emily’s case. I followed the story from when it happened. When Hank was first connected, he was already on trial for those two little girls. It was one of his co-workers at the time who brought up the connection to Emily – Alan … something or other. He said he’d always been surprised that no one had pursued Hank further. Hank is … he’s a little odd. He has some learning difficulties. He lived in a trailer on his own in the middle of nowhere. And then, when he stood trial for the girls, it just made sense. It got leapt on, of course, and they started trying to bring a third case against him, but there wasn’t enough evidence for him to stand trial. He got life without parole for the girls – only escaped the death penalty on the grounds of his mental health.’
She looks up. ‘And now you’re both probably wondering, even more, why I would want to go speaking to a man like that.’ She’s been worrying the corner of the notebook back and forth with her thumb and forefinger. Eventually it comes loose and breaks off in her hand. She brushes it to the floor; the little triangle of red lands on the black tile. She stares intently at it for a second, before carrying on. ‘My marriage was breaking down, around the time that Hank’s case started to be reported over here. My husband … wasn’t a nice man. He wasn’t very kind to me.’ She rubs an uncomfortable hand up her left arm.
‘Once the divorce went through, I picked up and moved to Edinburgh. I found myself on my own in a new city, without many friends or ties to speak of, and I became fixated on Hank. It was as if all my anger over my marriage somehow transposed itself onto him. I needed desperately to make him confess.’ She pauses, takes a breath and pours herself a glass of water from the carafe in the centre of the table. ‘I wrote to him, at first saying I was a journalist. It wasn’t exactly an outright lie, more a bending of the truth. Eventually he wrote back, and after about a year he agreed to a phone interview.’ Her hands work through the collection of files until she stops at a yellow speckled one. ‘The letters are in here, if you want to go through them.’
She hands the file over to me, and, barely glancing at it, I take it. Thinking of her speaking to him, this man who could be my sister’s killer, has sucked all the moisture from my body. I clear my throat, willing the words to form. ‘What … what was he like?’
‘Angry, at first.’ She nods. ‘And eventually remorseful. We speak maybe twice, three times a year. I was eaten up by it.’ She gestures to the files. ‘I was convinced that I was going to crack the case; that I’d be the one to get a confession out of him. It can get quite addictive.’ She shakes her head in a flurry of reddish-brown curls.
Something isn’t right here. ‘And now?’ I ask, although I already know the answer.
‘Rosie, I’m so sorry.’ I’m surprised to see a tear escape from the corner of her right eye and course down her cheek. ‘But I don’t think Hank did it.’
‘What?’ Beside me, Keira slams shut the file she is holding, causing the people at the next table to flinch in surprise. ‘But all of those posts … all of this …?’
I can only look on, waiting for the explanation to come.
‘I know; I know what a horrible person you must think I am, for hounding that man all those years. But the more I’ve looked into it, the more I’m convinced it couldn’t be him.’
‘How?’
‘The ages, for one thing. Those girls were ten and eleven – nowhere near the same age as Emily. And they were girls he knew – there was no predisposition for going after strangers. Plus, the fact that they’re alive when …’ She flinches. ‘Well, with Emily, we just don’t know. But most of all … most of all, I know he didn’t do it because he has convinced me he didn’t do it. I can’t quite explain it, but when you speak to someone in that situation, where there’s no hope of freedom, you develop a certain degree of honesty between you. After all those calls, over all these years, I’ve got to know Hank. And whilst I absolutely believe he is where he deserves to be for his other crimes, it wouldn’t be fair of me to saddle him with the blame for something I’m sure he did not do.’
‘Then why is it all still up there?’ White-hot anger burns through my veins and grits my teeth. All this time wasted. All the hope, and the anticipation, and the excitement of meeting her and maybe, maybe finding something, something the investigators missed or overlooked, has fizzled into nothing. I push the files away from me. One of them falls off the table and lands on the floor with a thud, but I leave it there, refusing to pick it up. ‘You’re a liar. You’re a fantasist who gets off on thinking they’re some great detective. But this isn’t an Agatha Christie novel. This is my family. And my sister. It’s real.’ I stand, pulling my jacket up from where it’s draped over the back of the chair. ‘Keira, let’s get out of here.’
We’ve taken barely three steps before Jane’s voice stops us. ‘Rosie, wait.’ The tone of sadness pulls me back. ‘You’re right. I’ll take it all down, as soon as I get back home. I think maybe it became a bit of a lifeline for me, at a time when I needed it. And a bit of me is still addicted to that rush – being a part of it all, feeling like I was making a difference. You must understand, Rosie, I really did think I was helping. But I’m glad I met you. Seeing you here now, I realise I need to let it go; move on. I should never even have replied to your email. It was foolish of me; but I just couldn’t bring myself to pass up the opportunity to meet you, after having felt so involved for so long. I … I’m sorry. But before you go, there’s just one last piece of information I want to give you … if you’ll let me?’
I make no motion of acquiescence, but I can’t quite bring myself to turn away from her. She seems to take this as consent, because she reaches into her purse, pulls out a folded piece of paper and places it on the table in front of her.
Cautiously, I find myself reaching across, picking it up and unfolding it, unsure of what else she can possibly tell me that will be of use. All that’s written on it is ‘Michael’ and a phone number.
I look up, confused.
‘You may know him better as “MikeD”? It was stupid of me to ever think I could help you. But he might.’
ANNA
13
There must be something in the house. Something to tell me who I am. For over a week I am haunted by this chant.
I go to school. We go to church. I help Mamma in the backyard. I go to choir practice, where I am polite and courteous with William but refuse his offer to drive me home. Ascension Sunday is coming up, and we rehearse ‘Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise’, whose lyrics are all about glory and triumph. I pray harder than I ever have in my life for some sign to tell me when the time is right.
And on Tuesday night, an opportunity presents itself.
‘There’s a craft fair in Cedar Key tomorrow morning. I’m going to collect some supplies.’ Mamma sets down two bowls of box mac and cheese. ‘Mrs Murray is going to give me a lift in on her way to work, so you’ll have to take my packages to the post office before school. And make sure the Anderson package goes Priority Express: her daughter’s getting married on Sunday and she’ll need the dress by then.’
I imagine her weighing up the better of the choices: admitting she really does need a car, or having to share one with Mrs Murray. But then a greater thought seizes me: if Mamma is leaving early, then she won’t be around to see me off for sch
ool. I say a silent thank you to whoever is up there, as the seeds of an idea begin to take root.
The next morning, when I wake up, instead of getting dressed for school, I scurry downstairs and dial the school office number from the phone in the kitchen. ‘Hello?’ I ask gruffly when the receptionist answers, giving a little cough for good measure. ‘This is Anna Montgomery; I’m in Mrs Baker’s homeroom.’
‘Yes?’ I hear the slurp of coffee; imagine her in her grey office chair, going through the motions of another ordinary day.
‘I’m sorry but I’m not well. I don’t think I’ll be able to attend classes today. My mother’s already left for work, but I can bring a note in tomorrow?’ This last part is a terrifying bluff – I’ve heard other students boasting about forging their parents’ signatures for one excuse or another, but it seems to me to be just one deception too far.
I hear the clack of fingernails on a keyboard. ‘That won’t be necessary at this stage,’ the voice meanders. ‘You’ve had no other absences this year, and you’re a senior. Only absences of three days or more require written documentation. If you’re off for more than five you’ll need a note from your doctor.’
‘Oh … well, OK then.’ I’ve never been off sick before, as far as I can remember. I’ve never had the need to know what the procedure is. ‘Thank you.’
‘Byeeee.’ I imagine her phone already halfway to the receiver. ‘Get better.’
I hold the phone in my hand, the dead tone ringing dully from it. If I hoped for some sort of hiccup or hindrance, I have been thwarted: it’s all gone completely according to plan. And so now the real work begins.
If there is anything that will tell me the truth about who I am, I know it lies within this house. Mamma is too particular, too cautious, to bury her secrets anywhere else. My thoughts turn at first to the attic, which is accessed via a short flight of wooden steps by Mamma’s room. But I’ve been in there recently, and it’s practically spartan: Mamma’s neatness won’t allow for much more than the old wrought-iron bed I slept in as a child, a chest of drawers we’ve been keeping up there to repaint, and a couple of boxes of winter coats and sweaters, all neatly folded and packed away.