‘She said she didn’t want kids,’ I say.
Rachel looks unsurprised. ‘It’s a strange choice then, to be in a relationship with a man who already had one. It’s not like she couldn’t have found someone with less baggage … No offence.’
‘She fell in love with me,’ I say, a little sharply.
‘I’m sure she did.’
There is silence for a few moments, something uneasy stirring in the air between us. Rachel is frowning down at her hands, as if she’s trying to fit the pieces of what we’re saying together. And in that silence, a strange feeling starts creeping over me. I have an increasingly strong desire – a need – to be with Jade. It’s probably just the way that Rachel has brought her into the conversation. She doesn’t fit there. I already know that I’m going to have to confront Natalie about all of this, but I don’t want Jade to be caught in the crossfire. It’s my job to protect her, and right now she feels very far away.
That thought triggers another. ‘Have you had Jade followed?’ I ask Rachel. I’m aware that I sound aggressive, and I make an effort to soften my voice. ‘If you have then I’m sure you had your reasons, but I need to know.’
She shakes her head, eyes wide and questioning. ‘No, never. The only contact I’ve had, personally or remotely, has been with you.’ She sucks in her cheeks in a brief moment of awkwardness, those late-night conversations shimmering in the air between us. ‘And I only did that because, like I said before, I felt like I had to know if you were happy. At least, at first.’ She hesitates, then seems to cut her own line of conversation off, sitting back in her chair and smoothing her hair nervously back behind her ears. ‘But why do you ask?’ she says.
‘There’s been a man,’ I say slowly, ‘hanging around my daughter. I think his name is Dominic Westwood.’
Rachel looks worried. ‘I don’t know anything about that. But I knew Dominic. He was close to Kas. Sadie would consider him a friend of hers. I can tell you that.’
The unease is growing, building painfully in my chest. I try and ground myself, remember all the moments of intimacy and tenderness Natalie and I have shared, but they don’t reassure me. All I can think is that my wife is a great actress. She’s someone who can hide an entire life’s worth of history and then lie to me all over again even as she reveals it. I have no way of knowing if anything we’ve shared is real, if she’s ever even loved me at all.
Abruptly, I stand up. ‘I need to make a phone call,’ I say. ‘Just give me a minute.’
‘Sure.’ Rachel looks as if she wants to ask what I’m doing, but she casts her eyes down and breathes in deeply, restraining herself. As I walk away across the bar, I glance over my shoulder. From the back, she could be Natalie. The same delicate yet pronounced shoulder blades, the same elegantly curved neck.
Outside it’s getting dark, the sun sinking redly behind the rows of buildings. I call Jade’s number, but it rings a few times and then goes straight to voicemail. It’s not surprising – making calls on the ward is frowned upon, so her phone is often on silent – but my hands are shaking as I dial the number for the hospital. It takes a long time for anyone to answer. I’m staring at the setting sun as I wait, and when I glance away a little red shadow is burned on to my retina, glimmering faintly, suspended in the air.
At last someone picks up on the switchboard and I ask to be transferred to the Burns Unit, then tell the receptionist that I want to speak to Jade. She tells me to bear with her, and then puts me on hold. I listen to the scratchy looped music, rattling down the line like coins in a can.
All at once the music cuts out and the line is back. For a few seconds there’s no sound except for the muffled backdrop of the ward; footsteps coming and going, murmured conversations. ‘Hello?’ I ask, my heart lifting. ‘Jade, is that you?’
‘Sorry.’ The receptionist’s voice comes through loud and clear again. ‘I was just asking one of the nurses if she knew where Jade was, but she’s only just come on shift.’
‘Where she is?’ I ask sharply. ‘Well, she’ll be in her bed, won’t she? Or possibly in the toilet, or the communal area. There are only so many places.’
‘The bed that was hers has been filled by another patient,’ the receptionist says, clearly parroting what she’s been told. Her voice is polite, but a little bored. This kind of conversation must happen to her all the time. A hospital is a vast and complex engine room, full of misunderstandings and miscommunications – and yet a sharp flare of panic shoots through me.
‘Well, I suppose she’s been moved for some reason,’ I say, hearing my voice sound bizarrely authoritative and calm. ‘Can you please find out where to? Or can you get a doctor on the line?’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ The hold music clicks back on. Its beat thumps in rhythm with my heart, and my breath is short, as if I’ve been running.
Sadie
September 2017
THE TAXI LINGERS in traffic for a while and I take the opportunity to call Dominic again, but just like the last four times I’ve tried, he doesn’t pick up. I decide to text him instead. I send a curt message, telling him where I’ll be later and when. Whatever he thinks of my plan, I know he won’t call the police – he doesn’t trust them an inch, and they’ve got too much on him. And I haven’t entirely lost hope that he’ll come around. I’d still rather have his help.
I’d have expected more of him, considering all his talk about loyalty, and considering what he owes me. Back at the time of the trial, Kas and I closed ranks. We didn’t bring him into the frame, and Rachel never knew that he was involved, so her little snitching performance didn’t impact on him. I think the police had their suspicions; he was questioned more than once, but they couldn’t find enough to charge him. There would have been no point in our bringing him down with us – it’s not like it would have diluted anything. In situations like that, blame seems to multiply like magic. It seems there’s always plenty of it to go round.
So when I first tracked him down and got in touch, I had the right to ask him for something and he knew it. We met in an anonymous downbeat bar just outside Brighton and I told him about Jade. I gave him the facts and he told me he understood. I didn’t have to think too much about it. I didn’t want to get too involved myself in her – disappearance. It was too much of a risk, and besides, something in me pushed back against it, when I thought about it. It wasn’t the same as with Melanie. This was pre-planned, and there was another reluctance there, something I couldn’t quite pin down. A bit of human compassion, maybe. Or just squeamishness. I don’t know.
What I hadn’t realized was how lightweight Dominic had become. The years had sanded off his hard edges, and while Kas and I had been inside, building up shells as hard as bulletproof glass, he’d been hanging out with a crowd that had clearly lost its focus and drive once their leader had gone. When I asked what he’d been doing, he just shrugged and muttered. Reading between the lines, he seemed to have scaled down to the odd small-scale drug deal. At one point he even mentioned working in a minimart. I raised an eyebrow and he backtracked a little, mumbling about it being good to have a front to deflect suspicion, but I wasn’t convinced. He’d put on a bit of weight, too; his fingers were soft and doughy, not the ones I remembered gripping me like iron on that day down in the basement at Kaspar’s, making damn sure that I didn’t escape.
Still, he was better than no one. We agreed that Dominic would scope Jade out for a bit, get the lie of the land and come up with a plan. So that’s what he did, only it went on for a lot longer than I’d anticipated. He hung around – not very fucking subtly, as I realized when Alex broke the news that she’d been noticing him for weeks – staring at her from across the street and psyching himself up, but that was about it. He pointed out that if he was seen talking to a fourteen-year-old girl then he’d get noticed pretty quickly, and that he wasn’t sure she was likely to be seduced by him. That I definitely agreed with. And Jade never went out alone after dark, so it was difficult.
&nbs
p; That’s when I came up with the plan. I had no idea what kind of boys she was into, but I knew she spent a load of time on social media, so I created a few profiles and messaged her saying how cute she was, just throwing out bait. I made a female profile too, just in case, but she blocked that one off straight away, so I had my answer there. There was one profile she seemed more attracted by than the others. I’d taken a picture of a good-looking, olive-skinned teenager off the net – he looked a bit like I would have imagined Kas to look at that age. She’d reply to his messages with the odd emoji, a blushing face or a little heart. At first I thought it might be enough to reel her in … that we could chat for a few weeks and then arrange to meet. But she was savvier than that. As soon as I even dropped a hint, she backed off. But now I knew what her type was, and I knew that Dominic would know someone who fitted the bill.
Sure enough, when I asked he sent me the photo of a friend’s son, Jaxon: dark hair and eyes, a dusting of stubble at his jawline, a bit cocky looking. I got in touch and asked if he was interested in making a bit of extra cash. A one-off, and not much required from him. All he had to do was turn up at our house, dressed as you might expect a plumber to dress, chat Jade up a little and give her his number. Only of course it wasn’t his number at all, just a spare pay-as-you-go phone that I’d bought in readiness. And I have to say, he played his part to perfection. I was there watching when Jade got home from school, and I saw the immediate light of interest in his eyes, and the way he straightened up slowly and gave her a look of part seduction, part innocent awe. I left the room at a suitable point and waited for the magic to happen, and after he’d gone I could see the excitement Jade was trying so hard to suppress, the way she was clutching her phone.
After that we messaged for a few weeks, taking it slowly, getting to know each other, building up to a face-to-face meeting. The plan was that we’d arrange a rendezvous, somewhere private and not too far out of town so that she could get there easily after school. ‘Jaxon’ would keep her waiting for a bit, send a few holding messages, until it got dark. Then, well, Dominic would show up instead. There’d be a message trail on her phone to tell the whole sorry story, and I’d have given Dominic the Jaxon phone to dispose of straight away. I’d thought of everything.
I arranged to meet up with Dominic the night before, to go over the finer points. Originally we were going to meet in a bar, but at the last minute Alex reminded me he was going out that night, entertaining a client, and that I’d have to stay in with Jade. I messaged Dominic and he suggested we could reschedule, put the whole thing off for another week or two. But I didn’t want to lose momentum, just wanted it over with. So I told him to come over, later on that evening, when Jade would be in bed. He turned up about ten o’clock, and as far as I knew she was in her bedroom, lights out.
‘I’m not sure about this.’ Those were his first words when he came through the door and sat down heavily on the sofa. He couldn’t quite look me in the eye. ‘She’s just a kid, Sadie.’ I could never get him to call me Natalie, no matter how many times I tried.
I knew as soon as he said it that it wasn’t going to work. Like I said, he’d gone soft. But I couldn’t face it, the thought of all this build-up being for nothing, and so I tried to change his mind. I argued that a life was a life, that it didn’t matter who it belonged to and that it didn’t really make sense to have scruples about some people and not others. Unless you knew and loved them, of course, but he didn’t know Jade at all. She was nothing to him. I reasoned that it would all be over so quickly, that it wasn’t the hardest thing he’d done. And when none of that worked, I tried to lay down the law and remind him of what I’d done for him. I reminded him that he owed me.
He listened, and then he went off upstairs to the toilet, stayed there a few minutes before he came back. I knew he was thinking about it, but when he reappeared I could see the spinelessness written all over his face.
‘I can’t do it.’ That’s what it boiled down to, unvarnished and simple. He spread out those podgy hands, palms upwards. ‘Sorry.’
I intercepted him at the door, grabbed on to his coat sleeve. ‘You’re a fucking coward,’ I hissed, careful to keep my voice down, but pouring as much venom into my tone as I could. ‘I won’t forget this, and nor will Kas. Just wait until he hears about this.’ They were empty words, of course; I had never visited Kas and didn’t plan to, couldn’t risk having my equilibrium rocked in that way, but he didn’t know that.
He shook my hand off with ease and glared at me, and for a brief nauseous moment I realized that he was still much stronger than I was and that if he wanted he could knock me out in a second. But he just shook his head and broke away, then made his exit through the back door. I stood there listening to his footsteps plodding away down the passage, and then there was silence.
Something built in me then, the kind of wild fury I hadn’t felt in years. Everything I’d planned was slipping out of my fingers and I could see it, literally see it all falling to the floor and smashing around me. My vision was blurred and there was only this white-hot anger and the need to do something, do something. My hands were shaking. I lit a cigarette, and suddenly I thought about how easy it would be to let it fall on to the rug and set it alight. And how easy it would be to do the same thing in the next room, and the next, while Jade was sleeping upstairs, and then to wait just long enough before I called 999. It wasn’t a well thought out plan. But in that moment it came to me with such blinding, shining clarity that it felt like the only thing to do. And so I did it. And it was real, the heat and the light and the terror. I didn’t have to fake it.
By the time Alex came home and I’d stumbled out of the building, my chest was sore and my heart was thumping like crazy and the tears came to my eyes without prompting, and when I saw him there he looked so aghast and confused and bereft, and I looked at him and thought – yes, I love you, I love you and you’re worth all of this. I’m not an idiot. I knew it would be hard for him, losing her, but I’d be there for him and I’d never leave him, and he’d never be able to do without me ever again.
But of course it didn’t work out quite like that. They got her out, like a cat with nine lives. I sat there in the hospital with my painted smile and my prettily crossed legs and doted on her, and I blocked it all out of my head, because I knew that if I didn’t I’d lose control completely and I might just reach out my hands and tear the fabric of it all apart into shreds until there was nothing left.
The taxi rounds the corner and starts up the main road. We’re almost there. I take a few deep breaths, calm myself. Crazily, I wish I could talk to Alex. I want to tell him everything and to share all the panic and frustration of the past few days with him. Impossible obviously, considering the subject matter, but that’s what love is. Wanting someone to know you, and all your secrets.
I’d been wanting to tell him about the past for a long time. I’d reinvented myself, but that doesn’t mean that I’d forgotten. When something is part of you, part of the blood that runs through your veins, not sharing it with the person you love more than anything else feels wrong. It drove me mad sometimes, lying there next to him and thinking that he knew so little about me – not even that, but that he actually knew completely the wrong things, that I’d just fed him a load of lies. After the fire, that feeling grew and grew. Maybe it was coming so close to death. I’d stayed in the house longer than I’d meant to, not realizing how slow and fogged my reflexes had become with the heat. The veil had been twitched back and it made me vulnerable, less able to bear things on my own.
There was only one problem. Let’s just say I’m aware that, to an impartial observer, ‘Sadie’ might not come out of this story looking too likeable. I wouldn’t have expected Alex to understand. Or more accurately, I didn’t trust him to – no, not even him. I would never trust anyone enough. Also, if I was going to tell him my story, it would have involved going into some detail about my obsession with another man … Not the sort of thing any husband wants t
o hear – but if I wanted him to understand properly then I couldn’t really downplay it.
I hadn’t solved this dilemma, but it all came to a head sooner than I’d imagined. Alex wrong-footed me completely when he pulled out the photo of Kas and Rachel. Stupid of me to have kept it, of course. But it was a snapshot in time, that photo. I’d taken it in the early days, before it all fell apart, when I was starting to believe that Kas and I could really have something, and maybe even that Rachel and I could build some bridges. I liked to look at it sometimes, when I was on my own. Just to remind me of how it was.
Anyway, I knew in that moment that I’d have to tell Alex something – he’d forced my hand – but I couldn’t tell him the truth. Like all my best ideas, it came to me quickly, a brilliant moment of clarity. I could tell the story, just from a different angle. I would reinvent myself all over again. And when I reached for my new self, Rachel was there waiting for me.
I hadn’t thought about her too much over the past few years. Maybe it hurt too much. She was my sister, after all, and part of me could never quite believe that she’d betrayed me. I’d hung on to a few old things of hers, out of what can only have been sentiment, I suppose, but I never tried to find her. I doubt I could have in any case. And anyway, I tried to imagine it a few times, and I realized that when I thought of coming face to face with her, I had nothing to say. Or too much, maybe. In any case, not the right amount.
So it surprised me, how easily I slipped into her character. It was as if she’d been under my skin the whole time and all I had to do was scratch the surface and out she popped. It was easy to see the situation from her perspective, play up the sense of hopelessness and fear and the bitterness against Sadie. After all, it’s not like I didn’t get plenty of that from her in the old days. In a way it was satisfying, becoming her. Alex certainly took to her; I could see him instantly casting me in the role of wronged victim.
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