by K. L. Slater
The irony of my words hits me like a truck, and I squeeze my eyes shut with the shame of what I just said. God help me if he ever finds out how I’ve concealed the truth of past events from him.
I wait. Two or three seconds seem like an eternity.
‘It’s not my money.’
‘How much is there, Blake?’
‘Just over fifty grand. But it’s not mine.’
So I was right about the amount. Over fifty thousand pounds of someone else’s money, salted away in a drawer. That’s the definition of dodgy in anyone’s book.
‘You say it’s not yours, but tell me why it’s in our house. Is this why you suggested that we can afford a holiday all of a sudden?’ I say bitterly. The idea that he’d take us, his family, on a holiday using dodgy money sickens me to my core. This is not the action of the man I love and trust.
‘Are you even listening?’ He’s getting snappy now. ‘It’s nothing to do with the holiday. I don’t spend money that isn’t mine.’
‘Then who the hell’s is it?’ I raise my voice, then immediately bite back, thinking of my dad and Oscar in the other room.
‘Can you trust me without judging me, Lucie? Just for a short while longer?’
I snap on the bedside lamp and glare at him. ‘How can I trust you when you’re scared of the police finding out? If there was nothing dodgy about that money, you wouldn’t have stashed it in your office and you wouldn’t be terrified of the police discovering it. How do you even come to have fifty grand in cash that doesn’t belong you? Can’t you understand how ridiculous it sounds?’
He turns away from me and lies on his back. When he speaks, the emotion has gone from his voice. ‘I’ve told you, I will explain everything. Just not now. Suffice to say, it’s nothing to do with Grace going missing, and she has to be our priority right now.’
I don’t answer. I pick up the glass of water by the bed and take another of Dr Mahmoud’s pills, praying it will abate the wave of sadness I feel that my husband can’t – or won’t – confide in me.
Wherever there’s a lot of dodgy money, there’s a chance that someone is out to get it by whatever means possible. Until I know the details, he will not convince me that it has nothing to do with Grace’s disappearance.
‘I blame myself for her going missing, you must know that,’ he continues, staring at the ceiling. ‘I had one job and that was to watch Grace come home. I couldn’t resist checking my fucking phone, I never cleared up the fucking moss, I—’
‘Leave it,’ I say softly. ‘We all have regrets, Blake.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ he says, and his voice is so full of remorse, of unspoken truths, that goose bumps prickle my forearms like tiny thorns.
Thirty-Five
Monday morning
I sit in the living room, leaving the toast and tea that Fiona made me untouched.
The lounge picture window that overlooks the street is large, lets in lots of natural light. It’s one of the many reasons we liked the house on our first viewing. But this morning, the room seems drab with shadowy corners I’ve never noticed that the daylight struggles to penetrate.
I can hear the hum of voices in the kitchen and the odd yelled conversation outside, amongst the press already gathering at the gate.
No breakfast to make or school blouse to hurriedly iron. No missing shoe or glove to hunt for. No frustrated sigh following a glance at the kitchen wall clock with its oversized numbers that Grace and Blake stuck on so carefully together one Saturday afternoon.
All the things that irritated me last Monday, I desperately wish I had back in my life today.
A whole night without Grace. A whole night Grace has suffered without us. Without her family.
Dad sits in the chair, shaking Oscar’s rattle to keep him amused. He keeps glancing at me, as if there’s something he wants to say. But when I catch his eye, he looks away again.
‘Your friends Bev and Mike are here,’ Fiona says brightly from the doorway. She’s doing her best, but I’m starting to feel a little irritated at her efforts to keep upbeat in our increasingly dire and heartbreaking situation.
I lost it a bit with Bev and Mike last night, but I’m past caring about that. I’m totally consumed by the horror of Grace being gone for an entire night. Everything else seems irrelevant.
Bev walks in first. She says nothing at all, but offers me her outstretched arms. I stand up and rush towards her. It’s a relief to fall into them.
‘It’s so shit. So utterly shit,’ she sobs into my hair. ‘I can’t believe she’s all but vanished into thin air. She has to be somewhere. She has to be.’
‘She could be miles away by now,’ I say flatly. ‘She could be anywhere at all. It’s completely hopeless… I just don’t know what to do any more.’
‘Come on, love, don’t think like that,’ Dad says softly.
I don’t cry. I feel dry as a bone inside, as if there are simply no tears left. And what use are they anyway, tears? They do nothing to help; just hinder. I feel like I’ve left tears behind.
‘Pete’s right, it’s not hopeless.’ Mike’s tone is strident, insistent. ‘We will find her, Lucie. We have to. No one will rest until Grace is back home.’
His words are sincere, but they don’t mean anything, not really. It doesn’t matter how forcefully he says that Grace will be found, we all know this can’t be achieved by the strength of our intention alone.
Eighteen hours she’s been gone. Door-to-door inquiries, searches, contacting hospitals, alerting all transportation leaving the country… and nothing. No whisper of my beautiful, innocent girl.
Someone has her, I’m almost certain of it now. Someone has taken our baby.
‘Let’s go and sit upstairs, just the two of us,’ Bev says softly in my ear. ‘I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m under so much scrutiny. Everything I say, everything I do.’
I nod.
‘We’re just going for five minutes’ quiet time upstairs,’ she tells Blake, and he accepts it immediately.
‘Leave Oscar with me,’ Dad says. ‘He’s happy enough.’
As we leave the room, I notice that he and Mike have not yet spoken to each other but I hear my dad’s voice speaking to them both. He sounds so worried, despite him putting on a show for me.
I climb the stairs and Bev follows.
‘Dad’s been great with Oscar,’ I tell her. ‘I need to do more though, I’m just sitting around and it’s not fair on Dad.’
Bev makes a little noise of understanding behind me.
I’m distracted by Grace’s bedroom door to the left, but instead of lingering there, I turn right, walking into our bedroom. I seem to be finding it hard to concentrate.
I register the mess in there – clothes strewn on the floor, a cold cup of coffee on the chest of drawers, plates holding untouched sandwiches on the bedside tables – but I don’t offer any explanation. I know none is needed. I feel at ease with Bev.
I wait for her to bring out the stock phrases about keeping up hope, that Grace will come home… but she doesn’t say any of those things.
I perch on the side of the bed and Bev pulls across the tasselled velvet dressing table stool. She sits on it opposite me, resting her elbows on her knees.
‘Lucie, I need to ask you something,’ she says, linking her fingers together and looking at them rather than me. ‘I need you to give me a truthful answer.’
‘OK,’ I say, wishing I could just lie down on the bed and drift off to another place. Anywhere that’s not here.
Finally, she looks at me.
‘Is there anything – anything at all – you want to tell me?’
I scowl at her. I don’t reply, because I haven’t got a clue what she’s getting at. Then I remember the money in Blake’s office. But I can’t tell her about that; Blake would never forgive me.
She gives me a long look, then delves into her coat pocket and pulls something out.
‘This was shoved through our lette
r box at some point during the night. I was first up this morning and I found it when I went downstairs.’
She hands me a small white envelope. I pull out the lined sheet of paper torn from a spiral-bound notebook and unfold it.
You think you know Lucie Sullivan, but you don’t. Nobody knows who she really is. Except me. I know the person behind the respectable mask. Be warned.
I feel a chill at the base of my spine. It reminds me of what Barbara Charterhouse said about Blake in the café yesterday. His facade, as she referred to it. But it’s my husband she has the knives out for, not me.
I give a brisk laugh and stuff the note back into the envelope.
‘Probably just some crank getting off on the drama,’ I say bitterly.
‘You’re saying there’s nothing in this?’
‘Like what? What were you expecting me to say?’
‘I don’t know.’ Bev sighs. ‘I was just shocked to get it, you know? I’d usually be inclined to give something like that straight to the police, but you’re my friend. I don’t want to get you into trouble, if there’s something…’ Her words tail off.
‘Go on.’
‘I dunno… I suppose I mean if someone has got something on you.’ She sighs in frustration. ‘Look, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. It was just a feeling I had when I got the note… a feeling that something might not be right and… I just wanted to give you the chance to tell me, to share the burden if…’ She takes in my incredulous expression. ‘I’m waffling. I’m sorry.’
‘I can’t believe you’re taking any notice of this bit of paper, but seeing as you ask: no, there’s nothing I need to tell you.’ I speak evenly, trying to cover up my irritation with her. ‘Anyone can shove an inane scrap of a note through the door like this. It has no substance. Surely you can see that, Bev.’
‘I had to ask. I haven’t even shown it to Mike.’
That surprises me. ‘Why wouldn’t you show it to him?’
She shrugs. ‘We’re not getting on too well at the moment. Let’s just say there have been some… problems.’ She gives me a thin smile. ‘It’s decent of you not to mention it, but I know you must’ve seen us arguing last night. In the kitchen.’
The stinging slap she delivered to Mike’s face when we were walking up the garden.
‘None of our business.’ I can’t think of anything else to say. ‘Anyway, you might as well chuck that note away, because it’s a hoax.’
‘If you say so.’ She stuffs the envelope back into her bag, and as her hand emerges again, I see she’s clutching something else. ‘But there was this, too, you see.’ She passes me a photograph. ‘It must be someone who knows you, or used to know you. Wouldn’t you agree?’
The image is slightly out of focus, the colours and clarity marking it as a dated Polaroid.
I’m dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black polo-necked sweater that ends above the waist of my jeans, revealing an inch of pale, toned midriff.
I’m turning as though someone has just shouted my name, and smiling, my eyes alight with something that resembles mischievous anticipation.
I can remember the exact day this photograph was taken, sixteen years ago.
I know exactly who the photographer was and what happened the day after he took the shot.
I open my mouth to speak, but find I can utter no words. I stand up, and my legs wobble.
‘Lucie!’ Bev shrieks as my knees fold. I fall heavily to the floor, and as I do, my fingers clench convulsively to crumple the photograph into a small, screwed-up ball in the palm of my hand.
Thirty-Six
Sixteen years earlier
Once she had met Stefan and his friends in the university café, Lucie’s life seemed transformed.
There was no longer time to sit around in her soulless little room watching daytime television and existing on tea and toast.
She was part of Stefan’s friendship circle now, and on top of that, her course had started with a full roster of lectures and she was loving it.
It sounded a bit weird, she supposed, loving the processes of accounting. It was the reliability of numbers that she liked. The way that everything could be ticked off via a logical and tested process. Formulae could be applied to ensure that you ended up with an accurate, satisfactory result. If only life could be like that, too.
The course was going to be academically challenging, there was no doubt about that. But whenever she began working on an accounting problem that seemed almost impossible to resolve, she kept a single thought in mind that always inspired her and got her through: the answer was there, it was just a matter of finding it.
The other students on her course all seemed very studious and committed. They reminded her a bit of herself before she became involved with Stefan and his friends. It didn’t bear thinking about how lonely she would have been if she’d started the course without already having met people, because this lot were very obviously natural loner types who headed straight to the library to swot after each and every lecture.
None of them made the effort to befriend each other or sit together during study periods, but that didn’t bother Lucie now. She’d found her own sort of people to hang around with out of class, though she spent a lot of time in the library too. The tutors had made it abundantly clear that self-study was crucial to getting the required marks, and she was determined to make the most of the well-resourced area.
So much so that she’d actually turned down Angela’s offer to go down to the Quayside area of the city later for a bite to eat followed by drinks with ‘the gang’, as Angela referred to their mutual friendship circle.
Lucie had a full day of lectures, and the following morning first thing there was to be a question-and-answer session. She wanted to use the evening ahead to prepare some intelligent questions. It was important the tutors realised she was committed and keen, and she could only show that by putting the study time in.
She headed across the campus, intending to spend the next two hours in the library.
‘Hey, gorgeous, how’s it going?’
She glanced at the figure advancing on her from the left.
‘Stefan!’ She felt her cheeks heating up. It was so annoying how she was forced to reveal her feelings, courtesy of her inherited high colouring. Her dad was just the same. ‘I’m good. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, Lucinda. Better now I’ve seen you. A little bird tells me you’re not coming out tonight?’
He insisted on using her full name, even though she’d asked him not to. It made her sound a bit stuck-up but she’d learned to ignore it.
‘Sadly I can’t make it. Maybe next time, though.’
‘Seize the day!’ Stefan punched the air. ‘That’s always been my maxim and it’s stood me in good stead so far. What’s so important that you’re turning down having fun?’
Lucie explained about the Q-and-A session preparation. ‘Also, I’ve told my dad I’m staying in to study and we’ve arranged a call at eight o’clock.’
‘Tut tut. Still tied to Daddy’s apron strings? That will never do.’
Lucie shrugged. ‘It’s just… he sounded a bit down when I spoke to him this morning, and he really perked up when I said we could chat later.’
‘What did I tell you? You’ve got to be cruel to be kind. If he’s not waiting in for your call, he might just make the effort to get out himself and start to build his own life.’
Stefan had a point, but her dad wasn’t really the sort to join a class or take up a hobby. Bob down the road was his only friend, and apart from the odd bet on the horses, all his hobbies – reading, gardening, watching movies – were home-based.
But Stefan would not be dissuaded.
‘It’s only a few drinks. You’ll probably be tucked up in bed no later than ten, and you can get up super-early and squeeze a bit of studying in if you’re really keen.’
She looked up at him, feeling small and protected in his company.
‘What do you say?�
�
She hesitated.
‘That’s agreed then. Meet you at the campus bus stop at seven, yeah?’
And with that, he turned and melted into the crowd of students who’d just piled out of the lecture theatre opposite.
Lucie sighed and headed over to the library. She didn’t mind being jostled by the crowd; it felt good to be amongst people who were here to study and make a better life, like herself.
She knew she’d allowed Stefan to press-gang her into going out, although she felt certain he meant well. And most of what he’d said made perfect sense, to be fair.
There was something else, too, although she’d never admit it to anyone else. Stefan liked her. She could tell.
She’d noticed the other girls in the group look longingly when he saved her a seat next to him or slung his arm casually around her as they left the café together.
He’d also insisted on walking her and Angela home one night when they’d had drinks in the student union bar.
‘He’s never offered to walk me home before when I’ve been alone,’ Angela had remarked sourly.
Lucie tried to tell herself there was nothing in it. He was a full ten years older than her, after all, and more like an older brother. She ignored the silly butterflies in her stomach, and the fact that she now took much greater care with her appearance.
Stefan had already told her he felt protective towards her. That he’d lost his sister while he was still at high school.
‘She had leukaemia,’ he said sadly, his brown eyes seeming to darken with grief. ‘She’d had it for some time, battled through the treatment, and we all thought she’d beaten it. Then suddenly the bastard thing killed her. One day she was there, the next she’d gone.’
They’d sat in silence for a moment, Stefan remembering his sister, Lucie thinking about her mum.
‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that,’ she’d said softly.