The Whispers

by Perks, Heidi

  When Caitlyn doesn’t answer, Grace asks, ‘So do you think that was why Anna was upset or do you think there was another reason?’

  ‘If you’re asking me if I think her argument with Rachel was enough to drive her away from us at the end of the night then no, I don’t see it. How can it be?’

  ‘So there’s something else?’

  ‘Probably.’ Caitlyn finally releases the pot of glitter and absent-mindedly pushes it away. ‘The thing is, Anna was really …’ Caitlyn pauses. ‘Well, frantic, I suppose. At one point Nancy was practically shaking her, telling her she was making no sense.’ She looks up at Grace. ‘But you have to remember how much everyone was drinking. I don’t think we can look too far into any of it.’

  ‘Of course we can,’ Grace says. ‘Because Anna still isn’t home. And she’s your friend, Caitlyn. All of what you’re telling me means there was something wrong, and by the end of the night, by the sounds of it, she’d fallen out with both Rachel and Nancy?’

  Caitlyn’s brow furrows. ‘Do you think she’s in trouble?’

  ‘Do you?’ Grace asks, her eyes narrowing as she cocks her head. There is something about Caitlyn’s expression that concerns her, and yet it excites her at the same time, because it makes her think she is on the right track, and that finally someone agrees with her. ‘I want you to tell the police what you told me.’

  ‘I did. Yesterday,’ she says.

  ‘Then I want you to come back to the station with me and tell them you’re still concerned about Anna and they have to open the case back up.’

  ‘But she’s texted Ben,’ Caitlyn says. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not? Because you’re too scared to go against Nancy?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Grace mutters, ‘what the hell has that woman got on you all?’

  Grace sits in the car outside Caitlyn’s house. Rain has now started to drum on the windows and she can no longer see much but the increasing circles it creates as it thuds on the screen, disappearing before new ones emerge.

  She has no idea if Anna is safe or not. If she texted Ben, or if someone else did. All she knows is that her friend is still missing and even if Caitlyn is prepared to sit back and do nothing, she isn’t.

  As thoughts of the last two days slip in and out of her head, something strikes her from her first conversation with Ben. Anna has been seeing a therapist, a woman called Sally Parkinson, who lives in a place called Lewen Close.

  Grace pulls out her phone and types the name into Google, expanding the map to show the address clearly. Then she calls the number and makes herself an appointment, using her mother’s name to protect her anonymity, for Monday morning.

  She has no idea what might happen in the next two days but at least she is doing something.

  December – One week earlier

  Anna

  ‘I’m pleased to see you, Anna,’ Sally says. ‘It’s been three weeks. I have to be honest, I was worried you wouldn’t come back. Not after last time. You seemed very upset when you left.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to come,’ I admit. The fact that I had so nearly told Sally that Grace had given me an alibi that night weighed heavily and made me afraid. I had been waiting for Sally to chase me, press me into making another appointment, and had rehearsed what I was going to say: I didn’t need any more sessions right now and I’d be in touch again if I ever did. I was up to date on my payments, I wasn’t letting Sally down. I had decided it was the right thing to do; I didn’t need to tell anyone what had happened.

  But the call never came. And as the days and weeks passed, I wondered if it was because of this lack of contact that my fingers began to itch to pick up the phone. To speak to Sally again.

  ‘Why weren’t you going to come?’ Sally asks.

  Because I’ve said too much already. Because I’m afraid that if I tell her the rest then everything is going to come crashing down. Because I could lose everything I love.

  ‘Anna?’ she persists when I don’t respond. ‘How come you’re back here, then?’

  ‘Because I have to tell someone.’ This is the conclusion I had come to. I have to tell someone before I am driven mad.

  Sally nods slowly. ‘Do you think you can tell me what happened to your friend, Heather?’

  That night I watched Grace turn into my driveway and disappear back into my house, all the while feeling sick with nerves that I’d chosen Heather over her. What was she going to say to me when I returned? What if it was the end of our friendship? Would she be upstairs on the mattress when I got home or might she have even gone back to her own house?

  ‘Come on, then. Let’s go,’ Heather was saying casually.

  I tried to put the questions to the back of my mind as I turned and followed Heather up my street, before going down one of the lanes that led towards the seafront. Every so often I’d look back, waiting to see Grace reappear. I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to or not; it would undoubtedly be easier without her, but it worried me that Grace was going to be at Dad’s house alone. What if he woke up and asked where I was? Would Grace tell him the truth? He would be mad, but Catherine would never forgive me for going to the cliffs against her stark warnings, and likely even more so when she learned I’d left Grace behind.

  We carried on, picking up our pace down the narrow lanes. It was a ten-minute walk to get to the coast road, and Grace hadn’t reappeared. To our left Crayne’s Cliff loomed ominously. In the dark it looked like a chalk mountain, its face flat and imposing against the dark sky. It took us another fifteen minutes to climb it and reach the point where the moonlight got sucked up behind the canopy of the trees.

  Soon we could make out the police tape tied between the trunks. Heather was making her way over to it, pushing it down with her foot and climbing over. ‘What are you waiting for?’ she called back to me.

  Catherine had told us many stories over the years. My dad had, too. The cliffs had taken their victims. Anyone who had lived in Clearwater for long enough knew not to go near the edge, and especially now that it was out of bounds. You never knew when the earth could slide away and take you with it.

  Heather was staring at me, though, and so I tentatively joined her. It was eerie at night, so dark, and hard to see your footing and what lay ahead. But now I was here, on the other side of the tape, and yet Heather was on the move again, picking her way towards the cliff edge. I followed her until my legs buckled. ‘Heather, stop. We’ve gone far enough,’ I said.

  When she turned back her mouth was twisted into a smile. ‘A dare’s a dare, Anna.’

  The dare was to cross the tape. We’d done that, hadn’t we? We could go back now. ‘It’s too dark and the cliffs – you know they can give way at any minute.’

  ‘Oh God, you’re worse than Grace!’

  ‘I’m not. I just—’

  ‘I’m going.’ She waved her hands out, palms spayed upwards, grinning as she stepped backwards away from me, once, twice … She was at the edge now. Behind her the ground disappeared into darkness, the drop only a foot from where she stood. If anything happened out here we were going to be in so much trouble. Even stepping past the police tape felt worse than I’d imagined it would.

  ‘Will you just come back?’ I cried.

  She laughed at me again, mockingly, and I wanted to cry like a baby. I stood rooted to the spot, unable to move as Heather shuffled further back again. She must have been inches from the edge now. All it needed was one misplaced footing, a slip, or the earth to crumble beneath her, and she would be gone.

  ‘If you don’t come back, I’m leaving you here,’ I screamed. My whole body was shaking. My arms and legs felt like they didn’t belong to me. All I wanted in that moment was to be wrapped up in the soft cotton sheet of my bed and not out on the cliffs in the dark with someone I’d thought was my friend but who was acting mad.

  ‘I left her,’ I tell Sally, as warm tears slide down my cheeks. ‘I walked away. And then I heard a scream and I
ran back, but by the time I got to the cliff edge she was gone. I couldn’t see her. She’d fallen, gone over the edge.’

  ‘Oh Anna,’ Sally murmurs, reaching into her box of Kleenex yet again and passing me another tissue.

  I clutch it in a ball, shredding tiny pieces from it as each memory slices through me. Desperately trying to see Heather over the side of the cliff. Running home, every heartbeat a sharp knife in my chest. The following day, when Heather didn’t turn up at school. When the police arrived at Grace’s house the following evening and I was sent home to answer their questions.

  Did I know where Heather was? Had I seen her at all that day? When was the last time I’d spoken to her?

  ‘I lied,’ I whisper now, to Sally. ‘I was so scared that I lied. I didn’t tell anyone I’d been to the cliffs, and Grace lied for me too. She told the police we were at my house, that the last time we saw Heather was at school earlier that day. It took them a week of searching before they found her.’ Through my sobs, my gasps for breath, I speak the words I have never told another soul in twenty-two years.

  ‘Her foster mother turned up on my doorstep a day later, begging me to tell her if I knew where Heather was, asking me to let her know she wasn’t in trouble,’ I cry. ‘But it was too late,’ I tell Sally, sucking in too much air as I breathe. ‘I was too caught up in my lies by then that all I did was stare back at her and tell her that I didn’t have a clue where Heather was.’

  Sally continues to watch me silently. I glance up at her, trying to find the judgement I deserve, but I can read nothing in her eyes. ‘I let her foster mother, and the rest of Heather’s family, believe she might still be alive. I never told anyone what had really happened that night.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Monday 16 December

  Grace

  Monday arrives. It’s been four days since anyone has seen Anna, and Grace’s anguish is rising with the passing hours.

  Still Ben tells her that Anna is fine. ‘Yes, she has messaged again,’ he says, with increasing impatience at Grace’s numerous calls. But Anna isn’t answering her phone. Each time Grace has dialled her friend’s number it goes straight to voicemail. She has lost count of the number of times she has called, but she doesn’t care. Until she sees Anna for herself she won’t relent.

  ‘Maybe she does need some time for herself,’ Caitlyn tells Grace, in what feels like a 180-degree turn. ‘I think we should leave her be.’

  No. Grace cannot believe this. She knows without doubt Anna would not walk out on her son unless there was something seriously wrong, a life-or-death situation. And you don’t spend an evening with your friends in the pub, laughing and drinking, to then decide at the end of it that you need space from your life.

  She has told Caitlyn this a number of times over the weekend, but it is like banging her head against a brick wall.

  Having Matilda around means Grace has tried to pretend there is nothing to worry about, but her daughter has been asking questions. ‘Who are you calling now, Mummy?’

  Ben. Anna. Caitlyn. Nancy. Rachel. The police.

  She has been calling all of them. She is pestering them, Nancy tells her.

  Will you stop bloody pestering me, Grace. I have nothing else to say.

  Their reluctance to talk to her and their refusal to agree that something isn’t right makes her even more anxious that Anna isn’t safe. Even more angry with them all.

  Grace has sat in the car, with her daughter in the back, outside Ben’s house, when he has neither let her in nor answered any more of her questions. She knows, she just knows, there is something he isn’t telling her.

  She has walked up and down the coast road, past the Old Vic, stood in its car park and stared over the wall at the cliffs to her left and the sea in front.

  ‘Why doesn’t Ethan’s daddy want to speak to you, Mummy?’ Matilda has asked her. ‘Why do we have to keep driving here?’ ‘Can’t we go on to the beach?’ ‘Why can’t we walk to the top of the cliffs?’ Her daughter’s questions are as relentless as the ones inside her own head.

  ‘Will you stop pestering me’ she has said to Matilda. Grace knows she is driving herself mad, but it isn’t just the not knowing that is doing this to her, it is that someone close is hiding the truth.

  But now at least she has safely deposited Matilda at school and she focuses on her upcoming appointment with Sally Parkinson. It is a half-hour journey and she is there by twenty past nine, so when she arrives she doesn’t have long to wait.

  Grace pulls up outside the therapist’s house and leans across to look out of her car’s passenger window. It would be ideal if she could tell Sally the truth about who she is and that she is worried about Anna, but any good therapist wouldn’t tell her a thing. It isn’t like the two of them could sit down and figure out what’s been going on in Anna’s head in the days and weeks before she disappeared.

  No, the reason she is here is to see if there is any other way she can find out why Anna has been visiting Sally Parkinson for the last three months and whether that will tell her why Anna has vanished – and if there is any chance she can get her hands on Anna’s notes herself.

  Sally leads Grace to a small two-seater sofa before sitting down in a wing-backed armchair that looks far too small for her. She has a notepad and a pen with an annoying gemstone that bounces from side to side as it moves, and a hairband that she is constantly fiddling with. Already Grace feels irritated, sitting in this small room with only one window to look out of. Not that there is much to see anyway, but the room could do with some daylight.

  ‘Maybe we could start by you telling me what has brought you here today, Catherine,’ Sally says. Grace notices how strange it is to be addressed by her mother’s name.

  ‘I’m having problems with a friend,’ Grace says. ‘It seems silly me talking about it as an adult, but …’ She lets the sentence hang for a moment, trying to gather some steam in her thoughts. She doesn’t want to veer too close to the truth, but while she’s paying for the therapist’s time she may as well get something out of it.

  ‘What kind of problems?’ Sally asks her. The pen with its stupid wobbly bit keeps dangling, waiting for her to give it something to write in the book.

  ‘It’s a friendship that feels very toxic.’ An image of Nancy fills her head, in her tight skinny jeans and the blazer she was wearing the night Anna disappeared. All puffed up with shoulder pads and faux importance, living the lie that her husband’s job is so much more than working part-time for the boatyard.

  While she is talking, Grace scans the room. There is a filing cabinet tucked into the corner, which must hold Sally’s notes. The small window, which is marginally open to let in some air, is attached to a flimsy latch. Outside the room is a downstairs toilet tucked under the stairs. She presumes it looks on to the side path.

  It is all a long shot and Grace knows she isn’t being rational, having thoughts of breaking in and searching through personal files. If she were caught she’d be in a whole heap of trouble. But as she talks and the therapist makes vague noises, she wonders what other choice she has.

  When Grace has managed to speak for forty minutes she asks if she can use the toilet, and leaves the room wondering what sort of help Anna could have got from talking to a woman who has given so little. She has vivid memories of speaking to a counsellor when she was a teenager, a woman her mum had dragged her to see in the weeks after Heather Kerr had been found. Grace had resisted it, protesting that she didn’t need to speak to anyone, but in the end she endured three long sessions before her parents acquiesced that she was wasting their money if she wasn’t going to open up. Not once did they appreciate that Grace simply didn’t need the help.

  As she thought, the toilet looks out on to the thin pathway that runs up the side of the house. She unlocks the window and looks out before pulling it to again.

  Her fingers linger on its clasp as thoughts flitter like butterflies through her head. She could climb through if she doesn’t catc
h it properly. If Sally used the toilet she would think it was still shut.

  Carefully Grace closes it as tight as she can, without shutting it properly. She rests the catch to one side, making it look as if it is locked, while running a finger under the wooden frame to check she could pull it open from the outside. If she has the guts to.

  What choice do you have? The thought plays on a loop once her session is over and she leaves Sally’s house. What other option does she have if she wants to find out what has happened to her friend? Everyone else is either lying to her or has given up.

  She will come back because the truth is she will do anything for Anna.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Grace

  Back at home, Grace stands at the front of her apartment and stares out of the large window with a mug of tea clutched in her hand. From the third floor she has an uninterrupted view of the sea on one side and Weymouth on the other.

  If her dad could see her now. Back in Clearwater. He likely would have had the same words for her as her mum had when she’d announced she was returning in August, but with a very different meaning.

  ‘What are you doing going back there, Grace?’ Catherine had said. Grace detected the panic in her voice and rolled her eyes in frustration. Her dad would have wanted to know because he’d never had a nice word for Clearwater when they’d left. As far as he was concerned it was a dead-end town with no prospects.

  ‘What are you worried about exactly?’ she’d asked her mum. She had put up with her mother’s neuroses for as long as she could remember. How her father put up with them she had no idea, and yet he seemed to tolerate her, love her even. More than he loved Grace, because it was no secret Henry hadn’t wanted children. Grace had once overheard him telling a customer in his car showroom. An odd choice for someone to tell something so personal to, she’d thought, but then her dad was strange in that way.