Her face was older than her fifty odd years, and her hair had gone white. But despite, or maybe because of, her lines and wrinkles, and her kind of grief-stricken serenity, Ava thought she was beautiful.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t stay in touch,’ she almost whispered, submitting to the warm, scented embrace.
‘Cariad, we never expected you to. We knew why you went in the end. It wasn’t having a baby that messed you up, it was Ellen’s going, wasn’t it?’
Ava studied Ellen’s dad, Peter, carefully. He was bald now, which gave his dark eyes and beaky nose the look of a ferocious bird of prey. As always, she had been handed a cup of tea and some bara brith and settled down on the sofa. She could tell, just by looking around, that there would be no lodger, and the lights in Ellen’s room were still for her.
After a bit of chat Ava carefully sidled around the subject. ‘Do you think you’ll stay here? I mean, my mum and dad keep on about you moving out to live on the Keys with them… I wasn’t sure if that was just my dad being bossy as usual.’
Jackie and her husband exchanged glances, and she was the one who spoke. ‘Actually, we are moving. Not to Florida, but to England. I must tell you, cariad, we decided this when we heard you were coming back. The thing that keeps us – it sounds so stupid when I say it aloud – but we never believed that Ellen ran away. To have kept silent all these years. She just wouldn’t. Your parents agree that she would at least have contacted you, Ava. The two of you were like sisters. But the police never bothered to look too hard, did they, and we hoped for so many years she would just come back. Then, Jesse – you know he was killed in a motorbike accident?’
Ava nodded, heart pounding, and a trickle of sweat edging down her backbone and along her hairline.
‘Jesse was a nice boy, and he always liked Ellen, didn’t he?’ Peter looked at Ava with Ellen’s eyes. The almond shape, with long lashes, were almost too pretty for a man, but luckily the rest of his face was masculine enough. The eagle image persisted.
‘Yes… What… what did Jesse say?’
‘We were having a drink one night, and he brought the subject up himself. Actually, I tell you how it happened. He had been doing some course online, graphic design I think it was – wasn’t it, Peter?’
Her husband nodded, and carried on carefully sipping his tea, quietly observing both Ava and his wife.
‘Anyway, he had been offered a job in Glasgow, and we talked about leaving Aberdyth. I think I mentioned that we couldn’t leave until we found out what had happened to Ellen, and he took it very badly. Said he had the same trouble, but he was going to put it right, and then we could all leave.’
Peter turned to his wife. ‘And those were his exact words, weren’t they, Jackie? We didn’t know quite what to say to him after that, but of course we tried to question him when he had calmed down a little.’
She nodded, lips trembling a little. ‘He said that… he said that he had proof of where Ellen was, but he needed to check something…’
‘Wasn’t it he needed to check with someone? I’m sure that’s what he said,’ Peter put in suddenly, his voice sharp.
His wife waved his comment away. ‘Do you think so? Doesn’t matter, anyway, because it never happened. Of course, after he said it we questioned him a bit more, but he left straight away, practically ran right out into the darkness. Peter went after him, but he headed down to East Wood, and disappeared. Perhaps he had been drinking before he came to see us, because he seemed very unsteady on his feet. All I can remember clearly is him rushing out, shouting that he needed to do something, or check with someone, but he would tell us tomorrow.’
‘Did you speak to him later at all, or try his house?’ Ava asked, annoyed that her voice came out husky. She cleared her throat and reached for her cup of tea, trying to calm her pounding heart. ‘Did he mention what his “proof” was? Did he give any hint of where she was?’
‘We weren’t sure. There have been a lot of people trying to tell us things about Ellen over the years, but Jesse… We wondered if he really had found something, so naturally, yes, we telephoned him that night, and Peter even went over to his house. As soon as it was morning, we phoned again, but there was no answer. He was living with his cousins and his girlfriend, and they said he took his bike out as soon as it was light. I telephoned the police as well, after what Jesse said, but it is such an old case, and I had nothing to tell them other than a drunken boy’s claim to know something. I can’t blame them for not following up on it.’
Ava could hardly breathe, and her fingers were clenched so tightly around the china cup that her knuckles shone white. ‘Then what happened?’
Jackie was shaking her head, eyes bright. ‘Well, they didn’t find him until the afternoon, but by then of course, it was too late. It’s such a lonely road, and apparently there had been a diesel leak from another vehicle that made him skid. He was dead. It was a couple of years ago now. I went up to Glasgow, to speak to the people who offered him the job, and he’d already rented a flat…’
‘You wondered if Ellen was in Glasgow, and that Jesse had found a trace of her?’
‘Yes. But it was a dead end. Just like all the others. The only copper who took a bit of notice was one of the team who dealt with Ellen’s disappearance. Sophie Miles. She’s a Detective Inspector working with the Major Crime Team down at Cadrington now, and she was very interested, but eventually admitted there was nothing to pursue.’
‘When we heard that you were coming home, we knew that it was our last chance. You saw her before she left, and she gave you that letter. It sounded so simple, that she was going to live a little, travel and meet new people, and we needn’t worry, but the police were never convinced, and neither were we. There was no catalyst for it, was there, cariad?’ Peter smiled benevolently at Ava, but his voice seemed to be echoing down a tunnel as she fought to get a grip on her emotions. This was far worse than she had imagined, far worse even, than the questions at the time. He continued, ‘But I’m sure even you must have wondered if she really went, or if something else happened. Because she’s never been in touch with you either, has she?’
‘No,’ Ava whispered. ‘No, she hasn’t been in touch.’
‘We knew you would have told us if she had. Ellen loved you, so if she was in trouble, even if she couldn’t tell us, it would have been you she turned to. So anyway, we have hired a private investigator. He’s coming down from Cardiff to stay here for a while, and I hope you won’t mind if he interviews you?’
People have always judged me on my appearance. I don’t blame them. I mean, we are all a bit fickle like that, aren’t we? We say, ‘She’s all right, but what’s she doing with that ugly fucker?’ or we assume that if you are one of the beautiful people you can’t have a brain, or maybe that you can’t have beauty and brains. Luckily I am one of the beautiful people. Even at school the other kids would like to be around me, share bags of sweets with me, and tell me their secrets… Stupid, stupid, because with secrets comes the power to fuck people over.
My days are filled with activity, and whilst I go about my meaningless tasks, I consider my players. They are ready to go now, lined up neatly in their start positions. All I need to do is roll the dice.
There’s no keeping secrets in this village, which is pretty funny when you consider what I do. Nobody looks beneath the surface, do they? By midday I’m sure everyone knows what Jackie and Peter have done. I make it my business to find things out. I was a bit shocked when I first heard, and then I wanted to laugh out loud. The presence of this pathetic private investigator merely adds another thrill to the mix. He arrives tomorrow and I really can’t wait to meet him. He’ll be staying at the Birtleys’ with Ava.