At first it seemed the woman wasn’t going to reply, but slowly she turned her face towards Clara. Her eyes, rimmed thickly in black kohl, landed on her own before flitting away again, as she asked softly and with the faintest ghost of a smile, ‘Where’s Luke, Clara?’
Clara could only stare back at her, too surprised to respond. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Where’s Luke?’
She’d had no idea the woman even knew their names. Perhaps she’d seen them written on their post, but it was the way she said it – so familiar, so knowing, and with such a strange smile on her lips. ‘What do you mean?’ Clara asked but the woman only turned and carried on up the stairs. ‘Excuse me! Why are you asking about Luke?’ but there was still no reply. Clara stood staring after her. It was as if the world was conspiring in some surreal joke against her. The door to the upstairs flat opened and then closed again and at last Clara went back to her own flat. She stood in her narrow hallway, listening, until a few seconds later the familiar thud of bass began to thump against her ceiling once more.
It was past two. She should go back to work; her colleagues would be worried by now. But Clara didn’t move. Should she start phoning around hospitals? Perhaps she should google their numbers – at least that way she would be doing something. She went to the small box room they used as an office and at a touch of the mouse pad Luke’s laptop flickered into life, the browser opening immediately at Google Mail – and Luke’s personal email account.
For a second she stared at the screen, her finger hovering, knowing she shouldn’t pry. But then her gaze fell upon his list of folders. Below the usual ‘Inbox’ ‘Drafts’ and ‘Trash’ was one labelled, simply, ‘Bitch’. She stared at it in shock before clicking on it. And then her jaw dropped – there were at least five hundred messages, sent from several different accounts over the past year, sometimes as often as five times a day. She opened and read them one by one.
Did you see me today, Luke? I saw you. Keep your eyes peeled.
And,
I know you, Luke, I know what you are, what you’ve done. You might have most people fooled, but you don’t fool me. Men like you never fool me.
How are your parents, Luke? How are Oliver and Rose? Do they know the truth about you – your family, your friends, your colleagues? How about that little girlfriend of yours, or is she too stupid to see? She looks really fucking stupid, but she’ll find out soon enough.
And,
Women are nothing to you, are we, Luke? We’re just here for your convenience, to fuck, to step over, to use or to bully. We’re disposable. You think you’re untouchable, you think you’ve got away with it. Think again, Luke.
Then,
What will they say about you at your funeral, Luke? Say your goodbyes, it’s going to be soon.
The very last one had been sent only a few days before.
I’m coming for you, Luke, I’ll be seeing you.
It had been a woman, all this time? And he’d known about it for months, had known but hadn’t told her – had never even mentioned the emails. Did he know who it was? It was clearly someone who knew him very well – knew his parents’ names, where Luke worked; knew his movements intimately. Was it the same person who had broken into their flat, sent the photographs, the letters? Perhaps it was a joke, she thought wildly. An elaborate prank dreamt up by one of his friends. But then, where was he? Where was Luke? I’m coming for you, Luke. I’ll be seeing you.
She was deep in thought when the sound of her intercom sliced through the silence, making her jump violently, her heart shooting to her mouth.
Cambridgeshire, 1986
We waited such a long time for a baby. Years and years, actually. They couldn’t tell us why, the specialists. Couldn’t find a single reason why it didn’t happen for Doug and me. ‘Unexplained Infertility,’ was the best they could come up with. You think it’s going to be so simple, starting a family, and then when it’s taken from you, the future you’d imagined snatched away, it feels like a death. All I ever wanted was to be a mum. When school friends went off to university or found themselves jobs down in London, I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to be a career woman, didn’t need a big house and lots of money. I was content with our cottage in the village I’d grown up in, Doug’s building business; I just wanted children, and Doug felt exactly the same way.
I used to see them when they came back to our village for holidays, those old classmates of mine. And I’d see how they looked at me, with my clothes from the market and my lack of ambition, see the flash of superiority or bewilderment in their eyes when they realized I didn’t want to be just like them. But I didn’t care. I knew that what I wanted would bring me all the happiness I’d need.
Year by year, woman by woman, things began to change. They began to change. As we all neared our thirties, baby after baby began to make their appearance on those weekend visits. Of course, I’d been trying for a good few years by then, had already had many, many months of disappointment to swallow, but nothing hit me quite as hard as seeing that endless parade of children of the girls I used to go to school with.
Because I could see it, in their faces, how it changed them. How overnight the nice clothes and interesting careers and successful husbands which had once defined them became suddenly second place to what they now had. It wasn’t the change in them physically; the milk-stained clothes or the tired faces, it wasn’t the harassed air of responsibility or the being a member of a new club or even the obvious devotion they felt. It was something I saw in their eyes – a new awareness, I suppose – that most hurt me. It seemed to me as though they’d crossed into another dimension where life was fulfilling and meaningful on a level I could never understand. And the jealousy and despair I felt was devastating. Plenty of women, I knew, were happily childfree, leading perfectly satisfying lives without kids in them, but I wasn’t one of them. For as long as I could remember, having a family of my own was all I’d dreamt of.
So, when finally, finally, our miracle happened, it was the most amazing, most joyful thing imaginable. That moment when I held Hannah in my arms for the first time was one of pure elation. We loved her so much, Doug and I, right from the beginning. We had sacrificed so much, and waited such a long time for her, such a horribly long time.
I don’t remember exactly when the first niggling doubts began to stir. I couldn’t admit it to myself at first. I put it down to my tiredness; the shock and stress of new motherhood, or a hundred other different things rather than admit the truth. I didn’t let on to anyone how worried I was. How frightened. I told myself she was healthy and she was beautiful and she was ours, and that’s all that mattered.
And yet, I knew. Somehow I knew even then that there was something not quite right about my daughter. An instinct, of the purest truest kind, in the way animals sense trouble in their midst. Secretly I would compare her to other babies – at the clinic, or at Mother and Baby clubs, or at the supermarket. I would watch their expressions, their reactions, the ever-changing emotions in their little faces and then I’d look into Hannah’s beautiful big brown eyes and I’d see nothing there. Intelligence, yes – I never feared for her intellect – but rarely emotion. I never felt anything from her. Though I lavished love upon her it was as though it couldn’t reach her, slipping and sliding across the surface of her like water over oilskin.
At first, when I voiced my concerns to Doug, he’d cheerfully brush them aside. ‘She’s just chilled out, that’s all,’ he’d say, ‘let her be, love,’ and I’d allow myself to be reassured, telling myself he was right, that Hannah was fine and my fears were all in my head. But when she was