‘Don’t you dare make this my fault,’ I shouted. ‘Don’t you dare do that!’ On we argued, our worry and distress causing us to turn on each other, sniping and defensive.
‘Mummy? Daddy?’ Hannah appeared in the doorway, looking sleepy and adorable in her pink pyjamas. She held her teddy in her hand. ‘Why are you shouting?’
Doug got to his feet. ‘Hello, little one,’ he said, his voice suddenly jolly. ‘How’s my princess? Got a cuddle for your daddy?’
She nodded and edged closer, but then said in a small, sad voice, ‘Is it because of Lucy?’
Doug and I exchanged a look. He picked her up. ‘You know how it happened?’
She shook her head. ‘Mummy thinks I did it, but I never did! Mummy loves her birdy and so do I.’ Tears welled, spilling from her eyes. ‘I would never, ever hurt Lu-Lu bird.’
Doug held her close. ‘I know you wouldn’t, of course you wouldn’t. It was only somebody playing a nasty trick, that’s all. Or a fox. Maybe a naughty fox did it. Come on, sweetheart, don’t cry, please don’t cry. Let’s get you back to bed.’ I knew he was fooling himself, too scared to admit the truth, but I’d never felt so lonely, so wretched, as I did at that moment. As they left the kitchen I looked up and caught Hannah watching me over her father’s shoulder, her expression impassive now. We held each other’s gaze before they turned the corner and disappeared from view.
London, 2017
When Clara answered her intercom it was Mac’s voice she heard, crackling back at her as though from a different world; an innocent, ordinary place where emails weren’t sent that stopped your heart from beating, that turned your blood to ice. ‘Jesus,’ he said after she’d buzzed him up, ‘you look awful. I tried you at work but they said you hadn’t come back after lunch so …’ he paused. ‘Clara? Are you all right?’
Without replying she led him to the computer and pointed at the screen. ‘Read these,’ she said.
Obediently he sat. She watched him as he read, his head bowed, thick black hair sticking out in all directions, his rangy six-foot frame hunched uncomfortably in the small office chair, as though he might uncoil and come springing out of it like a jack in the box. It was good to see him, the band of fear that had been wrapping itself ever tighter round her chest loosening a fraction.
Mac had been Luke’s closest friend since school and spent almost as much time at their flat as they did. He was life as she’d known it only twenty-four hours before: nights out at The Reliance, evenings in with beers and a box set, long, hung-over Sunday lunches in the Owl and Pussycat; private jokes and shared history, the comfort and ease of old friendship: he was the mainstay of her and Luke’s relationship, witness to their happy, normal life – before everything had become so entirely not normal, before the creeping awareness that everything was very far from normal indeed.
‘Holy shit,’ he said, when he’d read the last message.
‘Did you know about them?’ she demanded.
He glanced at her sheepishly. ‘Well yeah, Luke told me he’d been getting dodgy emails, but I didn’t realize they were this bad, that there were so many of them.’
Clara’s voice rose in frustration. ‘Why the hell didn’t he tell me? I can’t believe he kept them from me. They’re so nasty – some of them are fucking sick.’
‘Yeah,’ Mac said. ‘He, um, he didn’t want you to worry …’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’
‘I know, I know. I think he was embarrassed they’re from a woman.’
‘Are you kidding me? Whoever this nutcase is broke into my flat! She’s been threatening my boyfriend. What the hell was Luke playing at, not telling me about it?’ She looked at him sharply. ‘Does he know who she is?’
Emphatically Mac shook his head. ‘No. Honestly, Clara, I don’t think he’s got a clue.’
She went to the screen and read the last email aloud. ‘“I’m coming for you.” I mean, what the fuck?’ She looked around for her phone. ‘I’m going to call the police.’
Mac got up. ‘I’m pretty sure they won’t do anything until he’s been missing twenty-four hours. Look, Clara, I think these emails are from some weirdo who wants to rattle Luke – an ex maybe, but I doubt they have anything to do with him not coming home last night.’
‘Where the bloody hell is he, then?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’s just gone away for a wee while to clear his head.’
‘Clear his head? Why on earth would he need to clear his head?’
But Mac’s eyes slid away from hers and instead of replying he said, ‘I’ve called all his friends, but I guess he could be at his parents’ place. Have you tried there?’
The question made Clara pause. ‘No, not yet.’
‘Maybe you should check with them. It’s the first thing the police will do.’
Mac was right. His mum and dad’s house in Suffolk was the obvious place Luke would go – in fact she was surprised it hadn’t occurred to her before. She’d never known anyone as close to their parents as Luke. Perhaps the emails had rattled him enough to make him want to get out of London for a few days. But in that case, why hadn’t he told her?
Looking down at her phone, she hesitated. ‘What if he’s not there, though? You know what his mum and dad are like – they’ll be beside themselves.’
‘Aye, you’re not wrong there.’
She and Mac stared at each other, both thinking the same thing: Emily.
Luke never talked about his older sister and Clara only knew the bare facts: when she was eighteen, Emily had walked out of the family home and was never heard from again. He’d been ten years old at the time, his brother Tom, fifteen. He had told her a few months after they’d started dating, one night at his old place in Peckham, a shared flat off Queens Road in a dilapidated Victorian terrace, where at night they would lie in bed and listen to the music and voices carrying from the bars and restaurants squeezed into the railway arches across the street, trains thundering over the elevated tracks above.
‘And you’ve no idea what happened to her?’ she’d asked, astonished by his story.
Luke had shrugged, and when he’d spoken again there was a heaviness to his voice she’d not heard before. ‘No, none of us had a clue. She just walked out one day. Left a note saying she was leaving home, and we never heard from her again. It totally destroyed my family; my parents never got over it. Mum had a nervous breakdown and in the end it was better to never mention her. All the pictures of her got put away, everyone stopped talking about her.’
Clara had sat up, appalled. ‘But that’s awful! You were only ten, you must have wanted to talk about her, it must have devastated you and your brother too.’
The hand that had been stroking her leg paused. ‘We learnt it was better not to, I suppose.’
‘But … was there … I mean, weren’t the police involved?’
He shook his head. ‘She went of her own free will. I think that was the hardest part for my mum and dad – she left a note saying she was going, but no explanation as to why or where. My dad told me they hired a private detective to try and find her but it didn’t come to anything.’ He shrugged. ‘She completely vanished.’
And in that moment she’d understood something about Luke that had always puzzled her. Something she’d glimpsed hovering behind