At last Clara left London behind and joined the M11. It should only take her another hour or so to reach Suffolk. Would Luke be there? She gripped the steering wheel tighter and pressed her foot on the accelerator. Surely he would – he had to be. Unbidden, the emails she’d read earlier came back to her – It’s going to be soon, Luke, your funeral’s going to be very soon – and she felt again the knot of fear tightening in her stomach.
She reached The Willows as the sun began to set. As she got out of the car and gazed up at the house, cawing jackdaws circled above the surrounding fields in the twilight sky. This moment of stillness before nightfall seemed to capture the place at its most magical. It was an eighteenth-century farmhouse, clematis and blood flower clambering over its red bricks, an ancient weeping willow shivering in the breeze. On either side of the low, wide oak door, crooked, crown-glass windows offered a glimpse into the beautiful interior beyond. It was a house out of a fairy story; enchanted and remote beneath this endless empty sky. She approached the door now, taking a deep breath before she knocked. Please be here, Luke, please, please, just be here.
She heard the familiar sound of their ancient spaniel, Clementine, bounding to the door, followed by the latch being raised. It was Oliver who opened it. He peered out at her, not seeming to recognize her at first, clearly wary to have someone appear out of the blue, they were so remote and alone out here. Eventually, his expression cleared. ‘Good Lord, Clara!’ He turned and called behind him, ‘Rose, it’s Clara! Oh do calm down, Clemmy! Come in, come in, what a lovely surprise. What on earth are you doing here?’
She glanced over his shoulder to the cosy glow of the room behind him and felt the house’s familiar pull. She caught the smell of something cooking and pictured Rose in the kitchen listening to Radio Four while she made dinner, a welcoming, irresistible scene of affluent domesticity, so different from the chilly semi-detached she’d grown up in in Penge. But before she could reply, Rose came running up behind him. ‘My goodness, darling, hello! Where’s Luke?’ She looked beyond Clara to the car, her expression pleased and expectant.
Clara’s heart sank. Shit. ‘He’s not with me, actually,’ she admitted.
Oliver frowned. ‘Oh?’ he said, adding gallantly, ‘Oh well, how lovely to see you anyway. Come in, come in!’
But Rose was still smiling at her. ‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘You haven’t heard from him, then?’
‘No, not since the weekend.’
Before Clara could say anything else, Oliver was ushering her through to the kitchen. ‘Come in! Come in and sit down.’
While Rose bustled about putting the kettle on and Oliver chatted about a new book he was researching, Clara leant down to stroke Clemmy, and wondered how to begin.
Finally, Rose placed the tea on the table in front of her and, sitting down, said mildly, ‘So, my darling, where’s that son of ours?’
Clara took a deep breath. ‘Nobody’s seen Luke since yesterday evening, around seven thirty,’ she told them. ‘He emailed me to say he was coming home but he didn’t turn up and he doesn’t have his mobile on him. He had an important interview today, as well as a big meeting at work … but nobody’s heard anything from him.’ She looked from one to the other of their faces. ‘It’s just not like him and I’m so worried. I thought he might have come here, but …’
Oliver looked perplexed. ‘Well … perhaps he’s gone to stay with friends, or …’
Clara nodded. ‘The thing is, and it might be nothing, but he’d been getting these weird emails lately, and a few things had started to happen. A break-in at our flat, and dodgy phone calls, and, well, photographs. We hadn’t wanted to worry you, so …’
‘Phone calls? Photographs? What sort of photographs?’ asked Rose in bewilderment.
‘Whoever it was had been following Luke, taking pictures, I think they were meant to scare him.’
Rose’s face suddenly drained of colour behind her carefully applied make-up. ‘What did the emails say?’
‘They weren’t very nice,’ Clara admitted. ‘Quite threatening, saying they were going to come after him, talking about his funeral …’
‘Oh God. Oh dear God.’ Rose put a trembling hand to her mouth.
‘I don’t—’ Clara began, but was interrupted by the sound of floorboards creaking overhead, then footsteps on the stairs. She looked from Rose to Oliver in confusion. For a strange, chilly moment she wondered if it was Luke she could hear – the disquieting thought occurring to her that his parents had lied to her, that Luke had been here all along. It took her a second or two to recognize the man who appeared at the kitchen door as Luke’s older brother, Tom.
They stared at each other blankly for a moment until Tom said, ‘Clara! What – where’s Luke?’
She watched Tom as he listened to his father explain the reason for her visit. She had never quite been able to get a handle on Luke’s older brother. Perhaps it was because the rest of the Lawsons were so welcoming that Tom’s reticence was more noticeable, but it had long seemed to her that he kept himself a little apart from his family, that his aloofness almost bordered on disdain. And though he’d always been polite enough to her on the rare occasions that they met, she’d never quite managed to break through his reserve.
It was unusual to find Tom at The Willows at all, in fact. Although he lived relatively nearby, in Norwich, he was not as close to Rose and Oliver as his younger brother, visiting far less frequently than Luke. Unlike Luke, he took after their mother physically, rather than Oliver, having inherited her high cheekbones and blue, almost turquoise eyes – though apparently none of her natural warmth. She remembered Luke telling her once that Tom had split from a long-term girlfriend a year or so before, though Luke hadn’t known why. ‘That’s Tom for you,’ he’d said. ‘Closed bloody book when it comes to that sort of stuff.’
‘He’s probably just drunk somewhere,’ Tom said now with the elder-sibling dismissiveness she knew drove Luke crazy. She bit back a rush of irritation, and managed to murmur politely, ‘I hope so.’
‘But what about this stalker person?’ Rose asked anxiously.
Tom shrugged and, going over to his parents’ extensive wine rack, helped himself to a bottle. ‘Probably some unhinged ex of his,’ he said, reaching for a glass. ‘God knows he’s had enough of those.’ He glanced at Clara and perhaps catching her annoyance looked a little abashed and added more kindly, if patronizingly, ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up soon. I really wouldn’t worry.’
At that moment Rose gripped her husband’s arm. ‘Oh, Oli, where is he? Where is he?’
‘Tom’s right. He’ll turn up,’ Oliver murmured, putting a comforting hand over hers, but though his voice was reassuring, Clara saw the worry in his eyes.
She got to her feet. ‘I’m so sorry for upsetting you all like this,’ she said miserably.
‘What will you do now?’ Tom asked.
‘I’ll call the police as soon as I get home, if he’s still not back. He’ll have been missing for twenty-four hours by then, so hopefully they’ll take it seriously.’ She looked around for her bag.
‘That’s actually a myth, you know,’ Tom replied.
She blinked. ‘What is?’
‘That you have to wait twenty-four hours. You can report someone missing whenever you like – the police still have to take it seriously.’
She picked up her bag, ignoring his know-it-all tone. ‘Well anyway, I’ll be off now,’ she said. ‘Mac’s back at the flat, calling around the hospitals. Just in case,’ she added, seeing Rose’s alarmed expression.
‘Oh