11 Missed Calls: A gripping psychological thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat. Elisabeth Carpenter

time.

      I tear off my notes from Jack’s pad, scrunching the paper into my jeans pocket. I click back to his news feed. As I put both my hands on the chair arms to get up, a red notification appears over the message icon. He has it on silent … of course he does.

      I should leave it. If I read it, he will know – there’s no way of marking them as unread.

      But I can’t stop myself.

      A sharp intake of breath as I read the words.

       Have you told her yet?

      I look to the sender. It’s not Francesca King, but a name that is vaguely familiar: Simon Howarth. Where do I know it from? I thought I had met all of Jack’s colleagues, but they aren’t the most interesting of people – I can’t remember all of their names. It can’t be a relative of Jack’s; he’s an only child, as are both of his parents.

      The front door clicks shut. I race down the loft stairs and go straight into the bathroom. I stand behind the closed door. The kitchen is directly below me; I bet he’s pouring another glass of wine. I hear him put the bottle noisily into the fridge.

      If he sees my face, he’ll know what I’ve been doing. I flush the toilet and run the taps, waiting until I hear him tread the stairs.

      I have a lot of research to do.

      The information I found about Francesca King was the same limited details from her Facebook account. On her firm’s website – no win, no fee ambulance chasers – was a notice for a drop-in consultancy clinic on Monday nights. I wouldn’t have the bottle to face her – what if she’d seen the picture of Sophie and me on Jack’s desk at work?

      After firing a quick email to several of the private investigators, I slam my laptop shut.

      Jack probably won’t come down for the rest of the evening – too busy in the company of wine and Facebook. It’s ridiculous really. Why aren’t I saying anything to him?

      Because of what I did six years ago.

      He had to get me out of the mess I’d got myself into. It wasn’t about him cheating, it was about me, chasing ghosts. It happened before, when I was at college, but Jack doesn’t know about that. It’s not like that now: this isn’t stalking, per se. Everyone looks at what their husbands and partners are up to online, don’t they?

      Anyway, I have proof. I took a picture of the letter on my phone. Jack would be the first to say it: you can’t argue with evidence.

      I look in on Sophie before I go to bed, as I do every night. She looks so angelic when she’s asleep; I imagine all children do. Debbie would have seen me sleeping as a baby. Did she think I was an angel, or an inconvenience? Before now, she was a ghost – I had idolised her, exalted her – thought she disappeared through no fault of her own. I believed it must have been something really awful for her to have left us. But if this email is from her, then I should accept that she chose to leave us.

      If I found her after all this time, I’m not sure I’d even like her.

       Chapter Thirteen

      Monday, 7 July 1986

       Debbie

      When I worked, I hated Mondays. I’d spend the second half of Sunday under a cloud of dread, eating chocolate and watching videos from the corner shop. My colleagues weren’t bad people, but being estate agents turned them into arseholes. I’d had dreams of being a fashion designer – leaving home, going to art school and pondering Andy Warhol soup cans, floating about in chiffon and sandals. But I should’ve known I wasn’t good enough for that life. Dad said I was lucky to get a job at all. ‘Get any job you can,’ he said. ‘That’ll show Thatcher. She wants us to disappear into the woodwork like cockroaches.’