A Place of Secrets (38 page)

“I don’t know,” Euan said, stepping off the ladder and coming to join her. “I never told her.”

He peeped inside. “There’s nothing there,”
he said. “What would she be looking for?”

“And how do we know it was Summer anyway?” Claire cried out harshly. “It might have been someone else altogether. Summer was frightened of this place. Surely she wouldn’t come alone and willingly…”

Her words hung in the air. Everyone thought at the same moment: what if she hadn’t been alone? What if someone had brought her here … by force?

“Ludicrous…,”
he muttered to himself under his breath. “Who else knew about this place and the hideaway. It’s totally ridiculous to think anyone…”

Jude thought. Who else knew, indeed, apart from Gran? She cast her mind with difficulty over all the people she’d met at Starbrough. Who would know about the hideaway and to whom would it matter anyway? None of this made any sense.

Claire was clearly thinking the
same thing, though, since she’d never been up here before, she was even more at sea than Jude.

“We still can’t definitely say that Summer came here last night, can we?”

“Or this morning,” Euan said absently. He started hunting around the place, looking for clues no doubt, Jude thought. But he found nothing. No trace of a little girl in Barbie-pink pajamas.

Jude stepped over to help Claire to
her feet. Her sister was silent, disconsolate, staring at the floor. As Jude put out her hand her eyes followed the direction of Claire’s gaze. There was a small patch of crumbled mortar dust by the wall near the top of the stairs. In the middle was planted the perfectly formed print of a very small shoe.

“Don’t touch it,” Jude whispered urgently as Claire put her hand out toward it. “Look, we’d
better get out of here in case the police…”

The others both looked at her, as through fog. The fog cleared.

“I think Jude’s right,” Euan said slowly. “Claire, we ought to go back without disturbing anything further.”

They both helped Claire down the stairs, then, each holding a hand, led her out of the clearing by the route that Euan had taken Jude that first time they met, to Foxhole Lane
and down to the road. Jude’s gaze flittered as they walked, looking for … well, anything that might say what had happened to Summer. As they reached the junction of the lane with the road a police car drew up and two officers, one the very young constable, got out. Euan took them back in the direction of the tower to show them what they’d seen. The women continued down the road to the cottage.

* * *

When they arrived it was to find the house transformed into an incident scene. There was a police van, another police car and several other vehicles, a German shepherd on a leash, and the sergeant was organizing a team of local people, including Robert and Steve, the farmer, to start searching the area. Fiona had been allowed to take Darcey home. Claire was sent to find an item of Summer’s
clothing to give the dog a scent, then she and Jude were told to sit on the sofa in the living room while a detective asked them more questions, and tried not to listen to the people all around them studying maps, talking about ditches and storm drains, the crackle of police radios, the endless recitation of the meager scraps of information about Summer’s movements of the night before.

The hours
passed with agonizing slowness, and yet Jude didn’t want them to go quicker. The longer Summer was missing, the worse the prognosis would be. “Why can’t they find her?” Claire wailed again and again, and Jude concurred heartily.

Euan returned after several hours, the young constable with him. He told them in a low voice how the folly had already been turned into a crime scene, with blue and white
police tape and a forensic specialist in attendance. At the news, the blood drained from Claire’s delicate features and she sat as still as a porcelain doll.

Jude, though quite as anxious, thought what to do. The idea of ringing their mother passed briefly through her mind. She rejected it for the moment, but when the first journalist arrived—from the local television news—she knew she’d have
to tell Valerie before she got wind of the crisis from some other source. But when she made the call to Spain there was only an answer phone; she left a bland message about ringing Jude back. That was all she could do for the moment.

The detective returned to question Jude and Claire and Euan once more, going over and over the same facts, and Jude, despite Claire’s frowning looks, stumbled briefly
through her account of Summer’s bad dreams and weird knowledge of events long past. The man clearly didn’t know what to make of this, but did his best.

“So you’re saying that she was maybe frightened after you read her the fairy tale and might have sleepwalked or something?” he asked.

“Possibly. But…” If only she could remember her own confused dreams from last night. “Look—I know it sounds
daft—she might have gone off, I don’t know, on some quest to do with this story I told you about. She got quite caught up in it, you see. It seemed very real to her.”

“This girl from the eighteenth century,” he said unhappily. “It sounds a little strange.” Jude knew he wasn’t convinced. She couldn’t blame him.

When he finally left them, Claire turned to her fiercely.

“I wish you’d stop all
that nonsense. Couldn’t you see he didn’t believe a word of it? It’s just crazy.”

“Claire, we’ve talked about this before. You agreed—”

“I didn’t agree anything. If you hadn’t stirred everything up Summer wouldn’t have got upset.”

“I didn’t stir things up. It all started before I came here. Her dreams, I mean.”

Claire’s eyes slid to Euan, who stood up and said shortly, “I’m going out to help
look. I can’t sit here.”

“It’s you as well,” Claire cried. “It was when you took her to the folly that the dreams started. And she wouldn’t have gone to the folly last night, I know she wouldn’t, not of her own accord. She hated the place. Someone must have taken her there.” She looked hard and cold at Euan, who flinched. “Maybe you took her. For all we know it was you.”

There was complete silence,
then Euan said, “Thank you for that vote of confidence. Now I’m going out to look for your daughter.” And he was gone.

“Claire. How can you have said that?” Jude whispered harshly. “You know it’s nonsense. You know.”

“It’s you that’s talked the nonsense,” said Claire bitterly. And she covered her face with her hands and began to sob uncontrollably.

* * *

The day passed. Then the night,
which they spent in the tent again because Claire wanted to be close to where she’d last seen Summer, though neither of them slept much. In the small hours Jude woke and heard Claire whimpering. She shuffled her sleeping bag into the compartment where her sister lay and snuggled into her. Surprisingly, Claire allowed her to comfort her. Jude wondered when this had ever happened before. Claire had
never played the protective elder sister, had never cuddled Jude when she cried. There was just that time after Mark died, when she came and hugged Jude as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and Jude had wept into her shoulder, letting her feelings go for the first time since the accident. And now the person Claire loved best in the world was lost to her and it was all they could
do to cling to each other, Claire with the kind of desperation Jude had never, thankfully, seen in her before, and hoped never to again.

Was it really only yesterday she’d burned with jealousy of Claire? It seemed so long ago. And now she wasn’t jealous at all. Nor did she feel pity, because what Claire was feeling was what Jude was feeling, too. Summer was precious to all of them. And now they
might have lost her. For this brief moment there was nothing between them. And in this moment of pure truth, Jude dared to ask the thing that she had never asked, indeed had never even acknowledged as a conscious thought before.

“Claire,” she said, “I know this is stupid, but a couple of nights ago I had the weirdest idea. That—you’ll say I’m crazy—Summer’s father … was Mark.”

There was a silence
that went on and on and on. Finally Claire cleared her throat and said, “You’re crazy. How on earth could you think that?” and turned over, edging away. And a wave of despair swept over Jude.

At first light, police reinforcements arrived and the search resumed. The mood was darkening and there were shreds of talk about abduction now. The footprint in the folly might indicate Summer had gone there
of her own volition, or that she’d been taken there. Jude overheard the detective say “no signs of a struggle,” which somehow wasn’t as comforting as it might be. The nature of the police questioning was changing, too. Who did Summer know? Who did Claire and Jude know? Did Summer use the Internet? Did she ever wander off by herself? Jude couldn’t tell from the set expressions of the questioners
whether Claire’s answers were helpful to them or not.

At some point in the dreary confused hours, Jude thought to ring Chantal. She was slightly comforted to hear the woman’s warm sympathy. “I have been praying for the little girl. I am sure she will be found safe. Do not give up hope.” Jude had to cut the call short because her voice kept breaking as she thanked the woman.

Euan returned after
a day of searching the forest. He was exhausted and somehow a husk of his usual self. He sat, hands clenched together, arms on his knees. Claire wouldn’t look at him. At one point he told her, “I will search and search and search until we find her. I will bring her back to you,” but Claire merely shrugged.

In the early evening, the detective came with the young constable and formally asked Euan
to accompany him to the police station for questioning. He was assured that he wasn’t being charged with anything. Euan went, a shambling figure with the dust of the day still on him. Cameras flashed as he got into the police car and was driven away.

“Claire, sometimes I really hate you,” Jude whispered into the door jamb, but not loud enough for her sister to hear. The tears were falling down
her face.

She knew with absolute certainty that Euan had nothing to do with Summer’s disappearance. But though in her mind she’d been over and over the events of that fateful evening she couldn’t remember something that she knew was there but was dancing just out of her reach. It was something, she knew, to do with the folly.

Summer thought it was lovely going to sleep in the caravan, smelling the comforting, familiar scent of the painted wood, trying to make out the patterns on the ceiling, still faintly visible in the dying evening light. She was warm and comfortable and safe, with her best friend, Darcey, gently snoring next to her. She thought over the story Auntie Jude had read her and briefly imagined
that she was Rapunzel in the tower, but she didn’t think she’d ever let something like that happen to her, so she imagined instead what it might be like to be the prince and to save someone you love from something bad. With this not unpleasant thought she sank into sleep.

She dreamed, not this time the lost dream. She was running through a forest all right, but she wasn’t crying for her mummy,
she was running to help someone. She had a strong sense that something wasn’t right, someone was in danger and she had to find them. It was something to do with the folly, she knew that. She had to get there and help.

Still deep in her dream, she sat up in the darkness, pushed the bedclothes back and swung her feet to the floor. A toe prodded something. A shoe. She bent down and grasped it, fitted
it onto her foot, then felt about until she found the other and put that on, too. She pushed open the caravan door and felt her way down the steps. She knew the way up to the folly from here, and now she tiptoed past the tent and ran across the meadow—a little frightened, but not much for it was important to be brave tonight, like a prince. The owls, shuffling in their cage, saw her, but she
didn’t notice them. She turned left out of the drive and walked all the way up to the junction with Foxhole Lane, for she knew the footpath would be nasty and brambly.

And now she could sense more strongly the urgent summons to the folly. Part of her didn’t want to go. It had been spooky there. But another part of her mind knew she had to find Esther and help her. Before it was too late. It was
very dark under the trees, and misty, and she shivered, but then the mist cleared and she could make out enough to see her route. Quickly, she went, past several wagons huddled in darkness at the side of Foxhole Lane and the word
Rowan
formed in her head, then on she went, along the narrow path toward the folly. There were times in life, she knew from storybooks, when you had to do the thing you
were most frightened of.

When she reached the folly, the door was unlocked. It swung open easily on new, well-oiled hinges. She started to climb the sturdy brick steps.

* * *

In the safety of the tent, Jude’s eyes had briefly opened then fluttered closed. She had sunk once more into sleep.

It must have been past midnight when Esther heard the key turn in the lock downstairs and the door handle turn. Her flash of hope was immediately followed by a prickle of fear of who or what it might be. She flew across the room and flattened herself against the wall next to the doorway and listened to the sound of slow footsteps trudging up the staircase, louder and louder. A man bearing a flickering lantern loomed in the doorway, spiky shadows leaping up round the walls. When he lowered the light she gasped with relief, ‘Oh, Mr Trotwood, it’s you.’

He looked her up and down, somewhat warily, but with no surprise.

She said in a rush, and not without a catch in her voice, ‘I got locked in. I don’t know how. I expect you’ve all been looking for me. You saw the light, I suppose.’

Mr Trotwood ignored her, but held up his lantern to inspect the room, noticing the mattress and the book open on the table. His expression hardened. He turned to her and said, ‘You’ll be hungry, I expect.’

‘Why, yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve had nothing for three days.’