S is for Stranger (15 page)

I shook my head, bit down hard on my lip. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, you’re clearly not.’ He kneeled on the floor next to me. ‘What can I get you?’

Anger coursed through my veins, my mind buzzing with questions about why he would do that to me: why he would speak to the press, make me look like an uncaring mother. Make it look like I just wanted Oliver in my life and that we were better off without Amy.

I felt a ball of cold dread sitting in the pit of my stomach and suddenly, I realised, that he wanted me to need him.
It was like we were back at university. That look he was giving me now was the same look he gave me when I had been with Bethany: jealousy. He was jealous. Was he back, all these years later, to seek revenge? Would he take my daughter?

Oliver was looking at me intently. I realised I wasn’t speaking. I daren’t speak, because I needed him to talk to Darren. If I shouted at him now, Oliver would run.

‘Darren wants to meet with both of us,’ I finally said, my voice monotone, covering up the tide of nausea and anger I was feeling.

Oliver stood, I saw him clenching and unclenching his jaw.

‘It’s not a set up,’ I continued, trying to placate him. ‘Darren genuinely thinks it would be helpful.’ I looked at him. ‘Please.’

He nodded slowly. ‘OK.’

Minutes later, the doorbell rang and I jumped up, rushing to the door.

I let Darren in.

‘Sophie, are you OK? You look shaken up. Has something happened?’

I searched his kind eyes. ‘I’m fine. Oliver’s through here.’

Oliver shook hands with Darren, his jaw twitching with irritation.

We sat at the kitchen table.

‘OK,’ Darren said, smiling at me. He was trying to encourage me to relax. I clearly looked as wound up as I felt. ‘What I thought might be helpful is if we talked about that party you were telling me about the other day, Sophie. I believe Oliver was there, wasn’t he?’

‘He was.’ I nodded. ‘You know the party at Steph’s house? It was a huge house party. You had just told me you were thinking about travelling to India over the summer.’

‘So you had been listening,’ Oliver said, the bitterness apparent.

I pulled a face.

‘So, I think what would be helpful, Oliver, if you don’t mind just telling me what you remember from that night. What was the atmosphere like?’

‘What do you mean?’ Oliver was being sullen.

‘I mean was it hot in there or …’

‘Yeah, it was boiling. It was like the middle of the summer and there were loads of people dancing, what would you expect?’

‘It to be hot,’ Darren agreed, showing no emotion, ‘and do you remember much?’

‘No.’

‘OK, Oliver.’ Darren smiled at him now. ‘We’re doing this to help Sophie find Amy.’

Oliver nodded slowly. ‘Fine, yeah, I remember quite a lot actually.’

‘OK.’ Darren smiled.

‘I remember that Sophie wouldn’t stop drooling over Bethany.’ He looked at me, and I stared hard at the table top, my fingers silently tapping out three, six, nine. ‘I remember that I was trying to talk to Sophie and she wouldn’t stop staring at Bethany. Sometimes I swear Sophie was so obsessed with Bethany, I wondered if she might suffocate Bethany with her adoration.’

I let out a small gasp. His words were so abrasive.

‘What did you think about their relationship?’

‘They were like two peas in a pod.’ He looked straight at Darren. ‘Like sisters. One minute they loved each other and the next they hated each other. I don’t think it was very healthy to be honest.’ He smoothed the table with his hand. ‘I mean they started doing stuff by themselves. Never told the rest of us where they went. Then the drugs.’

‘I didn’t …’

‘Sophie, please,’ Darren said, put his hand up. ‘Give Oliver a second.’

‘What do you mean, you didn’t?’ Oliver furrowed his brow, shook his head in disbelief. ‘You and Bethany spent most of your life smoking weed or, on occasion, taking some sort of pill. You guys were always off your heads.’

‘How is this helping?’ I asked Darren, my heart beating faster, my left hand now gripping the table leg.

Darren brought out the photo of me and Bethany, the one at the party. The one that had started this whole memory off.

‘What does this make you think of?’ Darren held it up for Oliver.

Oliver grabbed it, pushed his hand through his hair. ‘I took this photo.’

‘Did Sophie ask you to?’

‘Yeah, her and Bethany were arguing.’

I whipped my head up and stared hard at Oliver. ‘Arguing? We weren’t, we were dancing together.’

‘No,’ Oliver said, ‘you had both taken some pill. That’s what you told me anyway, and it certainly looked like it. I remember because I was trying to keep an eye out for you, make sure you didn’t do anything stupid.’

‘Right, Oliver. This is good. Please go on,’ Darren said.

‘I came up to them in the middle of this argument, tried to break it up.’

‘What were they arguing about? Do you remember?’ Darren scribbled something in his notebook.

‘Yeah, Sophie had flipped. She had like turned into someone else and she was going on about Bethany being ungrateful. Her words were more choice than that but, essentially, she was screaming at Bethany, telling her she should appreciate her family more. That she was lucky to have one.’

I exhaled loudly, shook my head. I hated Oliver in that moment, and I hated him even more now. We had been dancing together, not arguing. I remember thinking that Bethany should be more appreciative of her family, but I certainly didn’t shout at her, like Oliver was making out.

I saw that Oliver’s hands were shaking now. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie, but it’s the truth. You asked me to take this photo of you two together. You put your arm around Bethany and shoved the camera in my hand. I remember thinking it was an odd thing to do, but took it anyway.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You did. That’s why Bethany’s not smiling.’

I looked down at the photo. She was smiling, kind-of. I knew her better than anyone else, she was smiling.

‘What happened after the photo?’ Darren asked Oliver.

‘Bethany walked off and Sophie blacked out.’

‘You were jealous,’ I said, my voice low, threatening. ‘That’s why you’re saying this now. We didn’t argue that night.’

After a few more minutes, it was clear Oliver and I weren’t going to agree and Darren called it a day. Suddenly we were left alone. I asked Oliver to go to the shops for me, get me some aspirin. He tried to apologise about the session with Darren, said he didn’t know what came over him. Before he left, I decided I couldn’t ignore the horror I had been through in the pressroom, and told him about the journalist.

‘What?’ He looked shocked. ‘I would never, Sophie, you must know that. Come on, it’s me we’re talking about.’ Then I saw the flicker of recognition pass over his face. ‘Oh god, there was one woman at the grocery store. She said she was a good friend of yours.’ He looked at me. ‘Shit, I’m such a fucking idiot.’

I knew then I couldn’t trust Oliver. He was not the caring family man I had once thought he was. There
was something in his recollection of the woman at the grocery store that struck me as untrue. Oliver was a savvy, intelligent man; I was pretty sure that if he was looking out for me, he wouldn’t even have entertained this woman for one minute.

There was no one I could trust. I couldn’t trust DI Ward. She had sat someone outside my own house, to watch my every move. I couldn’t trust Paul. He lied and continued to lie. There was no one.

My eyes wandered the length of the kitchen; something didn’t feel right. It was as if someone had been in my house, but nothing looked like it had been moved until I caught sight of a piece of paper peeping out of what I called my ‘secret’ drawer. My breath caught, I rose slowly from the chair and moved toward it, treading softly. The drawer was where I kept my medicine, my personal bits and bobs including all the house keys. I didn’t remember putting a piece of paper there. Plucking the paper from the drawer I skimmed the text and gasped. The words were made up of cut-out newspaper letters and stuck down. I imagined the woman at work: latex gloves, tweezers, glue, all by the light of her task lamp. It read:

You have forty-eight hours to find Amy.

Do not tell the police or she dies.

P.

‘P’. There it was, that one initial, and I realised she was back: ‘Polly’. The same woman who had clearly been so jealous of Bethany and me at university had returned. I thought then of Bethany’s doll, those glassy pale blue eyes staring out of a pallid face, her small rosebud lips pinched. I remember joking that her eyes seemed to follow you around the room. The all-seeing doll.

It was then I realised I had to find Amy. Alone. Whoever this woman was, she was bitter and twisted. ‘Polly’ had
harboured some sort of hate for me for all these years and she was therefore, I believed, capable of anything.

I ran upstairs and grabbed a change of clothes, cash (I couldn’t use my card), my phone and a small box of memorabilia I kept under the bed: my only memories of Bethany. I don’t know why but something told me it might hold some answers. I left using the French doors and the back gate. I had checked the front: it was too risky. DI Ward’s informant, three journalists outside wanting to know where I was going and the chance of Fiona reappearing, and Oliver about to return, put the front of the house off-limits.

CHAPTER 18

I slunk further down into my coat, and headed toward the Tube. My heart was hammering in my chest. What if someone saw me leaving? What if I was arrested? Then the police would
never
trust me. I felt as if I was falling: out of control, no plan, but I needed to find Amy. I could see that things were taking too long with the police. The officer outside my house unnerved me: it wasn’t for my safety, I saw that now. The way the detective looked at me: did she suspect I had Amy? As I slipped between the closing doors of the Tube train, I remained facing away from the other passengers. As the train sped up and we left the bright light of the station and descended into the underground’s depths, I caught my own tired reflection in the glass. I didn’t look the same. The last few weeks had taken their toll. Ever since I saw that woman outside the burger joint.

I headed east, the number of passengers soon dwindled the further out we travelled, and I was relieved when the carriage only contained one other person. I glanced over, not wanting to draw attention to myself, and gasped inwardly. She looked like the back of the woman at the fair, the one at the burger joint, the one watching Amy in her play. My heart was racing, and I gripped the yellow pole, steadying my suddenly weakening legs. I could feel the familiar humming in my ears, the carriage had started to spin. Slowly at first, then faster.

I clawed my way to the nearest seat and gulped air. My eyes remained on the woman’s back and I was just about to yell out to her, when I noticed a young girl by her side.

I held my breath. Was it Amy?

The doors were opening again. I needed to get to the woman.

‘Stop,’ I called. ‘Please stop!’

She had stepped off, refusing to turn around, the girl at her side.

I flung myself at the window, my palms on the cool glass, as the train pulled away. The woman turned just as we sped away and I realised it wasn’t her, nor was the girl Amy. My breathing had started to slow but the tears came fast.

I got off at Whetstone, my legs shaking uncontrollably after the attack. Walking as purposefully as I could, I made it past the transport police unnoticed and headed out. Within minutes I had found a B&B. I just needed a base for the time being, whilst I planned out my next move. I felt out of control, my nerves jagged. Just around the corner from the B&B, I spotted a corner shop and picked up a few supplies. I paid with cash and avoided eye contact with the man on the till: I did not want to draw attention to myself. Stuffing the items in my bag, I headed off quickly, head down.

Having checked into the B&B, I looked around the hotel room, grimacing at the mildew climbing the walls, the musty bed sheets and the bathroom reeking of stale cigarettes. I had chosen a rundown joint on the edge of London’s North Circular. It seemed unlikely that anyone could spy on me here.

I took the small box of mementoes from inside my bag and emptied its contents onto the bed. It was mainly photos. A picture of Bethany stared out at me from the middle of the pile and I picked it up. When Bethany died,
I threw almost everything we had bought together away, plus letters, photos. I had kept the perfume, and the music – everything that reminded me of her death, out of respect. Even deleting most of our email conversations: each one a painful reminder of what I had lost. But this photo was different. I couldn’t bear to get rid of it. She looked happy and carefree. Or was she? Oliver told me she hadn’t been smiling in that other photo. No, she was happy in this one. I had taken this photo from her room when she died. It was a snapshot of Bethany on holiday with her mother, before I even knew her. A happy family photograph. I know Bethany would have wanted me to have it.

I heard shuffling outside. I dared not move, make a sound. Maybe it was the landlord, if he had recognised me, he hadn’t commented. I had noted he was an overweight man wearing a white string vest, despite the chilly weather, and he hadn’t bothered with the garden as stubborn weeds covered the small square lawn, the beds empty except for crushed Coke cans, empty bottles of vodka and condoms.

My only fear was his phoning the police, telling them my whereabouts, but he had barely registered my face, too interested in his cigarette.

I retrieved the note from my bag and read it again. The words swam before my eyes. I thought ‘Polly’ had disappeared the night Bethany died. As though, she realised that there were no longer two of us, that there was no need to be jealous any more because my best friend had died. Now, it was just Sophie, and she was fine with that. Only, clearly she wasn’t and she was back.

Trembling violently, I sat heavily on the bed. Tears streaked my face and I looked at my watch. I needed to get back, tell the detective, show her the note, get her to up the search: to not tell the police would be crazy. But then my running away was crazy. She wanted this: she
wanted me to chase her. But I had to do it alone. I felt a rush of relief that there was still hope Amy was alive and if she was, it was up to me to find her. I couldn’t however brush away the guilty feeling that it was my past that had put Amy in danger.