The Night She Dies, page 6
‘Oh yeah?’ Sean starts looking around him, suddenly furtive. It must be exhausting being him, Jess thinks. Always checking over your shoulder, expecting the feds to turn up at any moment.
‘It’s nothing bad,’ Amber says, lifting her palms. ‘I just want you to meet someone. A friend of mine, and he works near here. He’s due to finish around now.’
Jess shifts on her feet. She’s got no idea who Amber’s talking about. Sean is surprised too because he pushes up off his knees, slides along the bench until he reaches Amber’s shins and glares at her. ‘What friend? Who the fuck have you told about me?’
‘Calm down,’ Amber says, giggling at Sean’s reaction. She must feel on stronger ground now. ‘He doesn’t know about our arrangement. He just thinks you’re a mate from my old life, which you are, remember, so it’s not exactly a lie. The thing is …’ she looks triumphant, or defiant maybe ‘… he’s my new boyfriend.’
Jess draws in a silent gasp. She’s not sure whether the shock is more down to Amber having a boyfriend she didn’t know about, or her flaunting him in front of Sean. Amber has kept quiet about whether she’s ever done stuff with Sean, which probably means she hasn’t, but it’s always been obvious that she wants to. Is this about making him jealous?
‘So what’s that got to do with me?’ Sean asks, not showing much sign of jealousy.
Amber shrugs. ‘I thought you might want to check out who’s fucking me.’
Jess flinches. She knows it’s old-fashioned, being squeamish about sex, but it was fucking the wrong guy that got their mum killed. Amber is only 14. If she’s already doing it, what are her chances of getting into the same trouble as their mum?
Sean raises his eyebrows. ‘Not really, but I suppose it’s better to have eyes on the bloke most likely to nick my gear.’
‘I’m not that stup … Hey, there he is.’ Amber points towards the entranceway, then morphs the gesture into a wave. Jess quickly turns, stares. The boy walks towards them, gives Jess an embarrassed nod, then hangs one arm over Amber’s shoulder. He’s tall, but not as muscular as Amber usually goes for. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Nothing like Sean. So not her type at all really.
‘Hey man, I’m Caden,’ he says to Sean. ‘It’s good to meet you; Amber talks about you a lot.’
THE NIGHT SHE DIES
Saturday 4th May
Rachel
I rest my forehead on the kitchen table and clench my fists in my lap. I’m both exhausted and agitated. My body hangs heavy, but my limbs are twitching. I rear back up, eye my phone for the millionth time. But there are no new messages from Matt. There was a flurry at first – Not at Ava’s, party def over; No sign of life at pub; Rec and churchyard empty. But there’s been nothing since the message Will keep looking. And that was an hour ago.
I’ve done my part too. Woken Felix up, opened his wound of rejection by telling him his ex-girlfriend hasn’t come home. In return he told me – stonily – that he hadn’t seen her all night. After almost begging him, he did check the map function on Snapchat for me, but it put Milla at home, and the timings tallied with when she came back. She hasn’t used the app since, which is why no new location has been uploaded.
I consider phoning her friends, but who would I call? Ava is Milla’s best friend, and I already know she isn’t there. Otherwise, she has a wide social group, but no one that stands out. And it’s nearly 2 a.m. I can’t wake up a dozen girls – or even worse, their parents – on the off chance.
I push up to standing, then immediately fold over the wooden worktop. Was it really just a few hours ago that I was dipping a poppadom into mango chutney and worrying about Lucy’s underwear being scattered on the school lawn? And a few hours before that, reassuring Mrs Gray that lashing out at her autistic toddler doesn’t have to define her?
Bile forms in my mouth as I imagine something violent happening to Milla. A drunk man attacking her on his way home from the pub. Or a rejected husband cruising past in his car. Or maybe just a sick mind taking advantage of a young woman, alone, vulnerable in the darkness.
I can’t do this anymore.
I pick up my phone, prod Matt’s number. He picks up after half a ring. ‘Is she home?’ he asks desperately.
‘We need to call the police, Matt.’
He sighs. His millisecond of hope extinguished. ‘No, not yet. I’m still looking. I’m sure I’ll find her.’
‘We haven’t heard from her for nearly three hours. We need people out there, Matt, police officers, searching for her.’
He doesn’t speak for a moment, and I listen to his heavy breathing as he tries to control his emotions. I know how much he hates the police. It hasn’t always been the case – a hardworking grammar school student from the outskirts of Manchester didn’t have much cause to – but that changed when he was arrested for assault, in front of his colleagues, at the school he’d spent most of his teaching career.
‘They’ll twist things,’ he moans. ‘Say it’s our fault, that we’re bad parents for letting her go out by herself in the dead of night. Christ, Rachel, we are bad parents!’
‘I know!’ I wail back. ‘But we can’t let that stop us. This is about Milla, not us.’
Matt goes silent and I imagine him alone in the car, both hands gripping the steering wheel, his face tightening as he interprets my plea as a reprimand.
‘You’re right,’ he says abruptly. ‘I’ll come home. We can call them together.’
We hang up and I feel both relieved and petrified. Contacting the police will hopefully draw an army of specialist help, but it will also make Milla’s disappearance feel more real. Transform her from a teenager behaving badly into a potential victim. Suddenly the house feels too empty. I think about Lucy upstairs, fast asleep, oblivious to the trauma of her missing sister. I won’t wake her, but I feel a compulsion to look at her.
I walk up the stairs slowly, then pause outside her room. The door is closed, like usual, and I take my time pushing down the handle so that I don’t make a noise. I expect there to be total darkness, but there’s a light glowing as I edge the door open. And when I can see more, I realise that Lucy isn’t in bed after all. She’s sitting at her desk with her back to me – her laptop screen the source of the light. She’s flicking between websites, and there’s a sense of frustration in the way she taps at her keyboard. I hesitate, unsure whether to announce my presence or retreat. But before I get a chance to decide, she whirls around, then flips down her screen.
‘Mum? What’s going on?’
‘I thought you’d be asleep,’ I say. I don’t want to tell her that Milla is missing, that her own brief disappearance might have led – however indirectly – to something much worse.
She drums her nails on the closed laptop lid. ‘I tried, but I couldn’t switch off.’
‘Being on a screen won’t help,’ I say. ‘The blue light keeps you awake.’ It’s the automatic response of every parent, but Lucy has always preferred sketchbooks and journals to electronic devices, so it’s something I’m much more used to saying to Milla. My eyes grow hot as memories flash up in my mind. What I would give to find Milla scrolling through TikTok under her duvet right now.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Lucy says with an apologetic half-smile. ‘I’ll give it another try.’ She unfurls her legs from her desk chair and makes the few steps over to her bed. As she falls against her pillow and pulls the covers over her head, I’m surprised that she hasn’t grilled me on why I’m still awake. A slow wave of sadness rolls over me as I realise how much this bullying must be affecting her. As though her mind is so full of it that there’s no room to notice life happening around her. I feel a stab of self-loathing for taking so long to figure it out, which morphs into a fireball of regret as I close her bedroom door.
Why did I allow Milla to search for Lucy by herself?
How can I love my kids so much and still make so many mistakes?
I suddenly feel exhausted and wonder if I’m going to collapse, right outside Lucy’s bedroom door. But then I hear a rustling coming from the porch, and the door swing open. Matt is home. I take a breath and walk back downstairs.
My eyes widen. I waver. I reach for the back of the sofa. ‘Milla?’
‘Shit,’ she says. ‘Have you been worried? Have you been looking for me?’
She’s standing just inside the house. Her hair and clothes are wet, no jacket, but otherwise she looks the same as she did a few hours ago. Alive. Unhurt. Indestructible.
‘Jesus, Milla!’ I screech. It’s loud. The realisation that I’m going to wake the neighbours registers somewhere, but I can’t hold back. All the pent-up fear is escaping through my open mouth. ‘It’s two in the morning, of course we’ve been looking for you! Where on earth have you been?!’
She leans back against the porch door and pushes her lips together. Even as adrenalin courses through my body, I can see that she’s conflicted. Her instinct is to shout back, to deny wrongdoing. But she’s also smart enough to know how her disappearance will have affected us.
She lets out a deep sigh. ‘I’m sorry, okay?’ she says begrudgingly. ‘But it wasn’t my fault. My phone died, then it started raining. And my foot was hurting; I think I’ve got a blister. So I sat on a bench by Kiln Lakes, just to rest for five minutes. But then I started thinking about Felix, and what the fuck happened to us. I probably drank a bit too much at the party, I guess. And the next thing I knew, I was waking up, and a couple of hours had passed. I ran home as soon as I realised. It was just one of those things. And now my foot’s killing me.’
I look up at the ceiling. The light wobbles under my teary gaze. No angry drunk or resentful ex-husband attacking my daughter. No psychopath hunting for prey. No crime at all. Just Milla doing what she so often does. Exactly what she bloody well wants.
I slink down into the sofa and close my eyes.
AFTER
Saturday 4th May
Rachel
The house is silent again, but this time I soak it up. I’ve only had four hours’ sleep – Matt carrying me upstairs like he did on our wedding night, minus the flutter of anticipation – but I don’t feel tired. I imagine it will hit me later, after my run, but I almost look forward to it. No doubt Matt will be tired too, and we can drift through a lazy Saturday together. I know our problems aren’t over. I still have the rough waters of Amber Walsh and Jess Scott to navigate next week. But after the terror of last night, I feel invigorated this morning. And for the next three days, the long weekend, I want to enjoy it.
I pull on my trail-running shoes and yank the laces. I need them to feel like an extension of my feet when I run over the slick mud and hard lumps of chalk along the Ridgeway. The trail is an ancient route sometimes called Britain’s oldest road, or the chalk spine of England. It starts fifty miles away in Wiltshire and finishes just north of London. Sometimes I take the path west, past the Kiln Lakes, but today I’ll run in the opposite direction, through Chinnor Hill nature reserve and along the Icknield Way.
I zip my house key into the small pouch at the back of my Lycra leggings and head outside. Some runners like to carry a backpack, but for me, any practical gains are far outweighed by the sheer joy of running unimpeded. Even though my dad ran when I was growing up, I didn’t get into the sport until I became a parent. When the girls were young, every minute away from them felt precious – both a sacrifice and a treat – and I wasn’t going to waste it driving to the gym or relying on other people for an organised sport. Running meant I could just put my trainers on and go. It’s the same for Matt, I think, with his cycling. He only took it up after we moved here, but he’s hooked now. Heading up into the Chiltern Hills whenever his work schedule allows.
The Ridgeway skirts along the top of the village, so I set off up the high street and take the narrow lane towards the fields. Last night’s rain has made the mud sticky again and I have to concentrate on placing my feet to keep from slipping over.
I cross over the single railway track – a heritage railway that’s only used on commemorative occasions – and head up towards the treeline. It’s a steady incline and I can feel my heart pump faster, my breaths become shallower, as my body adjusts. But the sun is peeking over the fields to my right, and the weak blue sky is decorated with white vapour trails above me, and my good mood grows as I reach the chalk white pathway.
The Ridgeway played its part in us moving to Chinnor. Matt and I met at Oxford University – seemingly the only two state school kids with provincial accents at Magdalen College – and moved to Jericho, in north Oxford, when we finished our degrees. We rented for the first few years, and then after we got married, we bought the flat we were living in. It was good for a while – me advancing my career as a social worker in the city, Matt publishing English textbooks at Oxford University Press – but then I got pregnant with Milla, and Matt’s dad was diagnosed with an aggressive stage-four lung cancer.
Over the next nine months, Matt became a different person. Or perhaps a dormant part of him awakened. The flat seemed to shrink in his eyes, and he became obsessed with keeping it tidy. I’d watch him throw away things that I’d grown to love. Listen to him swearing under his breath as he lined up our shoes, or found crumbs that had escaped into the corners of the kitchen floor. After Milla was born, it got worse, but it was also harder to bite my tongue as he shouted at me to put away her tiny things, or be a bit more fucking house proud.
Matt’s mum, Judy, was his saviour – and probably the saviour of our marriage. I didn’t know her well before Matt’s dad got sick. We’d meet up at regular intervals – Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day – but conversation wouldn’t go much deeper than pleasantries.
It was only when Judy became a widow that I discovered how amazing she was. While she must have been weighed down by grief herself, she was the first to see that Matt’s obsessive tidying was a sign of him breaking, and then dedicated herself to fixing him. She would come down most weekends and take him off for a few hours, give me some time away from him, and Matt the space to work through his difficult mix of grief and joy. After listening to him carefully, it was Judy who persuaded Matt to give up his job and train as a teacher – the vocation he’d always wanted but had never pursued.
It was also Judy who – after selling the family home to move somewhere smaller – gave us a financial gift that enabled us to buy a house. And she’d offered Matt the money during one of their walks, a route that Judy had found, along a prehistoric trail near a village called Chinnor.
I reach the ridge and turn left, the terrain instantly flattening out. Sometimes I see a dog walker, or another runner, out on the trail – it feels like I’m deep in the forest, but there’s actually a small car park only a fifteen-minute walk away – but today I’m on my own, and I breathe in the solitude. It’s not quiet though. The birds are making a racket from deep inside the trees, and there’s rustling at ground level too. Squirrels or maybe a rabbit. After about a kilometre, I pause to push open a gate and jog into Chinnor Hill nature reserve. There’s a pocket of green space here – a secret garden – but the surrounding woodland is more dense, and a sense of unease prickles on my skin. If I were dragged into the trees, no one would have a clue I’d been taken. But I shake the feeling away, frustrated with myself. This is my home. I won’t allow myself to be scared of it.
It’s harder to run here because the path has disappeared and the grass is long and wet, but I’ve got plenty of experience, so my pace hardly slows as I traverse the steep hill, drinking in the sight of new bluebells sprinkled along the ground. I can see the gate that will take me back onto Icknield Way ahead of me, but something lower down the hill, half-hidden by a hawthorn bush, catches my eye and makes me pause. I slow to a stop and concentrate on my breathing as I consider my options.
In the autumn I came across a dead deer on one of my runs. I’ve seen plenty of lifeless animals before – squirrels, mice, pheasants, foxes – but the sheer size of the deer was intimidating. There was no logic to it – it couldn’t do me any harm – but I still felt the physical signals of panic as I tried to slow my thoughts enough to decide what to do. In the end, I memorised the phone number on the nature reserve welcome sign and ran home to call them. When Matt and I walked the route the next day, the carcass had gone.
Is that what I should do now?
With my heart rate increasing, I take a few slow steps towards the dark mass. Now that I’m closer, I decide it looks more like a large rucksack than a dead animal. But something – some sixth sense perhaps – stops me from investigating further. My heart pounds in my chest. There’s a noise behind me, a rustling, and I whip my head around. But there’s no one there.
This is stupid. What am I scared of? I take a deep breath, then walk purposefully towards the bush. I push the branches to one side.
And scream.
Stumble backwards. Lose my footing and fall. Scramble away on my heels and hands.
Spew watery vomit on the grass.
Not a backpack, not a deer.
The dark mass is a human body.
AFTER
Saturday 4th May
Rachel
What do I do?
I don’t have a phone so I can’t call anyone.
I’m at least a kilometre away from the main path, so I can’t scream for help.
Oh Jesus – a thought barrels into my brain with so much force it makes me dizzy – what if it isn’t a body at all, but a person, still alive?
My legs are too weak to stand, but I need to check, however repellent the thought. So I crawl on my hands and knees, towards the bush, closer to the body. It’s completely still. I can’t see the face, but long hair, mussed and tangled, is hanging down their back.
Her back, I think. Long hair, small frame, a dip at the waist. Female.
