When I dropped Poppy off at school the next morning, I bent to hug her, but she pushed me away crossly and I watched her dart forwards, away from me. Before leaving, I stepped into her classroom and looked around for Lotty.
‘Can I help?’
It was the nursery assistant.
‘Yes. I left a load of dressing-up things here before half-term and there was something I wanted back.’
‘Changed your mind?’
‘Sort of.’
She pointed to the dressing-up corner and I went and started pulling items of clothing out of the old trunk. Bright and silky cloth slid through my fingers, flouncy skirts, an old Spiderman costume… There it was. My hand closed on the cap.
I stood up with it. I clicked on the photo of Skye that her mother had sent me. There she was, grinning from under the maroon peak that was tilted sideways. Behind that image was the remembered image of Poppy, the cap pulled down over her eyes.
I put the cap in my bag and left.
On the train to Chelmsford, I considered my recent behaviour. I had messed around with people’s private lives, I had virtually broken into my ex-partner’s house like a burglar and spied on his private mail. I told myself that I hadn’t exactly broken into the house. I’d had my own key. But I didn’t even manage to convince myself. All right, so Jason was betraying Emily, the way he’d been betraying me; I was sure of that from those emails. I had it in my power to tell Emily the truth. Perhaps to protect her.
I’d done it all to protect Poppy, but perhaps I hadn’t even managed that. I’d gone around creating trouble. It may be that I’d made life more dangerous for myself and Poppy, not less. Someone had killed Skye. Someone had broken into my house, searched through Poppy’s room, I was certain of it. Could it be that I’d caused this by kicking up dust, lifting up stones? And for what? What had I actually found out? And now I was going to spend more time with a grieving mother, forcing myself into her life, into her grief.
I told myself that I would allow myself this one last chance. I would spend this time with Peggy, I would listen, I would be her friend, I would find out whatever I could and if I didn’t find out anything, then that would be that. Even thinking it, it felt like I was an addict, lying to myself. Just one last time, one absolutely last time, I really mean it. I started to think that maybe the best way to protect Poppy was indeed to stop and give her a happy life and gradually her bad dreams and waking fears might cease. I would be kind to Peggy, but I would also keep my eyes open. If nothing came of it, then I would go back to work and put my arms around my daughter and try to keep us safe.
At a stall outside Chelmsford station, I bought a bunch of flowers and then took the taxi once more to Peggy Nolan’s house. I pressed the front doorbell and rehearsed in my mind questions I needed to ask her without seeming too intrusive. I waited for the sound of footsteps but none came. I rang the bell again and heard the chime at the back of the house. Could she have forgotten I was coming? Or was she asleep? Or had she gone to the shops? I called her number and it went straight to voicemail. I left a mumbled, incoherent message saying I was outside her house and wondering where she was and if she was all right.
I had a thought. She could be in the garden without her phone and maybe not hearing the doorbell. I stepped back and looked at the front of the house. The right side was detached and a passageway led through to the back. I looked around, almost guiltily. There was no fence or gate blocking it. It must be all right.
I walked along the passage and reached the garden. She wasn’t there.
I felt a puzzlement that quickly became irritation. I’d come all this way. Would I really just have to call for a taxi and go straight back to London?
Possibly she had fallen asleep. She was on medication and it might have knocked her out. I looked at the door leading into the kitchen. If she had gone out, she would have locked it and that would be that.
I tried it and the handle turned. The door was unlocked and moved inwards. I stepped inside and heard voices. It seemed that she had visitors and that was why she hadn’t heard the front doorbell, but then I realised that the radio in the kitchen was on. I switched it off and expected to hear the sound of footsteps or anything, the little creaks that show someone is somewhere in a house.
‘Hello?’ I called out, my own voice sounding strange to me. ‘Peggy? Are you here? It’s Tess.’
Nothing.
My first impulse was to turn round and walk out the way I had come in and go back home. But I had the strange sensation that a thread was pulling me forwards and into the house, into somewhere I didn’t want to go, to see something I didn’t want to see. And so, when I stepped out of the kitchen, took a couple of steps and walked into the living room, it was almost with a sense of inevitability that I saw the body of Peggy Nolan lying face down on the rug, one arm under her, the other splayed out to one side.
My brain was working slowly, as if everything was in a thick fog, but I had the dimmest memories of a first-aid course I’d been on, years ago, of chest compressions and blowing into the mouth. I knelt down by the body and said Peggy’s name and touched her neck. I very gently turned her head so I could see her face. Her sightless eyes stared at me. She was so obviously cold and dead that there was no point in doing anything at all.
I wondered at first whether she could have died of grief, of a broken heart, or perhaps just stumbled and cracked her head, but then I looked around and saw a bureau drawer that had been pulled out and tipped upside down, the contents scattered. Someone had been here and done this. Could they still be here? I listened, but could only hear my breathing and feel the beating of my heart.
I had to do something.
I took my phone out. What was the number? 999? Or had that changed? Did it depend on the kind of emergency? Then I thought: no. I looked through my saved numbers and made the call.
It took some time for Kelly Jordan to answer. She sounded immediately irritable.
‘Yes?’
‘You know Peggy Nolan? The mother of Skye Nolan?’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s been murdered.’
There was a pause.
‘What do you mean? How do you know?’
‘I’m standing next to her body. I’m looking down at it. It’s cold.’
Jordan began some kind of a question and then stopped.
‘OK,’ she said, in a clipped, official tone. ‘Where are you?’
I had to think for a few seconds before I could remember the address and give it to her.
‘Are you safe?’ she said. ‘Is there anyone else at the property?’
‘No, I mean, yes, I think I’m safe, I don’t think anyone else is here.’
‘Fine. You stay there. Don’t do anything. Above all don’t touch anything. Have you got that? Nothing at all.’
I murmured something in response and she broke off the call.
Don’t do anything. Don’t touch anything. What would I do or touch, anyway?
I looked around. I hadn’t taken in at first the sheer extent of the mess. Books, magazines, documents, mugs, cutlery, random objects, were strewn across the floor. Then I saw the bag I had seen the previous day. The bag that had been filled with the clothes and objects that had been on Skye’s body. We had looked at them one by one yesterday and then replaced them. I knelt beside the bag. Clearly it had been tipped upside down and emptied onto the floor. I noted the lovely dress, the bra, the sandals. I picked up the charm bracelet and as I looked at it the sound of Peggy’s voice came back to me as vividly as if she were speaking to me. I put it back down. The locket, the knickers. They were all there.
And then dully, through that dark fog, something dim, a kind of a memory: not quite all. There was something missing. What was it?
There were flashes of light on the ceiling and I looked up and round. The lights were coming from outside, there were cars and the sound of running feet.