I sit in bed in the Travelodge, sipping metallic-tasting tea heavy with the unmistakeable tang of UHT milk, glued to the TV. The journalists obviously haven’t been given any information, but they are spinning out the story nonetheless. The police clearly won’t let them speak to the dog walker who found the body, so they’ve interviewed other dog walkers, who can only say versions of the same thing. No, they didn’t see anything. No, nothing like this has happened here before. The empty space in the bed where Pete was gapes beside me, but I can’t even begin to probe my feelings about that now.
My mind is twisting and turning, trying to make sense of it. I need to know who it is. Please let it be one of those nameless, anonymous women, the ones I didn’t even recognise last night. The police will want to talk to everyone who was at the reunion, I am sure of that. I will call them, find out, and when I know it’s a stranger, that will be it, it will be over. They’ve given a number to ring on the news, so I reach for my mobile, my thumb jabbing at the numbers.
They won’t tell me on the phone, of course. They want to speak to everyone who was at the reunion and ask me if I can come in straight away to the makeshift incident room they’ve set up in the school hall. I call a cab, showering and dressing quickly, my need for the body in the woods to be a total stranger pressing within me like an overfull bladder.
In the cab I text Polly to check Henry’s OK. She texts me back a terse, ‘He’s fine’, with no kisses. It’s not like her, but I guess she’s in the middle of making breakfast or something. As we near the school I see police cars and a big, outside-broadcast van from the local TV station. A crowd of rubberneckers has already gathered, despite the fact that it’s nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, and a freezing wind is buffeting in from the sea.
‘Whereabouts you going, exactly?’ asks the cab driver. ‘Dunno if I can get all the way down here, looks like they might have closed the road off. You heard about what happened?’
He pulls over and I pay him, telling him I’ll walk the rest of the way if I can. I climb out into the cold, my town-dweller’s coat no protection against this vicious east-coast wind.
There’s a police car blocking the road, with a young policeman in uniform standing beside it. As I cross the road, he comes over to me.
‘Can I help you?’
I explain that I was at the reunion last night and have been asked to come in. His face changes and he asks me to wait for a few minutes while he speaks to someone. He moves away a little so that I can’t hear what he’s saying, muttering into his walkie-talkie. I stand awkwardly by the car, looking around. I am watching the reporter I saw earlier on TV trying to tame her flying hair into some kind of submission in preparation for another live broadcast, when the policeman comes back.
‘OK, you can go down to the hall now. Ask for DI Reynolds.’
I retrace my steps from last night down the school drive, my neck buried in the collar of my coat, trying to control my breathing. It’s a relief to get inside out of the wind. The hall looks different in the cold light of day. The disco, the debris, the banners from last night; it’s all gone. At a nearby table Mr Jenkins is sitting alone, unshaven and pale. He takes the cup of tea proffered by a uniformed policewoman gratefully. I am reminded that I don’t know who organised the reunion. I can’t imagine it was the school itself; surely they’ve got better things to do. But somebody must have dealt with the school, set up the Facebook page, gone round with a bin bag last night and swept the floor, though I have no idea who. Nobody seems to be coming to talk to me, so I walk over to him.
‘Mr Jenkins?’
‘Yes?’ He looks up, his face all dark shadows and worry.
‘Hello. It’s Louise Williams.’
‘Oh, hello there. You were there, were you… last night?’ He doesn’t show any sign of recognising me, either from the reunion or from school. I suppose I was neither a brilliant student nor a particularly naughty one: completed my homework on time, didn’t play up in class, achieved good if not outstanding grades. I slipped under the radar.
‘Sorry to intrude, but I was wondering… do you know who organised the reunion? Was it the school?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘It was a former student who contacted us and asked if it would be OK to use school premises. She booked the bar and sorted the licence and all that, hired someone to decorate the hall, clean up afterwards, everything. Just asked that we provide a member of staff to man the door. She thought it would be nice to have that connection to the school. I didn’t mind doing it.’
‘Did you meet her? The woman who organised it?’ I try to keep my voice neutral.
‘No, it was all done by email.’
‘And… what was her name?’ I struggle to form the words.
He looks around as if for permission from the police, but there’s no one nearby. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter,’ he says doubtfully. ‘Her name was Naomi Strawe.’
‘Oh. Straw? As in dry grass?’
‘No, with an e: S-t-r-a-w-e.’
I don’t remember anyone of that name. My heartbeat slows a little.
‘Was she in our year?’
‘She said she was. I think there was a Naomi, wasn’t there? Maybe Strawe was her married name. To be honest we didn’t really check whether anybody was actually from the class of 1989.’ He looks worried. ‘I just assumed that anybody who wanted to come would be from your year – I mean, why else would you go to a reunion?’
‘So did she show up, this Naomi?’
‘No. That’s the strange thing. There was a badge for her – she sent me all the badges of the people who’d said they were attending, and hers was one of the only ones left.’
Not the only one. There would have been a Tim Weston badge left on that table as well. I’m about to ask more, when I see a tall, bulky woman in a dark trouser suit making her way over to us.
‘Louise Williams?’
I agree that I am, and she introduces herself as Detective Inspector Reynolds, asking me to come and sit down with her in the corner where there is a desk with a laptop and a few chairs.
‘Thanks for coming in, Ms Williams.’
‘Louise,’ I say automatically.
‘Louise. PC Wells tells me that you were here last night at the school reunion.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ I feel as if I am in a dream, floating above myself. What has happened to my carefully ordered life, where has it gone? How did I end up here?
‘You’ve heard what has happened, obviously?’
‘Yes, I saw it on the news.’
‘So, as you know, we have found the body of a woman in the woods. The victim had her bag with her, so we’ve been able to make a provisional identification.’
‘So… are you able to tell me?’ Please God, let it be someone I don’t know.
‘Yes.’ I can tell that she is watching me closely. ‘The victim is Sophie Hannigan.’
My face somehow stays neutral but my body feels trembly and effervescent, as if my blood has been replaced with carbonated water.
‘You didn’t know her?’ She sounds disappointed. She was expecting a gasp, tears, even a small scream. But as I stare at her unmoving, clearly struggling with the simple task of breathing in and out, the truth begins to dawn on her.
‘You did know her?’
I nod without speaking and Reynolds sits in silence too, allowing me the time to process the information. She probably thinks I am in shock, but I am not shocked. All that happens is that the dull ache in my stomach that has been there since I first heard the news back in the Travelodge intensifies. It twists and grips. This is what I have been expecting all along.
‘Yes, I knew her,’ I manage eventually. Did I really? ‘I mean she’s not a close friend now, but she was once. I hadn’t seen her since school, apart from once, a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Why was that? Where did you see her?’ She looks interested. I think fast. I can’t tell her about the friend request from Maria; it brings up too many other questions, questions I don’t want to answer.
‘I contacted her when I found out about the reunion… thought it would be nice to meet up beforehand. I hadn’t really stayed in touch with anyone since school, and I thought it might be a bit much, turning up at the reunion cold, if you know what I mean. Meeting up with Sophie that night made the whole thing easier.’
‘How did you get hold of her?’
‘On Facebook.’ I try to keep my voice level.
‘And how was she, that night?’
‘Fine. Looking forward to the reunion. She didn’t seem to have changed much since our school days, not really.’
‘And was there anyone she was looking forward or not looking forward to seeing at the reunion?’
‘She was excited about it, but she didn’t mention anyone in particular. I don’t think she had any qualms or fears. She was one of those popular girls at school, you know?’
‘Mm hmm.’ She tries to maintain her blank facade but I can tell she wasn’t one of those girls herself, and also that she knows I wasn’t either. I can see DI Reynolds at sixteen, as tall and wide as she is now, her hair longer then, hanging greasily down her back, lumbering into the classroom, tripping over her chair, the pretty girls sniggering. Always at the front of the class, top marks for everything. Knowing, however, that popularity at school isn’t everything, waiting it out, best results the school has ever seen, and then off. Off to university where she could reinvent herself, find her tribe.
‘OK. Moving on to the reunion itself, do you remember when you last saw Sophie?’
‘Around ten o’clock, I think.’
‘Is that when you left?’
‘No, I left around eleven, but I don’t think I saw her later than ten.’
‘Did you spend much time with her?’
‘Not a great deal, no. We chatted, caught up, you know. There were a lot of people there.’
‘And how did she seem?’
I think of Sophie clutching my arm, panicking. She was frightened.
‘She seemed fine,’ I say, unable to quell my own panic. I’m digging myself in deeper and deeper here, so scared of saying the wrong thing that I’m not telling Reynolds anything at all. ‘Although, as I said, I hadn’t seen her for years, so I don’t know if she was her usual self or not.’
‘Did she spend time talking to anyone in particular?’
‘I saw her talking to Claire Barnes, Sam Parker, Matt Lewis…’ I list a few more names, trying to recall each time I heard her laugh, saw her kissing people extravagantly, tossing her hair. Reynolds is taking it all in.
‘And did she come to the reunion with anyone?’ she asks.
I hesitate – just a tiny bit, but she’s good, she notices straight away. For some absurd reason I feel guilty about dropping Pete in it, which is ridiculous as other people are bound to mention it.
‘Sophie was at the reunion with a man. Pete.’
‘A boyfriend?’ Reynolds’ ears prick up. I’ve got the stick and she can sense that I’m about to throw it for her. ‘Do you know his surname?’
‘No, sorry. I don’t think he was exactly a boyfriend either; apparently they’d only been out a couple of times before. She met him online.’
‘And she brought him to her school reunion?’ She looks sceptical.
‘I know. I asked her about that, but she said she didn’t want to come on her own, not with everyone else married and talking about their children and stuff.’ My voice falters and tears gather in my throat. Poor foolish, vain Sophie. I’ve been so busy berating myself for being wrapped up in what my teenage friends think of me, it never occurred to me until now that Sophie had cared even more than I did, with her pretend job in fashion… her borrowed flat… Pete. I think of Esther with her trophy husband glued to her side, passing round pictures of her children on her phone. None of us are immune, it seems.
‘Take your time.’ Reynolds’ voice is kind, but she is watching me carefully.
‘It looked like they were having an argument, towards the end of the evening. Not long before I last saw her.’
‘And was that the last time you saw him? Did he leave without her? Or was he there looking for her at the end?’
It’s like I’ve walked into a brick wall that I didn’t even see coming. I’ve heard the expression about sweaty palms, but until now I didn’t realise it was a real thing. I’m going to have to tell Reynolds that I spent the night with Pete. But how does that look? He was Sophie’s boyfriend. Who would believe me if I say nothing happened between us in that hotel room? It will set Reynolds off on a chain of questioning that could lead to the friend request from Maria. They’re bound to be looking at Sophie’s social media accounts, but at the moment, all they will see from Maria is a couple of innocuous messages: Still looking good, Sophie; See you at the reunion, Sophie Hannigan. There’s nothing to arouse suspicion there.
But if Reynolds suspects that I slept with Sophie’s boyfriend on the night of her murder, she’s going to want to look at me very closely. And if she looks at my social media, and finds the messages from Maria to me, she’s going to have questions. Questions I don’t want to answer. I can’t bear for anyone to know what I did to Maria. And more than that, I can’t risk the possibility of going to prison. Of course there’s no body, but there are other people who know what happened at the leavers’ party. Maybe not even just Matt and Sam – I wouldn’t be surprised if Sophie let it slip to other people over the years. As Sam always used to say to me, it’s just not worth the risk of letting anyone know what happened. And I have Henry now. If there’s even the slightest chance that I could go to prison, I need to take what I did to Maria to my grave. I can’t leave Henry without his mother. I’ve spent so long hiding in the shadows, covering up the truth that I can’t stop now.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, my whole body itching with panic. ‘I didn’t see him.’
‘Do you know where we might find him, this Pete?’
‘Sorry, no. I only know his first name. And that he lives in London.’
‘OK,’ says Reynolds, leaning back in her chair. ‘We’ll want to speak to you again in due course, but if there’s nothing else significant that you think we should know now?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Just one more thing,’ she says, pulling a brown envelope out of her inside pocket. ‘We found something near the body.’ She reaches into the envelope and pulls out a clear plastic bag. I can see what it is before she says any more, and it takes all my strength to keep my hands relaxed in my lap and my breathing steady.
‘Have you ever seen this before?’ she asks.
It sits there innocently on the table between us.
‘No.’ I try to answer naturally, evenly, speaking neither too quickly nor too slowly.
‘Sophie wasn’t wearing it?’
‘No, definitely not. She was wearing a big, silver statement necklace.’
Reynolds doesn’t say anything, just slips the clear plastic bag back into the envelope. A plastic bag containing a slender chain with a small golden heart hanging from it. Even though it’s been more than twenty-five years since I last saw it, I would know that necklace anywhere. It haunts my dreams. Without a shadow of a doubt, that is Maria Weston’s necklace. The one she was wearing the night she disappeared.