Kyle Norris . The hairs on the back of Joanna’s neck prickle against the collar of her shirt. K-y-l-e. Seated at the kitchen table, she hunts the letters for booby traps and warnings. Nothing; it sounds perfectly innocuous. But the similarities between Dean Fry and this man her sister attacked without provocation are startling. Even down to the wave in his light brown hair. This twenty-seven-year-old Kyle could be his twin – his twin nearly three decades ago, because Joanna knows Dean would be near fifty now.
Poor Caroline. This must have been what she thought that night in the mini-mart, and why she shouted out Dean’s name – too irrational to understand he wouldn’t look like this any more. Could it be that Caroline saw Kyle around and about in Bayswater before that night, and mistaken him for Dean? It’s possible – the police said he’d moved to the area six months previously. And if so, could Dean be the threat her sister was going on about in the postcard she didn’t send? But why on earth would she be scared of him, so scared she needed to carry a knife to protect herself?
Joanna would have liked to run it by Pauline, had she not needed to rush off to work. Weighing up what she does and doesn’t know, Joanna shakes dog biscuits into a bowl for the ever-wagging Buttons. She thinks about the stuff her sister recorded in her notebooks – dreams, nightmares – that Joanna’s been unscrambling. Dreams of Dean mutating from someone loving, into someone wanting to destroy her. It proves she never forgot him, but it wasn’t her pining after her first love, as Joanna originally thought; it seems more likely now that she was terrified of him – terrified he’d come after her. Joanna’s theory that Caroline couldn’t let herself fall in love with anyone else because she was stuck aged thirteen and nurturing a crush on an older boy, wasn’t what was going on in her sister’s head at all. Caroline’s life was on hold because of her fear of him, not a love for him. It makes perfect sense now. But what doesn’t make sense is why she was frightened of him.
She double-clicks on Dean Fry’s doppelgänger again. Studies the enlarged image. The similarities are breathtaking. In Caroline’s unbalanced mind, this bloke just happened, unfortunately, to look exactly like someone she was afraid of for whatever reason. And to think she could have killed him. Joanna has got to explain to Kyle, it might make him feel better. It will certainly make her feel better.
With hours to go before she needs to fetch the boys from school, Joanna makes a fresh coffee and sits back down at the table. She gazes into the good-looking record producer’s face – the accused, then swiftly acquitted Kyle Norris – then clicks on the icon to compose him a message. Happy with it, she presses send and hopes she hears something from him soon. Little point pretending she’s marking – these papers on the significance of Benjamin Britten’s chamber pieces will have to wait – her need to find Dean Fry is far more pressing as she now fully believes the mystery of her sister’s state of mind and subsequent death are connected to him.
Despite her earlier trawl of the internet throwing up nothing new on Dean’s whereabouts, she wants to have another look. But aside from a series of unsettling images of Drake’s Pike and the hundred-acre section of dense and ancient woodland – which, as lush and green as it is in her memory, looks rather claustrophobic and sinister in the photographs the websites provide – there is little else. The village of Witchwood looks relatively unchanged, but she can’t find anything about the Boar’s Head. According to her searches, Witchwood’s only pub is the Royal Oak, and the name of the landlord isn’t one she knows.
Sipping her coffee, it dawns on her the only chance she has of finding Dean – which she must do if she wants answers – is through his parents. She scribbles down the number of the pub, taps the biro against her teeth. The brewery probably renamed it in an effort to stamp out its past, but the new owners might know where Liz and Ian moved to. It’s a start, what else has she got?
‘Erm, hello,’ she begins, unsure what to say next. ‘I don’t know whether you’ll be able to help, but I’m looking for a pub – the Boar’s Head,’ she says tentatively, her mobile pressed against her ear. ‘It used to be in Witchwood.’
‘Yeah, this used to be the Boar,’ the man on the other end of the line clarifies. ‘Changed it for some reason; donkey’s years before we took it on.’
‘Right.’ Joanna, hopeful. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know Liz and Ian Fry, would you?’
‘Who?’
‘Liz and Ian Fry?’ Joanna repeats. ‘They used to run it when it was the Boar.’
‘Liz and Ian Fry ? Nah, sorry, love, never heard of ’em.’
‘Really? Oh, well, it was a bit of a long shot.’
‘Hang on a min – can you hang on?’ the man asks.
‘Course.’ She nods frantically, hears the handset knock against the buttons on his shirt, a muffled muddle of voices in the background.
‘Me wife’s sayin’ she knows someone you could try. That he might know where they’ve gone.’ The man, re-joining her. ‘He’s been here for years.’
‘Brilliant.’ Joanna perks up. ‘You don’t happen to have his number, d’you?’
‘Yep, just a tick.’ More scrabbling, jumbled voices. Joanna holds her breath. ‘Here you go … got a pen?’
‘Yes,’ she says, jotting it down. ‘And the name?’
‘Petley. Frank Petley.’