It was nice, going out for lunch like that with Jess, but something about it has left Emily uneasy. She sits on the edge of the bed in the early evening light. Was it something in the hard edge to Jess’s voice when she asked about their parents, something in the way she was so quick to accept Emily’s version of events? Of course, they were drinking too, and it’s quite possible that on top of her tablets and her fatigue and sorrow Emily is feeling edgy and mistrustful, imagining an atmosphere between them that isn’t even there. After all, Jess has been her salvation these past few days, since the news came through about Avril. It’s Jess who has kept Emily functioning when all she wants to do is curl up and die. She’s kept them fed and clothed, she’s prevented the house from falling into disarray, quietly buoying James enough to keep getting up and going to work, and dealing with all the problems of Chloe so that Emily doesn’t have to. So why, then, does she feel so uneasy now? Is it suspicion and mistrust she feels? No, not exactly. It’s something more like fear of letting herself go, of giving herself back to her sister without reservation. Perhaps it’s guilt, a rare and honest voice whispers inside her head: guilt at the decades they’ve wasted apart, guilt at her own stubborn refusal to let bygones be bygones and bring Jess back to the fold years earlier.
Whatever it is, she tells herself, she’s being neurotic and she ought to be grateful to Jess, not tight-minded and suspicious. As she lies back on her bed and closes her eyes, a terrifying thought occurs to her: what if Jess leaves her now? Her heart races – she can’t allow that to happen, not now that she’s here – Jess has become the glue in this family, the one thing that is holding them all together. She even plugged Emily’s phone into the bedside charger this afternoon, insisting she must keep it switched on in case any news comes through, and of course Emily knew she was right. She can’t leave them now. Emily leans over to the bedside table and snatches up her mobile phone, urgently tapping out a message, and pressing send before she has time to change her mind. She flops back against the pillows and exhales with relief.
Thanks for today, Jess. So glad you’re here. Love you, Ems xxx
By Emily’s standards the message is positively gushing, and that in itself makes her feel exposed. What is it with open displays of affection that spook her so? She doesn’t know the answer to this, nor to so many of the other questions that hurtle through her mind at all hours these days, but she does know that Jess will appreciate it, that she will know she’s needed, and that’s the important message that Emily must convey.
Jess went out again a while ago. She didn’t say where she was going or what she was doing, just that she’d tell Emily all about it in the morning. Perhaps she’s off on another of her long walks across the island; perhaps she just needs a bit of time alone. Before she set off, Jess cooked up a big pan of chilli, taking a bowlful up to Chloe’s room and plating up two more so that Emily can eat together with James when he gets back from work. He’s gone in even though it’s Saturday, claiming that he’s got a lot to catch up on after taking off so much time over Daisy, and, while that may well be true, Emily knows he’s glad to be away from her as much as possible. Jesus, this is one ugly great mess. Just one month ago, if anyone had predicted the future to Emily, she would have written them off as insane. If they had said to her, ‘By mid-January, Emily, you will have slept with your husband’s best friend and your baby will have been abducted. Your stepdaughter, who hates you, will have been hospitalised with alcohol poisoning and your husband’s first wife will have turned up alive and well, not dead as you’d believed for the past thirteen years. Oh, and your long-estranged sister will be the one person you can really rely on, the one person you believe just might be able to get you through this nightmare if you don’t go crazy first.’ If someone had told her that this was what her future held, she would have laughed in their face.
Emily turns to look at the digital numbers of the clock, sees it is 7pm. Should she look in on Chloe, see if she needs anything? Part of her wants to, but the other part of her knows that Chloe’s not interested in anything she has to say. She’ll leave her for now, let her sleep. Yes, that’s the thing to do. She emerges from the dim loneliness of her bedroom to seek out a new bottle of wine. She’ll take it back upstairs with her, and, with no one here to cast judgment, she’ll crawl into bed and drink it alone.
They are lying on the beach under a gently scorching sun, the sand mounded over their concealed bodies, their heads resting side-by-side on warm sand-built pillows. To passers-by they might look like a pair of tiny Egyptian princesses, prepared for internment in sarcophagi made of golden sand. Where are they? Emily tries to remember as she lies on her bed, half-dozing, and it comes to her, strangely, that it was here, on this very island, on a rare summer holiday over from the mainland. They can’t have been very old at all, but the memory is as sharp as a photograph: beyond their feet is the sea, lapping and glimmering, alive with the sounds of splashing children and laughing adults, and the low but clear tones of their own parents’ voices tell her they are nearby, perhaps on a picnic blanket outside of her line of vision. She’d look, but she can’t turn her head without fracturing the sand that pins her shoulders. Overhead the sun is a misty white, and as gulls and pipers squabble and soar across the skyline she must squint as her gaze follows them for fear of burning her eyes out.
‘My face is stinging,’ Jess says. She remembers now, how it was so often her – Emily – that Jess would turn to for help and advice, rather than Mum. Why was that? Was she more available? More approachable? Or was it, as Emily suspects, that she guarded her little sister so fiercely that Jess knew it was easier to ask her in the first place? ‘Emi, my face is stinging.’
‘Five more minutes,’ Emily replies. She allows her fingers to burrow stealthily beneath the sand until the tips of her hand find those of her little sister, and they stay there like that for a while longer, until they’re both pink and singed and hungry for sandwiches.
The phone rings, and Emily sits bolt upright in her bedroom, wishing she could remain on that beach with her little sister forever, warm and secure. Why doesn’t anyone answer it? she wonders irritably, before remembering that it’s just her and Chloe here in the house. She dashes on to the landing and picks up the extension there, a hot pain behind her right eyeball pounding with the beginnings of a hangover.
‘Hello?’ she barks with more aggression than she had intended. Perhaps she thinks it will be James, phoning to say he’ll be late. But he’s already late. It’s too late to say you’ll be late.
‘Emily?’ The voice is familiar to her, but Emily can’t quite place it.
‘Ye-es?’ she replies with caution. It could be a trick; it could be a journalist. She can smell her own acrid breath, tainted with wine.
‘Emily! It’s Sammie! God, I’m so glad I finally got through to you!’
Sammie. One of her oldest friends, someone she once would have trusted with her life, a friend who was with her through school days and early adulthood, through thick and thin. Little Sammie who never topped five foot and looked like a fairy; little Sammie who bought her Converse trainers from the kids section of Bentalls, because she only took a size three and they were at least a tenner cheaper. Sammie, the one friend who had been there for her through childhood, always around in the fun times, always ready to pick her up each time her heart was broken. Why did they drift apart?
Sammie’s voice starts off excitable – but now it drops, adopting the generic concerned tone Emily so despises. ‘I’ve heard about everything that’s happened, Ems. I heard about Daisy,’ she says. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through.’
Another overused cliché. I can’t begin to imagine how you’re feeling. Of course you can’t, you thoughtless idiots. How could you ever begin to imagine, unless you’d been there yourself? Emily wonders if there’s a special instruction manual these people are all consulting, a catalogue of trite phrases for the lost and grieving.
‘It’s been pretty dreadful,’ she hears her own voice replying.
‘What are the police saying? Is there any fresh news?’
Emily sighs heavily. ‘Well, I expect you’ve seen that they suspect James’s first wife now?’ The shame she feels at this – at admitting to the world that she had no idea about Avril, that her husband keeps secrets from her – it’s unbearable. ‘You can’t have missed it, Sammie – it’s been all over the papers.’
There’s a little pause, and she guesses Sammie can hear the jaded misery in her voice. ‘I saw it online this morning,’ Sammie admits. ‘That’s sort of what made me call. I couldn’t believe it, Ems. They think she’s taken Daisy, don’t they? Surely that’s better news, isn’t it, than, well – than some complete, um, stranger or something …?’ Her sentence grows weak at the end, as so often happens in conversations of this kind. She started off all right, but then she just had to keep talking, didn’t she, leading the conversation into suggestions of psychopaths lurking in alleyways, evil men, murderers – all the terrible kinds of monsters that have, of course, raced through Emily’s own tortured imagination.
She decides not to answer, to let Sammie sweat a bit more.
Sammie fills the gap. ‘So, did you have any idea she was still alive?’
Emily laughs. ‘You’re not a journalist these days, are you, Sammie?’
‘No, I’m not!’ her friend shrieks. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry! Oh, God, Emily, I don’t know what to say to you! This is just about the most awful thing that’s ever happened to any of us, and I know we haven’t been in touch much over the years, but I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you. I just wanted to let you know I’m here!’
‘I know,’ Emily says after a short pause, and momentarily she forgives Sammie her clumsiness, and she understands that this must be a difficult conversation for anyone to have with a friend. ‘Sorry, Sammie. I’m just exhausted.’
They talk now, relaxing a little, sticking to more pedestrian subjects such as Sammie’s new job and the latest gossip from Emily’s home town. Emily asks after Sammie’s kids and Sammie reminisces about the old days, when she used to spend most afternoons with Emily and Jess because her own parents were always out at work, and Emily’s mum cooked the best Victoria sponge cake. They laugh about the time flashing police sirens lit up the street outside Sammie’s house because the neighbours had spotted ‘youths’ climbing in through the bathroom window, not realising it was Sammie and Emily, arriving home late from a party, drunk on alcopops and short of a house key.
The exchange is drawing to a natural close, when Sammie asks, ‘Is Jess still staying with you?’
Sammie knows the answer to this, Emily thinks, her reservations rising up again, because Jess said she spoke to her on the phone only last week. ‘Yes. She’s been a real help.’
‘That’s great,’ Sammie says, but her voice is overly bright, and Emily isn’t fooled.
‘What is it, Sammie?’ she asks impatiently.
Sammie doesn’t answer immediately, but ums and ahhs a bit, until Emily tells her to spit it out or hang up. ‘OK,’ she says with resignation. ‘I’m just going to come out with it – and you can choose to forget it or hate me or whatever – but if I don’t say something, I’ll never forgive myself.’
What the hell is this? Emily’s stomach tenses and she wonders if she might be sick. ‘Yes?’
‘Has it occurred to you that Jess might have something to do with Daisy’s disappearance?’
The silence hangs between them.
‘I mean, it’s just that everything was fine between you and James, and then Jess came back after all these years, and moved straight in – which was a bit of a surprise – and then within a few weeks, well, you know, Daisy –’
Emily lets her roll, lets her keep talking, jabbering away to fill the dreadful silences.
‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot, Ems – ever since I first heard about Daisy going missing – and it’s probably stupid, especially now that they think it’s James’s ex-wife – but even so, I just thought, well, maybe Jess contacted her – maybe Jess told her where James and Chloe were, out of –’ and here she struggles to say the word ‘– out of spite or something. After everything that had happened between you two before. I know it’s years ago, but I just –’
‘Is this some kind of a joke, Sammie?’ Emily’s patience has run out. ‘What do you mean, everything that happened before? Nothing happened! It was just kids’ stuff, teenage squabbles, nothing more! Stupidly, we took far too long before getting back in touch – but now we have, and Jess and I are just fine. Better than fine!’
‘But, Emily, at your mother’s funeral, I think I might have –’ Sammie starts to say, but Emily has had enough of her madness and she slams the receiver on to its cradle and returns to her bedroom.
Sammie. What a bloody nerve she’s got, phoning up like that, trying to come between her and Jess. Sammie Evans. She always was a shit-stirrer.