Someone pushed a copy of the Sun on Sunday through the letterbox first thing this morning, and Emily has lost the plot. She’s screaming on the landing, waving the paper around, demanding that James and I explain ourselves. As I rush up the stairs intending to calm her down she starts banging on Chloe’s door, with James grabbing at her arm, trying to pull her away.
‘I suppose you knew all about it too!’ she yells into Chloe’s room, and I push past Emily and snatch the paper from her hands in an attempt to pull her focus away from Chloe. She spins to face me, furious in the curtain-dark room. Behind her Chloe is sitting up in bed, pale, just woken, and utterly bemused.
James stands in the doorway beyond Emily, and his sleep-creased face is asking me, what’s up, what’s happened now?
‘How could you do this to me again, Jess?’ she shrieks, her hands on her face. ‘My God! I’m such an idiot! I trusted you.’ She wrestles the newspaper back from my grasp, her chest heaving with the weight of her emotion, and shakes her head, as though remembering all the wrongs I’ve ever done her. And then she goes from enraged to exhausted in a breath, her shoulders slumping in defeat. ‘I trusted you.’
James enters the room and sits on the edge of Chloe’s bed, reaching out to pat his daughter’s leg beneath the covers. Chloe hasn’t said a word, but I can tell that she thinks this is about Daisy, because she’s running her thumb along her upper teeth in the way that she does when she’s on edge, and her eyes are welling up with fresh tears.
‘Emily,’ James says, gently, ‘we’re all in the dark here. Exactly what is Jess supposed to have done? Only last night you were texting her to say thank you, telling her you loved her.’
The moment he says the words, his face shows he knows his mistake.
‘And how would you know what I texted to my sister last night, James? How could you possibly know that!’ She screams this, spittle flying – and I swear she looks as insane as a person ever could – and she raises the newspaper and slams it against her husband’s chest. ‘Because you were with her all evening? Because you were secretly meeting my sister when you said you were at work? Because you were drinking and flirting and after that, what? Screwing? Whispering sweet nothings? Planning your happily-ever-after together?’
James rolls his eyes in desperation, before turning them to the newspaper in his lap. Emily fixes her hard eyes on me and I want to deny it, to put her straight, but the words won’t form in my mouth and then, more than anything, I’m distracted by the look of horror on James’s face as he studies the front page of the tabloid.
‘I suppose you don’t remember a thing about it, Jess?’ Emily says, calmer now, soft malice creeping in. ‘The usual excuse, is it? Sorry, officer, I didn’t see my niece being abducted because I fainted. Sorry, Emily, I don’t remember fucking your husband because I “had an episode”.’
She’s goading me, urging me to react, and I really believe I won’t, until she says the words, sweet as can be: ‘Sorry, doctor, I don’t know how I got pregnant, because I was off my face.’
I gasp, winded by her words, and I lunge at her, knocking her tiny frame to the bed as the rest of the room shrinks away and there’s only me and her and the aching pain that courses between us. She’s pinned to the bed by her shoulders, the full weight of me holding her there, our eyes locked in combat, and I see hatred there, pure, unadulterated hatred, and I know in that moment that she’s never forgiven me. That she will never get over what happened with Simon O’Carroll.
James’s grip eases me off her, and I see Chloe huddled up against her pillows, her face streaked with tears. I crawl over the tangle of bedsheets to pull her to my chest, desperate to protect her from yet more trauma. She’s a kid, just a kid, and this is all wrong. So wrong. I think back to that day when Emily invited me to stay and, excited, I’d said yes, and I had had so many lovely ideas leaping around inside my head, ideas about how it would all go, how my life would change once I’d moved in with my big sister. This is not how I saw it unfolding; this is not the new future I’d planned. Her words pain me so much that I want to blurt it all out – scream out all her secrets for the world to hear – but I mustn’t. I mustn’t.
Emily is now sitting on the carpet, away from us, her thin fingers clasped around her knees. James sits on the other side of Chloe, his arm around her resting against the bare skin of mine. He holds the newspaper between us, and there we see the photograph that has sent Emily into meltdown. It’s a side-column headline, telling readers to ‘turn to page 5 for the full story’. But the front page photo says it all: it’s me and James at Becca’s Café last night, smiling at each other over an intimate table for two, a bottle of wine between us, and his fingers reaching out to gently touch my face. To an observer, I can see – in that split-second snapshot – we look like a couple in love. His five o’clock shadow and half-smile appear more seductive than shattered; my wind-messed hair might easily be confused for bedroom dishevelment. But it’s not the photograph that has wreaked the worst of the damage here. It’s the headline, with all its nasty innuendo:
MISSING DAISY DAD AND AUNT ‘COMFORT’
EACH OTHER OVER WINE
‘It’s a lie,’ James says to Chloe. ‘It’s been set up to look bad. But it’s not true.’
Chloe turns to me and I nod earnestly, wanting her to believe us, wanting her to know that I’m the same Jess that I’ve always been. That I am trustworthy and good.
Chloe glances at Emily, whose head is now resting on her knees, and Chloe whispers, so that only James and I can hear, ‘I wouldn’t mind if it was. I wouldn’t blame you if it was true.’
James sighs sadly, and I leave the room. This family needs time alone.
Trustworthy. It’s a word Emily used more than most as a child, as a young adult. Do we think so-and-so can be trusted, Jess? Are they loyal – are they honest – are they trustworthy? It’s not that she herself was exactly the model of good behaviour when it came to these particular attributes, but she set a high bar when it came to anyone who entered her inner circle. She’d constantly test her friends, setting them difficult choices to make, choices that would illustrate how much they thought of her, how much they preferred her company over others, liked her the best. Who wants to sit next to me? she’d ask as we filed into morning assembly, favouring the first of her friends to leap at the chance. Don’t go into town with Sammie, Jane, come to the beach with me instead.
Jess is much prettier than me, she announced one day over lunch in the school canteen. You’ve never heard a group of girls clamour so quickly to tell her she was wrong. It didn’t upset me in the least; I was used to it. I was no stranger to Emily’s loyalty traps, as she’d been laying them down for me for as long as I could remember. We shared a room in the years before we started at secondary school, often talking into the darkness long after lights out, long after Mum had popped her head around the backlit doorway to wish us goodnight, and God bless, and don’t-forget-to-say-your-prayers. We would lie in silence for a few minutes, both pretending to pray, though each knew the other was also just waiting to hear the distant click of the living room door that told us we couldn’t be overhead. Then, ‘Jess?’ Emily would start. ‘Did you see Mrs Green’s dirty fingernails today?’
‘Yes.’
‘Disgusting, weren’t they?’
I liked Mrs Green. ‘She told me she had to mend a bike puncture on the way to school this morning. It was oil. She said she couldn’t wash it out.’
I could feel Emily’s mood stiffen across the room from me. She hated it when I disagreed with her in any way. ‘Who do you prefer, Mrs Green or Mr Hobbs?’
‘Mrs Green.’
‘You think I’ll say you love Mr Hobbs if you said him.’
‘I don’t!’ My stomach knotted. Why did she always do this? She was right, I did prefer Mr Hobbs, but only because he was kind, not because I loved him.
‘OK, then. If you had to push one of them off a cliff, which one would it be? And you can’t lie – imagine it like it’s really going to happen.’
‘Mrs Green,’ I reply, reluctantly.
‘Knew it,’ she says, and I can feel her pleasure radiating silently into the room, in perfect opposition to my discomfort. ‘Who would you marry – Josh Brown or William Hope?’
‘Neither!’
‘You have to, Jess. You know the rules.’
What rules, I thought? No one ever told me there were rules. ‘Josh Brown,’ I whisper, my face hot.
‘Urghh,’ she said, making a retching noise, judging me. ‘I’d rather die. Who would you rather go on holiday with, me or Sammie Evans?’
This question told me I’d been spending too much time with Sammie. I would have to pull back a little, let Emily take centre stage next time Sammie was around. ‘You, of course.’ Could there be any other answer?
Now came the pause that always filled me with dread, in which Emily would come up with a final question, something more troubling, a haunting scenario for me to carry off into sleep. ‘Jess? If you had to choose one of them to die – hanged like in the olden days – which would it be? Mum or Dad?’
‘No!’ I hissed out into the emptiness. ‘No! You always do it – you always ask me a horrible one like this. I’m not answering.’
‘You have to,’ she replied, her ten months of seniority sounding so much greater. ‘It’s the rules, Jess. Which one?’ When I went silent on her, refusing to play, she whispered, ‘I don’t know why you’re being such a baby. I know which one I’d choose.’ And she didn’t tell me, just shifted over in her bed so I could hear from her breathing that she’d turned her back on me to go to sleep.
I lay there for what felt like hours, turning it over and over in my head, the alternative images of my parents, swinging from the gallows as I tried not to choose one of them over the other. The thing was, I knew I wouldn’t sleep until the decision had been made, even if it was only ever inside my head.
I don’t know why Emily took so much pleasure in testing me like that, because really, apart from that one time years later, I’d never given her reason to doubt my devotion at all.
‘God, just look at it,’ I say, standing beside James at the dining table, the newspaper spread out across its surface. ‘No wonder she thinks there’s something going on.’
James glances back over his shoulder, but he needn’t worry, Emily is back in bed now, sleeping off the exhaustion of her earlier explosion. He looks back at the photograph of me and him in Becca’s restaurant. ‘It’s not a bad picture, all things considered,’ he says, rolling his eyes towards me, trying to find some small sliver of humour in the situation. ‘I think I look quite handsome.’
I shake my head, still not quite believing that I’m looking at a photograph of myself in the national press. An intimate picture of James reaching out to touch my face. ‘And what’s that face-touching all about? Do you think they’ve Photoshopped it?’
‘The only thing I can think is that it was when I was reaching up to take my credit card back from Becca. I bet if you zoomed out of this picture she’d be there, leaning over the top of you. Without her there, it looks as if I’m stroking your face.’
‘Yes! Bastards. God, it just goes to show you can’t take anything at face value, can you? Unbelievable. Of course the whole world will know that we’re at it now.’ I look at James, and we know it’s serious – but it’s also funny, horribly, absurdly funny, and we start to laugh, soft and unbelieving at first, growing in strength and hysteria until there are tears running from our eyes and we’re holding on to the chair-backs for support.
‘Stop it,’ he whispers, checking again for signs of Emily, rubbing his face vigorously to clear his tears. ‘Stop. God, you’re terrible – this is serious.’
I nod, running a finger beneath my lashes to blot my mascara. ‘Sorry. I know, I know. Shit – how are we going to convince Emily there’s nothing going on? As if she needs this right now. Bloody hell.’
Having regained his composure, he reaches for the telephone. ‘We’ll get Becca to speak to her. She’ll vouch for us – it’s all straightforward enough, isn’t it?’
‘Emily will still think we planned to meet up, that we’re trying to get one over on her. You know how suspicious she can be.’
‘But it was completely innocent,’ he says, throwing his hands up as if it was Emily he was speaking to. ‘Jess, you had no idea I was going to be in there after work, and I had no idea you’d be there talking to Becca about an evening job! The newspaper makes it look like a romantic meal for two – but it was a drink, just one drink, for God’s sake. You’re my sister-in-law. Under the circumstances it would have been more strange if we hadn’t stopped for a drink together.’
He flips through the business cards pinned to the noticeboard until he finds one for Becca’s Café, and he’s poised to dial the number when the phone rings in his hand. ‘Jeez!’ he says, alarmed, and answers it on the second ring.
The previous lightness evaporates instantly, as James’s face freezes, and he presses the speakerphone button on the handset and a woman’s voice is projected into the room.
‘James?’ Her voice is soft. ‘James, it’s me.’
She doesn’t say her name, but I know it’s her from the expression on his face, and the familiarity of her tone. The one time she rings, and neither liaison officer is here, Cherry having been absent for the past couple of days with a family emergency of his own, and Piper having called to say he wouldn’t be with us until midday. I scan the room trying to remember where I put my mobile phone, spotting it on the sideboard beside my keys. Should I call someone now, or wait to hear what she has to say?
‘Hello, Avril,’ James replies, gently, indicating for us to move into the kitchen so as not to alert Emily. I’m shocked by his calm exterior, by the way in which he is able to contain all the questions and emotions that must be rushing up through him right now. ‘How are you, sweetheart?’
Sweetheart. DCI Jacobs had thought she might make contact, might try to speak to us now that her face is plastered all over the news, and she’d told James to speak to her as he would have done back then, to use the same language, the same way of speaking she would expect of him. So I know that he’s just playing it by the book, but Jesus – sweetheart?
There’s some hesitation before Avril replies, and I think maybe it was too much, this term of endearment, until she speaks again and it’s clear that she’s smiling.
‘Isn’t she adorable?’ she asks him. ‘Our Chloe? Isn’t she adorable? I’d forgotten how like you she was, James.’
I can see from the stunned fear in his eyes that he has no idea if she’s talking about the real Chloe, or the baby she has taken from us. Frantically, I grab a notepad and scribble the words Just say yes! Robotically, he replies, ‘Yes, she is. She’s adorable.’
He looks back at me and I shrug, my mind racing as I try to second-guess what it is she wants, how she wants James to react to her call. Surely the police have put a trace on the telephone line? Didn’t Jacobs say something about that before? I don’t know how these things work, I think, desperate to believe we’re moving closer to Daisy with every passing second. Surely they’ll be able to find her now?
‘What have you been up to?’ he says lightly, and it’s as though he’s pressed the magic button.
‘Oh, James, we’ve been having the most wonderful time! Yesterday we took a walk at Alum Bay – you know, where they have the coloured sands – and afterwards we took a bus and ended up having lunch at a lovely little café where they played live piano music and let us sit and listen in the comfy seats long after our plates had been cleared away.’
‘What did Chloe have?’ he asks, and I know that he’s worried. Avril has no idea what Chloe eats – what gets her to sleep, what makes her laugh or cry. Avril is a stranger. I see these thoughts and more flaming across James’s face as he speaks.
‘Well, I asked the waitress what she’d recommend, and she knew just what to suggest, because they have lots of young mothers bringing their babies in, apparently. She did a little bowl of butternut squash soup for Chloe – and she loved it! They do a wonderful Italian platter, James – remember the Parma ham in Tuscany?’
This is insane, I think. Is this conversation really happening? I blink at James, trying to encourage him to ask her something useful, something that might give us more clues to where she’s staying. I scribble on the notepad: Can we meet?
‘Maybe we could meet there for a coffee?’ he says.
And that’s when Avril’s tone changes. It’s as though she knows, and at the same time it seems as if she doesn’t. As though she thinks she’s still living that old life, that that baby really is Chloe – while at the same time she’s trying not to be caught, knowing she’s doing something wrong.
‘That’s why I called you,’ she says, her voice harder now. ‘I want to meet you – but not there. Do you know the Botanic Garden in Ventnor?’
James pauses, pensively rubbing his finger along the side of his nose as I scroll through the contacts on my own mobile phone, preparing to call DC Piper. ‘Um, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t think I’ve been. Is that where they grow all the tropical plants?’
‘Yes! They have a microclimate, apparently. I’ll meet you there tomorrow. There’s an old hospital tunnel that runs through the cliff beneath the gardens – they have a daily tour there at 2pm. I overheard a group of walkers talking about it in the café yesterday, planning to go, so I know there’ll be a small crowd. Join the tour and I’ll find you.’
‘But how –’ James starts, but he’s cut off as the line goes dead.