THE FIRST MESSAGE BUZZES AT eight twenty-seven on the Highgate Ladies’ Book Club WhatsApp group.
—Something’s happening at the Miller house—it says—police cars outside.
—I saw thm 2 on way 2 yoga—someone immediately confirms. —2 policemen stndng by the door.
A member of the group who lives close to swain’s Lane grabs a lead and drags her bewildered old spaniel out for a second walk, hoping a stroll through the cemetery behind the Miller house might yield fresh gossip, which it does, though not of the caliber she was hoping for.
—They’ve cloned the cemetery—she types, eager fingers hitting Send before she notices autocorrect has made a nonsense of her message.
—CLOSED—she types quickly to head off the swarms of corrections from the Olympic-standard pedants of the book club. —They’ve sealed off the pavement outside the house. I asked what was going on but was told to move on.
And as nothing on the suburban landscape inflames interest more than a wall, so the barrier to information hastily erected around the Miller house only serves to galvanize the resourceful, well-connected, and perennially bored neighbors to greater feats of industry and espionage. “Miller house,” “Highgate incident,” and “police” are tapped into Google along with the Millers’ names, just as they were a year earlier when the couple first moved in, and with similarly frustrating results. Nothing comes back—not a photograph, not an article, not even a Facebook page. In the modern age where everyone of any substance can always be stalked through a Google search, Mike and Kate Miller are ghosts.
—I bet he hit her and she called the police—a new message says.
—OMG I was thinking that—buzzes an immediate response. —I met them at the Cemetery Trust Summer Party and they seemed way too happy. No one is THAT happy.
—Exactly. They’re too perfect to be THAT perfect.
—I met them at the Summer Party too—another message cuts in. —I actually found them both to be utterly charming, and so, so glamorous.
—Bit up themselves though aren’t they?
—That’s what I thought, I’m so glad you said that.
—Well I think they’re lovely—Heather Robinson, lady captain of the local golf club and nearest neighbor to the Millers, chimes in. —Last Xmas I knocked on their door selling tickets for the raffle and Kate Miller bought all ten books on the spot. Gave me a Company Coutts check. She also won two prizes, decent prizes too, but told me to put them back into the next raffle. I hope nothing terrible has happened to them.
There is a brief, chastened pause where everyone sheepishly considers their meanness for a moment, then:
—2 prizes!?—a new message exclaims. —Some ppl R born lucky. Bn doing the rffle 10 yrs and nvr won.
—Me either. And it’s easy to be generous when you’re rolling in cash.
—But who are they? Does anyone know where they came from or how they made their money?
—I heard it’s all her money
—A friend of my husband said it’s all him, that he inherited a fortune and that she’s some kind of Swedish aristo, or Danish maybe, one of the Scandi countries anyway. Did you see that police drama on BBC Four btw, the one with the autistic detective who shags everyone? Me and Rog binged it last week.
—I think they were dodgy—another says, ignoring the group’s usual diversion of TV chatter. —No one that young has that much money without something shady going on.
—I saw people in paper suits going into the house—a new message says, elevating things to a whole new level because everybody’s binge-watched the police dramas and knows what paper suits and policemen mean.
—There was an ambulance at the house—another message buzzes immediately afterward. —I think I saw Kate Miller getting into it.
The author of this message, Jane Farrow, new to the book group and eager to work her way into favor, did not see Kate Miller getting into anything but thought she might have done, and so this tiny lie, born of insecurity and a burning desire to be of use, sets everyone hurtling down the wrong track. Contact lists are hastily consulted, eager eyes searching for anyone they know in the medical field who might be able to find out where Kate Miller has been taken and, by extension, what has happened to her.
In the days to come, when what has actually happened in the Miller house becomes global news, Jane Farrow will look back at this moment and reread her message to the WhatsApp group she never gets messages from anymore. And though no one will ever tell her to her face why she’s been ghosted, she will know in her heart that this was the moment it all went wrong. Because she had not seen Kate Miller getting into an ambulance, and the information they have all been collectively and aggressively chasing down all morning is about to come to them and prove it.
—THE POLICE ARE HERE—a new message declares in caps.
It comes from Heather Robinson, nearest neighbor of the Millers.
—I’m in the kitchen making tea. Bob’s in the living room talking to them now.
Heather arranges four bone china cups and saucers on a tray and considers biscuits as the replies come buzzing like flies, sending her phone skittering across the granite countertop.
—Plainclothes or uniforms?
—What have they said?
—What happened?
—What happened?
—What happened?
Heather decides against biscuits, swaps the fine china for the mugs she keeps for plumbers, builders, and other trade, then sweeps her buzzing phone off the granite.
—Kettle’s boiled—she types with fumbling fingers. —I’ll let you know what they say once they’ve gone.