21

Joe turned up as usual. I looked at him with sympathy.

‘What did you try today?’

He sighed. ‘Stayed home. I wasn’t going to leave, no matter what.’

‘And?’

‘Gus went to the shop and got hit by a car. I had to go and pick him up from the doctor just over there. I never made it because my legs brought me here instead.’

‘Was Gus OK?’

‘Yeah. He sounded it. And it wasn’t real Gus.’

‘Did you see the angry guy?’

‘He’s always there.’ Joe looked worried. ‘I hope Gus didn’t really get hit by a car.’

‘I’ll see if I can ask him.’

‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘You could ask him in twenty years!’

We stared at each other and then Joe shook himself.

‘Anyways. Tomorrow I’m going to try the train to London. But now you’re off to look after my nieces!’

‘I sure am,’ I said. ‘So. We’ve got the list of everyone you usually talk to. I’m working my way through it, but there’s nothing that jumps out at the moment apart from Lucas. Have you thought of anyone else?’ I took out my notebook and pen, and looked at him. Joe nodded at the change of tone.

He started counting people off on his fingers. ‘Are these people all on your list? Dad and Gus, of course. Troy Henry. The neighbour, Mr Armstrong. Jemima. I think I see the back of Marco’s head some days. There’s Alicia, Lucy. Lucas Ingleby.’

I nodded. We’d been over these names several times now. All his old schoolfriends were living regular lives in Devon or London, apart from Troy who seemed to have vanished altogether.

I wrote down Joe’s teachers’ names: as far as we could work out only the benign Mr Patel taught us both. The most significant one on Joe’s last day was Mrs Dupont because of the upcoming trip, but neither of us thought she was about to burst into this room and murder him.

‘Dad fancies Mrs Dupont,’ he said, and told me a story about his dad flirting with her at a meeting. It was rare for him to remember things from twenty years ago so clearly, so it must have made an impression.

I had to work very, very, very hard to play it cool when Gus opened the door because he was Joe’s brother and I wanted to tell him everything straight away.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m Ariel, the babysitter.’

‘Ariel!’ He grinned and gestured for me to come in. His face was lined in a gentle way because he was thirty-seven and he’d lost his brother. ‘Thanks so much for coming. I’ve been hearing about you from the girls. You made an impression. Good to meet you.’

I followed him inside. Gus was taller than I’d expected, and he looked, of course, exactly as he had when I’d spied on him the other day. I wished so much that Joe could have come here with me.

‘Your girls are lovely,’ I said, nerves making me talk fast. ‘It was so nice to meet them. I think we’ll have a good time together. I’m going to be an aunt in July, so it’s nice to spend time with children. You know. Get used to not being the youngest any more. I’ve always been the youngest in my family.’

I was babbling, trying to seem friendly. I wanted to be someone they could talk to, to tell Gus things so that he might tell me things back.

‘A little niece or nephew!’ Gus looked mildly interested. ‘That’s nice. First one?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I took my phone out of my pocket, looked at it and pantomimed relief. This was shit, but it was the only plan I had. ‘Oh phew. Sorry. My friend got hit by a car yesterday, just really mildly, but she had to go for a check-up today. And it’s all fine.’

The girls were watching TV, and Abby was rushing around in a fog of perfume, wearing a wrap dress and sparkly earrings.

‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘Is she really OK? Hit by a car doesn’t sound good.’

‘I think she managed to jump out of the way just as it hit her. She’s actually fine. The doctor told her it happens more often than you’d think. Has anything like that ever happened to you?’

‘Happily not,’ said Abby.

‘Me neither,’ said Gus when I looked at him.

I filed that away. We already knew that it wasn’t the real Gus in Joe’s day, and this proved it.

‘Do you know what the baby’s going to be?’ said Abby, kissing me on each cheek. ‘Thanks for coming, Ariel. You’re a lifesaver.’

‘It’s a boy,’ I said. ‘It’ll be weird having a boy in the house. Did you find out with the girls?’

God, it was so easy. No wonder adults never seemed to run out of things to say. You lobbed them questions about their babies and children and it went on forever. Even if you didn’t know the person, you could just ask about their children and be instant friends.

‘We did,’ said Abby. ‘I couldn’t bear to know that the technology existed and not use it. A little nephew! How lovely. Right. Coco goes to bed at eight, Zara at eight thirty. They’ll try to get you to read them stories, but don’t let them bully you. Watch TV if you want. There’s biscuits in the tin up there and ice cream in the freezer. Help yourself to anything at all. Tea’s here. Coffee’s here. There’s squash over there, if you prefer. We won’t be later than eleven. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to be able to say, “Got to go – babysitter!”’

And, just like that, they were gone.

We played a few games of hide-and-seek, then I asked the girls to get changed. It was easy. Sasha, I thought, would be a great mother because looking after kids was fun. Coco agreed to go to sleep after five stories, but Zara wanted to talk.

We sat on her bed in her tiny room and I wished with all my heart that I could take her to meet Joe. He would be so happy to see her. Meanwhile being with her was the closest thing I could manage to being with Joe in the real world. I felt a bit psychotic when I admitted to myself that I had leveraged myself into this little girl’s life to try to solve a twenty-year-old mystery, and not because I’d actually wanted to look after her. I’d never had any desire to babysit, had never been remotely interested in children.

That was changing, though. I was enjoying myself.

Zara was still a bit shy, but I chatted away about how my sister was going to have a baby, and asked questions about when Coco was tiny, and she slowly opened up.

‘She was so annoying,’ she confided. ‘She still is, but when she was little she was actually mad. She just threw things on the floor. One time I spent ages doing a picture, and she just came along and ripped it up. I was so sad. Mum made her draw me a new one, but it was rubbish, so I ripped that up. I wanted to make her cry, but she laughed.’

‘I’m the little sister in my family, so I must have been annoying like that to Sasha.’

‘Sasha is a nice name. But Ariel’s better.’ She looked at me with big eyes. ‘Is it nice to have the name of a mermaid?’

‘Usually, yes. Sometimes it’s annoying.’

‘My mummy’s called Abby. What’s your mummy’s name?’ she said.

I hadn’t even thought this might come up, and it was a stab in the chest, just for a few seconds. I took a deep breath.

‘My mummy died,’ I told her. ‘Last year. Her name was Anna. She was really nice. It’s just me and Sasha in our family now because our dad doesn’t live with us.’

Zara’s eyes were wide. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh, poor you, Ariel.’ She patted my arm tentatively several times.

I blinked hard. ‘Thank you. It’s OK, sweetie. She got ill and in the end she couldn’t get better. We miss her every day. It’s funny to think that Sasha’s baby will only know her from photos.’

Mum would have been furious at Sasha getting pregnant, but I knew she’d have quickly come round. By this point in the pregnancy she would have been wildly excited about becoming a grandmother. I couldn’t bear to imagine it because she would have been so wonderful. She’d have known how to do all the things that baffled us.

I decided, again, to ask Joe to go and look for her in his world. I kept nearly doing it and then being scared. I knew that if he couldn’t find her – if she hadn’t been in town on 11 March 1999 – I would be utterly crushed. It felt better to think that she might be there than to know that she wasn’t.

‘You’re the baby’s auntie,’ Zara said, and I nodded. Her brow was furrowed. ‘I have an uncle I don’t know. He died before I was born. He was my daddy’s brother. My uncle Joe. That was so sad for Daddy and for my granddad and grandma, wasn’t it?’

I made myself look surprised. My heart was pounding.

‘It really was,’ I said. ‘Your poor daddy. Did your mum know him too?’

She shook her head. ‘No. He disappeared when he was still at school. They never found him, but they think he must have died.’

I realized that she was a small child and that she was supposed to be going to bed. This was terrible babysitting.

‘Maybe your uncle Joe and my mum are in heaven together,’ I said, and she gave me a sceptical look. ‘Perhaps they’re watching us now, talking about us because we’re talking about them.’

Zara nodded. ‘Yeah. They might be ghosts. They might be here right now. Sitting on the bed next to you. I hope so.’

I felt warm inside because she was closer to being right than she could possibly know.

‘I hope so too,’ I said.

When I tucked her in, I couldn’t help kissing her on the forehead like Mum used to do.

‘Night, Ariel,’ she said. ‘Night to your mummy Anna. Night to my uncle Joe.’

As soon as the girls were asleep, I set to work, digging deeper in my search for Troy Henry and Claire Simpson. Most of Joe’s friends and family had been easy to find: after everything Joe said about Lucas Ingleby I’d half expected him to be in prison, but he was, in fact, an accountant. Jasper Simpson’s name cropped up from time to time online and he had a private Facebook account. Claire and Troy had absolutely nothing.

I stopped when Izzy phoned.

‘Just checking in on you,’ she said. ‘There’s something different about you, Ariel. You know, you really can talk to me about anything any time.’ She paused, and it suddenly felt awkward between us. That never happened.

‘I’m OK,’ I said.

I imagined myself saying the next words, but it would hardly stop her worrying about me, so I didn’t add, I’ve got another best friend. You remember that boy who ghosted me? Well …

We had a strangely stilted conversation instead, and I ended it by pretending one of the girls had woken up.

I arrived home by taxi at half past eleven. Sasha was already in bed, and I popped my head into her room to wave at her, but my mind was spinning and I couldn’t sleep. I got out three big sheets of paper from my art folder and cleared a space in all the clutter on the table. I started to get down everything I knew so far.

PEOPLE FROM THE LAST DAY, I wrote on one, and I listed everyone we had discussed:

Joe’s dad, JASPER SIMPSON: Still alive, has a very small online presence. He seems to be in Devon, but impossible to find his address so far.

GUS SIMPSON: Contact established.

MR ARMSTRONG: a man called Thomas Armstrong died locally in 2004, aged 90 – possibly him.

TROY HENRY: Vanished without trace.

LUCAS INGLEBY: Accountant in London.

MARCO MANCINI: Music-vid/advert director, sometimes based in London, sometimes Italy, sometimes LA.

JEMIMA SAUNDERS: Mother of three still lives in town, sells crafts online.

ALICIA KAMINSKY: I think she married, changed her name and moved to Australia, though not 100% sure it’s the right person.

LUCY JONES: Married and changed name, lives in Brighton, 12k Instagram followers.

Teachers: MRS DUPONT no longer at the school and probably retired by now.

MR PATEL: Teaches us both, doesn’t seem the murdering kind.

The angry guy at Beachview: ??

CLAIRE SIMPSON: Joe doesn’t see her on the last day, and she’s not a suspect, but also impossible to track down.

On one of the other pieces I sketched a really terrible map of the area, from Joe’s old house to the school, to Beachview. The whole thing had happened on streets I walked every day. I was in the right place, but at entirely the wrong time.