Hearing the creak of a floorboard on the landing, Claire wondered whether it really was just the wood settling. Might it be a ghost, after all? she wondered. That of a woman whose life was cut cruelly short, searching endlessly for some sense of closure. Imagining how that might feel, lost and lonely as she tried forlornly to make contact with those who still lived, a shudder ran through her. She was glad that Luke was downstairs. She felt safer with him here.
He was as furious as she was about Sophie’s inflammatory comment, she could see it in his eyes, but had diplomatically said it was a subject better not pursued tonight. She still didn’t know the truth about what had happened between him and Anna, whether a switch had flicked and his emotions had spiralled out of control, the shock of what he’d done causing him to bury it. It was possible. She wished she herself could forget so easily. She doubted she ever would.
Sitting at her dressing table, she studied the photograph she’d extracted from her memory box – a beautiful photo of a couple seemingly very much in love – and then went back to her task. She found manually editing her father out of the photographs therapeutic. She couldn’t banish the memories from her mind, as he had, but she could obliterate any physical reminders of him.
She placed the remaining half of the photo back in the box and selected another, one of her and her father together on their long-ago trip to Rhyl. There was no point keeping just half of it – herself smiling adoringly up at a man who wasn’t there – so, wielding the scissors carefully, she snipped it into halves, and then halved it again, cutting until she’d obliterated every recognisable part of him. Sighing at the loss of something that should have been special, but obviously never was to him, she sprinkled the bits of photograph into her waste-paper basket like so much sad confetti, and reached back into the box for her mother’s perfume, the smell of which she found so comforting. She frowned as she noticed the top was loose. That was odd. She always pushed it back on tightly. Someone had been using it. Not Ella. She knew how precious it was to Claire. Sophie, no doubt, poking around, as she obviously had been.
Picturing her pretty little pixie face, Claire reached for another photograph of her father and hacked sharply through it.
It would be interesting to see what she had to say for herself when she got back. Claire had been on the verge of ringing her but had thought better of it. She wanted to talk to her face to face, read what was in her deceitful doe eyes when she confronted her.
Hearing another distant creak, she felt a shiver prickle her skin. She’d been icy cold since she got back, chilled to the bone after getting soaking wet tonight. It was late. She hadn’t realised how late. Noting the time on her bedside clock as the digits clicked over to four a.m., she pushed the bits and pieces back into her box, placed it in the drawer and went across to the bed.
She paused before climbing in, ran her hand over Luke’s pillow, wished he was here, that there wasn’t a floor separating them, an ocean between them. She craved the warmth of him, his hard body next to hers. Wished dearly that things could be the way they had been before their lives had been turned upside down. But he hadn’t wanted to be with her. He preferred sadomasochistic sex with a complete lunatic… according to Sophie. Claire had actually started to believe her, thought that in some mysterious way, finding her half-sister might have been a blessing, an antidote to her deep sense of loneliness. She’d thought the woman had truly cared about her. She stifled a scornful laugh. It had all been bullshit and lies, and she’d been ready to believe it because she’d been desperate.
Rubbing at the goose bumps on her arms, she pulled back the duvet and crawled under it, curling herself into a ball and squeezing her eyes closed, attempting to block out the images that played on a loop through her mind, but to no avail. They were scorched on the insides of her eyelids: images of her father’s bewildered face as she’d glared accusingly at him. How much bullshit had he fed her over the years? It seemed to her that his whole life was an intricate web of lies. How could he have done that, lied so consistently to his own child? Had he been lying this evening? Even though his mind was failing, had his first instinct still been to protect himself, no matter how much hurt he caused her? Claire curled herself smaller, listened to the sounds of the house breathing.
She heard it again, a ghostly creak on the landing. This time it was louder, nearer; definitely not wood settling. Emerging from her cocoon, she listened, and then threw back the duvet. It was probably just Luke going to the bathroom, but still she felt the need to check on Ella.
Coming quietly out of her room, she paused to peer over the stair rail for signs of him. Seeing none, she carried on to Ella’s room, hesitating outside her door when she found it open a fraction. Strange. She’d stopped leaving the door ajar when her father had taken to wandering at night. Perhaps she’d gone to the loo, which was also a bit strange. Ella was scared of the dark. She would normally come and find Claire first.
She pushed the door further open, cursing silently as the hinges squeaked, and squinted across at Ella’s bed. Unable to make her out by the pale glow of her night light, she tiptoed further in, poised to reassure her should she wake – and then froze.
‘Ella?’ she whispered, her heart catapulting into her mouth as she realised there was an empty space in the bed where her little girl’s body should be. ‘Ella?’ Attempting to quell her panic, she glanced quickly around the room, and then flew across to the wardrobe in the vain hope that her daughter might be playing some sort of hide-and-seek game.
Nothing.
Icy fingers ran the length of her spine.
She must have gone downstairs. Claire took a deep breath, breathed it out. Of course she had. Aware that Luke was down there, she’d snuck out of bed and crept down. She was probably snuggled up fast asleep on the sofa with him. Nodding reassuringly to herself, her chest pounding, she was about to go back to the door when a tiny glimmer of light from Ella’s bed caught her eye. Steeling herself, unable to imagine what it was, she reached for the duvet and peeled it back. Her heart jolted violently and her stomach turned over, nausea climbing her throat as she stared down disbelievingly at the sharp shards of glass. A broken wine glass, red wine staining the white sheet beneath it.
Oh, dear God. ‘Ella!’ Whirling around, Claire flew to the landing, swinging round the stair rail to thunder down the stairs. Her whole body lurched as she lost her footing partway down. Instinctively, she flailed for the rail, catching hold of it and pulling herself upright to scramble down the rest of the way.
‘Luke!’ Thrusting the door wide, she raced into the lounge. ‘Luke?’ It took another terrifying second for her to assimilate what she was seeing, as she took in the blanket haphazardly folded and placed on the pillow. He might abscond with her… Sophie’s dire warning rang loud in her head, and Claire’s heart stopped dead.