Karen reread the email and this time she couldn’t stop the bile from rising and filling her mouth. She raised her hand to her mouth and stopped the foulness from spilling out onto the computer keyboard. She swallowed it back down, all concerns other than the email and its contents had become meaningless.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. It just couldn’t be.
She looked at the screen and checked the date. The email had been sent four days ago.
She fought the rising panic and picked up the phone by the computer. She dialled Erasmus’s number but it rang out, skipping to voicemail.
‘Erasmus, it’s Karen. Please can you call me as soon as you get this message.’ And then, ‘It’s urgent.’
She hesitated, contemplated calling the police but then put the mobile phone in her jeans pocket. She knew what the police would say. The detective she had called when Rebecca went to Helsby Hill had been kind and as much use as fly swat against a tank. He had agreed in all the right places, mentioned he had had teenage children and then at the end told her he was sending her details of counselling services offered by the local authority. To cap it all he had expressly pointed out one that specialised in advising the parents of troubled children.
Karen took a deep breath and told herself to think and not react. What she wanted to do was to storm upstairs, grab Rebecca, shake her, tell her she loved her and to get it into her head that something bad, something really bad was happening but she knew the response she would get, the angry eyes that would look pityingly at her, and more lies.
She reread the email.
The email was a group email to Ella Logan’s friends from her husband Clive in Australia. Karen had only met him the once before the wedding. He had seemed like a nice man, if a little bland for her charismatic and adventurous friend. That had been fifteen years ago and aside from Christmas cards and the odd Facebook update Karen had pretty much lost touch with Ella. They had had two things in common: they’d been friends at school, part of a close knit gang who had shared their first cigarettes together, discussed their first kiss, their schoolgirl crushes, and there were only two other people in the world who fell into that category for Karen; and they both had teenage daughters. If it wasn’t for that, they definitely wouldn’t have stayed in touch, the other things they shared were too painful for all but this limited contact.
Ella’s daughter, Melanie, was eighteen, a little older than Rebecca, but the brief emails Karen and Ella had exchanged bore out the commonality of experiences they had both gone through in bringing up a teenage girl.
But now that shared experience had twisted, come together and rotted.
From: Clive Logan
To: Karen and Ors
Subject: Sad News
I’m sorry to have to email you this news but you need to know and I don’t know how else to do it.
It seems impossible but it is true that our beautiful daughter Mel passed away last week. It was very sudden and has left us both devastated. Ella is not taking any calls at the moment but if you want to contact her then please send me an email to this address and I will make sure she receives it.
I don’t know what else to say. I am typing this but it feels unreal. Mel, our little ‘Red’ is dead.
I will email the funeral details to this group when I have them.
Yours truly,
Clive
Karen knew, even though there was no cause of death given, how Melanie had died. The ‘sudden’ told her everything. There was something else as well, something that had lodged in her mind like a dirty penny in the mud. A photograph she’d seen.
Karen logged onto Ella’s Facebook page. It was already full of consolation messages. It wasn’t these she had come to see though; there was something else, something older. She had tracked back through Ella’s timeline. Last year, nothing there dislodged the penny, but the year before, there was the filthy penny.
It was just a normal photograph, the type you would see on any proud parent’s Facebook page. It was a summer shot of a barbeque in what Karen presumed was Ella’s back garden. A group of happy looking family and friends milled about eating burgers, drinking cold beers, a happy scene captured and frozen in time, probably never to be repeated for that family. In the foreground Clive was clowning about for the camera. The sun and the beer had given him a ruddy, rosy-cheeked complexion. Hadn’t Ella hinted in an email that he had been drinking too much? But what made Karen stop and cry out was the figure of Melanie, sitting at a table with some similar aged kids, in the background. In every respect she looked like a happy-go-lucky kid, except for one thing, the bandage on her right arm.
Karen composed herself and then sent an email to Clive.
I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. I never met Mel but from the stories Ella told me it was clear she was a charming, generous, beautiful spirit and I cannot begin to imagine how you both must feel.
It is trite but if there is anything I can do, if Ella needs to talk, then please let me know. There is one last thing, I know Melanie wasn’t ill and I wouldn’t ever ask this but I find myself in a situation with my own daughter where I need to, so I hope you understand. The question I have is did your daughter take her own life? I ask because my daughter cuts herself and I am very afraid she is on the path to much worse.
I am sorry to intrude on your grief this way but I hope you understand why I must ask.
Yours in deepest sympathy,
Karen
She hesitated for a second and then hit send. Upstairs she heard Rebecca pad around her room, get something out of her cupboard and then return to the chair that Karen so hated, the chair by her desk that faced the computer.
Karen tried Erasmus again, voicemail once again. She left another message. She thought for a second and then dialled again, this time the phone was answered straight away.
‘Hello?’ the voice was upbeat and happy, as though someone had just cracked a joke. There was one face still smiling, thought Karen.
‘Hello, is that Pete?’
‘Speaking.’
‘It’s Karen, I need to know, do you still have that software on my daughter’s computer, the one that tracks her keystrokes?’
‘I do but … ’ he sounded hesitant.
‘No, buts, I need you to reactivate it straight away, I need to know what my daughter is doing.’
Pete groaned. ‘Listen, I’m not sure that is a good idea. Snooping is – ’
‘It’s not fucking snooping when you’re doing it to save her fucking life,’ she snarled.
‘What does Erasmus say?’
‘It’s not his call, it’s mine,’ her voice cracked. ‘Please Pete, imagine if you thought one of your girls was in danger.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘I’ll turn it back on but I’m sending you a link so you can access the connection directly so it’s up to you if you want to spy on her. It’s your call.’
‘Thank you, Pete.’
‘Sure, I’ll send it right away.’
She rang off.
Seconds later there was a beep from her computer announcing she had mail. She opened her mail client but it wasn’t from Pete. It was from Ella.
Yes. It’s the Black Rose. Do you remember, Karen?
Karen put her hand to her mouth and tried unsuccessfully to stifle the howl that tore up from the pit of her stomach.