25
“I don’t remember before or after,” she says urgently as Abbie Rose sits in the armchair with her notebook, while I hover on the edge of the sofa. “It’s like looking at a single chapter of my life—in isolation. Nick’s in it. We’re not in this house, though.”
“This is good, Evie.” Abbie Rose gets out her phone. “Do you mind if I record you? That way, you can just talk freely. It’s probably better than stopping and starting while I write.”
“Okay.” Jen waits for her to set her phone to record.
“It’s on. You can start.”
Jen begins. “We’d been looking for a family home. Not too far for Nick’s commute. But we needed space, Nick said. Air that didn’t reek of traffic fumes. Somewhere quiet enough so that when you sat outside, you strained your ears to hear anything. It was Nick who found it. The first time we went there, I remember just staring at the rambling house in front of me. I wasn’t in love. I wanted to be, if only to share how Nick was feeling, but it was too big, too dark, an L shape of gray-brown stone and clapboard the color of tree bark.
“Nick was ecstatic, striding around the outside, enthusing madly about everything. His eyes were bright with excitement, with his dreams. I could tell from his face, it wouldn’t matter what I said. He’d already moved us in.” She pauses. “Nick was a dreamer. I knew all his boxes, too, and this ticked every one of them. He’d found his house, with room to host parties and big, noisy family Christmases. The family house he wanted us to grow old in. I remember I was gazing at it when he came up behind me and grabbed me, held me still, not moving. Whispering, ‘This is what silence sounds like.’ ”
She continues. “I listened, heard nothing, not a voice or a single car, and a feeling of fear came from nowhere. Fields separated us from our nearest neighbors. After city life, it was quiet, with too many twisted pines and oaks that were knotted with age. It looked as though someone had reached in, parted the canopy of branches, and placed the house beneath. As I stepped through the front door that first time, I remember I shivered. It sounds weird, but the house felt hostile, almost as though it didn’t want us there.
“It needed too much work. It was far from perfect. We talked all weekend about it, until Nick persuaded me that we should make a silly offer and leave it in the lap of the gods. Convinced we didn’t have a chance, I let him, but I was wrong. We already had an offer on our own house, and I had never got round to telling him that I couldn’t shake my sense of unease, that I just felt my life spiraling out of control.
“After that, it all happened so fast, so effortlessly. We moved in on the hottest day of the year. I remember being in one of the bedrooms, pausing, leaning on the windowsill, looking down at the parched lawn, at the flowers bravely holding up in the heat, then across the yard toward the woods. I wasn’t sure about the woods. After living in a town, I felt they were too dark, stretched for too many miles. Anyone could be out there, and you wouldn’t see them. I always felt someone could have been watching me and I wouldn’t have known. It was his dream. Not mine.”
I’m flabbergasted by the detail with which she recalls what happened. Then uncertainty flickers on her face.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She nods. “It’s just—” She breaks off. “How can I be sure that what I’ve remembered is real? It doesn’t seem like I’m talking about my life. I don’t feel anything. It’s as though I’m talking about someone else’s past.”
I’m not sure, either. It doesn’t sound like the Nick I met.
“Take your time, Evie. It’s okay.” Abbie Rose tries to reassure her.
“I don’t think I wanted to move there.” She goes on. “I know I didn’t. The house was too big. And just now, talking to you, I remember how unhappy I felt.”
“What happened between you and Nick?” Abbie Rose sounds curious.
She’s silent, thinking. “It feels like that house changed something—or something happened while we lived there. It must have.”
“And this was before Angel was born?”
Jen nods. “I can’t remember exactly when we moved there, but that would make it at least four years ago. What I told you just now . . . I remember it’s how he was. Always pushing me to want what he wanted. Frustrating me, because he never listened.”
“You don’t remember how long ago you split up?” I can see what Abbie Rose is doing, trying to fill in the gaps in Jen’s fragmented narrative.
But suddenly it’s as though she’s said enough. “I’ve told you everything I know,” she says, suddenly anxious.
“It may seem confusing now,” Abbie Rose says, trying to calm her. “Think of it like jigsaw pieces. On its own, each piece doesn’t tell you much, but the more of them you put together, the more of a picture we can build. It’s okay, Evie. At some point all of this will make sense. I’m sure of it.”
Her reassurance seems to work, but Jen’s frown returns. “It’s Tamsyn.” She’s clearly anxious. “What if her disappearance is connected with Angel’s in some way? Could she have seen someone take her? Could it be the same person who went after me?”
I’m silent. But maybe somewhere in the depths of her damaged mind, it’s Jen who has the answers.
I can’t get out of there fast enough. Jen’s fear, anxiety, uncertainty are a fog, filtering through from room to room, until the entire house is infected. In my car, with my music turned up earsplittingly loud, a sense of normality returns.
But as I drive home, too late I remember my promise to Jen that I’d go walking in the woods with her. Not that she’s up to it yet. I can imagine Abbie Rose voicing her disapproval. But I know also that my escape is no more than a brief respite. Later this afternoon, I’ll have to drive all the way back, a fly in a spider’s web—needing answers as much as Jen does. Trapped.
* * *
Living where Jen does, someone could have watched her house for weeks. She would never have known. Late that afternoon, as I drive back there, I imagine a child abductor surveying their next victim—victims, because Jen’s one, too. I wonder about the thoughts that must torment Jen, about whether she was lured away and beaten almost to death before they came back here for Angel. Or if they somehow got in and took Angel first, so that Jen went upstairs, tiptoed across the bedroom, bent down to kiss that little pink cheek, and her heart stopped as she found an empty bed, her child gone. Pitched into every parent’s worst nightmare, she would have run outside, screaming her daughter’s name, gone through the woods and across fields. Maybe she heard her, followed her voice like a seagull’s cry on the wind across the dark landscape, desperate to find Angel.