Meanwhile, over in Rachel’s kitchen, with a stack of fluffy American pancakes liberally spread with golden syrup and strawberry jam (‘Mum would go crazy if she could see this,’ Scarlet confided with a mixture of guilt and glee), Becca was trying to ascertain what might have led to her sister’s out-of-character disappearance. ‘So she dropped you at school as usual this morning, did she? Do you remember her saying anything about what she was doing later on? Where she was going?’
The girls exchanged a glance. ‘She was in a weird mood this morning,’ Mabel said, reflecting. ‘Bad-tempered, sort of snappy.’ She rolled her eyes with teenage world-weariness. ‘Like that’s anything new.’
‘She told me off for spilling the milk,’ Scarlet said, licking her sticky fingers. ‘And when I found my lunchbox from yesterday that I’d forgotten to empty.’
‘She was checking something on the laptop,’ Mabel remembered. ‘And then I had to go, and she was like, oh my God, is it that time already? We’re going to be late!’ The high-pitched breathy imitation of her mother was verging on cruel, Becca thought, wincing.
‘And then she took me and Luke to school, and we had to take Henry and Elsa too, because their mum was going to pick us up later and they’d done a swap,’ Scarlet said and pulled a face. ‘Elsa is so freaking annoying. God!’
‘Anything else?’ Becca prompted.
Scarlet thought, head tilted on one side, small dark eyebrows angling together in a frown. ‘Not really. When she dropped us all off, she said, “Remember, Sara’s picking you up after school but I’ll come and get you before teatime.” Only she never did.’ She bit into her pancake and a splodge of jam plopped out onto her white school shirt. ‘Whoops.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Becca. ‘So it just felt like . . . an ordinary day, then?’
‘Yep,’ both sisters chorused.
‘And she took the car, I’m guessing? There’s nothing outside.’
Scarlet was trying to suck the jam off her shirt but paused in order to answer. ‘We usually walk to school but we went in the car this morning,’ she explained, ‘because Mum said she was in a rush.’
Car crash, thought Becca immediately, feeling sick at the thought of crumpled metal, squealing brakes, her sister’s body flung through the windscreen like a rag doll. She shook her head, not wanting to imagine any more. But then again, no – if it had been a car crash, they would have heard from the police by now, surely? The registration plate would have been traced, someone would have been in touch, uniformed officers at the door, caps in hand, grave expressions . . .
She got up from the table and began washing up the frying pan and batter bowl, so that the girls couldn’t see the twinge of panic on her face. ‘Maybe she’s got a flat tyre,’ she said, trying to stay calm. ‘Your poor mum! By the time she gets in, she’ll be fed up, I bet.’ Her fingers shook on the washing-up brush; she had never been a very good liar. ‘In any case, I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Why don’t you go and get ready for bed now? I’ll tell her to pop in and give you goodnight kisses just as soon as she’s home, okay?’
Later on, when the house was quiet, Becca sat in her sister’s tidy (and very beige) living room and watched the small slate mantelpiece clock tick its way round till nine o’clock, nine-thirty, ten. Elsewhere in the street, good little families were closing their curtains and settling down for the night. Here at the Jacksons’, the phone remained silent, the front door resolutely shut, and no car headlights came sweeping up the road.
Becca might not be close to her sister but she knew instinctively that this was not how Rachel operated. Organized, in control, achieving – that was Rachel. While Becca’s life tended to pinball from one shambles to another, Rachel had children, responsibilities, this nice suburban detached house in a well-to-do neighbourhood: a proper, grown-up life to come home to, in other words. She gazed around the room, searching for clues, and her eyes fell on a vase of white roses standing on a side table, scent spilling from their velvety heads. People who were going to run away didn’t bother cutting flowers and thinking about vases, did they? So where was she?
The sky was dark outside now; she hoped the children had managed to fall asleep despite the unusual situation. She didn’t know them well enough to gauge whether they were acting out of character, if Mabel was usually so scathing about her mum’s driving (‘I bet she’s lost. She can’t even read a map, you know, let alone park without having a nervous breakdown’) and whether Scarlet always needed her bedroom door to be ajar just so, the bathroom light left on, her school uniform laid out for the next morning, or if it was her way of trying to wrest back some control. Poor girls! They were toughing it out, but you could see in their eyes they were worried. So was Becca.
Mabel had hesitated before going up to bed and said, ‘I hope it was all right, me giving Sara your name. Only . . . Dad’s not around now and Grandma – Welsh Grandma – would only make a massive fuss and be mean about Mum.’ She shrugged, looking self-conscious and suddenly much younger. ‘I just remembered that time at Grandad and Wendy’s anniversary party when you were really nice to me. That’s all.’
Becca’s heart melted at the girl’s awkwardness. ‘I’m glad that you asked me,’ she said, dimly recollecting how Mabel had confided in her on that occasion, something about a bullying classmate who was picking on her. It was nice to hear that the moment had lodged in her niece’s mind; that Mabel associated her with a rescuer, someone who could help. So that made one person in the family who thought Becca was remotely competent, anyway.
A thought occurred to her. Checking something on the laptop, Mabel had said earlier. Might that be a clue to where Rachel had gone? She remembered seeing a laptop skew-whiff on the kitchen dresser and went to retrieve it, feeling uneasy as she switched it on. What if Rachel came back right now, walked in to her own living room to find Becca sitting there snooping at her laptop? It would be like getting caught trying on her big sister’s make-up all those years ago; there would come the same shriek of horror, no doubt, the same outrage in her eyes. What the hell do you think you are doing?! That’s mine!
But what else was she supposed to do? she thought defensively. Relax and sit back in front of the telly with her feet on the coffee table, hands behind her head? As if. And it wasn’t like she was going to snoop, anyway, she was only going to . . .
Oh. Maybe she wasn’t, after all. A screen had appeared requesting a password, and Becca’s shoulders sank.
MabelScarletLuke, she tried. Incorrect password, the message came back.
JacksonFive, she tried next. They were the Jackson Four now, technically, with Lawrence having left, but maybe it would still . . . Incorrect password. Ahh.
Racheliscool, she typed, if only because her own password to lots of things was Beccaiscool. (Well, come on. If you couldn’t big yourself up in secret digital code, then when could you?) But no. Incorrect password. Rachel was obviously not as tragic and insecure as her stepsister – surprise, surprise.
There was a pattering sound and she jumped before realizing it was a gust of raindrops that had been flung at the window like small pebbles. Here came the storm. She shivered to think of Rachel still out there somewhere, rain spattering a cracked windscreen maybe, drumming against the roof of her car, plastering her blonde hair wetly to her skull if she was outside . . . No. Don’t think like that. She pushed the laptop away, aware that she could try different passwords all night and still not get anywhere. She’d ask Mabel about it in the morning if need be.
As the clock ticked on and the evening became later still, Becca felt increasingly unsure about what to do next. She didn’t want to go to bed in her sister’s room in case Rachel arrived home in the middle of the night and freaked out about her being there. Nor had she thought to ask about spare bedding and blankets so that she could camp out on the sofa. Not that she felt remotely tired yet, anyway. Her mind was turning like a hamster wheel, running through lists of what she should do tomorrow morning if Rachel still wasn’t back. Look after the children, obviously, and try to keep everything feeling as normal as possible, for starters. Then she’d have to start contacting her sister’s friends and colleagues to see if anyone had seen her. She would have to tell Lawrence too, she supposed, with a jolt of trepidation.
Lawrence. She couldn’t help remembering that awful night in Birmingham when she’d seen him last, back in early November. She’d been waitressing, contract catering work through an agency, and working a shift at the Copthorne, some hot noisy sales conference dinner that seemed to be populated entirely by braying white men in suits. Every waitress’s favourite – not. She had already had to make several sharp swerves that evening, dodging the wandering hands; matters not helped by the short black dress they’d given her as uniform that clung to her boobs and bum like a second skin. And then there he was, across the room, his eyes fastening on her with interest. She had smiled briefly, professionally, Hi, and went on pouring wine for a group of men who didn’t seem to have learned the phrase ‘thank you’, but only minutes later he had come over to her, standing that little bit too close as always, a proprietorial hand on her back. ‘Well, hello there,’ he had murmured, low and suggestive in her ear.
She shuddered at the memory now. It felt like a betrayal to even be thinking about it, sat here in Rachel’s smart living room.
Her phone pinged and she scrabbled to open the text, but it was just a photo from her mum, who was on her first ever girls’ holiday in Crete. Mackerel for dinner, v healthy!, the text read. And chips. And mojitos!!!
Wendy, the eternal dieter, thought that by ’fessing up to every calorific crime by text she was somehow atoning for her sins. Who could say what warped reasoning kept prompting her to do this, but do it she did – every day, generally. Barely registering the sun-drenched table of food in today’s photo, Becca began typing a reply.
Mum, something weird has happened. Am at Rachel’s. She
But she changed her mind almost immediately and deleted the message, not wanting to worry her mum. Wendy had slogged out the first year of widowhood with heartbreak in her eyes throughout; this was the first time she’d done anything nice for herself since Dad had died. (‘I’ve bought a new cozzy and everything,’ she had twittered the night before leaving. ‘And three new lipsticks!’) Becca could not, would not spoil her holiday and give her an excuse to come home early.
God, though. This was all too awful and strange for words. She couldn’t work it out. Had Rachel maybe gone to meet a secret lover and lost track of time? Met up with Lawrence for some kind of showdown? Perhaps they were drunk and at each other’s throats by now. Perhaps . . . well, who knew? Anything might be happening.
The rain was falling harder, beating against the windows, the wind swirling in the chimney. For the hundredth time Becca tried her sister’s mobile, but it rang and rang. Maybe she should try to get hold of Lawrence sooner rather than later to see what he knew, she thought, uncertain of how amicable – or not – the break-up had been. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask the girls directly, but looking round the room, she could see that there were no photos of him anywhere, not one. It was as if he’d been deleted from the family, stripped right out. What had gone wrong between the two of them, anyway?
There were no photos of her or Wendy either, Becca noticed, feeling sad, although lots of Rachel and Terry back when it was just the two of them – on beaches, in front of Big Ben, in lush green countryside with their bicycles, both pink in the cheeks as if they’d cycled a long way together. Look how happy we were, the photos said. We didn’t need anybody else, thank you very much! He was mine first!
A memory swam into Becca’s head, of when she was about six, and fifteen-year-old Rachel had brought back friends from school: exotic creatures to Becca, all long swishy hair, short skirts and high-pitched laughter.
‘Oh my God, is this your sister?’ cried Amanda, one of the girls, seeing Becca playing with her Sylvanian Families in the living room. ‘Too cute. You never said you had a sister!’
Becca had smiled shyly up at her, dazzled by the girl’s white-blonde hair and glittery fingernails, but Rachel was already pulling her friends away.
‘Stepsister,’ she had said, hustling them upstairs. ‘We’re not related.’
There had been a lot of that. Together under duress, as Rachel was always so keen to point out. Not my choice.
Becca trudged upstairs to brush her teeth and wash her face, remembering how it had always hurt when Rachel said such things. Nobody liked being rejected, least of all by someone you looked up to. How she had hoped, little Becca, that her big sister would one day change her mind and love her, just a tiny bit. And how she had gone on hoping and hoping, until she had finally given up. That had hurt too.
The bathroom was gorgeous, of course – smooth pebble-grey tiles, a huge mirror lit with spotlights, and a long, deep bath. The shower was in a separate corner unit, with an enormous monsoon head, the towels were white and fluffy, and the overall effect – if you ignored the children’s strawberry tangle-tackler shampoo and the Playmobil pirates standing guard around the bath – was one of sleek, stylish luxury.
All right for some, thought Becca, trying not to compare it with the cramped, mould-smelling bathroom back home, with the shower that leaked if you stayed in it for longer than three minutes. Then she brushed her teeth, frowning at her foam-mouthed reflection the whole while. Where was Rachel? Who had she gone to meet? Was she hurt or lost or stranded by the side of the road with a flat tyre . . . or had something far worse happened?
Her skin tingled all over with premonition. It was bad, she felt certain. Something really bad. And those three worried children were now depending on her, Becca the screw-up, to somehow make everything all right. Christ. She hoped she was up to the job.