It was late Tuesday afternoon as I entered the walled garden via the blue door, holding my breath. A part of me wondered, clung on to a sliver of hope, that I might push open the door and find Zoe and Keira sitting, laughing happily, on the other side.
The garden wasn’t warm like before. The clouds in the sky were thick and the sun had no hope of breaking through. I entered quietly, as though trespassing in a private space, and looked towards the bench. There was no sign of anyone. I decided to sit for a while, gather my thoughts, and try to tame my racing heart. The note Angela had given me I held firmly in my pocket, as if to contain the knowledge for as long as I could. I sat and looked around the garden. The plants and trees had predominantly lost their leaves and a carpet of auburn, gold and red covered the ground.
I saw then a cigarette butt, its embers still aglow and thought of Keira smoking. I scanned the garden and then I saw her. Keira was sitting in the corner, behind a large shrub, her trainers just visible. I drew a deep breath, got up and walked slowly towards her.
‘Keira?’
‘What do you want? Why can’t you leave me alone?’ she said. ‘Why did you come here? This is mine and Zoe’s space.’
‘I want answers.’
She still hadn’t shown her face.
‘Listen…’ she said. Then I saw smoke drift in a small wisp up above the shrub. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the abortion before. It’s just, I know how much Zoe didn’t want you to know.’
‘Okay,’ I said slowly and sat down on the grass on the other side of the shrub. The earth felt damp and cold underneath me but I didn’t care. ‘If you can believe it, I get it. I get your wanting to protect Zoe, to keep her secrets, but what I don’t get is why your mum has just handed me a copy of a page from Zoe’s diary in your handwriting.’ I paused, tried to control my voice. ‘I just want to know why you’ve been sending those notes and pretending they’re from Zoe?’
She didn’t speak for a second and then said, ‘It’s complicated.’
‘It was you who spray-painted the graffiti on the cars, too, wasn’t it?’
‘Mrs Hall, leave me alone.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until you give me an explanation for what’s going on.’ I stopped, looked briefly up at the sky. ‘Do you know where Zoe is?’
I heard Keira start to cry and, despite my frustration and anger, a part of me wanted to go to her and hug her; guilt pierced my heart when I realised it was that exact natural reaction that I should have felt with Zoe. Then she would never have felt alone.
‘Keira…’ I tried to imagine what was going through her mind, to put myself in her position. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing these things but you understand that this isn’t one of your games, don’t you? We’ve been out of our minds with worry.’ I watched another wisp of smoke disappear into the air. ‘I think you know where Zoe is, and if you don’t tell me, then the police will make you.’
Suddenly, Keira stood up, threw her cigarette down on the ground angrily and trod hard on it with her trainer.
‘I love Zoe and I just wanted to show you that you were never there for her. I wanted you to feel the pain I’ve seen her go through.’
I got to my feet unsteadily, a burning filling my lungs as I gasped for breath. ‘Don’t you think I’m suffering enough? Don’t you think I feel guilty every second of every day?’
‘Do you?’ Keira shouted at me now, her face ashen. ‘Do you, though? I saw you talking to that student again. You’re just out to please yourself, to make yourself happy. Fuck the fact your daughter’s out there alone.’
‘Keira, please. You know how much I love her.’
Keira shook her head. ‘At first, when Zoe went missing, I thought that you had learned your lesson. Then I saw you with him, and I realised you have no idea how much damage you’ve done.’
‘Fine,’ I said, my voice quivering, ‘I’m going to the police and you can tell them all this.’ I intentionally didn’t mention that the police already had two of the notes and the photographs, and that they would likely figure out who had sent them pretty quickly. And that Carter already knew about my affair with Robert.
Keira bent down, picked up her rucksack and slung it over her shoulder, then stuffed her cigarette packet in her pocket. She looked at me.
‘You tell the police, Mrs Hall, and I tell everybody about your affair. I can’t imagine your boss would be too pleased about what you’ve been up to.’
The little witch! I’d meant to glean all the information I could from Keira so I could confront Robert, but now I found myself in a tit-for-tat match with a stubborn teenager, and I was tired of it. ‘You’re too young to understand what grown-up relationships are like, Keira, how complicated they are, and what it takes to make them work. One day you will, but for now you’re going to have to take my word for it.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Mrs Hall. All you have to do is prove that you really care about Zoe.’ She jutted out her chin. ‘Stop seeing that student, Robert.’
Was that what Zoe wanted, too? Was that what this whole thing had been about? I tried a different tactic. ‘Please just tell me if you’ve spoken to Zoe, tell me that she’s okay.’
Keira wiped her nose with the back of her hand and pushed past me. ‘Just stop seeing Robert,’ she shouted over her shoulder and angrily stormed out, leaving me alone in the walled garden, the blue door swinging in the wind.