Chapter Twenty

When I finally get home, there’s a car pulled up outside the house, a dusty blue Mini, not a car I recognise. The door swings open and Tara climbs out. Struggling, she lengthens her cane and leans on it as she watches me, almost like it’s her home and I’m trespassing.

‘Hi, Grace,’ she says, smacking her lips together. ‘Quite the day you’ve had.’

‘Please, I’m not in the mood for this,’ I say.

‘Well, you’re going to have to be, because I’m not leaving until you hear what I have to say.’ He voice sounds strained, like she might cry.

‘You have nothing to say to me.’

‘I do,’ she says, hitting her walking stick against the pavement as I cross the lawn towards the house.

‘No, you don’t,’ I yell back. ‘You’re rotten.’

She laughs. ‘Oh, Grace, come on, you know Graham wasn’t involved in this, but that doesn’t matter. What I came here to say to you is leave him alone. He’s rebuilt his life, he has a beautiful family, and he’s moved them to be closer to me so I can be near my son in my final years.’

‘Final years?’ I say. ‘Don’t act older than you are.’

‘Leave him and his family alone, Grace, I’m warning you.’

‘Warning me?’ I say, turning and storming towards her. She throws back her walking stick and rests a hand on her car. ‘For all I know you’re covering for him.’

‘Finally,’ she says smiling, ‘you’re saying what you really think. It’s only taken ten years.’

I ignore her, walking back towards the house. I close the door and scream, wondering briefly if she can hear, but I don’t care. I drop my things to the floor and let out a painful cry. I tear through the house, the anger ripping through my chest, my heart feeling like it’ll explode, a pain in my temple, and then I think I’m going to faint, but I suck in a deep breath of air and count all the things I need to do today.

There’s a loud thud at the door, but I ignore it. I charge into the lounge. It’s almost time, isn’t it? For his face to appear on my screen and everyone to see a man who lost a daughter he didn’t know and for me to choke in the truth of what he did to me. I grab a bottle of sherry, so old it’s covered in dust, but I don’t care. I suck in a mouthful and swill it around, take in large gulps, hoping it’ll soothe me, but it doesn’t.

My head’s spinning, the snow globe is in front of me. Am I the bad mum? I think, staring at myself in the reflection of the TV.

‘Or were you the bad daughter?’ I scream, picking up the snow globe. I throw it as hard as I can at the wall. It makes a small dent before shattering in front of me. The noise washes over me before the house falls into silence.

I take a step forward, the crunch of shattered glass under my feet. The cream rug is soaked in the liquid from the globe, and iridescent blue strips of glitter stick to a slimy film. Pieces of the pink castle lie scattered across the floor. I reach down, picking through the turret of the castle with the small flag on top, and carefully slot two pieces together, then let them fall from my hands, back down onto the rug, broken.

I start to cry, silent tears, until in my blurred vision I see something small, black and thin lying on the ground among the shards of broken glass. I carefully reach forward to pick it up, moving aside the plastic base of the globe. I stand up clutching a USB stick.

I bend down, searching the ground, when there’s a glint of something small and gold in between the tatters of glitter. I pick up a small gold key. I reach over to the plastic base of the snow globe and realise the battery lid has snapped off, the base now empty where batteries should have been.

I rush through to my workshop, and opening my laptop I slide the USB into the slot and stab desperately at the pop-up on the side. It’s titled, Katy’s work. It’s here. All the answers I’ve been searching for are finally going to unveil themselves. I can barely breathe, as the programme opens and a single folder appears titled story.

I click on it, but a little box appears asking for a password. I lean back. Katy was always good with passwords; she wouldn’t have made it something obvious like mine. I remove the USB and clutch it in the palm of my hand. I slide the key out of my jeans pocket and examine it carefully, looking for any clue to what it means, what it could open. Is the key a clue to the password? I lean forward and type ‘GOLD KEY’. Nothing. ‘GOLDEN KEY’. Nothing.

I gaze around the room, trying to remember Katy’s bedroom just how she left it, if there were chests, lockboxes, padlocks, but there was nothing. I stare at the key, balancing it in the palm of my hand, willing it to have some meaning.

I march into the hallway and open the loft hatch, yanking at the rope to pull down the ladder. I hesitate for just a moment before climbing up into the loft. I haven’t been up here for about six years, not since I pushed the last of Katy’s boxes across the loose floorboards. I flick a switch on the wall, and it blinks a few times, before casting a weak orange glow across the low ceilings, tufts of pale green insulation sticking up, trying to support all of Katy’s things.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.

‘For what?’ Katy says.

‘For shutting you up here.’

‘Don’t do that, Mum.’

‘Do what?’

‘Beat yourself up like that.’

‘I just didn’t how to cope with seeing your things every day. I couldn’t do it, I wasn’t strong enough.’ I sniff. ‘Katy, are you there?’

‘I’m here.’

‘What were you hiding from me? Why didn’t you feel like you could tell me?’

‘It was a secret.’

‘We shouldn’t have secrets.’

‘But we do, don’t we, Mum?’

I open my eyes and look around, but Katy isn’t there, she never is. I haul myself up and start peeling open boxes. The smell of Katy fills the loft, replacing the dust and dirt, and now all I can smell is grapefruit and lavender. I spend hours searching, pulling apart boxes, taking my time at first as every item I touch chips away at me, but it’s no use. Whatever it is I’m looking for isn’t here.

I sit for a moment, under the bulb, my legs dangling through the hatch. I twist the key over and over in my hands. I should call Detective Lane and tell him what I’ve found. I’m sure the police department will crack whatever is on the USB and figure out whatever this key opens. Katy was working on something, Peter was right, something she wanted to stay hidden. A new thought rises in my stomach: what if the police won’t tell me? They’ve kept things from me before, haven’t they? What if I never find out what Katy was working on and it’s brushed off as another dead end?

‘No,’ I say into the quiet of the house.

I make my way down the ladder and pause, looking up at the now dark loft. I don’t want to shut her away again, but I’m close to something that could find her. I imagine holding her, pulling down the hatch together and sorting through her old things, chatting not about the years we lost, but the ones we’ll now have.

I reach for my bag and search through it, bringing out the piece of paper Peter gave me with his number on it. I pinch it between my fingers, glancing back at the folder on my laptop screen, the blank password box.

‘Hello?’ he says, picking up on the second ring.

‘It’s Grace.’

‘Grace? Hi.’

‘I need your help.’

‘Okay, with what?’

‘You know IT, right? So you’d know how to get through a password-protected USB?’

He’s silent on the other end. I think he’s hung up until he whispers, ‘You found it.’

‘I can’t get into it.’

‘It’s encrypted,’ he says, sighing. ‘That’s why she wanted the software.’

‘Can you help me?’

‘Yes, but it’ll take some time. I don’t want to corrupt any documents trying to access it, and I should know, I’m the one that hid them for her.’

‘I can meet you.’

‘I’ll send you my address. Can I use this number?’

‘Yes, just be quick.’

‘Where did you find it?’ he asks.

I bite down on my bottom lip. ‘The snow globe.’ I say. I wonder if I should tell him about the key too, but he never mentioned a key when I met him, and I don’t know if I can trust him fully, not yet.

‘The note,’ he whispers, relieved that it was for him, that he cracked it.

‘I think you might be right. I just … I need to know what’s on this.’

‘Are you not going to contact the police?’ he asks.

‘No, not yet, not until I know what it is I have.’

‘This could get me into a lot of trouble,’ he says.

‘All this time, it was sitting in her wardrobe, gathering dust.’

‘It might be nothing,’ Peter says reassuringly.

But nothing is worse than something. This is the first time I’ve felt hope that I could find Katy, that she’s left me a message and it’ll lead straight to her.

‘I’m on my way,’ I say.

I hang up, waiting for Peter to send his address through. I grab my coat and slip on my trainers, glancing back at the mess in the lounge. That’s when I notice the time; it’s nearly 8pm and the show will be starting any minute. I feel the USB whole and warm in my pocket. This is what matters.

‘I’m coming, Katy,’ I whisper as I leave the house and shut the door firmly behind me.