Authors: Samantha Hayes
‘I wonder if this is to do with her breaking up with her boyfriend,’ I say quietly, although it’s really none of my business. But I suppose it is my business if the result was positive.
I put the pieces of wand back in the box. Why did she break it? Was she angry at the result? Perhaps she
wanted
to be pregnant – or not. It’s no good second-guessing Zoe’s personal life. The only way to find out for certain is to ask her. But then she’ll know I’ve been snooping.
My heart flutters with curiosity when I see the camera – a small digital one that looks as if it’s either been dumped on the floor of the wardrobe or it fell from a jacket. It’s compact enough to fit in a pocket. My mouth salivates at the thought of flicking through her photos while my heart protests with guilty palpitations. It’s only because I feel there’s more to Zoe than I know about. That’s what I tell myself anyway.
I creep towards the door and listen again. The snoring has stopped and the house is completely silent apart from the tick-tick of a radiator as the central heating kicks back into action. I know I have to do this, even though James would say I was mad. ‘Oh Claudia, let it rest. Come and sit with me beside the fire.’ I can almost hear his exasperated voice.
I pick up the camera and remove it from its slim case. It’s expensive-looking and a newer model of the one James and I use. I turn it on, thankful that it works in the same way. I move closer to the door, one ear straining for sounds. Would I hear the front door from up here?
I toggle through Zoe’s pictures and smile at the first few. She has snapped Oscar and Noah at Tumblz Play Zone and Lilly is in some of them. The next dozen or so are of Pip from across the room. It doesn’t look as if Pip knows she’s being photographed. Then there are a few from our aquarium visit, though they’re dark and out of focus. Then there are pictures of our street. It’s as if she’s photographed it from each end as well as focusing on our house in some of the shots. No doubt to send to family or friends, I assume, to show them where she works. That’s normal, I tell myself. We’re lucky to live in such a lovely neighbourhood.
My brain doesn’t assimilate the next few pictures immediately, so I flip back and forth through them. They appear to be photographs of documents. I can’t make them out exactly, but there are loads, and each one is the same . . . yet subtly different. My fingers hover over the camera buttons, momentarily unsure which one is for zooming in, but then I remember. I enlarge an image at random and my mouth goes dry and my heart races so much I think it might fly up my throat. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.
‘Oh my God,’ I say as the photographed text resolves. ‘What on earth . . .’
I strain my eyes to read the writing, even though I don’t need to. The name at the top of the page tells me exactly what she’s been taking pictures of.
Then I hear it – the familiar sound of the heavy front door banging shut. The noise funnels up the stairwells, reverberating through the silent house.
Shit, shit, shit.
My hands fumble with the camera, desperate to turn it off and get it back in its case. I try to fasten it but the zip gets stuck. I drop it back in the bottom of the wardrobe and waddle as fast as my body will allow towards the stairs, closing her door behind me. I can hear Zoe’s footsteps approaching. She’s humming a soft tune, as if she’s happy. I’m too slow. I’ll never make it down even to the first-floor landing without being caught along the way so I lower myself onto my knees in front of the bookshelves. I try to stifle my breathlessness.
‘Zoe, don’t jump,’ I call out as normally as I can without actually yelling. I don’t want to wake the boys. ‘I’m up here looking for a book.’
‘Oh,’ Zoe sings back, sounding intrigued. Her head appears behind the banister spindles. We are close, and it’s as if one of us is in a cage. I have a feeling it’s me.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s called
Social Work and the Law
and I can’t find it anywhere.’ I run my finger along all the spines of my old textbooks. I know exactly where it is but pretend not to see it.
Zoe comes up and crouches down beside me. She turns her head sideways. ‘Here it is.’ I can feel her stare burning my cheek.
I pull the book out. ‘Thanks,’ I say, turning to her. Our faces are inches apart. ‘Couldn’t see it for looking.’ It breaks the crackle of tension between us as I attempt to stand up.
Zoe holds out her hands and laughs. ‘Good job I came back,’ she says, ‘or you might have been stuck down there all night.’ There’s something about the way she says it that makes me think she knows what I’ve been doing.
‘You saved me,’ I say with a return laugh and head down the stairs.
‘Goodnight,’ she says quietly when I am out of sight.
‘Goodnight,’ I reply, and go into my bedroom.
Immediately, I boot up my computer. Within seconds, I am searching for the name Zoe Harper on the internet, as if all my previous reference checking and research has been a waste of time. Top of the searches are the usual Facebook entries and other social networking sites. I click them all but none is her. There are various videos of people called Zoe Harper and entries in address databases and businesses run by people of the same name as well as a plethora of random pages containing my search words. My eyes scan down the results and I review the bulk of them. There are too many to check. Half an hour later, I am none the wiser.
I call James’s phone just for the comfort of hearing his voice. There’s no point me leaving a message as he won’t pick it up until he returns. ‘Honey, I need you. I’m scared,’ I whisper after hanging up. I consider sending him an email but that would only worry him witless and there’s nothing he can do.
I lie back on my bed fully clothed. I stare at the ceiling. I have no idea what I should do. Why, oh
why
, has my nanny been photographing Carla Davis’s social work file?
LORRAINE WAS BESIDE
herself with worry for Grace. Not because she wasn’t answering her phone – she often didn’t pick up, and was sometimes late replying to texts – and it wasn’t because she’d forgotten to take her packed lunch with her this morning or because she missed her driving lesson (the irate instructor had called mid-meeting). Rather, Lorraine was developing a deep, troubled feeling that one day very soon she simply wouldn’t come home at all.
She toyed with the bottle of Cabernet. It was definitely too early in the day for a glass, however small. Drinking wine wouldn’t fix anything, let alone change her daughter’s mind. She placed the bottle on its side again in the wine rack.
‘Oh Grace, Grace, Grace . . .’
Leaning on the sink, she stared out of the window and thought. She wondered how long it would be before the gossip started once Grace left school, moved out, got married. Stories would be rife: the parents couldn’t cope, the poor girl ran away, she was being abused, she got pregnant, they kicked her out . . . Lorraine shuddered. Whatever they believed to be the truth, she, as the mother, would get the blame. And maybe she deserved it. If Grace wasn’t happy, if she wanted to be with Matt’s family, then it
must
be her fault. She’d hardly been a regular stay-at-home mum lately, having been on call virtually twenty-four hours a day. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d watched Grace play a netball match or made it to a parents’ evening at school. As for going out to the cinema or shopping and lunch on a Saturday, that hadn’t happened in ages. And what about just a simple, honest mother-and-daughter chat at the kitchen table?
Lorraine covered her face then reached for the wine again. This time she opened it. ‘I’d like to see how stay-at-home mums would bloody cope with a job like mine, a husband who thinks he can . . . can . . .’ She closed her eyes in despair. ‘And a daughter who’s intent on doing everything to ruin her life.’ She poured herself a glass and took a sip, sitting half slumped at the kitchen table, muttering to no one.
‘Whassup, Mum?’
Stella was already nosing in the fridge by the time Lorraine realised her youngest daughter had come in. Had she heard her ramblings? Whatever happened, she didn’t want the girls to suffer for what Adam had done. No, it would be kept private between the two of them, although she wasn’t sure why she protected him. Perhaps it was because broadcasting her husband’s weaknesses would mean that she had some too; that she wasn’t able to keep him. The question was, how long could she maintain the charade?
Oh
. . . she chased the thought from her mind and gave Stella a hug instead. ‘Missed you, little one,’ she said.
‘You haven’t called me that in ages.’
Lorraine felt her daughter’s arms reciprocate, and for a few seconds everything seemed fine. ‘Well I’m calling you it now. Little one.’
There was a mutual grin, Lorraine’s accompanied by the thought that at least one member of her family hadn’t gone completely mad.
Stella pulled away gently and returned to the fridge. ‘What’s for dinner? I’m starving.’
‘When’s Grace home, love?’ It occurred to Lorraine that, as her mother, she should probably know this. She felt ashamed having to ask Stella. It also occurred to her that she should have bought some food.
‘She said she wouldn’t be . . .’ Stella trailed off, turning scarlet. A mop of blonde curls fell over her face as she bowed her head in thought. ‘Gosh, actually, I can’t remember when she said she’d be back.’
‘Stella . . .’ Lorraine warned.
‘Maybe later?’
Lorraine took Stella gently by the shoulders despite her swell of panic. ‘Where is your sister?’
‘At Matt’s? With a suitcase?’ Again, questions rather than a statement, but it told Lorraine all she needed to know. Had Grace told Stella of her plans? She knew her girls were close.
‘Thank you, sweetheart. Dinner will be a take-away.’ She dashed to the stairs. ‘Once I’ve got your sister back.’
Upstairs, she poked her head round Grace’s bedroom door. She hadn’t been in there for ages. It was a mess and hard to tell if Grace was in the process of moving out or there’d been a burglary. But her dressing table told a story. Most of her make-up was gone along with the various photos of Matt she’d stuck to the mirror.
‘Fuck.’
Lorraine ran back downstairs, grabbed her coat, bag and keys – thankful she hadn’t drunk more than a mouthful of wine – and prepared for a confrontation.
*
It had been Adam’s idea to make a note of Grace’s boyfriend’s car registration number. At the time, Lorraine had called him a helicopter parent. Now, she stifled a half-angry, half-hysterical laugh as she drove, remembering Adam flapping his way around their bedroom dressed only in stripey boxer shorts pretending to be a helicopter. But before that he’d been peeking out of their bedroom window, spying on Grace and Matt saying goodnight in the red Mazda Matt drove. It was hard to see much through the steamed-up windscreen, but that alone told Adam they were getting up to no good.
‘No good?’ Lorraine had said. ‘I don’t think many teenagers in love would say that a snog in a car was “no good”.’
At the time, Adam hadn’t yet dropped his bombshell on her. They were still happy, or so she thought.
‘I don’t like it, that’s all,’ had been his reply as he watched them through a gap in the curtains.
‘Leave them be,’ Lorraine had said, patting his side of the bed. ‘At least he’s brought her back at a reasonable hour. It could be a lot worse.’
Adam had grunted and begun hunting around the bedroom.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘A pen and paper.’
‘Why?’
‘To write down his registration number.’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Lorraine had said, flicking off her bedside lamp. ‘Just get into bed, Adam.’ But he’d continued fumbling around the bedroom in the dark. ‘Put it in your Blackberry if you can’t find a pen.’
‘It’s in the kitchen charging.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Lorraine had put the light back on and tossed her phone at him. ‘Here, use mine.’
Now, driving towards Selly Oak, where Grace had once said Matt lived, she was grateful for Adam’s obsessions. It had been a two-minute call to get the car’s registered address. During the short time Grace had been going out with Matt, they’d never once met his parents or found out exactly where he lived. It hadn’t seemed necessary. They’d assumed the relationship would burn itself out soon enough, like all the others had. They simply didn’t have time to play at meeting the in-laws.
Lorraine blew out a tight sigh as she drove down Matt’s road. Grace had once mentioned something about Matt’s dad working at the hospital and Lorraine hadn’t given it much reflection; she’d thought briefly porter, security guard, male nurse. Judging by the large houses around here, he was clearly a consultant. Under normal circumstances, that would have pleased her no end. Now all she could think of was that he’d have the money to spend on a slap-up wedding, and to help them get a place of their own.
Cranley Lodge was a large mock-Tudor house with a wide front garden and sweeping in-and-out drive. Three cars were parked on the block-paving – a Range Rover, a Mercedes, and Matt’s Mazda, a sleek MX something-or-other that Adam had complained about bitterly.
Who’d buy a new driver something like that?
A rich parent, Lorraine now knew, although at the time she’d stuck up for Matt, suggesting perhaps he had a Saturday job and had saved up. Ironically, she recalled defending the lad as being nothing less than utterly sensible.
Lorraine’s phone rang as she got out of the car. It was Adam. She listened intently to what he had to say, barely commented, told him that she’d be home in half an hour and they would discuss it later. Even what he’d found out about Carla Davis didn’t put Lorraine off her stride. She pressed the doorbell hard while simultaneously rapping on the letterbox.
She wanted her daughter back.
‘Hello.’ A petite woman in her early fifties answered quickly. She was elegant and well groomed.
Typical doctor’s wife
, Lorraine thought bitterly as she tucked her unstyled hair behind her ears.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Fisher,’ she said gravely. It was no doubt the only score-settling moment she’d have, she thought as she watched the woman’s made-up, probably Botoxed face attempt a concerned frown.