I Know Who You Are(22)

I read the questions on Jack’s face without his having to say a word.

“I’m sorry, they’re here because of a personal matter. I’ll deal with it,” I interrupt, and wait for the others to walk away, out of earshot. Jack keeps throwing concerned glances over his shoulder, and I smile to try to reassure him that everything is okay.

“Did you have to come here?” I ask when I think nobody can hear.

“Is there some reason why you didn’t want us to?”

“You could have called.”

“I could have, but then I wouldn’t have got to see all this. You’re probably used to it, but for me, well, this is like a trip to Disneyland. Not that I’ve been.”

“What do you want?”

“I think the first question most people in your situation might ask would be ‘Have you found my husband?’”

“Have you found my husband?”

“Sadly no, we have not, but I need your help with something. Is there somewhere a little more private where we can talk?”

Her face lights up like a Christmas tree when we step inside my dressing room.

“There really are lights around your mirror and everything,” she says, beaming.

“There really are, yes. You said you needed my help.”

“I did. I think we might have got ourselves in a muddle when you gave us your statement, for which I can only apologize. We work crazy long hours, and sometimes we make mistakes.” She takes her iPad from the inside pocket of her jacket. “I had down that after leaving the restaurant, you came straight home, went to bed, and went to work the following morning, presuming your husband had spent the night sleeping in a spare bedroom.”

“That’s right.”

“Except that we didn’t have a note of you going for a drive in your husband’s car.”

“You don’t have a note of me doing that because I didn’t.”

“Really? Sure looks like you…” She turns the screen to face me, before using a small, skinny index finger, with a short, neat nail, to swipe between images. “I mean, I appreciate that the image is a little grainy, compared with what we got from the restaurant, but that looks like you parking his car at the petrol station, and that looks like you paying at the till. See, we only had the credit-card receipt, and I think most people would assume someone was buying petrol. I know I sure did, and this is why I need your help because, according to the records, this woman—the one driving your husband’s car and using his card, the woman who looks a lot like you—well, she wasn’t buying petrol. She was buying several bottles of lighter gel, like the stuff you squirt on a barbecue if you have an impatient personality. So … are you certain that isn’t you? On the screen I mean, I don’t need to know whether you’re impatient.”

I stare at the woman in the photo wearing a coat that looks just like mine, with dark curly hair resting on her shoulders, and oversized sunglasses on her face. “No, it’s not me.”

“It does look like you. Don’t you think it looks like Mrs. Sinclair, Wakely?”

“I thought so.”

“Have you looked into the woman who was stalking me? The one I told you about?” I ask.

“Why? Does she look like you?”

“Yes. I’ve never seen her close up, but she used to dress like me and stand outside our old home.”

“Do you know her name?”

“I already told you, no. At least not her real name.”

“What name did she use?”

I hesitate, not really wanting to say it out loud, but realize that I have to now. “She called herself Maggie. Maggie O’Neil, but that isn’t her real name.”

“How do you know that isn’t her real name?”

“Because Maggie O’Neil is dead.”





Eighteen


Essex, 1987

“Look alive, you need to get up, get dressed, and come downstairs today. I don’t have time to keep checking on you,” says Maggie, bursting into the room in her nightie. She pulls back the curtains, revealing another rainy day behind the bars on the window. She tugs the duvet off my bed and I shiver. I am still wearing pajamas that say AIMEE on the front to remind me of my new name. I’ve been wearing them ever since I arrived here, which I think is three days ago now.

“Why are there bars on the window?”

“To keep the bad men out. There are bad people who try to take things that don’t belong to them, and the bars help keep us safe.”

I don’t feel safe when she tells me this, I feel scared. Then I think about how I don’t belong to Maggie, but she took me.

She opens the white wardrobe and I can see that it is full of clothes. Someone else’s. Maggie takes out a purple top and a pair of trousers, then lays them on the bed, along with some underwear and socks. “Put those on,” she says before leaving the room.

When she comes back, she is dressed and her face is covered in color. Orange on her cheeks, brown on her eyes, red on her lips. She’s wearing a short skirt and long boots. She looks at me in my trousers, which keep falling down, then shakes her head and tuts. She tuts a lot.

“You’re still too skinny, you need to eat more. Take them off.”

I do as she says while she opens the wardrobe again, her hand scraping the hangers along the pole as though she is cross with everything she sees.