The Couple at No. 9(46)

‘I honestly couldn’t say,’ he replies. ‘It was sad, really, afterwards like. Nobody came to clear out her flat. I don’t think she had any family. So I did it. And she hardly had any belongings. Just clothes left behind and food in the cupboards and fridge. It was a furnished flat. Nothing belonged to her. There were no personal items. No clutter, no mess. Nothing, really, that gave any clue as to what kind of person Sheila Watts had been.’

‘What about a purse? Or keys?’

‘The keys to her flat were in the trousers she’d left on the beach. No purse, or handbag. The police at the time suggested they might have been stolen when she was in the water. There were a few people on the beach that night.’

An idea begins to form in Lorna’s head, like a photograph being developed. ‘Do you think she could have faked her death?’

Alan sits back in his chair, his mouth an O shape. ‘That’s a bit of a leap.’

‘It’s just …’ She’s trying to arrange all the images she has in her head into some kind of picture that makes sense. ‘It’s weird that my mother has this newspaper clipping about Sheila, and her lodger was called Daphne Hartall. It’s not like Daphne Hartall is a common name, is it? It’s too much of a coincidence. There must be a link.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I could be so wide of the mark here. But …’ her heart flutters with excitement ‘… isn’t it possible that the Daphne Hartall my mum knew and the Sheila Watts you knew could be the same person?’

‘You think Sheila faked her death and stole my sister’s identity?’ He sounds incredulous.

‘People do. Did she ever seem particularly interested in Daphne?’

‘Well,’ he rubs his chin, ‘yes, I suppose, now you mention it. And there was one thing that niggled at me. After Sheila died, I was tidying away Daphne’s things that I kept in a little box on my bookcase, and I couldn’t find her birth certificate, but that could just be down to me being disorganized …’

‘Do you think Sheila could have taken it?’

He looks troubled. ‘Maybe. She had the opportunity.’

‘And what a perfect way to disappear if someone was trying to find her.’

The more she thinks about it the more convinced she is.

Sheila Watts and Daphne Hartall are one and the same.





24


Rose



February 1980


As the days wore on I became even more intrigued by Daphne. She was so strong in some ways, and in others there was a vulnerability about her that brought out my maternal side, even though we were around the same age. I wanted to protect her, just like I wanted to protect you. This slim, attractive woman who, I was now certain, had been terrorized by a man, just like I had.

After our night out at the Stag and Pheasant the previous week, and her Joel revelation, I felt even more certain that we should stick together. Men, it seemed, couldn’t be trusted. Even Joel – a man I thought was kind and dependable – was really a predator waiting for the right time to pounce. We sat up late most evenings discussing women’s rights. ‘Why do men think it’s okay to pat your arse and call you “darling”?’ she said, hugging her knees, the sleeves of her chunky jumper pulled over her hands. ‘It’s 1980 not 1950.’

She was so right-on. So modern. So different from me: I had lived there, in the back of beyond, for the last three years.

And she was so easy to live with. She seemed to sense when I wanted it to be just you and me, tactfully staying in her room or going for a walk to the village. She’d managed to procure a second-hand sewing-machine – a bulky old Singer with a foot pedal – which she set up in the little room across the hall. I’d often hear its whirr as she ran up patterns, or mended her jeans with patches. She wanted to make you a pretty summer dress and came home one day with a roll of printed yellow fabric. You were delighted at the prospect. She was capable and self-sufficient, with all these useful practical skills, and I admired her for that.

It was a cold winter, February even worse than January. Ice crusted the grass and fog rolled over the woods so that they were barely visible from your bedroom window. It unnerved me, made me concerned about who could be watching the house. Daphne must have felt the same: one evening when you were in bed and we were standing in the kitchen, smoking and huddled against the range for warmth, she said, ‘It’s strange.’ Her gaze went to the window as she exhaled a plume of smoke. She’d been at work that day – she refused to give up her cleaning job just because Joel had made a move on her. ‘To think this place could be our sanctuary or our undoing.’

Her words chilled me. ‘What do you mean?’

She turned her gaze on me, intense and unnerving. ‘We think we’re safe hiding here, away from the world, away from danger, but the danger could be here anyway. Trapped in this place, with us.’

I’d never told her I was hiding but it was like she knew. That she could sense it. Perhaps because she was doing the same.

‘In this house?’ I asked, puzzled and a little freaked out. What was she trying to say?

‘No, in this village. We can’t escape it, Rose. Don’t you see?’

I stubbed out my cigarette and wrapped my arms around myself. ‘Don’t say that,’ I said, in a small, frightened voice.