The Girls Who Disappeared(28)

‘I’m sure Jay Knapton will get around that. He managed to build those cabins, didn’t he? Even though everyone moaned about it! You know what people can be like around here. They don’t like change.’ He sighs. ‘I’ve been renting for years but I want to invest in something.’ He turns to her with a disarming smile. ‘In us.’

Her heart sinks. She doesn’t want to live in a soulless new build. She doesn’t want to live anywhere but the ramshackle house she grew up in, with the sound of horses whinnying at night and the tranquillity of the surrounding countryside. Not overlooking a bunch of centuries-old stones that give her the creeps. And she can’t think about all this now. Her head is filled with Jenna and Dale. What were they talking about? What did they say about her? ‘I haven’t really got much money, to be honest, Wes. Not enough for a deposit on a flat anyway. You know Mum can’t afford to pay me more than a pittance for my work at the stables. The place is only just ticking over, especially in the last few years.’

He rolls his eyes. ‘I don’t know why your mum just doesn’t sell it.’

‘Of course she’s not going to sell it. It’s been in the family for generations. And who would buy it? Stafferbury isn’t exactly a prosperous town.’

He shrugs. ‘It does all right. And that’s fine. Like I said, I’ve been saving and have enough money to put down.’

‘How could you have saved up enough, though, Wes? You’ve been spending loads.’

She knows instantly it was the wrong thing to say. His face darkens. ‘Why do you always have to go and ruin everything, Liv? I’ve got a handle on it all, okay? I’m trying to do a nice thing for us and you throw it back in my face. And now look at you. Sitting there like a frigid little mouse with your coat still on. I know it was a shock seeing Jenna and Dale together but you were in a foul mood before we even got to the pub. What’s going on?’

Fear pierces her heart. She hates it when Wesley gets mad. Not that he’s ever hurt her. He’d never do that. He doesn’t even shout at her, not really. It’s more the resigned disappointment followed by the silent treatment that he stretches out like an elastic band, getting tauter and tauter until she can bear it no more.

‘I don’t know,’ she lies. ‘It’s this time of year. The anniversary and everything. It’s just a shit time.’

His face softens. ‘I know.’ He inches nearer to her on the sofa. ‘Why don’t we go to bed? Have an early night?’ He leans over to kiss her but they are interrupted by his phone chirruping on the coffee-table. Some rap song that Olivia’s never liked. ‘Sorry, babe,’ he says, reaching for it. ‘Hello,’ he barks into it, glancing at her and rolling his eyes. He gets up and goes to the window. ‘Right.’ His voice is serious now and he stands with his back to her. ‘I can be there in ten.’

Be where? She wraps her coat further around herself. It’s freezing in the flat. She just wants to go home. He slips his mobile into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Sorry, babe. Something’s come up.’

She frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I need to pop out. A – a friend has asked me for a favour. You can stay and wait for me here or I can drop you back home …’

She gets up from the sofa and he comes towards her and tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear. ‘Which friend?’

‘Stan,’ he says, too quickly. Wesley has lots of friends she doesn’t know, all with monikers like ‘PJ’ and ‘Sickboy’ and ‘Pod’. Even Stan isn’t his real name – she has no idea what it is. She doesn’t think any of his mates go by the names they were actually born with. She doesn’t care that she has never got to know them even though she remembers some from school. They were immature then and they’re immature now. On the odd occasion she’s bumped into Wesley with these mates they’re usually talking about football or the latest PS4 game. She suspects that when Wesley isn’t staying at hers he spends way too long on his gaming station talking to his mates through headphones. He’s like a seventeen-year-old in the body of a thirty-nine-year-old man.

‘That’s fine.’ She doesn’t ask what’s come up at nine o’clock at night. She finds that she doesn’t care right now if it means she can fall asleep in her own bed.

He can’t get her into his car fast enough. He has a parking space around the back of the high street where all the delivery entrances and garages are. She gets into his BMW, shivering and tired, desperate for bed and oblivion from her racing thoughts.

He pulls up outside her house, brushes her cheek with his lips and has driven away before she’s even got to the front door. The TV is blaring as she walks into the hallway. Her mum is watching a sitcom with canned laughter. She suspects it’s a rerun of Seinfeld.

‘Hi, love,’ she calls, when she hears Olivia come in. She turns as Olivia stands in the doorway. The room is dark and the television casts a bluish hue over everything. ‘Not staying at Wesley’s after all?’

Olivia slumps onto the sofa next to her. ‘No. He had to go out to see a friend.’

‘Right,’ she replies, looking back towards the TV.

‘Do you think Wesley’s cheating on me?’ she asks. Is that why he raced off tonight? An image of Izzy pops into her head. Beautiful, young. Like Sally had been. But, no, she shakes the thought away. Of course he isn’t. Why would he ask her to move in with him otherwise? Wesley might irritate her sometimes but she’d be lost without him, wouldn’t she? She tries to imagine her life without him in it and finds she can’t. It’s as unfathomable as living without oxygen. He’s always telling her she needs him. And she does.