The Girls Who Disappeared(38)

I try to concentrate on my surroundings and look for the memorial bench Chlo? mentioned. And then, towards the back of the field, I notice a large oak tree in the corner and, just to the side of it, half shaded by branches, a wooden bench. On closer inspection I see all three girls’ names etched onto a brass plaque with the words, ‘Always in our hearts’. And then I see that someone has left a bunch of pink roses on the arm. Izzy must already have been. I sit down on the bench and sigh. And that’s when I see the note scribbled on lined paper almost hidden beneath the leaves. The writing is in block capitals and slanted to the left. There’s something familiar about it. I pick it up and read.

KATIE, TAMZIN & SALLY

And then, underneath, just two words.

I’M SORRY.

It’s the same handwriting as on the threatening note left on my windscreen.





24



Olivia


Olivia can’t stop thinking about Ralph. She knows people think it’s odd that she and Ralph are friends. Were friends. Were, were, were. Her heart contracts. Ralph was a good person, a kind person. He liked the simple life but he was surprisingly astute, yet all his life people had taken advantage of him. Even her, in the end. There’s so much she wishes she could change. Ralph had told her once that the truth would set her free. That was a typical Ralph statement. He liked to talk in slogans. But he was wrong about that. The truth wouldn’t set her free. Far from it.

The truth was a Pandora’s box and she had to keep the lid firmly closed.

Not for the first time she wishes she had someone to confide in. With a pang of sadness she realizes that Ralph was her only friend, the one person she thought she could trust. And now he’s gone. She feels more alone than ever.

She checks her watch. It’s five past twelve. Wesley said he’d meet her here by the stones: they could visit her friends’ bench, lay down some flowers, then grab a bite to eat before he has to go back to work. The bouquet feels heavy in her hands. Where is he? And then she catches him walking towards her with his familiar loping gait and his big puffy jacket that makes his top half look out of proportion to the rest of him, like one of those characters in the Guess Who? game. He’d texted her this morning to tell her to meet him here and she had assumed it was him being sweet and thoughtful, wanting to commemorate the fact it’s been twenty years since her friends’ disappearance. But from the look on his face as he approaches she sees she assumed wrongly. He looks furious.

‘Ralph Middleton is dead,’ he says curtly, when he gets up close. He grabs her arm and almost forces her over the stile and into the field. ‘And you were seen coming out of his caravan in tears yesterday. What the fuck, Liv?’

She feels like she’s been punched in the gut. Why is he so angry?

‘Has that fucker Dale been to see you? Because he came to my flat earlier.’

‘Why did he want to see you? You hardly knew Ralph. And weren’t you at work this morning?’

He runs a hand across his chin. ‘It was before I left for work,’ he says, too quickly. ‘It was just routine apparently.’

His eyes have gone flinty, like they always do when he’s lying. Instead he deflects the questioning back to her as deftly as a tennis stroke. ‘What were you doing at Ralph’s caravan yesterday?’

How did he know? Did Dale tell him? Her heart races beneath her waxed jacket and the arm holding the bouquet feels dead. ‘I’m devastated about Ralph,’ she says quietly. ‘And I’ll always feel guilty that our last conversation ended with heated words.’

‘Heated words about what?’

She toes the muddy grass. She’s still in her riding gear. ‘It was a stupid misunderstanding.’

‘He was murdered, Liv. Did Dale tell you that?’

She looks up and for the first time today she notices real fear in his eyes. ‘More or less.’

‘That fucker …’ He sighs, and she wonders if he’s talking about Dale or Ralph. She knows Wesley and Dale were in the same class at school and never liked each other. But Ralph … Wesley didn’t know him that well. It was she who kept in touch with him, who would visit him to make sure he was okay, that he wasn’t too lonely living in that caravan all by himself. It was she who had cared.

Wesley balls his fists at his sides and his expression darkens as he stares at her. ‘What are you keeping from me?’

‘I’m not keeping anything from you, Wes, I promise,’ she lies. ‘But you have to trust me. I don’t question you about where you went last night.’

‘I told you, Stan needed –’

‘And I don’t care,’ she says, in the same calm tone. She’s learnt that to raise her voice to Wesley just makes him rear more, like Sky, the hot-tempered grey at the stables.

‘I’m just trying to look out for you, to protect you,’ he says. ‘But you seem to thwart me at every turn. You’re vulnerable, emotional. It’s the twentieth anniversary today and you’re not thinking straight. But if there was something going on between you and Ralph I need to know.’

She wants to laugh in his face. Something going on? Surely he can’t think there was anything romantic between them. But she knows better than to laugh at Wesley.

‘I felt sorry for him and I felt I owed him. That was all. I was upset because I knew he wasn’t going to change. That he was killing himself with the amount of drinking he did … the drugs.’