The Girls Who Disappeared(49)

‘What did they row about?’

‘No idea. Probably something trivial. Tamzin often acted like a bit of a dick when she was pissed. She’d probably made some comment to Katie about what she was wearing or her lack of a boyfriend.’ Olivia sips her tea. ‘And then driving back it started to rain really heavily.’ Her eyes glaze over as though she’s seeing the empty Devil’s Corridor in front of her, like I imagine it would have been the night she drove home. ‘One of the girls screamed that someone was in the road. I swerved and the car turned over. I blacked out and when I came to they were gone.’

I nod, not wanting to speak, to break the spell. I already know most of this, of course, but this is for the listeners.

‘And then I lay there for a while, hurt, unable to move and that’s when I saw someone hurrying towards the car, appearing out of the rain. I screamed thinking it was the person I’d seen in the road but it was Ralph. It was just Ralph. I knew him a bit. I’d seen him around the town and we’d always say hello to him when we passed him. He once helped Katie find her cat. I wasn’t scared of him. And in that moment I knew I had to trust him because what choice did I have?’ She laughs mirthlessly and crosses her ankles. One of her woolly socks has bagged away from the toe area so that it looks like she has one long foot.

‘And what did Ralph do?’

‘He rang for an ambulance, then got into the passenger seat with me while we waited for them to arrive. I was crying quite hysterically and he tried to calm me down by reassuring me that my friends had probably gone to get help but I knew – I knew that didn’t seem right because Katie had a mobile, but I thought maybe her battery had died, or maybe it had broken in the crash. So I let myself be convinced. And, if I’m honest, I was more concerned with myself at that moment. My leg was trapped, crushed. I knew I’d have to be cut free. I worried I’d never walk again.’

‘That’s understandable. So you’re sure Ralph wasn’t the figure you saw in the road?’

‘I’m not sure, no. But Ralph assured me that he wasn’t. He’d been in the woods, tending some animal – I think a fox, Ralph was animal mad – when he heard the sound of, as he put it, exploding metal. It had taken him ten minutes or so to reach me.’

I hesitate. She catches my expression and frowns. ‘What is it?’

I explain about the photos found in Ralph’s caravan, describing them. ‘I think they must have been taken in the days or weeks before your accident. You were filling up your Peugeot 205 and you were wearing winter clothes. You said you thought you were being followed? I think it might have been Ralph. If he was following you, it could have been him in the road. He could have been the one to cause the crash.’

‘But …’ She stares at me in confusion as though trying to reorder everything she’d thought she knew all these years. ‘No, that’s not right. I told the police at the time. The man who was following me drove a white van. And the man had a scar.’

‘A scar?’ Neither Dale nor Brenda had mentioned that detail.

‘Yes. Here.’ She touches her cheekbone. ‘It was quite prominent and ran from the corner of his eye to the middle of his cheek.’ She leans forwards and places her mug on the table.

‘Did you tell the police?’

‘Yes. Of course. I mean, I was drugged up. I’d just been through an operation but they came and interviewed me several times.’

I watch her carefully, not sure whether she’s lying. If she’d mentioned the man with a scar to the police then there would be a record of it. Is this something she’s just plucked out of the air now, for the purpose of this interview? To protect Ralph? Or have both Brenda and Dale decided not to tell me for some reason? I make a mental note to ask Dale when I see him later.

‘So this man with a scar,’ I continue, ‘what else can you remember about him? How old was he roughly?’

She fidgets and wrings her hands in her lap. ‘It was such a long time ago. But I’d say late forties. Very rugged. Unshaven. A few times I saw his van parked up and he was sitting behind the wheel, smoking.’

‘And you never saw him get out?’

‘Just once. I think he was trying to approach me. I was walking one of the ponies to the nearby field and I saw him on the other side of the road. He called over to me.’

‘Did he call you by name?’

‘No. No, just “Hey” … something like that. And I started running with the pony. I was freaked out. He was sinister-looking. Unkempt. He didn’t run after me, thank God.’

‘And that was the last time you saw him?’

‘Yes. I think that was the day before the accident.’

I digest this information. ‘And you’ve never seen him since?’

‘No.’ She blinks. ‘I asked Sally about him. At the club that night. But she hadn’t noticed anyone. And the police never found him or his van.’

‘But that doesn’t explain why those photos of you were found in Ralph’s caravan,’ I say, perplexed. ‘You never saw the man with the scar with Ralph?’

She shakes her head. ‘No. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Ralph said something to me about a bright light at the scene of the crash,’ I say, moving the interview on. ‘Did you see the lights too?’