The Girls Who Disappeared(60)

He clears his throat. ‘Anyway. We can talk properly when you get back. And, Jenna …’

I nod even though he can’t see me.

‘Look after yourself, won’t you? Don’t do anything stupid. If there is a murderer on the loose …’

‘I’m fine. Don’t worry.’

‘Well, bye, then.’

‘Bye.’

I hear him breathing for a few seconds at the other end of the line, both of us connected, each not wanting to be the first to put the phone down, just like it used to be at the beginning.

I end the call first and then I burst into tears.

I go and wash my face, splashing away the tears. I have to pull myself together and put thoughts of Gavin to the side for now and concentrate on why I’m here. I get undressed, go back into the living room and make myself a hot chocolate. The fire is almost dying now. I’ll sit until it’s burnt itself out. I’m in no hurry to go to bed. For some reason I feel safer sitting here, with all the lights on and my phone within reach.

I glance towards the fireplace, deep in thought, and then my eye lands on a piece of paper resting near the grate, not yet burnt but curling at the edges. I get up, then kneel down at the hearth. The flames have engulfed most of the writing but I can just make out the last two words BE NEXT. It was the note from my car. I’d left it on the counter, by the laptop, under the book I was reading. How did it get into the fireplace?

It must have been Dale or Olivia. But which one? And why?





36



Olivia


When Olivia wakes up she notices that Wesley isn’t in bed with her although the room is dark. She leans over for her phone to check the time. It’s just gone midnight. She’s been asleep for less than two hours.

The euphoria she’d initially felt after arriving at Wesley’s flat, knowing she was safe, has dissipated and now she just feels flat. She has a banging headache too. She’s never been a big drinker but she had a few glasses of wine. Not enough to induce this strange sensation inside her, surely. Her leg also aches, more than usual. She reaches down and touches it. She’s still wearing her jodhpurs but she can feel a bump. She peels back the duvet and shines the light from her mobile onto it. There is a hole in her jodhpurs and when she pulls them down she can see a bruise on her thigh. It looks almost like an injection site: a spot of red in the middle and a faint bruise fanning out around it. Was she drugged? It would explain how she’d blacked out, the wooziness. She’s never taken drugs in her life so doesn’t know how she’d feel but she imagines it’s how she feels now. She swings her legs out of bed and stands up, groping around her for the light switch, her panic increasing. What the hell happened to her? And where is Wesley? She presses the switch and the room is flooded with light. She wonders if he’s in the bathroom but a quick check shows he’s not there either. He’s gone out. She can’t believe it. After everything she’s been through tonight he’s just left her in the flat by herself.

Her fingers tremble as she scrolls down to his number. A phone on Wesley’s bedside table pulsates, on silent. She grabs it and sees her own number flashing up. What the fuck? Her mind is racing. Why would Wesley go out and leave his phone? She slumps onto the bed, her mobile in one hand and his in the other. She tosses hers angrily aside – it lands with a thump on the duvet – and concentrates on getting into Wesley’s. But he has a passcode and even though she tries three combinations none is right and it won’t let her in. In frustration she replaces his on the pine nightstand. What is going on? Wesley always has his phone attached to him. Unless … She goes to the window and pulls aside the ugly brown curtains. She has a view of the high street but it’s empty. Has he got another phone? She gulps. She’s heard of burner phones, has seen them used in crime dramas on TV. Maybe he’s cheating on her after all and uses a different phone to call his other girlfriend. No. No, she’s being paranoid. He’s probably popped out to get some milk or something at the all-night petrol station and forgot his phone. Nothing more sinister than that.

The light is too bright, one of those cheap paper lanterns that was once white and has yellowed with age. Olivia stands up and flicks the switch so that she is plunged back into darkness. It feels symbolic somehow. Isn’t she always the one left in the dark? She continues to sit on the arm of the sofa, with the curtains not quite closed, a chink of muted night sky reflecting on her thigh. She doesn’t want to go back to bed until Wesley gets home.

She can hear the far-off wails of an ambulance and she’s reminded again of that night twenty years ago. They would still have been in the club on this day in 1998 with no clue of how their lives were about to change. Unless the others knew? And planned to leave her behind.

It had been such a strange time after the accident. She’d been so ill, so worried about her leg and not knowing if she’d ever walk again that those first few months after her friends vanished had gone by in a blur. But something else had made her reluctant to look back on the hours before they went missing. Guilt. Because in the club that night, at approximately this time, Olivia had been thinking bad thoughts.

It had been a normal Saturday night out with the girls. Sally was excited about Mal, the boy she fancied and who, she felt, was close to asking her out. And Tamzin and Katie were on a mission to get drunk. Did Tamzin flash the cash a bit more than usual? Olivia couldn’t remember. They did leave the club earlier than they normally would, she recalls that much, and even though Katie and Tamzin had argued they’d seemed fine with each other on the drive home. She has an image of Tamzin staggering over to where Olivia had been standing at the bar by herself while Sally was snogging Mal, and Katie was dancing with a group of strangers. She’d been feeling melancholy, nursing her one glass of wine while the Chemical Brothers boomed overhead, thinking of Wesley and how she wished he’d been there and she’d felt a little – she feels bad for this now – resentful towards Sally for her obvious hostility towards him. She’d been worrying about how her relationship with Wesley was going to work if her best friend couldn’t stand her boyfriend. And she’d also felt a twinge of jealousy, as Sally tossed her glossy dark mane back over her shoulder while she snogged and flirted with Mal, that boys seemed to fall at her feet and Olivia had been Wesley’s second choice.