The Girls Who Disappeared(72)

‘And you never thought to tell me before?’ The room tilts. Another secret. Another lie. ‘Who … who did he kill?’

‘Does that matter?’ her mother replies sadly.

‘How? I mean, why? I just …’ Olivia pushes back her chair. She can’t breathe. A pain shoots from her knee to her hip. She’d forgotten to take her medication this morning after everything that happened last night. ‘I need to get out of here,’ she says, stumbling towards the door. She grabs her coat from the porch and rushes out into the cold winter air. Mel’s car is pulling up on the driveway and she steps out, waving to Olivia. Olivia plasters a smile on her face to cover her true feelings. The horses aren’t even ready. Three adults are booked into the 11 a.m. class. Mel will be annoyed.

‘We’re running a bit behind schedule today,’ Olivia calls, her voice carrying on the wind. ‘I won’t be long.’

She doesn’t wait for Mel to reply. Instead she heads to the tack room to retrieve the saddles and bridles required for Roxie and Prince. She’ll come back for Petal’s. She can’t think of anything but her father. He’s back in town. He’s a murderer. A convict. She saddles up Prince first, a fifteen-hand bay gelding. She feels calmer as she goes through the motions of slipping the bridle over his head by pushing her fingers into the corner of his mouth to insert the bit between his teeth. She hears footsteps outside the yard and sees her mother coming out of the tack room carrying the saddle for Petal, the piebald. She has so many questions she wants to ask about her father. He’d always been a faceless entity, someone with no name, no personality. A spectre, really. A heartless bastard who’d left her mum while pregnant. But now – now he has a name. John-Paul. And a personality – gentle, her mother had said, kind but also troubled. Secretive. It must be a family trait.

And he’d killed someone.

She moves on to Roxie. As she does up her girth Mel arrives. ‘I’ll take her. Laurie’s waiting,’ she says, grabbing the reins from Olivia. She already has hold of Prince with the other hand. Olivia nods and watches her walking off, leading both horses, then hides in Roxie’s stable until the clients and their horses have followed Mel into the arena.

‘Darling?’ She looks up to see her mother poking her head over the door. ‘We need to talk.’

‘I can’t right now. We’ve got work to do,’ Olivia snaps, ignoring the guilt she feels at being mean to her mum.

‘I’m so sorry to lay this on you. Please, for the moment, don’t tell Wesley or anyone else.’

Olivia murmurs her agreement, then turns her back on the pretence of raking Roxie’s bed. She waits until she hears her mother’s retreating footsteps before leaving the safety of the stable.

Mel’s loud, posh voice instructing the clients to do a rising trot carries on the wind as Olivia heads to the office. She’s just in time to see her mother’s old Land Rover pulling out of the driveway. Something sad and melancholy opens inside her as she sits behind the desk with the diary spread in front of her. She should feel … not happy exactly. How can she be happy when she’s just found out she has a criminal for a father? But intrigued, certainly. Yet she feels apathetic to the notion she has a father who’s living and breathing and in the vicinity, wanting to meet her. It just feels like another piece of armour weighing her down.

The sound of tyres over gravel makes her sit up straighter, expectantly. Is that him? She feels sick. She doesn’t know if she’s ready for this. But it’s Jenna who appears in the doorway, her cheeks red, her beautiful copper-coloured hair windswept.

Despite everything Olivia is pleased to see her and can’t stop the smile spreading across her face. Her first genuine smile since she heard the news about her dad.

‘Have you got time for a coffee?’ Jenna asks, as she strides into the office with a confidence that Olivia envies.

Olivia tries not to look too delighted to have this welcome interruption to her relentless negative thoughts. Mel will be at least another forty-five minutes with her class. ‘Sure.’ She collects the two ugly red Nescafé mugs from the side and pours them both an instant coffee. She remembers that Jenna likes hers black.

Jenna takes it gratefully and sits opposite Olivia, blowing on the coffee. There’s a fan in the corner chugging out warm air but it doesn’t do much to heat the room. ‘How are you feeling now?’

‘A bit more human, thanks to this,’ Olivia says raising her coffee mug, which is a lie. Tears well up every time she thinks about her father.

Jenna suddenly looks uncomfortable and keeps fidgeting on the chair. ‘I do need to tell you something, though,’ she says, making Olivia’s heart sink. ‘I’ve … I’ve … God, I don’t know how to say this.’

‘What?’

Olivia listens intently as Jenna tells her about Samuel Molina and John-Paul. ‘This John-Paul has a scar down the side of his face, Olivia. I think the man with the scar you saw in the days leading up to the accident is him. I think John-Paul could be your father.’

Terror rises in Olivia, making her feel hot and cold at the same time.

The man with the scar is John-Paul Molina? Her father?

And then, despite promising her mother she wouldn’t, she tells Jenna everything she’s learnt today.

‘Wow,’ says Jenna, after she’s finished.