The Girls Who Disappeared(79)

After Jenna left earlier she’d tried to ask her mum about Derreck and John-Paul but her mother’s mobile rang and she left to answer it. Olivia had sat there, in the freezing cold office, with just her dark thoughts for company. She was going to confront her mother once and for all about the bright lights she saw after the accident. And the one thing she’s always been scared to ask: Were you there?

She wonders if her mother will lie about it. After all, she’s been lying to Olivia her whole life. Ralph told her that. And now there’s this business with John-Paul being her father and the man with the scar, and she suspects her mother’s lying about him going to prison for murder too.

She needs to talk again to Jenna, this time without her mother being there. So that’s why she’s here now, trekking through mud with an aching leg and a heavy heart.

She’s relieved when she sees Jenna’s car in the driveway. Jenna is the only one who has been honest with her. It doesn’t escape her notice that the only person she trusts is a journalist she’s known for a few days. What does that say about her life and the people in it?

Olivia knocks on the door and waits. She hears a dog barking from inside the cabin and she feels a flash of unease. Jenna doesn’t own a dog. When nobody comes to the door she raps on it again with her knuckles. She tries to peer through the bedroom window but the curtains are closed, and then, another bark. Something is wrong. She tries phoning Jenna but it just rings out.

Olivia creeps around to the back and into the small rear garden with the neat patch of lawn freshly turfed. There is a single patio door but the curtains are closed. Why would all Jenna’s curtains be closed during the day? Unless … She blushes at the thought. Is Jenna in there with a man? Maybe Dale? She can see he has a thing for her. Is that why she’s not answering the phone? But that doesn’t explain the dog.

She’s just about to turn away when she spots a man’s ankle through the gap in the curtains: the trouser leg of a navy blue suit and smart black shoes. Whoever it is looks like they’re pacing and, yes, yes, it looks like a dog. A big dog.

‘Olivia?’

She turns at the voice behind her. Her mother is standing in the garden. She must have followed her here. ‘What’s going on?’

Her mother’s face is crinkled with worry. ‘I think he’s lost the plot. He’s been backed into a corner.’ She clutches Olivia’s hand and tries to pull her away from the door. ‘It’s not safe. Please, we need to leave.’

‘What?’ Who is her mother talking about?

‘It’s Jay. He’s lost it.’

Olivia stares at her mother in horror. ‘Jay Knapton? What’s going on? Is he hurting Jenna? Please, Mum. You can’t let this happen.’

Suddenly the patio door is thrust open and Jay is standing there. Her mum drops Olivia’s hand.

‘About time,’ says Jay, coldly, addressing her mother. ‘Why don’t you come in and explain yourself, Stace?’

Stace? Only Maggie ever called her that. Everyone else, including Wesley, shortens her name to Ana.

Olivia watches, frozen to the spot, as her mother steps reluctantly into the cabin. And then she sees Jenna sitting wide-eyed and terrified on the sofa, her arms crossed as though for protection.

Jay turns to her mother with a malevolent look. ‘Do you want to tell them about the night of the accident? Or shall I?’





49



The Night of the Accident


It was late. Way past her bedtime. Stace liked to wait up for Olivia to get home. She was only just eighteen and had never been a particularly outgoing girl. She had only got into drinking and partying in the last few months. She was sure that was Tamzin’s influence. Since Leonie and Griff had split up their only daughter had become even wilder.

Things were never quite the same between her old gang of friends after Thailand. They rallied around her, of course – probably because they felt sorry for her being alone and pregnant, with John-Paul banged up in a Thai prison. But she always felt like she was hiding a part of herself from them.

Or, rather, someone.

Derreck Jason Knapton. Her Jay. The love of her life.

After the night they slept together and John-Paul had beaten him up, Derreck had told her everything: the drugs that were in the ornaments, the business he was in, the real reason he had so much money. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you before,’ he had said, in the bedroom, as she attended to his wounds. ‘I never expected to fall for you in such a big way.’ At least he was being honest with her, she had reasoned. She insisted he tell her everything and he did. He had smuggled drugs for years, mostly cocaine. He didn’t deal it, he said. That had been John-Paul’s role and that was how they had met. He had asked John-Paul to come to Thailand so they could carry on working together – but John-Paul had resisted. Kept changing his mind. The Goa episode had knocked his confidence. So Derreck had tried to persuade him to get into smuggling instead. He’d wanted to use Stace and her friends too, thinking it would be less risky if they each had just the one ornament: a token of their holiday.

Before she’d met Derreck her knowledge of drugs was limited to TV dramas and films. But Derreck made her see it wasn’t necessarily like that, and normal everyday people could make a lot of money from what he called ‘distribution’.