The Silent Ones: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller(61)

‘What are you smiling at?’ Lizzie said shortly, and Dana realised she’d let the thought of settling down with Lizzie affect her expression.

‘Oh nothing, just this and that,’ she said. ‘Another gin?’

‘No thanks.’ Lizzie stood up. ‘In fact I’ve decided I ought to go home after all. I said I’d babysit for a friend who’s stuck for help. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

And two minutes later she was gone, leaving Dana berating herself, although she wasn’t sure exactly what it was she’d done wrong.

What was it with her and relationships?





Forty-Five





Juliet





Both Tom and Beth have warned me against looking at my work emails.

‘I’ll handle everything,’ Beth assured me when I gave her the passwords to the business sales and client accounts. ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to give it any more thought. Maddy is your only priority right now.’

She’s right, I know it. But with the rest of my life in tatters, the temptation to dip in to see what is happening with the business proves too much to fight.

After five seconds of glancing down the email inbox, I wish I could un-see some of the subject lines.

Order cancellation

Retraction of contract

Please remove us from your communications

When I see the subject line of an email from Van Dyke’s, I lean against the wall to keep my legs from buckling.

Contract UK4167915: cancellation clause activation

This is the contract we’ve already spent thousands on, commissioning our garment suppliers to make the clothing. The contract Tom and I remortgaged our house to fulfil.

I’d hoped – I’d really hoped – that because so much of our business is done online via the website, it might just be possible to recover from the fire.

Our existing stock has been destroyed, but we’ve had an unbelievable stroke of luck because the Van Dyke clothing order has not yet been delivered and so wasn’t in the lock-up when it was burned out.

Despite all this, it seems that lots of our clients have somehow heard about our involvement in the investigation into Bessie Wilford’s death, and I’m not sure how that can be.

Yes, we do a great deal of business in the local area and it’s highly possible that word has reached those customers. But the bigger contracts are with companies much further afield, some of them in Europe.

None of the newspaper reports I’ve seen so far have flagged InsideOut4Kids as being our business. Have I underestimated the power of the Internet… or could there something more sinister at play here?

Beth hasn’t informed me about any of these worrying emails, which have all been opened. I know she’s screening stuff she thinks I’m going to find upsetting, but it’s made me feel even worse discovering it like this. And I can’t just forget it.

Instead of turning off my phone like I know I should do, I open Safari and go to my list of bookmarks for websites that are important to our reputation. A lot of these are review sites like Trustpilot, where customers can leave testimonials about how they found our service and the quality of the products.

New companies we approach, who don’t know our outstanding reputation, often refer to review sites to give them the overview on how we treat our customers and judge whether orders are promptly fulfilled.

I tap the business name into the search bar and immediately see that our rating has suffered a catastrophic plunge from 4.6 to 2.9 in less than two days. When I click on the link, I count eight one-star reviews in the most recent posts. One star is the lowest rating it’s possible to give.

The anonymous reviews all start with a scathing opinion on our clothes, and then mention Bessie Wilford’s death complete with links to news articles. If the same person has posted all of them – and the reviews do look suspiciously similar – it’s someone who knows how important positive feedback is to us.

Chloe’s face flashes in my mind again, her distant, evasive behaviour the last couple of months: having the odd day or two off, forgetting to renew the insurance policy.

What would she gain by ruining me?

Then I catch myself. We may have our differences but we are sisters. The business provides Chloe with a living too.

I pick up my phone and call Beth. She answers on the second ring and I blurt everything out to her.

‘So despite promising to leave the business stuff to me, you went and had a good look anyway?’ She sighs. ‘Juliet, I know it looks bad, and it is bad. But even something as terrible as what happened to Bessie Wilford will be fish and chip paper soon. You just have to give it time to blow over. Trust me.’

‘But it’s worse now, Beth. Maddy has confessed to hurting Bessie and they’re interviewing the two of them again. If she doesn’t speak up and tell them everything, they could well charge her.’

‘Surely they wouldn’t charge her with such scant details? The truth has got to come out soon and I can’t believe either of the girls did anything wrong.’

Something closes in my throat like a fist. I take a breath and swallow down the wave of nausea spreading rapidly through my chest.

‘She’s going to get the blame for it, Beth. I just know it.’

‘That’s ridiculous! She’s a child, for goodness’ sake. She didn’t do it… Maddy can’t have done something like that.’