Where the Missing Go(40)

19


I spend the afternoon inside, with the study blind drawn against the sun, trying once more to get into the email account from Sophie’s diary. I’m optimistic at first. Surely inspiration will strike, it can’t be that hard.

But I still can’t do it, locked in a cycle of getting the answer to her security question wrong and freezing the account. After that, I focus on trying different passwords, typing in different variations of her ‘loopysophie’ password, before starting to randomly type in words that she might have chosen instead. Amberton, for her school. Charlotte, her middle name. Lilac, her favourite colour. What bands did she like? Pop stars? I start typing in names, and then names with numbers – 2000, for the year she was born. 99, just because. Eventually I break, my eyes gritty and tired.

I will sleep on it. And then if I can’t get into it, I will tell the police.

I groan, my head in my hands. I can just imagine Nicholls, polite as ever: ‘And what exactly do you think it means if a teenage girl has more than one email address, Mrs Harlow?’

He’ll think I’m looking for a way out. That I just can’t accept that Sophie went through all this alone. That she would rather run away than confide in me. Which is true, I suppose. I can’t.

I’ll sleep on it, I tell myself. And then I’ll decide.

I’m winding down for the night, pottering about the kitchen and wiping down surfaces that are already clean – there’s less mess with everyone gone – when the phone rings. I consider letting it ring out.

‘Who the hell’s this?’ I mutter to the cat. Charlotte and I used to say this to each other if anyone rang after dinner, parroting our favourite Peter Kay sketch. I check the oven clock: 9.35p.m. Even by my family’s standards, I’m keeping old lady hours. I reach for the phone.

‘Hello?’

For a heartbeat, the faint crackle on the line catches at me, casting me back to the other night, at the charity …

‘Mrs Harlow?’ The woman’s voice is soft, American vowels. I relax, a little. It’s not Sophie again.

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘It’s Olivia Marnell. I got your message, about the house.’ It still takes me a second to place her, then I do. Not American, Canadian. ‘I used to be Olivia Corrigan.’

She’s very polite, apologetic even. I’ve explained who I am, and talked – tactfully at first – about the state of Parklands. I got the impression she doesn’t realise in quite how bad a state it is. Eventually I tell her more bluntly: it’s been pretty much derelict now, at least since I’ve moved in. The trees are so big they could be undermining the houses around it, let alone hers.

Finally she gets it. ‘Oh dear.’ She sighs. ‘I do apologise. My parents – they didn’t want to deal with it, really. For personal reasons. And now it’s fallen to me, there’s been a surprising amount to take care of this end, in terms of arrangements, after my mother died.’ She sounds tired. ‘But I’m going to get on top of the house now. I’m going to decide what to do with it, in terms of selling or getting it redeveloped. It shouldn’t go to ruin.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It could be a beautiful property again.’ How can I bring it up? I decide honesty is the best policy. ‘I can understand it must have been hard for your parents, though, if they were getting older. I heard’ – I pause delicately – ‘I understand there was a family tragedy. In the past.’

There’s silence on the line.

‘Sorry,’ I say hastily. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘No, that’s OK,’ she says slowly. ‘I’m just not used to talking about it. My husband, my kids – they never knew my sister. And after we lost my dad, then Mom – well, nobody really knows.’

‘So – what happened? I read that she ran away.’

‘Yes,’ she says simply. ‘That’s right.’

‘And after that you didn’t ever hear from her?’

‘No. We never heard from her,’ she echoes.

I’m shocked, somehow. For some reason I thought that there’d have been some sign, at least, some phone call or … I don’t know, something they hadn’t mentioned in the papers. ‘But people don’t just vanish, not now …’ I stop myself from saying anything else clumsy.

‘I’m afraid they do. It was a different time then, too, no Facebook, nothing.’

‘Even so,’ I protest, feeling irritated. How can this woman sound so … resigned to it all? Suddenly, I realise that I was hoping to hear what I wanted to hear: Nancy had come back.

‘What was Nancy like?’ I ask. ‘If you don’t mind.’ I just want to keep her on the line.

‘What was she like?’ She sighs again. ‘She was clever. She did well in school. She liked horses – she had a pony, Blossom, that she loved.’ She laughs. ‘He was vicious. He was sold, afterwards.’

‘But what was she like to you?’

‘To me? I don’t know. She was my big sister. There were six years between us, so I looked up to her. She used to tease me sometimes, and I’d cry. But she’d braid my hair, sometimes, and let me play with her make-up. And she could make me laugh like no one else ever has.’