Where the Missing Go(80)

‘And it worked better than I could have hoped. The police just thought it was you making the calls. Kate was cracking up again.’ He’s pleased with himself, I can hear it in his voice. Proud.

But his boast tells me something: he’s not infallible. Because he had to change his plan, react to what I was doing. Something small opens up in me. Not hope, not yet; just a glimmer of possibility.

‘So maybe you did cover that up, and they believed you. But you can’t just keep going. You had to do the diary too, didn’t you – get Sophie to write those new entries, once I knew about the pregnancy test. To explain that away and put the blame on her boyfriend. You had to keep covering up your tracks. And I was asking about Lily’s medicine too, they know at the surgery that you’re giving her medicine and you’re related—’

‘I can explain it,’ he says, angry now. ‘They’ll believe me.’ He opens his eyes wide, innocent.

And then I see it: something in the way his blue eyes are placed in that pleasant face.

‘You’re Lily’s son. That’s why you were there, that’s how you knew Nancy. Living in the shadow of the big house that your parents looked after.’

‘No,’ he says, irritated. I wait. ‘Bob was my stepfather. She remarried after my father died.’

‘And you didn’t take his name. So you kept that quiet. What, did you not like to mention it at school, what your parents did?’ I’m guessing, but his mouth tenses. ‘And what about this, now?’ I fill my voice with as much conviction as I can muster. ‘You know this is the end for you. They won’t believe it.’

‘Oh, they’ll believe it.’ He laughs. ‘You’ll be surprised what people will believe.’

He’s so assured, he’s not even worried.

Yes, I think, because you’ve done this before.

Sophie, a runaway who wasn’t a runaway. Now me, a suicide that isn’t a suicide. And—

‘Nancy,’ I say. ‘She didn’t run away either, did she?’ He doesn’t reply. ‘So what did happen? Did you do the same as with Sophie, trick her, hide her somewhere?’ I’m throwing words at him, trying to get him off balance; to get under his skin. The door behind him, it’d be what; eight, nine steps? ‘And then what? Did you get bored of her, decide to get rid of her? To murder her—’

‘No!’ His voice is loud. ‘Shut up.’ His top lip is glistening now, he’s sweating despite the chill. ‘Nancy was an accident. It was her fault – it was all her fault.’

‘How? Because she got pregnant? With Jay’s baby? Is that why you did it? Because the girl you wanted was with someone else. That’s it, isn’t it. She was pregnant with his baby.’

‘It wasn’t his,’ he bursts out.

I stay silent.

‘It was ours. They’d broken up. I comforted her. She didn’t want anyone to know. I understood: we were … different.’ I can imagine: the housekeepers’ boy, still no one you’d notice; Nancy, a teenage princess. Him infatuated, totally. ‘And then she got pregnant. She was so upset, but I knew what to do. We were going to go away, until we were older, until her family couldn’t bully her.’ His mouth twists. ‘We’d even written our notes, decided what we’d say. But she let me down.’ There’s a whining note in his voice now.

‘That night, when we’d planned to go, she came to me. She told me it was fine.’ His voice breaks on the word. ‘She wasn’t pregnant any more, because she’d told her parents. They’d sorted it, that’s what she told me, and now she was going away. It was going to be smoothed over, like nothing had happened.’

‘She was going to boarding school.’ Just like Lily told me.

‘She didn’t even mind. She said she wanted a fresh start. I said, we could still go. We could still be a family. I’d always wanted that. She said it was madness, she was far too young to have a baby. I got angry, I called her – names. And she said she never wanted to be with me, not really. Look at you, she said. Look at me. And then she – she laughed at me.’

The room is very still. I can smell the damp earth.

‘So you lost control,’ I say slowly. I see it now. Not planned. Opportunistic. A teenage boy rejected, reacting in blind fury. ‘What did you do? Did you stab her? Did you hide her?’ Suddenly, rage is filling me; I want to hurt him, like he’s hurt so many people. ‘Is that it? You stabbed her?’

The knife in his hand flashes again, and I shrink back against the wall.

‘She provoked me.’

‘But then why did she leave a runaway note …’ I can see the answer in the sly curve of his mouth: just the hint of a smile. ‘No, you left the note.’ He went into Parklands, into Nancy’s house, and left the note she’d written on her bedspread. That’s what they found, when everyone woke up the next day. ‘But Sophie? Why did you have to do this to her, too?’ There’s despair in my voice. ‘Just to hurt someone?’

‘No. No, this is why I knew people would never understand. It wasn’t to hurt – it was love. When I saw her, I knew. They could have been sisters. She even lived next door to Nancy’s house.’ His voice softens. ‘It was like it was meant to be; my second chance. Our chance – to repair the past.’