I Am Watching You(3)

But he is out and hasn’t taken his mobile, being one of the few who still thinks they give you brain cancer, and so I speak instead to Luke and find that it calms me to hear him describe supper – a tagine from a recipe he downloaded on a new app. He loves to cook, my Luke, and I am teasing him about the state of the kitchen, betting he has used every appliance and pan on the property.

Then it is the morning in the hotel.

I so hate this sensation – that out-of-body numbness born of air conditioning, a foreign bed and lack of discipline over the minibar. My hotel treat – a brandy or two after a long day.

It is barely six thirty and I long for more sleep. Ten futile minutes and I give up, eyeing the sachets of sadness in the little bowl alongside the kettle. I always do this in hotel rooms. Kid myself that I will drink instant coffee just this once, only to pour it down the bathroom sink.

I stare at the line of empty miniatures, wincing as a terrible thought flutters into the room. I glance at the phone by the bed and feel a punch of dread, the familiar frisson of fear that I have done something embarrassing, something I am going to regret.

I turn back to the row of bottles and remember that after the second brandy last night, I decided to phone directory enquiries to track down the girls’ parents. I go cold momentarily at the thought of this, my memory still hazy. Did you actually ring? Think, Ella, think.

I stare again at the phone and concentrate hard. Ah, yes. I am remembering now, my shoulders relaxing as I finally see it. I was holding the phone and then at the very point of dialling, I realised that I wasn’t thinking straight, and not just because of the brandy. My motivation was skewed. I wanted to phone not because I was worried for the girls, but as a punishment, because I was angry at how Sarah had made me feel.

And so I did the sensible thing. I put the phone back down, I turned out the light and I went to sleep.

Good. This is very good. The relief now so overwhelming that I decide by way of celebration that I will try the instant coffee after all.

I flick on the kettle first and then the television. And that is when it comes. The single moment – suspended at first and then stretching, stretching, beyond this room, beyond this city. The moment in time in which I realise my life is never going to be the same again.

Not ever.

The sound is muted from the late-night film I watched with the subtitles on to spare disturbing the guests next door.

But the picture is unmistakable. Beautiful. A photograph from her Facebook page. Her green eyes glowing and her blonde hair cascading down her back. She is at the beach; I recognise St Michael’s Mount behind her.

And somehow my body has zoomed backwards – through the pillow and the bedstead and the wall – until I am watching the screen from much further away. This screen that is scrolling putrid, awful words: Missing . . . Anna . . . Missing . . . Anna . . . The kettle screaming angry clouds onto the mirror while I am planning the calls in my head all at once.

A black and terrible jumble of excuses. None of them good enough.

To the police. To Tony.

You have to understand that I was going to phone . . .





CHAPTER 2


THE FATHER

Henry Ballard sits in the conservatory, trying very hard to ignore the clattering in the kitchen.

He knows that he should go to his wife – to help her, to console her – but he knows also that it will make no difference and so is putting it off. The truth? He wants just a little longer like this, looking out on the lawn. In this strange space, this addition to the house that has never really worked – always too hot or too cold, despite all the blinds and the big dust-magnet fan they had installed at ridiculous expense – he has managed somehow to drift into a state of semi-consciousness, a place in which his mind can roam beyond his body, beyond time, out into the garden where this very minute, in the early morning light, he is listening to them whispering in their den in the bushes. Anna and Jenny.

It was their favourite place for a year, maybe two, when they were into that hideous pink phase. Pink duvets. Pink Barbies. Pink tent bought from some catalogue and filled with all manner of girly paraphernalia. He had always refused to go near the thing. Now he wanted more than anything in the world to forget the milking and the hay, the VAT forms and the bank, and to float out there and make a little fire to cook sausages for their breakfast. Proper camping, like he promised to do so many times, but never did.

Now an almighty crash from the kitchen brings him back inside. She is picking up tins from the floor – a collection of bun and baking cases in all manner of sizes and shapes.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘Plum slices.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Barbara.’

Anna’s favourite. A sort of flapjack with spiced stewed plums through the middle. He can smell the cinnamon: the spice jar is tipped over on the kitchen surface, the pungent spill a neat tiny hill.

Oh, Barbara.

He watches her picking up all the tins, her hands trembling, and simply cannot bear it.

And so, instead of helping and trying to be in any way kind or even decent, he goes into his study and sits by the phone so that five, maybe ten minutes later, he is the first to see the police car pull up again on the drive outside.

Something terrible wrenches in his stomach then, and he actually thinks for a moment of barricading the door – a ridiculous image of all the hallway furniture piled up high so that they cannot come in. There are two of them this time. A man and a woman. The man in a suit and the woman in uniform.