I Am Watching You(53)
Barbara now gets up and moves over to sit alongside Jenny to comfort her. She is stroking her hair and turning to Henry with a pleading expression.
‘It’s probably best I go, Jenny.’ Tim is feeling in his pocket for his keys.
‘No, Tim.’ Barbara reaches out for his arm. ‘Jenny wants you to stay.’
‘No. I’m sorry, Mr Ballard is right.’ Tim’s voice is shaking and he is looking at Henry. ‘I should have been there. It’s why I got mad at Sarah that time. Trying to pass the buck.’
‘Oh my God – Sarah.’ Jenny is suddenly taking her phone from her pocket, flipping between channels with her other hand, desperate for new information. ‘Has anyone been in touch with Sarah? This could tip her right over the edge again.’
CHAPTER 33
THE FRIEND
When she was small, Sarah was terribly afraid of the dark. She watched a film once in which an intruder hid under the bed. After that, she begged her mother to swap her bed with its creaky iron frame for a divan. No space underneath. But the bed was never changed and the young Sarah would lift the overhanging duvet every single night to check the shadows beneath.
She shared a room with Lily back then, and would often wake in the middle of the night, terrified after a bad dream. Sarah seemed to have the ability to recreate scary films scene for vivid scene, recasting herself in the role of star victim. No matter that she knew it could not be real; it felt real. But Lily could not sleep with the light on, and so there was a terrible stalemate. Sarah would whisper in the darkness, begging to have the lamp on. When a grunt said no way, she would next ask to be allowed to share Lily’s bed. Please, Lily. But even when her groggy sister finally gave in, Sarah would find that she was too afraid to put her feet on the floor in the darkness, in case an arm stretched out from under the bed.
‘Do you remember when you put a chair between our beds at night so that I could get across to yours from mine after a bad dream without touching the floor?’ Sarah is looking at her sister, now older and so much skinnier and frailer. It feels as if the tables have turned somehow, and she is supposed to be the stronger one . . .
‘Yeah. You were a right pain.’ Lily smooths her skirt and smiles.
‘Was that before the really bad stuff started?’
‘Yeah. It was when I got my own room.’ Lily looks away to the window for a time and they sit in silence.
Sarah is thinking of the horrible paradox: how pleased she was to have her own room when they moved, so she could keep a little night light on, and how horrified she is now to realise the consequence of that for Lily.
She looks at her sister and thinks of their father . . .
Sarah’s phone vibrates on the table. She is worried it may be a message from the police.
‘It’ll be Mum again. Ignore it, Sarah.’
But it buzzes again. And again . . . and again.
Sarah picks up the phone, intending to switch it off completely, but the messages are not from their mother. All from different friends.
Put on the TV . . .
Have u seen the news . . .
Are you OK? . . .
OMG! Ring me . . .
‘We need to put the news on.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ As Sarah waits while Lily reaches to the lower shelf of the coffee table for the remote, she is thinking that maybe their mother has upped the ante, made things worse? That maybe she has convinced the police that Sarah is really missing and they are running some kind of appeal? But as Lily finds a rolling news channel, the picture on-screen is not of her.
Anna. There she is again. The picture from her Facebook page, standing in front of St Michael’s Mount, her beautiful blonde hair blown back in the wind.
‘Police have now confirmed that the armed man inside the flats is wanted in connection with the disappearance a year ago of teenager Anna Ballard,’ a reporter says.
‘Dear God, what’s going on?’ Lily keeps the remote in her hand, leaning forward.
‘I feel a bit sick.’ There is the taste of coffee back in Sarah’s mouth. Unpleasant now. Bile, too.
‘You want something? A bowl?’
Not enough time. Sarah glances about and sees a waste-paper bin by the side of the sofa. She grabs it just in time, retching. Once. Twice. Not real sickness, just fluid. Retching over and over.
‘I’ll get water.’ Lily is gone, presumably to the kitchen.
Sarah keeps the basket on her lap and holds her breath, wondering if they are going to say that Anna’s body has been found. That she really is dead . . .
But no. There is a witness who says she has seen a young blonde woman. It makes no sense. They do not confirm that it is Anna, just hint.
Sarah changes channels, and each one seems to have a slightly different version. One witness is sure he heard five gunshots. Another says two. The ticker tape of headlines says there are no confirmed casualties but a large area is still fully sealed off.
Sarah checks her phone again to read the messages, in case one of her friends has more information. Facebook is going mad. Twitter, too.
She searches for Jenny’s number in her phone – the Ballards will surely know the most – but as her finger hovers over the button to ring, she changes her mind and skims again through Facebook.
Lily is now back, with iced water. Drink this.