Then She Vanishes(93)

She was sure she heard Deirdre reply, ‘There is no party, darling. It’s just us.’ And in that moment she knew she had made a huge mistake in trusting them. She wanted to scream, to put up a struggle. She longed to be at home with her mum and Uncle Leo and Heather, huddled on the sofa with Goldie on their laps. But her body felt too heavy, her mind fuzzy.

And this time she was unable to prevent her eyelids from closing.





50




Margot


Tears stain Heather’s face and Margot thinks her daughter looks young and vulnerable in the huge hospital bed, her legs drawn up so that she’s hugging her knees under the covers. ‘I never gave up hope that she was alive somewhere,’ she says.

Gary Ruthgow is perched on a chair on the other side of the bed to Margot. She was surprised when the hospital staff allowed him to talk to Heather at this time of night. But Heather had readily agreed, hungry for any news of Flora. Margot has a pager in her hand, given to her by Flora’s doctor, who promised to let her know if there is any news on her elder daughter.

Margot stays silent as she holds Heather’s hand for reassurance. After all these years she’s finally going to learn the truth.

It was the ring that did it.

‘I’d been cleaning Deirdre’s caravan when I saw it,’ explains Heather. ‘It was nestled among Deirdre’s cheap costume jewellery. I picked it up and compared it to my own – it was exactly the same. And I knew, then, that it was Flora’s. So I took it. It wasn’t until she checked out the next day that I had the courage to ring her up at home – she’d left her number when she made the booking so I knew where to reach her. It was a Bristol number. I know now it was the Southville address.

‘She’d been affronted on the phone when I asked her about the ring, accusing me of stealing. Her defensiveness caused alarm bells to ring. She eventually admitted she’d bought it from a charity shop but I didn’t believe her. The ring – coupled with the dog – made me suspicious. I don’t even know exactly what I thought her involvement was then, just that she must have known something about Flora’s disappearance. And it was the way she acted around me too. There was something odd about her. While she was staying she’d been too interested in the caravan park. And in me. She stared at me a lot. I don’t know, in retrospect I wondered if, on some level, she wanted me to find out.’

‘Deirdre had cancer,’ says Ruthgow, matter-of-factly. ‘It was terminal. So maybe she was trying to find some kind of redemption.’

Heather shrugs. ‘I couldn’t get it out of my head. The dog. The ring. So I did a bit of my own detective work.’

‘Why didn’t you come to the police?’

‘I didn’t have any evidence. I didn’t even know what I thought had happened at that point.’

‘Did you tell anyone about the ring?’

Heather sighs and blinks. ‘I told Adam. But I’ll get back to that.

‘After I found the ring but before Deirdre checked out, I asked her if she had any children. She said she had two, Clive and Norman. Her eyes shone when she spoke about them. I asked her if one of them dated a woman in the early 1990s with a son called Dylan. I didn’t say anything about Flora going missing. She pretended to think about it before answering that, yes, one of her sons had dated a woman with a son called Dylan. And then I just knew. I knew that one of her sons knew more about what had happened to Flora.

‘So I found out where Deirdre was living – this was a few weeks before she moved to Tilby so she was living with Clive in Southville still. In one of the windows hung a West Ham flag and the house was a bit grotty. And I stalked them. I watched when they left, saw who they spoke to. Clive went out mostly in the evenings. I asked around but a lot of people were scared of him. He had some dodgy connections. One thing became evident, though. He was a drug-dealer with a perversion for under-age girls.’

Margot stares at her daughter, horrified. ‘Do you mean that Clive and Flora were … together? That she knowingly ran off with him?’

Heather looks appalled. ‘No. God, no. Mum, I’m sorry, I wish it had been that. But it’s a lot worse.’

Margot’s head is pounding and bile rises up in her throat. All her worst hideous visions, the ones she tried not to think about but that came late at night when she was alone in bed, burrowing through to her brain, like a determined rat, flooded her thoughts. Visions of Flora being raped, murdered, tortured. Suffering. In pain. Screaming for her to rescue her. She puts her hands over her ears and shuts her eyes to get rid of the images. A moan escapes her lips.

‘Mum …’ Heather squeezes her hand. ‘I’m so sorry …’

‘Please … go on.’ Margot senses Ruthgow’s gaze on her but she avoids looking at him.

‘So, for the next few weeks I hung around their street in Southville when I could. I saw Clive help Deirdre move to her cottage in Tilby and took that opportunity to knock on their Southville neighbours’ doors and ask questions. They said they’d seen Clive out and about very occasionally with a dark-haired girl younger than him. And, no, they didn’t know her name. I became convinced it was Flora. I thought maybe she’d run off with him, but it didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t have contacted us to let us know she was okay.