The Other People: A Novel(58)

Gabe swallowed. “Go on.”

“So, yes, I went to the park. You know the one?”

Gabe knew. They had taken Izzy to that park on their sporadic visits to “Nan and Grandad.”

“I sat down on the bench and waited. I hadn’t been there long when the mobile started to ring. I answered it. A woman’s voice said: ‘Look toward the swings.’

“I turned. And she was there—Izzy—standing with a woman in the playground. The woman told me if I wanted to see Izzy again, I needed to do exactly what she said. She would call again in one hour with instructions.”

“And you let them walk away?”

“I was hardly going to give chase. At almost eighty? And I was in shock. Izzy was alive. It was impossible, a miracle.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I walked home and told Evelyn. I thought she’d say that I was going mad or demand that I call the police, but she didn’t. She took my hand and said: ‘We must do whatever she says. Anything to get our granddaughter back.’?”

“Like drugging me, stopping me seeing the body, lying at the identification?”

“The woman told us the only way to protect Izzy was to make sure everyone believed she was dead.”

Gabe stared at him. Something else fell into place with a sickening thud.

“It was her daughter, wasn’t it? The little girl who died? The little girl you identified?”

Harry nodded, face slack.

“Why the hell didn’t she go to the police?!”

“She couldn’t. She said she had made a mistake. Become involved in something beyond her control. She had tried to save Jenny and Izzy, and it had cost her daughter’s life.”

Gabe tried to imagine how terrified someone would have to be to abandon their own daughter’s body, to let her be buried in another little girl’s grave. Terrified, or some kind of psychopath.

“How did she even find you?”

“I presume Izzy must have told her where we lived.”

Perhaps because the woman told Izzy she was taking her back to her family, Gabe thought. He tried to force the anger down.

“What else did this woman say?”

“That what happened was retribution for something terrible you had done. She said that the people responsible would never stop if they knew Izzy was still alive. Because they always settled their debts.”

“Did she say who ‘they’ were?”

“She called them ‘the Other People.’?”

Gabe felt his spine bristle with ice.

“You believed her?”

“I’m not sure what we believed. We just wanted our granddaughter back. The woman promised that if we did this, when it was safe, she would bring Izzy to us, we could take her away somewhere. Just the three of us.”

“Just the three of you?”

“It was what Jenny would have wanted.”

“How the hell do you know what Jenny would have wanted?”

“I know she wanted a divorce. She told Evelyn.”

Gabe stared at him, stunned. Divorce. The word had hovered in the air between them sometimes, almost spoken but never quite given form, for fear that if it were to materialize, it might turn into reality.

He knew they had come close. It was getting harder and harder to hide his missing Mondays from Jenny. His agency was flexible about hours. It was a creative industry and they were happy for Gabe to work remotely a couple of days a week. But there were still times when Jenny had caught him out, calling his office, only to be told he was working from home.

“Are you having an affair?” she had asked him bluntly one evening. He had denied it, furiously, fervently and—thank God—she had seen the truth in his eyes. But she knew he was lying about something. Ultimately, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t an affair. It was his lack of honesty, the lack of trust that was driving an insurmountable wedge between them.

But he’d had no idea that Jenny had told Evelyn. The woman she once described as “about as maternal as Maleficent.”

He shook his head. “She never said anything to me.”

“She wanted to get away from you.” Harry snarled. “If only she had done it sooner, then maybe she would still be alive.”

Gabe wanted to argue, to deny it. But he couldn’t. It was true. If only she had left. If only she had hated him more.

“So, why isn’t Izzy with you right now?”

Harry’s lips thinned.

“Let me guess,” Gabe said bitterly. “It was never safe enough. It was always next week or month or year.”

“It was your fault. You couldn’t let it go. You couldn’t stop searching, stirring things up, looking for the damn car. You ruined it all.”

“Why the hell didn’t you go to the police?”

“We were scared. We thought, if we did, we might never see Izzy again.”

“How do you even know that Izzy is still alive? This woman—this nameless woman—could have been lying to you all along.”

Harry hesitated. His eyes staggered around as if looking for somewhere safe to settle. “Every three months we would receive a photo or a video. So we knew that Izzy was safe, looked after.”

“You have the phone? The one she gave you?”