As she walks back up to the tube station, Jane forwards George’s photograph of Daisy Black to Helen Yaxley:
Is this Rose White?
Then she takes the Northern Line from Hampstead to Angel, Islington, and heads back once again toward the Waterside Academy.
It’s too early for the lunchtime rush at the school, so she meanders for a while, drifting in and out of boutiques and interiors shops, touching beautiful things reverently, remembering the days when she had access to rich men’s money and could buy herself anything she wanted. And she did. In both her marital homes (or, in fact, multiple homes) she’d had walk-in wardrobes, special places to store her shoes, drawers full of top-end cosmetics. And was she happy? No, she was not happy. Is she happy now? No, she is not happy now. And she feels very strongly that a nice summer dress, or a vase, or a golden necklace with a solitary turquoise bead might lift her up for a moment, bring her the feeling of fullness and happiness that she craves, but she also knows that it won’t last. So she leaves the shops empty-handed, takes management of her own sense of emptiness, carries on along the way, her bank balance intact.
At midday she positions herself outside the academy and scans the trickle of kids leaving the front gates, looking for anyone who is the right age to have been here when Daisy was. The children in the sixth form wear what is known as “business attire,” which is, Jane has often thought, a very warped concept, suggesting as it does that there is only one mode of attire for work and that it must always involve tailoring, when of course so few people have cause to wear tailoring in the real world these days.
Her phone buzzes as she waits, and she sees that she has a reply from Helen Yaxley to her earlier message asking about the photograph of Daisy.
I think so, says the response,or at least looks very similar. Just different hair and maybe a little lighter.
A mixed group of sixth formers emerges and Jane approaches them. The boys look at her curiously from under their matching haircuts and she gets their attention. “I’m looking for a missing girl,” she says. “I think she went to this school? Can I show you a photo?”
“Sure,” says one of the girls.
Jane turns her phone to the girl, with the photo of Daisy Black on her screen.
The girl squints and the two boys peer over her shoulder.
“Oh,” says one of the boys, “yeah. That’s Daisy Black! Yeah! I remember her. She left like in year eight? Nine? She was in my brother’s year. She was really pretty, I remember that. Really pretty, but also like really, really weird. She didn’t have any friends. I remember my brother, he was, like, scared of her. He said it was like she was possessed by demons or something. Do you remember?” He turns to his companions, and they both nod.
The girl says, “Someone once told me that her mum and dad were brother and sister.”
“What!” Jane claps her hand to her chest.
“No, like, I mean obviously they weren’t, but I just remember someone saying that once. Like, not true. But she was the sort of person that made people make stuff up about her, because she was so…”
“Mysterious?”
“Yeah,” says the girl. “That’s right. Mysterious.”
chapter forty-one
CLAIRE
It was one of those days, one of those perfect days. I felt pretty. I felt on. I felt as if I had the city at my feet. I’m not a Londoner, I’m a northern girl, and it’s taken me a long time to feel as though I belong here. But that day I felt like a native. I did my yoga on the tiny patch of grass outside my Kentish Town apartment that is laughingly called a garden. I made myself a smoothie. No hangover that day as I’d stayed in the night before updating my CV, watching music documentaries, and playing the guitar. The sun was shining. I was shining. I put on jeans and a smock top, a loose denim jacket, and my Converse. I tucked sunglasses into my bag and I walked all the way from my apartment into Soho, my feet instinctively knowing how to get me there without once having to consult my road map.
I went to the guitar shop on Denmark Street where the cute boy worked. I flirted with him in a way I’d normally feel too shy to do, but like I say, I was on that day. Fully. I bought some new strings for my guitar and a purple glitter plectrum. The cute boy put them in a paper bag for me that he folded neatly at the top before passing it to me with a smile.
I walked home and changed out of my jeans and into my favorite Top Shop dress. The temperature was rising, and I wanted to be in something loose, something that let the air circulate.
My friends texted me to tell me they were meeting up for drinks in Hampstead. I replied that I would join them there later. I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted the day to sweep me along in its perfect arc. I’ve always been what I call spontaneous but what my friends and family might refer to as “Claire doing a no-show.” I like to keep my options open, my phone at home—sometimes I like to disappear.
I made my bed so that it would be all nice and fresh for me when I returned, and I lifted the window just a crack, enough to keep it aired during the day, but not enough to allow some murderous monster to get in and hide under my bed awaiting my return.
And then I walked to Hampstead.
The Heath fascinated me. How, I always wondered, did this exist? In the middle of a city? How could I feel that I was cut off from the world, miles from anywhere, nothing around but rustling treetops and dusty paths, when I was a ten-minute walk from a tube station? I stopped that day at the point on the Heath where the shiny silver towers and spires of the City suddenly loom into view on the horizon and I caught my breath. It’s miraculous, I thought. London is miraculous.
And then as I passed the edges of the Vale of Health, I heard the sound of a cat crying.
I followed the pathetic noise to the fence at the back of someone’s property. I crouched down in the tangled undergrowth to pull away some weeds, and there was a beautiful gray cat, its collar caught on a spiny branch, its body contorted into an uncomfortable position. I put down my bag and tried to free the cat, but it fought and struggled. And then I heard voices floating dreamily over the top of the fence. It sounded like a group of people conversing sociably; a party maybe? I called out: “Excuse me? Hello? Excuse me?”
A man’s voice responded.
chapter forty-two
