Janes pauses for a moment and then says, “I’ve been in your house. Thornwood. I’ve been there.”
Stuart throws her a questioning look.
“About twenty-five years ago. I was picked up in Soho by a man who I now know to be Allen Black. He was very charming, very attentive, very handsome. We had a few drinks and then he brought me to his house to talk about a potential ‘job.’?” She makes quotes with her fingers and sighs. “Anyway. We got there, to Thornwood, and I knew immediately that I’d made a mistake, that there was something horribly off. His wife was there, and I could tell she did not want me in her house. Allen made me a drink and as he passed it to me there was a bang and a scream from upstairs that made me jump and I accidentally knocked the drink from Allen’s hand. The atmosphere turned really weird then and when I looked at him, in that moment I just knew, without a shadow of doubt, that that drink had been meant to knock me out. I made my excuses and I left and ever since then I felt like that was one of my nine lives, you know? We all have them. Especially when we’re young. I always felt that I had dodged something that night. Something terrible. So you can imagine how it makes me feel to know that a young woman not that much younger than I was then went missing outside that house only five years later.”
There is a taut silence when Jane finishes talking; then Stuart looks ather with pain in his eyes and says, “Fuck.” And then he says, “All I know is that after the DI and her team left, I felt really unsettled. I knew that they’d missed something. So I started looking. Every night when Jessamine, Annie, and Daisy were sleeping, I’d come down. I went through everything. I knew that Annie must have hidden something that day before the cops arrived. I stayed up late into the night. And then, yeah, finally, I found something.”
“What was it?”
“It was a photo. Of a girl.”
chapter sixty-two
STUART, SIX YEARS EARLIER
On the third day of searching the house I found an empty packet of photos. I was about to return it to the drawer in the laundry room where I’d found it but then I noticed three strips of negatives tucked into its front pocket. I held them to the light but could barely make out what I was looking at, so I took them to Snappy Snaps in the village, the one that George Michael once drove his car into when he was off his face on skunk, and I paid for the one-hour service.
I leafed through the photos frantically after I returned to collect them, but most of the shots were blurred or damaged; they looked like they’d been taken with a cheap disposable camera maybe. I was about to throw the whole lot away when I stopped. I didn’t recognize the girl, but I recognized the setting. It was the room in which Jessamine had kept me locked up for four days after trying to cut off my ear.
The au pair’s room.
The girl had short dark hair parted to the side and was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and next to her was a young Jasper, wearing jeans too, and a white T-shirt with a Stephen King book jacket printed on it. His hair was floppy, and he looked gawky and nervous, with one skinny arm around the girl’s shoulders. The girl herselflooked shell-shocked, slightly blank. There were some objects strewn around the room that were hard to identify but looked like clothing, a hairbrush, some books. But there was something else on the floor, just between the girl’s legs. At first I thought it might be a fancy pair of sandals, with wide ankle straps, but when I took a photo of it on my smartphone and enlarged it with my fingers, I saw it.
It wasn’t a pair of strappy shoes.
It was a pair of metal leg restraints.
Fury and rage surged through me.
I ran upstairs to Jessamine’s bedroom and shook her awake. Her hair was stuck to her mouth with drool, and she pulled it away with the back of her hand. “Go away,” she said. “It’s early.”
“It’s not early,” I say. “It’s ten thirty. Open your eyes, Jess. Open them.” I shook her roughly.
“Fuck off, Stuart.”
“No, I’m not going to fuck off. I want you to look at something, look at it now.”
“Jesus.” She pulled herself up to sitting and tugged her T-shirt down over her bare belly. “What?”
I showed her the photo. “Who is this?” I hissed. “Who the fuck is it?”
She screwed up her face and snatched the photo from me. “It’s Jasper.”
“No.” I snatched it back and stabbed my finger against the girl. “Her. The girl. Who is she?”
She groaned and fell back against her pillows. “Oh my God, I have no idea. One of the au pairs, I suppose. How am I supposed to remember?”
“Jess,” I said, prodding her back to consciousness, “look. Just fucking look.”
She groaned loudly again and flounced forward.
“Look at her ankles, Jess. She’s wearing fucking shackles. Metal ones.Look!” My heart raced and pounded under my ribs; adrenaline flowed through every part of me. “What the fuck, Jessamine! What the actual fuck! Jessamine, listen to me. I know you know. I know you know and I know you probably don’t want to think about it, but you have to tell me what happened. Back then. When you were young. What did your father do, Jessamine? What the fuck did he do?”
I saw her demeanor change then, a crack in her armor. She pulled her ratty hair away from her face and sighed tremulously.
“OK,” she said. “OK. But please don’t tell my mother I told you this. OK?”
I nodded.
