“My father… when we were growing up… he brought sex workers here, to the house. To have sex with them. He called them ‘au pairs’ but me and Jasper knew they weren’t really au pairs. We could hear things.”
“The shackles,” I said. “What were the shackles for?”
“To stop them from running away, I suppose.”
“So, they were prisoners here, these sex workers? Trapped?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, OK? I just know that they were called the au pair girls, that they lived up there and that my father had sex with them. That’s all I know, OK?”
“And what about the girl the police were here asking about? Claire Connolly? Was she anau pairtoo?”
She shook her head forcefully. “She was never here. They’re making that up.”
“It really doesn’t sound like it, Jess. It really sounds like—”
Jessamine flung herself backward again and growled. “Can we stop now, please? My head hurts. You’re making me feel ill.”
“I don’t think it’s me making you feel ill, Jessamine. I think you’ll find that’s the two bottles of wine and quart of rum you drank last night.”
“Fuck off, Stuart. Let me sleep.”
I should have gone—I should have left her. I’d pushed her too faralready. But I was feeling pumped and brave, and I put it to her, the question that had been haunting me for years.
“Who’s Daisy’s dad, Jessamine?”
She was wide awake again. “For fuck’s sake, Stuart. Leave me alone!”
“No. I’m serious. Daisy’s father. Who is he? And don’t tell me that your married ex faked the DNA results. I know he didn’t, and you know he didn’t, and you know that someone out there has to be the actual father of your child, so tell me, who is it? Because frankly, the way I’m feeling right now, the stuff you’ve been telling me, your father raping those women under this roof? I’m starting to think some really weird and twisted things, Jessamine. I mean, your father, did he ever… with you…?”
“I’m sorry, are you suggesting…?”
“I don’tknowwhat I’m suggesting, OK? It’s just… tell me stuff, Jessamine. What happened to your dad? Where is your brother? Who is Daisy’s dad? What happened to those fucking girls, Jessamine? Talk to me. I can’t stay here and help you unless you talk to me. OK? I can’t be here.”
“Oh, there it is,” she snarled. “There it is. That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? Finding an excuse to leave. Finding an excuse to fuck off back to your sad, pathetic life and your sad, ugly women. Go on then, fuck off. See if I care.”
“But you do care. You need me. You can’t live without me.”
“Try me.”
I breathed in hard through my nostrils and clenched my jaw. The same circles, the same endless, endless loops. I couldn’t do this anymore, I really couldn’t.
“Seriously, Jessamine,” I said. “I could go straight to that policewoman, show her this photo, show her what you did to my ear. I could tell her about the neglect, the abuse. I could tell her everything. Social services would take Daisy and the police would be back digging up the back lawn. All of this could happen, Jessamine. But it doesn’t have to. Just tell me, tell me what happened here. Please.”
“I don’t know! I don’t know, OK? Things happened, but I don’t know what they were! I was just a kid. I was just a kid.” And then she was crying, crying so hard it made me hurt to watch. I passed her tissues; I held her in my arms. I waited for the storm to pass through. And when it did, I left her to sleep.
chapter sixty-three
Jane pulls in her breath hard and lets it out slowly. Leg shackles? Sex slaves?
“Did you ask Annie?” she asks Stuart urgently. “About that girl in the photo?”
“Yeah. Of course I did. Brick wall.” Stuart uses his hands to describe a wall falling rapidly from the sky. “Said she couldn’t remember who the girl was. Maintained she was just an au pair girl. The leg shackles were a little trick of Jasper’s, apparently; he’d been practicing on her. And then whoever the girl was, she packed her little rucksack and disappeared back to wherever she came from.”
“But Jessamine told you that her father had been having sex with her?”
“Annie flat-out denied it. Told me that Jessamine was a fantasist, which isn’t entirely inaccurate. Jessamine is a very difficult woman, a very damaged woman, she’s an addict and a liar. But I knew—when she told me what she told me about her dad—I knew she wasn’t lying. And I knew that Annie was. But how the hell was I going to prove it? The word of a booze-addled alcoholic against the word of a silver-tongued sociopath. It was impossible. So I kept on looking.”
“And what did you find?”
