This, I realized, must be Jasper. The mysterious missing brother. The one who ran away to join the circus. I’d never seen a photo of him before. I stared deeply at him, trying to absorb him, the shape of him, the feel of him, the particular curve of his eyebrows, the size of his hands, every bit ofhim. Could he be, I wondered, the missing link? The piece of the puzzle that would lead me to the truth about Claire Connolly. He was there, I thought. He was there when Claire Connolly stumbled into our home. He knows what happened. Maybe he’ll tell me.
Maybe he’ll tell me that Claire Connolly was my mother.
chapter seventy
I found a little studio for rent just outside the village. The lady who owned it was really nice and told me I could give her a cash deposit when I got there and pay the rest later. She said because it was so last-minute there was no need for her to put it on the system. “We’ll just work it out as we go along,” she said when I told her I didn’t know exactly how long I’d be staying. “And we’re dog friendly too if you wanted to bring a friend.” Hugo was at my feet at the time, and a warm feeling ran through me. A few days in the countryside, I thought, he’d like that, and I wouldn’t feel as alone. I said yes, I’d bring my dog, and she said she would have bowls and a bed ready for him.
The day I left, I didn’t tell anyone. I waited until Stuart went out to the shops and then I quickly packed a case. I wasn’t even thinking, just threw things in from Stuart’s laundry pile, ended up with an old school top, some of Jessamine’s leggings, and a pair of Grandma’s underpants. Then I clipped Hugo onto his lead and we walked down to the station. I felt bad about Stuart, but I knew he’d try to stop me if I told him what I was doing.
I made myself look nice that night for the circus. I don’t know why, but I felt it was important. I put on some makeup and brushed my hair. I evenput on some perfume. I left Hugo in the studio and told him I’d be back soon. I walked across the village and out toward the fields where the circus was located.
The clowns came on for the first time around fifteen minutes into the show and my breath was held in anticipation. There were two tall men, and one small, pushing each other about, making noises, pretending to fall over, and it was clear to me that the small one was Jasper, and he was the fall guy, that he was used by the taller men to get the laughs. At one point, one of them held Jasper on his shoulders like a toddler and galloped around the ring with him while Jasper flapped around, exaggerating the flopping of his head on his neck, dropping and catching his hat numerous times, and the audience went mad with delight. But I didn’t laugh. This was Jasper’s job, I thought, every night of his life.
At the end of the night, I headed back to the studio, to Hugo, who was very happy to see me. I felt shaken, unsure, and strangely sad.
The following day I took Hugo for a walk through the local park. After barely leaving my house for six years, it felt incredible to be seeing new things, new landscapes, new buildings. I bought a coffee from the village and then headed up toward the circus ground, where I sat on a bench for a while, pretending to be engrossed in scrolling through my phone. There were messages from Stuart from last night and from this morning. I sighed and replied to the latest.I’m just taking a break,I typed.Please don’t worry about me, or Hugo. We’re fine.I could see him immediately typing a response, so switched to another app. I couldn’t handle his concern.
Ahead of me I could see behind the scenes of the circus: people milling around, coming in and out of trailers with mugs of tea, babies, dogs, the echo of TikTok videos from smartphones, a hint of frying bacon in the air, somebody laughing, someone else shouting. Behind one of those trailer doors, I thought, was Jasper, or Patch, or whatever he was callinghimself these days. Behind one of those doors was a person who could tell me about Claire Connolly. It took nearly an hour, but then finally I saw him, emerging from a small yellow trailer, wearing a white T-shirt, green shorts, and a denim jacket. I zoomed in on him with the camera on my phone.
He didn’t look like the boy in the photograph anymore; I suppose I hadn’t really considered that. He was shorter than me, and closer to forty than thirty; his face was both youthful and old at the same time, a combination I found unsettling. His hair was short at the back and sides, floppy on the top, with a small bald patch just showing at the back of his head. I took some photos and then put my phone down before I drew attention to myself. I noticed that nobody seemed to acknowledge him as he walked around and the same feeling of sadness passed through me that I’d felt last night watching him being manhandled by the bigger clowns. What happened to him, I wondered, to make him like this?
I followed him over the next two days, trying to get a feel for what sort of person he was. I followed him into the village, where I watched him buy sausage rolls and a four-pack of Coke Zeros from the local convenience store. I watched him get a haircut and come out of the salon rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. I watched him eat a full breakfast in a café where nobody looked at him, nobody talked to him, not even the server who brought him his food. As time went by, I began to feel an ache about him, an exquisite pitying. I saw his brokenness, his loneliness, and I felt ready.
That night, the last night of the circus being in town, I left Hugo in the studio and waited at the circus grounds until there was nobody in sight, then I slipped through the winding paths of trailers and caravans to Jasper’s tiny trailer in the far corner. The curtain at the back was slightly open and I stood on my tiptoes to peer through.
I saw a pot on a tiny stove with a lid on it and an upturned woodenspoon on the counter next to it that had been used to stir whatever was in the pot. I ducked down when he passed the window, and when I looked up again, Jasper was sitting on a small stool in front of a mirror, his hands finding boxes of greasepaint and makeup from a drawer beneath, squeezing something white onto his fingertips and rubbing them together.
I watched him paint circles of red onto his cheeks, his dead eyes staring at his reflection in the mirror for a moment, before flicking toward me, sharp and quick as a rattlesnake’s tail. And in that split second, I saw it. Darkness.
I ducked, my breath ragged and harsh in my lungs, and the wordshe was therepass again through my consciousness. I’d seen that child in the photograph with his wide, innocent eyes, his slick of floppy hair, the colorful mask on his lap, and I’d assumed him to be a victim in all of this too. But at the time that Claire Connolly was trapped in his house, he was not a child—he was a teenager, almost a man—and suddenly I felt the chicken sandwich I’d bought from the village shop at lunchtime start to rise up the back of my throat. I heard the door of the trailer opening, a man’s voice saying, “Hello? Is there someone there?” and slowly, I made my way to the front of the trailer.
“Hi,” I said. “My name is Daisy Black. I think I’m your niece.”
His face contorted with fear when I introduced myself. He went to shut the door, but I pushed back against it.
“Please,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
“I have nothing to say to you. Just leave.”
His voice was young and reedy for a grown man.
“Please. You’re the only person who can help me.”
“Go away,” he said, pushing against the door again. “I don’t want to talk to you. Just leave me alone.”
I sighed and let the door shut between us.
“I can tell the police where you are,” I said, breathlessly, through theclosed door. “I’m sure they’d like to talk to you. The case is still open; the police searched the house just a while ago. They were asking about you. I could tell them where to find you.”
It fell silent inside the trailer and then a moment later the door opened a crack. “I’ll talk to you,” said Jasper. “OK. But not here. Let’s meet tomorrow.”
“OK. Where?”
“Give me your phone number. I’ll send you a location.”
I didn’t have time to stop or think or work out if this was really what I wanted to do, and I called out the digits of my number through the plastic door.
“Promise me you’ll message me,” I said.
