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I follow her as she flits in and out of the separate offices that flank the circular corridor surrounding reception. She tends to each plant, watering and feeding, snipping off any crispy leaves and dead-heading when needed. Just as she’s been shown. Then she goes to the cleaning cupboard and drags out the vacuum cleaner, plugging it in and swiping it along the grey-blue office carpet.
I flick off the power at the socket. The cleaner wheezes to a stop.
‘Leanne…’ She’s been on my mind ever since the meeting when she ran out, upset. The urge to help her and her sister, to do whatever it takes to give them a better life, is overwhelming – as if by saving others, I’m rescuing a part of myself. But I know it’s a risky idea the moment the words leave my mouth. ‘Do you and your sister want to come and live with me?’
Leanne turns to face me, the vacuum hose dangling by her side. ‘What?’ She goes to turn on the power again, but I stop her.
‘I’m serious,’ I say, taking myself by surprise. I haven’t asked Rob, or the girls, or thought this through in any way at all. But since I picked up Leanne from her flat the other day, saw her sister afraid, met that man, heard about her home life, it’s been playing on my mind. So much of her reeks of me, of my past, and I want to do all I can to prevent her having it as her future.
‘It’s just…well, I’m concerned for you,’ I continue. ‘We have spare room on the top floor for you and Kate. Natalia, my au pair, is up there too, and she’s lovely. Plus, I’ve got two daughters, who’d be company for you. Amber is really funny and sweet, and Belle…’ I pause, not knowing what to say about my eldest daughter. Not so long ago, I’d have said that she’s a happy, kind, responsible, thoughtful and loving girl, who would go out of her way to make Leanne and her little sister feel welcome. But now, I’m not sure I even know her. ‘Well, Belle is…she’s engaged.’
‘Cool,’ Leanne says, lunging for the socket again. I stop her, a hand on her arm.
‘You’ll come, then?’
‘I meant cool about your daughter being engaged.’
For a second, I see a dreamy look cross Leanne’s face, as though she sometimes thinks about what it would be like to meet a nice boy, fall in love, get married, have babies. But then reality returns and I see her face reset to its familiar form – all hard lines and anxiety fixed in a semi-permanent frown.
‘So will you?’ I want to tell her that no, it’s notcoolmy daughter is engaged at all. In fact, it’s my worst nightmare, which just happens to be made a million times worse because she’s engaged to a man who has groomed hundreds of vulnerable girls and is now doing the same to Belle to punish me.
‘Wouldn’t that be a bit weird?’ Leanne says, leaning on the long silver pole of the vacuum. ‘Like, you’re my boss. What about my mum?’
‘You already said she works long hours, that she struggles to cope. And you don’t like her boyfriend. It could just be for a while, until you save up some money.’
Leanne stares at me as we stand facing each other in the corridor, the fluorescent lights above casting a harsh light on her, emphasising her grey eye sockets, the sunken pouches of her cheeks, the greasy sheen of her unwashed hair.
‘Will you think about it?’
‘Maybe,’ she says, flicking the power switch back on with her foot. The vacuum starts up again and Leanne turns to get on with her work, while I walk slowly back to my car, not wanting to return to the place where I’ve just invited her to live.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
HANNAH – NOW
I don’t know why I google her name. Perhaps it’s because Rob is away on one of his meet-ups – something he’s done every couple of months for years. A group of his fellow industry mates get together periodically to discuss ‘all things financial’, according to Rob. It brought a smile to my face when he first told me what they got up to, as we both knew it was simply an excuse to stay in a decent hotel overnight, eat too much rich food, drink too much expensive wine and, hung-over the next day, play a few holes on the golf course before going their separate ways, most likely not having discussed anything financial at all. But tonight, there’s no smile on my face. Just a sense of relief that he’s not here, even if he did depart with less enthusiasm this time, as if he didn’t want to be a part of the gathering. I assumed it was because he wouldn’t be able to grill me further about the photographs, pummel me for information. He still doesn’t believe I don’t know anything about the dead girl, and he still can’t bring himself to confront Belle about the pictures. That’s my job. And I haven’t done it.
I type my mother’s name into the search engine. I haven’t looked for information about her for years, not since Belle was at primary school. Last time I searched, she had a locked-down Facebook account with a profile picture that made me gasp. I never use my outdated profile, and only have about ten friends on my list, and she’s not one of them. While she still looked like my mother, with her unmistakable pinched eyes as if there was a permanent bright light shining in them, her string-thin lips and her earlobes heavy with chunky gold hoops, there’d been something about her that screameddifferentat me. Beneath the features of the neglectful woman I remembered, there was an undeniable sense of happiness about her. It cut me deep to think that she couldn’t have tapped into it when I was in her care. When I was her daughter.
And now, clicking on her guarded Facebook profile again, I see there’s a more recent photograph of her staring back at me. In this one, her eyes are fully open, as if she’s finally woken up, and her lips seem fuller, perhaps kissed back to life. Part of me is happy for her. While the other part of me is angry as hell.
On a whim, I dig the card that Grant from the café gave me out of the bedroom bin. Back at my laptop, I google his name too. I’m not expecting to find much by searching for Grant Webster, and indeed dozens of results with the same name come up, but none of them seem to be him, or relevant. I know nothing about him – his job, where he lives, his age (in his forties, I’m guessing), and even an image search doesn’t give me anything to go on. None of the faces staring back at me are recognisable as the man from the café. A Facebook search comes up with the same. Zilch.
‘Mummy, what’s wrong with Belle?’ comes Amber’s voice from the doorway. Her hands are latched on the frame either side of her as she rocks back and forth. ‘I’m hungry.’
I shut my laptop lid quickly and slide off the kitchen stool. ‘Is she upset about something?’ Is it wrong that I hope it’s because Jack hasn’t messaged her all day, that things are cooling off between them? Perhaps, now he’s back in London, he’s decided that hounding me and my family isn’t worth the trouble and he’s going to fade away. What is it they call it – ghosting?
‘She won’t talk to me. She swore. Told me to get out of her room.’
I take a breath, then whip up a couple of rounds of peanut butter sandwiches – something to quell Amber’s hunger and an excuse to go up to see Belle with a plate.
‘Darling, it’s me.’ I tap on her door and, when there’s no reply, I go in. Belle is lying on her bed staring at the ceiling. Unusually, she’s not focused on a screen and her headphones are on her bedside table. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Not really,’ she says. I recognise the tone in her voice – the one that tells me she wants to talk, that she wants me to help her, to make whatever is bothering her go away. But she’s making me work for it.
‘Here, I brought you this.’ I put the plate down beside her headphones, along with a cup of tea. ‘Is it Jack?’
Unexpectedly, she shakes her head.
