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“This was an accident, Simon. A terrible, horrible accident. You screwed up, and you’re going to have to carry that for the rest of your life. But you didn’t mean to hurt her.”
He stood up and we hugged for a second time, and I tried to remember the last time, before that night, that I had touched my son. It had certainly been months. Had it been years? Maybe, if I’d been a different kind of father, his first instinct would have been to call me for help instead of trying to cover things up. I shoved the thought away. Simon wasn’t a murderer. He was no more responsible for her death than he would have been if Nina had died in a car accident where he had been driving carelessly. In that situation he’d get a slap on the wrist, and some people would blame him but just as many would feel sorry for him. They’d want him to have a second chance.
Simon wasn’t a murderer. He was a kid who’d made a mistake. That was it. I told myself I believed it. I did believe it. I just couldn’t stop thinking about that bruise on the left side of Nina’s face. The thoughts rolled around and around in my head. Andy Fraser had said that if I’d spent more time with my son, none of this would have happened, but that was bullshit. No amount of parenting could prevent an accident. And that’s what this was. An accident. An accident. An accident.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jamie
After the search for Nina at Stowe, we went home. In bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. I gave up on it and wandered the house. I went to the living room and sat in the dark and looked out at the trees. We’d installed lighting in the backyard, beams of white light that pointed upward from the base of some of the bigger trees. The beams caught the branches as they swayed in the wind, and the swirls of rain caught in the gusts. The lighting looked great at parties—dramatic—but to sleep-deprived me, it just looked like a perfect setup scene for a horror movie, and I wondered what the hell we’d been thinking. I went to use the bathroom, washed my hands, and stared at myself in the mirror. I was a mess, with dark shadows under my eyes, lank hair, and a zit coming up on my forehead. I had to pull myself together. Falling apart would help no one.
At 6:00 A.M. I got in the shower. I used the hair dryer and took my time drying my hair with lots of volume, then tied it back in a messy, casual high ponytail that always makes me look five years younger. I put on my new Alo Yoga leggings and tank top and my red jacket with the lightning stripe down the right sleeve. Then I put on makeup, with a heavier-than-usual layer of foundation to try to deal with the worst of the ravages. I looked in the mirror at 7:00 A.M. and I still looked like shit. The zit was angry, and no amount of concealer was going to deal with that. The shadows under my eyes had turned into bags, and the makeup was just sitting on my skin. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and grabbed my sunglasses and a baseball hat.
I checked on Simon before I left the house. I opened his bedroom door as quietly as I could, pushed it ajar enough so that I could see into the room. It was a pigsty. There were clothes on the floor, a few dirty dishes, books. The room smelled of body odor. All of which was not normal for Simon, who liked things to be clean. He was asleep on his stomach, his head turned away from me, his body sprawled in a way that made it look like he’d been fighting his covers in his sleep. I wanted to go to him, to adjust his gangly limbs and tuck him in safely, but he was too old for that, so instead I closed the door very quietly and left the house.
The press had been outside the house the day before. Not many. Just a couple of shady-looking guys with cameras sitting on the hoods of cars parked across the street. But Nina’s story must not have been hot enough to justify an early-morning start, because when I drove out of the gate, there was no one there. I was the first to yoga. Misha, our instructor, was there, setting up, but she prefers not to talk before class, which suited me perfectly. I put my shoes and jacket away in a cubby, laid out my mat, and did some deep breathing while I waited. By seven twenty-five, people started to trickle in. David Armstrong arrived first. David is sixty-two. He started yoga in his forties after a back injury. He comes for coffee with us occasionally, but he’s no fun. He doesn’t join in the gossip, just sits back and listens with this supercilious look on his face that says, Silly women. Which would be annoying at the best of times, but it’s all the more annoying because he so clearly doesn’t want to miss a single word. Predictably, when he saw me that morning he worked very hard not to react, to pretend he had no idea that anything unusual was going on in my life. Georgia White took the opposite approach. Georgia must have seen my car in the parking lot, which gave her plenty of time to plan out her perfectly delivered little theatrical gasp of surprise when she saw me in the studio. She rushed over, hands out as if she was going to embrace me, or catch me, or push me.
“Oh my God, Jamie. You are. So. Brave. Amazing woman. What can I do to help? Of course you were right to come. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you different. You’re among friends here. But you look so tired. Are you sleeping?”
I gave her my very best don’t-fuck-with-me smile and brushed her off. I turned to the front.
“Let’s get started, Mish.”
Behind me, Georgia turned and spoke to Anne Wellington in a faux whisper.
“We have to be kind. It must be awful for her. What people are saying about Simon. Of course, it looks terrible.”
I kept my back straight, pretended I hadn’t heard, though everyone was looking at me, even Misha, who has never really liked me, in a kind of frozen sympathy. Misha started the class, and I tried so hard to focus, but I fell out of Vasisthasana and I couldn’t hold my Astavakrasana, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Georgia’s head popping up as she tried, so hard, not to show her triumph. I could have cut and run, but that would just have given them more to talk about. I got through the class, took extra time with Savasana, and chatted lightly to Misha about a new book I’d heard about that I thought she might like, as I put on my shoes. And then I walked out with my yoga mat under my arm, as casually as you like, as if I hadn’t noticed that everyone had already left for coffee without me.
It must have been a hard call for them. Without me there they had the freedom to get really nasty, of course, but if I’d gone with them they could have indulged in all that fake sympathy, and they might have had a small chance at an inside detail or—jackpot—some tears from me. I guess they’d decided I wasn’t a good candidate for tears and confessions. I told myself that that should make me feel better, and I got into my car, but I couldn’t face going home. Not yet. I turned back and drove to the bakery on Bridge Street, where I bought a cappuccino with two sugars, three chocolate muffins, two cinnamon Danishes, and a giant chocolate croissant that I told myself was for Simon but that I demolished in the car. By the time I was driving back down our road at 8:30 A.M., I was feeling almost human. Except that I couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Leanne’s face when she’d hit Simon—the twisted fury on her face and the fear in her eyes—and the fact that Nina had now been missing for five days. And then I saw the scrum at our gates.
At first I couldn’t make sense of it. Instead of the two shady guys with cameras, we had, what... fourteen? Sixteen people? And there was a TV camera crew, right in the middle of the gang. They were all huddled at the gate, as if they were waiting for something. I drove up slowly behind them and buzzed the electric gate. They parted to let me through, and camera flashes went off as I drove past. Our garage door rolled open automatically, and I drove in and parked beside Rory’s car. I pressed the button again to close the roller door and the outer gate, but the door and gate had barely started to close when they stopped and froze in place. I got out of the car. Rory was waiting for me by the front door, his car keys in his right hand. He’d used his own buzzer to stop the gate from closing. He smiled at me; it was an attempt at his usual everything’s-under-control smile, but he looked like hell. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all. He was nicely dressed in slacks and a button-down with the sleeves pushed up, but he was jittery. Full of nervous energy.
“Are you going out?” I said. I was so aware of the cameras flashing from the gate and the shouted questions. I tried to look natural, like all this was completely normal. Like I was having a casual morning chat with my husband.
“I think we’re going to have to talk to them sooner or later. Let’s just get it over with.”
Before I had a chance to respond, Rory took my hand and turned me back in the direction of the press. I almost tripped as I turned, stumbling over my own feet. I wasn’t ready for this. I was sweaty after yoga, and probably covered with croissant crumbs. I wanted to grab my baseball cap to cover the zit on my forehead. I wanted to tug Rory back toward the safety of the house. The gate was open, but it was as if there was an invisible line keeping people back. The press stayed just outside the gate, but the questions came immediately, shouted at us. It was just like it was on TV, but it felt very different in real life. Much more aggressive. I shrank back.
“How’s Simon doing?”
“Do you know where Nina is?”
“Why did Simon leave her alone?”
Rory held his hand up to everyone, gesturing for silence. He drew me close until I was standing right beside him.
“Thank you, everyone. My wife and I would like to make a short statement. This is a very difficult time for our family, so we won’t be taking questions right now. We hope you understand.” He drew a deep breath, then continued. “Simon and Nina have been together since they were sixteen years old. They’ve been very much in love, but they are also very young. They broke up on Friday night, and Simon came home. This was not their first breakup. They’ve broken up a few times in the past. As I said, they are very young. Nina told Simon that she would stay in our vacation property, as she’d been drinking. She asked Simon to leave. She said a friend would pick her up the next day. Simon has not heard from Nina since he left the cabin. He is extremely worried about her, as you would expect.”
There was a question from the back of the press pack, something about Nina’s phone, but I didn’t quite make it out. Rory ignored it.
“As a family we love Nina very much, and we are all very worried about her.” Rory turned to the TV camera. “Nina, if you hear this, we ask you please to call us, or call your mom, and let us all know that you’re safe. Better yet, just come home. Everyone misses you and wants to see you.” Rory squeezed my arm tightly and took a half step forward. He raised his chin and his voice.
“There’s one more thing we want to say. We’ve seen the videos, the terrible things people have been saying about Nina’s mother, Leanne, and her stepfather, Andrew. We do not agree with them, and we ask the people out there who are coming up with these theories to stop. It’s harassment. The truth is that almost no one has led the kind of completely blameless life that will stand up to internet scrutiny. But making mistakes in your life doesn’t mean that you are a... that you deserve that. We ask that all those internet sleuths out there, coming up with theories about the Frasers, or indeed about Simon, we ask you to stop, please, and let the police do their jobs. Thank you for your time.”
Rory pulled me backward and hit the button on his key fob. The gate started to slide closed. The press pack shouted questions, but no one tried to step inside the gate, and we turned our backs and quickly retreated to the house.
“Rory, what was that?” I hissed.
