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‘Maybe Baa Baa Barbra’s too frigid for me, but she’s just a little girl. Mama Smith is all woman, and we all know how wet she is for me.’
I open the car door and spit the taste of bile onto the lane. I breathe for a moment, thinking I might be sick, then pull my hand across my mouth andclose the door again.
How can I go back to the house?
The policeman told me to act as normal. But how? I’ve been doing it my whole life and only just realised and now I have to go back to doing it again.
The policeman said I’d have to wait to speak to Bevan for a proper update, but that she’d spoken to Georgia Smith, who had been at home and hadn’t given them any leads. The parents searching around the school had found nothing and a few groups were working their way around all the local beaches. They were waiting for Glastonbury security to complete a search but had already notified a dog team.
Maybe I don’t need to go home. But the other thing they said is that most missing children just turn up in the morning.
I pull round the house to the grain store and hurry back.
I always knew there was something Tristan didn’t want anyone to see on that tape. Why is this the first time I’m allowing myself to really think about that?
Lydia knew, immediately, without even knowing about the tape. And so did Mina, I think.
I wonder again: what if Tristan knew Jenna had the tape, before his children told him? Is it possible that he did something to her?
I walk out of the grain store and back towards the house, the great hulking mass of it.
No – no. He’s my brother. She’s his niece.
She’s his pet.
60
NOW
I go in through our side entrance, taking in a deep breath and letting it go slowly. The last thing the policeman said to me was to try to get some sleep, but my eyes are wired open, my teeth have been clenched for so long my jaw aches, and there’s a feeling in my brain like a spring being twisted tighter and tighter.
I check my phone: just after three. I have a voicemail. It’s the head, Mr Whitlow. ‘Frances, I’m so sorry about the bullying. I can’t believe we didn’t know. I’m going with a group to search Piskie and the coves round there.’
The need to see Jenna is as real as the swelling ache from my cuts. It feels as though my intestines are being drawn out of my stomach, pulling me down, emptying me.
In our little kitchen, an IKEA job put in when Dan moved in, I try to make a coffee but I scatter grounds across the counter with my shaking hands. The kettle begins to boil and I watch it juddering, wondering if I’ll manage to pour it without scalding myself.
I think again that it’s odd, isn’t it, that my daughter is missing yet I’m here on my own. It has taken this to see just how alone I am in this family.
And the funny thing is, I feel sick but I have no desire right now to take a knife and run it across the soft skin of my upper thigh.
There’s a thud from upstairs and my heart stops. I stare up at the ceiling.
Is she home? Is she back?
My heart swells and as I run out and up the stairs, I hear a strange, warbling sound that I realise is me, calling her name. ‘Jenna?’ I almost fall as I let go of the banister at the top, spinning round the final twist of the stairs.
Her light is on. It wasn’t when I drove up. I run in, ready to take her in my arms?—
But it’s Mina, standing over the jumble on Jenna’s desk. Tears spring into my eyes immediately. She jumps and spins round. ‘Oh God – Fran you scared the life out of me.’
‘What are you doing in here?’ I choke.
I’m suddenly taken with the urge to strangle this woman who was so eager to lie for my brother, who probably knew better than me what he had done and then married him, this friend who moved into my home and kicked me out of my nice rooms and lives off my parents’ money while my husband and I scrimp to afford our share of the heating bill.
‘I…’ She shakes her head, her beautiful, silky hair swishing like a sheet of water.
‘Mina?’
