Then She Vanishes Page 4

  ‘Don’t do that because of me,’ I say, going over to him and planting a quick kiss on his lips.

  He laughs. ‘You know I only watch it so my brothers don’t beat me to a pulp.’

  ‘Well, you do need to sound like you know what they’re talking about,’ I reply, mock-serious.

  ‘You’re right there. It’s research.’

  It’s our in-joke. Rory pretends he needs to learn how to be an alpha male, like his brothers, when really we both know he loves football.

  He chuckles to himself as he returns to his cooking and I dart into the bedroom on the pretence of drying my wet hair. But really I want to look out of our bedroom window. From here I have views of the street I’ve just walked down and I pull back the roller blind to get a better look. A young couple are weaving across the cobbles, laughing too loudly, arm in arm and obviously holding each other up. Across the road from us, a derelict building is going through the planning process: it’ll be converted into apartments. Is that a figure I see loitering in the doorway? I press my face to the glass but, no, it’s just a trick of the light. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

  I comb through my damp hair, then go and find Rory in the kitchen, happy now I know there’s no threat, just my imagination running away with me. ‘Thanks for making dinner,’ I say to him. I don’t need to add again. He’s always the one cooking. He says he enjoys it and finds it relaxing, even though it looks like a bomb has hit the kitchen after he’s finished with it. I survey it now: a dirty spoon left on the black granite worktop, dishes and cups filling the sink. He usually leaves all the clearing up to me. I don’t mind – I’d rather stack the dishwasher than cook any day. Jack jokes that if I married Rory the cooking would soon stop, that it’s his way of lulling me into a false sense of security. But I don’t believe him. Rory’s too honest.

  He brushes back my hair so that he’s looking at me. Really looking. He has these brilliant blue eyes and when he stares into mine I almost squirm because it’s as though he can read my mind, as though he knows every evil thought I’ve ever had, or the horrible dark things I’ve done, like the real reason we had to leave London last year. Or the guilt I carry about what I did that summer of 1994.

  ‘What’s going on, Jessie?’ he says now. He’s the only one who’s allowed to call me that. The way he pronounces it in his sexy Irish accent gives me a little thrill. ‘Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?’

  I move away from him to pick up a spatula and dump it in the sink. He’s still studying me when I turn around. ‘It’s just work.’

  ‘I thought it would be better now. Local news. Twice-weekly deadlines instead of daily, you know?’

  ‘It is better. Or, rather, it was …’

  He frowns. ‘But?’

  Something sizzles and hisses. ‘Shit, it’s the food,’ says Rory, darting to the hob and turning the heat down. His dark hair flops in front of his face as he picks up the wooden spoon and stirs the mince. I hop up onto the counter to watch him. He turned thirty-five last month but there is no sign of ageing, no softening of his chiselled jaw, or extra fat on his lean frame. He still looks boyish.

  He pours in his legendary homemade sauce that his mother taught him how to make. He once told me that growing up as a geeky, skinny kid in the countryside of County Cork he preferred learning to cook with his mum to climbing trees like his brothers. Aoife, the only girl, preferred the tree-climbing, so it was only Rory, out of all of Rowena’s children, who learned any culinary skills.

  ‘So,’ says Rory, once the mince is back under control. ‘What happened today? I thought you liked working for Ted.’ He gently moves my legs aside so he can get to the cupboard for a pan.

  I jump off the counter and switch on the kettle. ‘I had to go to Tilby. To doorstep the mother of a woman who killed two people.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I heard about that on the news. Pretty shocking. Especially for Tilby.’ He pours spaghetti into a saucepan of cold water.

  ‘Well, it turns out that I went to school with the killer.’

  ‘What?’ He stares at me in shock.

  ‘For two or three years she was my best friend.’ Best friend. It seems so trivial to call her that when she’d been so much more. Our friendship had burned with an intensity I’ve never experienced with anyone since. Not even Rory. I didn’t realize how rare it was at the time. I’d taken it for granted. And thrown it away as though it was nothing, not knowing I’d never have another friendship like it. I’ve spoken about her to Rory a few times in the two and a half years we’ve been together, in passing, and only in reference to something that happened at school. Like the time we got a detention for accidentally flooding the girls’ toilets or were sent out of chemistry for laughing at the back of the class. Heather was the quiet one of the two of us, softer than me, but she had a wicked sense of humour and would often have me in fits of giggles at the most inappropriate times. Yet none of the anecdotes I shared conveyed the true depth of feeling I had for her back then. For a moment in time she meant everything.

  I’m hit with a sense of melancholy for that schoolgirl. So innocent. What changed? What went wrong for her?

  Although I know some of it. We both changed after what happened in 1994.

  ‘Blimey!’ exclaims Rory, when I’ve finished filling him in on today’s events. ‘Are you allowed to report any of this, considering she’s in a coma?’

  I drop teabags into two mugs and nod. ‘The case is only active if she’s charged. And she can’t be charged because she’s unconscious.’

  Rory runs a hand through his hair. ‘What was she like at school? Did she have violent tendencies? Was she the kind of kid to pull the legs off a daddy-long-legs?’

  ‘Of course not!’ I cry, a little too quickly. Heather would never hurt an animal, or insect. ‘She was just a normal schoolgirl.’

  Except she wasn’t.

  We were almost twelve when we first met. Mum and Dad had only recently divorced so we’d moved from a four-bedroom detached house in Bristol to the little cottage in Tilby in time for me to start the one and only senior school there at the beginning of the Easter term. At first I didn’t have much to do with Heather. A girl called Gina, big and butch with spiky hair and too many piercings, took me under her wing. She was popular and I was easily accepted into her group. I always did have the gift of the gab, as my mum would say, and I found it easy to make friends. Heather, on the other hand, was a bit of a loner. Apparently, according to Gina, she’d only recently moved to the area from Kent and was finding it hard to fit in.

  I first noticed her in our art lesson. We were put together by our art teacher, Miss Simpson. Heather didn’t really speak to me much, just sat beside me drawing the bowl of apples we had been asked to sketch, her long dark hair falling over her shoulder and pooling onto the desk, deep in concentration. I was mesmerized by the way her hand sped across the page, shading in the apples with expert precision and flair. I could tell, even then, that she had a talent. I enjoyed art but she was so much better than me.

  ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’ I’d exclaimed, when she’d finished. Mine looked like two blobs on a plate while hers were so lifelike.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ she said, smiling and blushing slightly. When she turned to look at me I was struck by how pretty she was. Her eyes were hazel with flecks of green and her pale skin flawless – unlike mine with a few stubborn pimples on my chin – with a sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her nose. She was wearing the ugly green school uniform, just like I was, but she managed to make it look exotic. There was something about her, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but she seemed different from the other girls. She was quiet but she appeared self-assured rather than painfully shy; she didn’t need to flock around in little cliquey groups like I did.

  After that I made sure I always sat next to her in art. And even though she still didn’t speak much she would often pass me one of her earphones, the other in her ear, so I could listen, too, to her Walkman (art was th
e only lesson in which we were allowed to do this). She loved The Cure, and even though I didn’t know much about their music, I soon started to look forward to those art lessons.

  One day, towards the end of year seven, we were asked to make something for Father’s Day. She’d turned to me and said, ‘My dad’s dead.’

  I’d stared at her, appalled by her forthrightness and not knowing how to answer. She didn’t look embarrassed or worried by my reaction. I paused, then said, ‘And my dad’s done a runner so …’

  ‘Does that mean we get this lesson off? I’ll ask Miss Simpson.’

  She went to put her hand up and we both collapsed, laughing.

  After that I asked Gina about Heather but she’d scoffed, professing her ‘weird’. At home time I often saw Heather leave school with an older girl. ‘That’s her sister, Flora,’ said Gina one day, standing beside me and crunching mint Polos in my ear. ‘She’s in year nine. They live up on Tilby Manor. Own the caravan park there. Moved here last year. Think they’re snobs.’

  They didn’t seem snobby to me. They were like two pretty black cats. Aloof. Mysterious.

  After that I began to seek Heather out. She usually disappeared to the library at lunchtime to read or to draw. One day I followed her and saw that she was writing what looked like a story. I loved writing, and would spend hours in my bedroom making books out of A4 paper that my mum would bring home from her office job especially for me to use. I knew Gina and the others would take the piss out of me if I told them about my hobby. It wasn’t cool to be clever at Tilby High in the early 1990s. But I was getting bored of Gina and her cronies, their incessant talk of boys, and who fancied whom. I wasn’t ready for all that. I didn’t want a boyfriend: I wanted a friend. A best friend. Someone I admired, who had similar interests. And I quickly realized that the person I was looking for was Heather.

  6

  Jess

  BRISTOL AND SOMERSET HERALD

  Friday, 16 March 2012

  FAMILY DEVASTED BY SEASIDE SHOOTINGS

  by Jessica Fox

  The family of a mother and son who were shot dead in the sleepy seaside town of Tilby are shocked and saddened by their ‘senseless’ deaths.

  Deirdre and Clive Wilson were killed in their own home just a week ago today.

  Lisa Wilson, 29, Deirdre’s granddaughter, described her grandmother as a fun-loving, bubbly lady, who was fit and active and loved to ballroom dance.

  Deirdre, who had been a widow for over twenty years, had only moved to the cottage where she died a month previously.

  ‘My gran loved the sea so decided to save up so that she could buy the cottage. She was so happy to finally put down roots in Tilby,’ Lisa said. ‘Gran had admired the area for a long time and, in the short time she was there, she threw herself into the local community, joining the Women’s Institute and volunteering at the church café. My uncle Clive had his own place in Bristol, but they were close so he often stayed with her. I don’t think Gran liked living alone. They were just two normal, kind people. Gran loved dogs. She used to breed those beautiful Chow Chows that look like teddy bears. It’s tragic to think all her planning and saving came to nothing. She only got to live in that house for a month. Why would someone want to kill an old lady who never hurt a fly?’

  Police are waiting to question local woman Heather Underwood, 32, in connection with their deaths. She is currently in a coma in hospital after trying to take her own life.

  Lisa’s father, Norman, 56, added, ‘My brother Clive was a gentle soul. He lived a quiet life with my mum. He’d had a few financial difficulties over the years, a few businesses that went bust. I regret to say I didn’t see them that much over the years after me and my family moved to Reading, although we kept in touch by phone. But I can’t understand why somebody would want to shoot him or my mother. I’ve never heard of this Heather Underwood. And, as far as I’m aware, my mum and brother had never met her. For her to break into their home and shoot them … well, it beggars belief. The family want answers.’

  Lisa and Norman Wilson aren’t the only ones who seem baffled by this senseless killing. The police are also perplexed and can find no motive …

  I stop typing and read what I’ve written so far. It’s not tying together in the way I want it to. I need to convey who these people were and ask why anyone would want to hurt them. Maybe I should take out the bit about the police being perplexed. It might make them look ineffectual, even though when I spoke to DCI Ruthgow on the phone earlier that was exactly how he’d sounded. He more or less admitted they have no motive, no reason why Heather would shoot those two people. Just evidence: the shotgun she used to try to kill herself was the same one used to kill Deirdre and Clive, then the fingerprints, the type and size of the cartridges used and other forensic results they must have at their disposal, which I can’t report at this time. If Heather wakes up, will she plead temporary insanity? Did she do it because she was depressed? Had she, momentarily, lost a sense of reality? They are all things I’d love to ask Margot, but since she practically shut the door in my face on Monday I haven’t tried to speak to her again, though it’s only a matter of time before Ted sends me back.

  And I refuse to give up on Margot until I get her story.

  I re-read the article. I need to think of how to end it before filing it ready for the deadline tomorrow. It will be in the newspaper on Friday and I can’t write anything that Margot might read and disapprove of. Not if I want to get her on-side.

  I flip through my notes. I’d spoken to Lisa and Norman Wilson this morning and they were very forthcoming on the phone. Lisa had cried, her voice sounding thick beneath her tears, as she described her grandmother. I look again at the photos she emailed. There’s a lovely one of Deirdre sitting in a garden at the end of last summer, a puppy on her lap. Its fluffy teddy-bear face makes me think it must be one of the Chow Chows Lisa described. Deirdre is wearing a straw hat and is smiling, surrounded by peach roses. She looks younger than her age, her eyes clear and blue, her white hair bobbed to her shoulders, her face plump and rosy-cheeked. She appears happy, contented. She looks like a lovely, kind, devoted grandmother. I wonder how she’d felt when Heather had burst into her home carrying a gun. Had Clive been shot first? Or her? The police didn’t say. I try to imagine her fear and shudder, feeling nauseous.

  I scroll down to the next photo. Clive. It looks like it was taken in a pub. He’s sitting with a pint in front of him, grinning. His blurry eyes give away that he’s had a few. He looks his age: the whites of his eyes are bloodshot and, even though the photo is only of his top half, I can see that he’s stocky. He’s wearing a football shirt in grey and maroon – West Ham? Rory would know – and a gold chain around his neck. The hand holding the glass has a fat sovereign ring on the middle finger.

  Who were Clive and Deirdre Wilson?

  I sense Ted watching me. I look up and meet his eyes through the glass of his office – I say office, it’s more of a cubicle. He’s on the phone and is leaning back in his chair. Who is he talking to? Is it about me?

  Stop being paranoid, Jess. I turn back to my computer. He’s probably talking to Jared, our slimy editor at the Herald, who thankfully works at HQ. When he comes here – luckily for us, only very occasionally – he stands too close to me and Ellie, our trainee reporter, and addresses us by our names too many times for it to be natural. Apart from Ted, the office is quiet today. Seth is at his computer slowly going through images. Ellie is out on a story with Jack. Sue sits around the corner so I never see her unless I go to the loo or am heading out, although I can hear her on the phone – her voice is unusually loud – more often than not chatting to her sister about her ‘good-for-nothing’ husband.

  I log onto Facebook. A few times over the years I’ve tried to search for Heather under her maiden name, Powell. I was intrigued, I suppose, to find out what had happened to her. To see what she looked like now. To know if she ever married or had children. For those two years of my childhood the Powell
s had felt like family, and even though I could never go back, a part of me missed them. Although numerous Heather Powells came up, they were never her. But now I know her married name I search for Heather Underwood.

  Her page is the first to appear and I click on it eagerly, wanting to know more about her life. I’m disappointed to find that her settings are restricted so that I can see only a profile photograph of her. I click on it anyway, intrigued to know what the adult Heather looks like. It’s a close-up and obviously taken on holiday, judging by the palm trees in the background. She’s squinting slightly but my stomach flips at the familiar sight of her: the long dark hair, the almond-shaped eyes, with new lines fanning out at the edges, the clear skin. Oh, Heather.

  ‘Attractive woman.’

  I jump at the sound of Ted’s voice by my shoulder. He’s as stealthy as a bloody cat. I place my hand on my chest theatrically. ‘I was just seeing what information I could get but her privacy settings are too tight.’ I don’t want him thinking I’m skiving by being on Facebook.

  ‘Fuck.’ He draws breath through his teeth. ‘We need something. Come on, Jess. Where’s that killer instinct you’re famous for?’ I cringe, remembering how it could have landed me in prison. ‘You know the family. You have an in. The Daily News and the fucking nationals are all over this story and it’s already Wednesday. It’ll be just a matter of time before this photo hits the red tops. We need something more. We need an exclusive.’

  He’s right. I can’t let what happened at the Tribune put me off. It’s shaken my confidence, but I need this. I push back my chair and gather up my coat and bag. ‘I’ll try Margot again.’

  ‘Good.’ His eyes glint. ‘And remember, do whatever it takes. But stay the right side of the law.’

  Despite myself, my stomach drops as I pull into Cowship Lane, oppressed by the narrow road with the hedges rearing up on either side. Dark clouds gather in the distance, heavy with rain. I take a deep breath. This isn’t just some random woman I’m trying to interview. It’s Margot Powell. But before last year would that have bothered me? I don’t think so.