‘You know, sometimes, Lauren it’s better to not know these things. Why are you so concerned with where I live?’

I’m not immediately certain how to answer this. It’s now obvious she isn’t going to reveal her address, but why? What exactly is she hiding? I pick at a loose thread on my hem and try to turn away from her. She’s watching me closely. I can feel it. My face burns, my throat thickens. My pulse, solid and rhythmic hammers away in my neck. Does she know about us? About Dad and me and Mum getting murdered? She has a plan. I’m now sure of it. I just don’t know what it is yet. I need to get inside her head, read her thoughts. Find out who she really is, see if she’s as fucked up as I first thought.

‘Who are you, Alice? It just that it seems you know so much about us and yet we know nothing about you.’ I don’t inject any friendliness into my voice. Perhaps I should. If I play the innocent victim, she might be more likely to open up to me. Or not. I’m not prepared to be manipulated by her. All I want is the truth although I think the chances of that coming out are slim and shrinking rapidly with every passing second. I know now that there’s way more to this relationship with Dad. She has an ulterior motive for being here and the possibilities of what that motive could be cause me to feel sick with dread.

‘I’m Alice Godwin. There’s not a lot else to know.’ Her voice is even, no hint of distress or anger. No hint of anything at all. She sounds robotic as if this moment has been rehearsed many times, the lines played out in her head to perfection. An a-emotional woman playing at being caring.

‘So, where do you live, Alice Godwin?’ I’m going to keep at it. I too, can be polite and well-mannered when required but I’m also tenacious and I’m definitely nobody’s fool.

She shuffles closer to me. I can smell her perfume, even the occasional waft of coffee as she leans in, her fingers now gripping my arm with force, her nails digging into my exposed flesh. ‘Don’t ask so many questions, eh, Lauren? Let’s keep everything just the way it is and that way nobody will get hurt.’

I spin around, my heart now a galloping stampede beneath my ribcage, and stare at her. She’s smiling. Not a smile. A grimace, her eyes narrowed into tiny slits as she stares at me and nods.

‘What?’ I shake my arm loose from her grip and shuffle away from her, putting some distance between us. The ground is soft under me. I try to stand up but my balance is out of kilter, the earth tilting and rocking, throwing me about as if it is trying to tip me out into deepest space.

‘As I said earlier, except you refused to listen, you have no need to know anything about me. So why don’t you stop asking questions and just shut your fucking mouth, eh? There’s a good girl. Now sit the fuck back down and let’s wait for your father to turn up and then he can take the two ladies in his life back home.’ She looks away into the distance. No pulse in her neck. No sheen of perspiration coating her face. No signs at all that she is unnerved by any of this. Cool, calculated. Deliberate. Dear God, what are we dealing with here? Who is this woman, this Alice? Who the fuck is she?

I remain silent, a wall between us. She makes no attempt to say anything else and I make no attempt to speak to her. Two disparate souls sitting close together yet miles and miles apart.

I haven’t the first idea what her agenda is, or who it is I’m dealing with here. But then, neither does she. We all have something to hide, things we would rather keep hidden, tucked away from the prying eyes of the world. Alice Godwin, or whoever the fuck she is, may just have met her match.

Dad arrives with a flourish. Red-faced and concerned as his car shrieks to a halt beside us, he takes Alice’s arm, helping her up as if she were made of porcelain. I open the car door and slide into the back seat, unable or perhaps unwilling to take part in this sick little farce.

‘Lauren, can you help out here, please? Get the blanket and fold it up. Put it back in the bag.’ His voice is sharp, turning soft again as he helps Alice into the front seat, cooing and shushing her gently when she cries out in pain.

I throw the bag and blanket into the back seat and get in, unable to look at either of them. I can hear her as she settles down into the leather seat, sighing softly. She rests her head back and turns to look at Dad. ‘Thank you so much, Peter. I hope the walk didn’t tire you out too much. I feel like such a nuisance.’

‘You are anything but that, my love. Now let’s get you home and sort out that knee, shall we? And I insist that you stay over at ours tonight. You can’t manage on your own.’ Dad looks over at me and gives me a half smile. ‘Lauren and I will spoil you, won’t we, Lauren? You can sit back and we’ll wait on you hand and foot, if you pardon the pun.’

He chuckles at his own joke then leans towards her and they kiss and all the while I want to vomit, to leap in and drag them apart, screaming at him that she isn’t who she claims she is, that there is something else going on here. Something deeply menacing and underhand but I know he won’t believe me. He will take her side because he is well and truly smitten. And I also don’t know what that something else is and until I find out, I am onto a loser. I need more evidence that she isn’t the sickly-sweet individual she claims to be.

I just don’t know where to look to find it.

33PETER

Lauren has turned sullen, shrinking away from him and Alice and holing herself away up in her room as soon as they arrive back at the house.

He noticed it first in the car on the drive back home – the pout, the dark looks, the truncated sentences. Disappointment had rippled through him. He thought her better than this. Better than other teenagers who flounce around the house, grunting and answering in monosyllabic tones and yet it appears she has suddenly morphed into just that.

It disappoints him. He wants them to gel as a family because they fit together, him and Alice, and deep down, he thinks Alice knows that too but also knows that she is holding back, still too scared to commit herself fully. He isn’t about to pressure her. That would only fuel her fears and frighten her off. She just needs a little time and careful handling, that’s all it is. They’ve both been through a lot. More than most. He thinks about the sessions at the church, how quiet she was, almost disappearing off his radar. Demure and sensitive. He needs to tread carefully around her. She’s a quiet one. Deep and thoughtful.

Months from now, they may look back on this delicate period in their lives and smile, recalling how they tried so hard to treat one another with the utmost care, how he handled Alice with kid gloves. Like fine bone china. But that’s okay with him. That’s all he can do: show her some decency and let her know how much he cares about her and then everything else will fall into place.

Except for Lauren’s rapid and unexpected change of mood, that is. That has put a big dampener on things. Maybe it’s something different – a boyfriend issue, a girlfriend thing, some kind of fall-out. Or maybe it’s Alice. He doesn’t want to think about that. She is here to stay and his daughter had better get used to it.

It starts as soon as he gets back in after dropping Alice off home. She declined his offer to stay over at his house, telling him she had work in the morning, insisting she would manage just fine. All the way home, she had regaled him with tales of her employers, telling him how lucky she is that they treat her so well although she fears that a redundancy may be on the cards as his business is in trouble, this Jack Downey. Thoughts and visions had flitted through Peter’s head as she spoke – visions of Alice moving her things into his house and settling there with him and Lauren; waking up next to her every morning, staring into her eyes, the lingering scent of her perfume on the pillow.

He had had to force himself to stop. Jumping ahead would do nobody any good. One day at a time, that’s what he told himself. One day at a time.

‘What did Alice say when you dropped her off?’ Lauren is standing in the hallway, hands on hips to greet him as he shrugs off his jacket and hangs it over the newel post.

‘Nothing of any real importance. Why?’ He keeps his voice even. Measured and controlled. He refuses to get into an argument with her. She has the same attitude she had that day she discovered the damage to the books. A dark, simmering fury located somewhere deep inside her. He has no idea where it has sprung from, why she is being like this. She needs to try harder, be more accepting, throw off the shackles of distrust, have fewer misgivings.

‘She didn’t say anything about me and our conversation when you went to collect your car and we waited behind?’

‘No?’ Peter furrows his brow in confusion, exasperation creeping into his tone. ‘Why would she?’

He refuses to second guess what Lauren is about to say and will not get involved in a spat with her. Things were looking up, almost damn near perfect. She will not spoil it. He won’t allow it. He will shut her down before she has the chance to even begin.

She shrugs and bites at her nails feverishly. ‘No reason. No reason at all.’ Her head is shaking, despondency evident in her stance as she turns and heads upstairs.

‘What, Lauren? What is it you’re trying to say?’ His voice echoes up the stairs, straggling behind her as she reaches the top and spins around, her face half hidden in the shadows. A cold feeling clings to his skin. It’s like looking at Sophia – a younger Sophia, but Sophia all the same. Peter shivers, bats away those thoughts: Sophia crying out as she slid down the riverbank, that strangulated cry, the echo of it as he turned and fled.

Lauren’s eyes are dark, her voice low, peppered with anger and, he thinks, possibly an element of desperation. Her words hit him with force, a punch to the gut that blindsides him. ‘Dad, you need to watch out. I don’t want to say anything else because I know you won’t believe me anyway, but something happened between Alice and me when you went to collect the car. Something really unpleasant. She’ll deny it if quizzed, but you have to believe me when I say that she is a very, very nasty piece of work.’ Lauren waits, her breathing irregular. Ragged. ‘She is hiding something, Dad and she’s mean – really, really mean. Just be careful.’

The door doesn’t slam as she goes into her room. It’s more of a dull thud that accentuates the instant silence around him. He stands, her words still ringing in his ears, thinking that he should go in there, demand she elaborate, speak to him, tell him what the hell that was all about, but then he thinks better of it. It won’t solve anything. In fact, it will probably escalate the situation, make things a hundred times worse.

Instead, he sits himself down in the living room, tries to work out what is going on in Lauren’s head. Did she misconstrue something innocuous that Alice said to her? Did Alice commit the terrible sin of speaking about Sophia and Lauren has taken it to heart, convinced Alice is the Devil incarnate for daring to do such a thing? He thinks not. Lauren loved her mum but he knows now that she knew about the affair, knew that the marriage was coming apart. She is all too aware that Sophia was not a saintly figure but simply a woman with flaws. So what did happen back there on the moors in his absence? What exactly was said?

Alice’s face implants itself in his mind – her gentle smile, the way she waved and blew a kiss as she stood at her gate, her hand resting on the latch. And he was right about that too. The house, whilst not completely rundown, needs repair. A small, terraced property, it had a postage stamp sized front garden and looked as if a lick of paint wouldn’t go amiss. Even the gate was looking the worse for wear with rusty hinges and paint flaking off in huge chunks.

Peter sighs. Poor Alice, having to endure the wildly oscillating moods of a resentful teenager. He needs to do something to bridge this gap because Alice is going nowhere and Lauren had better get used to having her around.

He glances at the clock, wondering if it’s too early to crack open a beer. It’s earlier than he imagined but as the lyrics of the song says, it’s five o’clock somewhere. He opens the fridge door, grabs at a bottle, snaps off the lid and takes a long and welcome slug of the freezing, amber liquid.

34ALICE

I wait until his car drives off, disappearing around a corner, and then I step away from the gate, hoping nobody inside saw me loitering outside their house. I’m pretty sure this is the same place where the taxi dropped me off when we were out together but I can’t be certain. Both Peter and I had had a drink, it was dark and if he questions me, I am a bloody good liar. One of the best. I could easily bamboozle him. He is naïve to the point of being childlike. It’s as if he was desperate to fall in love with somebody and I happened to be that somebody. I had to get to him before anybody else did. It took time but I managed it in the end. I guess I would have found another way had he not succumbed to my charms, but he did and now we’re a couple. A couple with a shared past. A dark, troubled one.

I continue walking, knowing I have a fairly long journey ahead of me but the weather is mild and I have plenty of time. Nobody waiting at home for me. Nothing pressing. Nothing at all.

I wonder if Lauren will mention our little chat to her father. I suspect not. We have quite the connection, Peter and I, our chemistry flowing nicely. If she does, he will undoubtedly take my side, thinking she is jealous of his new-found love, knowing she is still grieving for her mother. He will forgive her but he will not tolerate her berating me or blackening my name. As I said, Peter and I have forged a good, solid connection. He hangs onto my every word. It’s rather flattering really, if not a little disconcerting. Like a child clinging to its caregiver. Quaint and yet at the same, utterly grotesque.

The streets are quiet as I head home. Only the occasional teenager hanging around or the odd smoker loitering outside their doorway blowing grey trails into the air as they stand, banished from their own property because of their stigmatised habit.

My feet are aching by the time I get in. Faking a limp has put a strain on my leg and now I am paying the price. It seemed like my only option at the time. Fucking stupid Lauren and her relentless probing into my affairs. She wasn’t prepared to let it go. I had to do something to curtail the conversation. I just hope she’s now got the message that my private life and where I live is none of her fucking business and definitely not up for discussion.

I rest my feet up on the sofa and glance at my phone, looking specifically for the local news. I’ve been checking sporadically throughout the day and so far, there has been no mention of anybody finding a body in the churchyard. No missing persons either. I suppose I should feel relieved but actually, I feel nothing at all. Perhaps a little intrigued at how it will all pan out, but as for guilt and remorse and shame and all those sentiments that should be currently burrowing their way deep under my skin and into the very heart of me – they are absent.

Maybe my family were right all along and I am damaged and in need of help. I had to do something to stop that woman’s probing. Just like Lauren, she thought she had every right to investigate the goings on in my life, assessing and judging, paying visits to check that everything is as it should be, and I had to stop her. If people made the decision to get on with their own sad little lives and to leave mine alone, then none of these things would have happened. It’s been a damaging turn of events and it began with Phillip, telling me that I should see somebody about my declining mental health, his sister wading in on the argument, agreeing with him, backing him up. How dare they? How fucking dare they? I went along with his suggestions to keep him happy and he went behind my back and slept with another woman – a colleague. The indignity of it still makes my scalp prickle with horror. Initially his friend and purported confidante, she soon became his lover.

I stop scrolling as I stumble upon a headline about a death in York and read the story beneath, marginally disappointed that it’s not about Jeanette, but a homeless man instead, who was found slumped and freezing cold in a shop doorway by an unsuspecting young woman who had turned up early to open up for work. Surely somebody has been in that churchyard since I was there? It’s a tiny, overgrown area accessed down a small alleyway but still, local people know it’s there and what about the priest? Hasn’t he been and seen something? Small animals will be foraging by now, nibbling at her skin, tearing off strips of her flesh. That will surely draw attention to her, won’t it?

The walk home and the constant pretence I have to maintain in the presence of Peter and Lauren has exhausted me. I lie back on the sofa and drift in and out of sleep, dreaming of Tom and Jeanette, their faces leering at me, furious and ghost-like. I dream that Jack Downey asks me to marry him and that Elizabeth never returns home and I take her place as the woman of the household.

When I wake, the darkness has begun to set in, a veil of grey obscuring the sunlight and stealing the remnants of the day. I sit up and yawn then feel around for my phone, finding it lodged down the side of the cushion.

My eyes are misted over as I look again, scouring local pages for news of a body. And then I see it.