With my confusion settling a notch, I carry the torch out to the garden. It’s heavy – a couple of kilos maybe – and I’m surprised that Milla agreed to take it with her. She’s never liked being weighed down by anything. But it’s lucky that she did, because her phone would have offered no help against the darkness once it ran out of power.
The shed sits against our back fence and it’s immaculate inside. There are shelves and cubbyholes, plus equally spaced hooks with different tools hanging down. The Maglite’s charging cradle sits just inside the door, so I drop the torch in and listen to the satisfying click as it connects. But the memory of Steve’s words, the forensic bags removed from that garage, makes me pause. Will the police come here one day? Stretch on latex gloves and pick through the items, searching for … what? A wrench? A hammer?
My stomach drops.
I will hunt those bitches down.
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. Because all I can see is the faint rusty stain on my kitchen drainer. Rivulets of tarnished water drying before they have chance to escape.
Please make this stop. It was mud. Not blood.
Neither of my daughters are killers.
Without looking back at the torch – its heavy-duty handle now a possible murder weapon in my head – I walk out of the shed and close the door.
Back in the house, I drink in all the family photos on the garden room wall. A cycling holiday in the Pyrenees that Milla moaned about relentlessly, until she won the prize for fastest teenage cyclist in the group. Christmas at my parents’ house, their front room barely recognisable under all the decorations and presents. The girls in their school uniforms from year to year, stepping stones through their childhood. The view settles me. Reminds me that we’re just an ordinary family. Honest, responsible, and of course law-abiding.
My toast is cold, and I’ve lost my appetite anyway, so I slide both slices into the food waste bin. But I still can’t face working. I drum my nails against the work surface, until my eyes rest on Mrs Jones’s apples. I’ll make a pie for supper, I decide; something wholesome. Serve it with vanilla ice-cream from the freezer.
Fifteen minutes later, the pastry is a satisfyingly smooth solid ball. I cover it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge. The stirring and kneading has done its job, and I feel calm enough to fire up my laptop while I wait for the pastry to chill. I’ve got about fifty unread emails, so I spend the next forty-five minutes browsing through them, and thankfully dragging most of them to my ‘no action required’ folder. When the timer goes off, I get the pastry out of the fridge, scatter some flour on the work surface, and reach into the utensils drawer for the rolling pin.
I frown. Burrow my fingers beneath spatulas and wooden spoons. Start pulling out things I didn’t know we owned – bamboo chopsticks, an ornate cocktail stirrer, an old-fashioned carrot peeler – but no rolling pin. It’s not there. I close the drawer, lean against the curved edge of the worktop, and drop my forearms onto the thin layer of flour. I don’t want to question where it is. I don’t have any energy left to justify its disappearance. Instead, I let the images slip back in. The broken bluebells. Amber’s damaged face and bloodstained hair; her glassy, blank stare. How small and innocent she looked in death.
Then I pick up the ball of pastry and drop it into the bin.
AFTER
Wednesday 8th May
Rachel
‘Hi, Mum, loads of homework, going to my room.’ Milla pulls down the heel of her trainer with her toe, then kicks it into the porch. Lucy has photography club after school today, and won’t be back for an hour, so this is my best chance to talk to Milla alone. To remind myself that she’s not capable of murder, and nor is her sister. There will be an innocent explanation for the missing rolling pin – I haven’t used it since Christmas after all – and I’m almost sure the mud by Kiln Lakes is a reddish colour now I’ve had the chance to think about it.
I just need her to make eye contact.
Milla’s second trainer somersaults into the porch and she hoists her rucksack back onto her shoulder. She starts walking towards the stairs, still not looking at me. I exhale a breath of frustration. ‘Aren’t you going to ask how it went?’ I call out. ‘At the police station?’
She turns, assesses me. ‘I assume they asked Lucy some dumb-arse questions and then let her go?’
I replay the conversation with DC Bzowski in my mind. ‘I guess you could describe it like that.’
She nods wisely, as though she never doubted it. ‘Good. Can I go now?’
I bite my lip. I want to keep her downstairs with me. What I really want is to dunk sponge fingers into cups of tea with her, and have to get a spoon for the sugary dregs. But life moves on. ‘Why did you not want Lucy to go to the police station?’ I ask. ‘Last night, at dinner, you suggested she pretend to be sick. Why did you say that?’
Her eyes flit away from me, towards the stairs, and I wonder for a moment if she’s going to leg it. But she doesn’t move. ‘Lucy’s scared of stuff like that, isn’t she? I didn’t think she should have to go through it when she’s a victim too.’
I may be imagining it – my heightened anxiety makes that a distinct possibility – but Milla’s answer sounds forced, as though she’s acting. ‘Did you know that Amber texted Lucy earlier in the evening?’
Milla doesn’t answer immediately and in the quiet, I listen to her breathing. It’s regular but pronounced. ‘Yeah, Luce told me,’ she eventually mutters. ‘Messaged me when I was at Ava’s party, asking whether I thought she should go and meet Amber.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told her no fucking way of course! I couldn’t believe she was even considering it. For what? A stupid letter?’
‘She didn’t take your advice though. Did she tell you that too?’
Milla looks down at her socked feet. ‘Not at the time. I was pretty firm in my message, so I assumed she’d gone along with it. Then I put it out of my mind. It was my best mate’s party, after all. But when I got home, and you said she was missing, well, it didn’t take a genius to work out where she’d gone.’
‘And did you go to the meeting place to find her?’
‘Yeah. I got Dad to drop me at the railway station, then I doubled back along the track. But she wasn’t there of course. No one was,’ she adds.
I hesitate for a moment, then plough on. ‘And were there any signs that she had been there? Any broken glass for example?’
She looks up at me and her hard expression takes my breath away. Milla is 18, so a woman, not a girl anymore. It doesn’t feel like that a lot of the time – the have you washed my jeans? and what’s for tea? questions – but right now I see an equal, an adversary even. ‘Why are you asking that?’ she says, her tone accusing. ‘Lucy didn’t meet her. That’s what she told me, and I’m sure that’s what she told you too. So how could there be evidence they met when it didn’t happen?’
She stares at me, an icy glare, and I don’t know how to answer her. She’s calling me out for not trusting my own daughter, and she’s right. I’m not sure I do trust Lucy anymore. But why not? Yes, she’s kept things from me – the blog, her text exchange with Amber – but only because she’s scared. And who wouldn’t be under the circumstances?
‘It’s such a mess,’ I finally say, dropping onto the sofa. ‘I feel like we’re up to our necks in a murder investigation, and I can’t fathom how that’s come about. Especially after what happened to your dad. We know we’re good people, so why does this keep happening to us?’
Milla sighs, and I see the tension release from her shoulders. She sits down next to me. ‘We’re not involved in this murder, Mum. None of us. That’s what you need to focus on right now.’
‘I know, but—’
‘I saw this TikTok,’ she interrupts. ‘Did you know that only seven per cent of murders are carried out by women? And I don’t know how many of them are under 16, but it must be close to zero per cent.’
‘I’m not suggesting …’
