His urgent tone launches me into action. I turn the key, give him and Milla a quick glance, and then head off down the driveway and towards the recreation ground, praying that, wherever she is, she’s safe.
BEFORE
Friday 19th April
Jess
‘Tea’s ready!’ Molly’s voice hollers up the stairs.
Jess rolls over on the top bunk and drops her head over the edge. ‘Shall we go?’ As fake parents go, the Wainwrights are okay, despite being ancient, but Molly does get arsy if they ignore her when she calls them. Usually Jess doesn’t care too much, but she’s meeting someone tonight (can she call him her boyfriend yet?) and she doesn’t want Molly to suddenly decide they’re grounded. Or more accurately, she can’t be bothered with the hassle of lying to her foster carers and sneaking out the back door when they’re watching TV.
‘Yeah, in a minute,’ Amber says, but she doesn’t show any sign of moving. ‘Just got a text from Sean.’
‘Oh?’ Jess sits up in bed, her mess of red wavy hair skimming the ceiling. ‘What does it say?’ She twists her body and climbs down the ladder. When they first moved in with the Wainwrights, they were offered a bedroom each. But when Amber said she wanted to share, Jess jumped at the chance, even though it meant bunk beds. It had been a horrible few weeks for her in the run-up to them leaving their last foster carers – Lou and Justin – and Jess wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep in her new home without her sister close by.
‘He wants me to call him,’ Amber says, her expression folding into a frown. She taps the crappy Nokia against her leg in thought. The dumb phone, they call it. Just phone calls, and texts, nothing smart about it. But Sean gave it to Amber soon after they moved to Chinnor and told her to only ever use that one to contact him. He’s changed the SIM card a couple of times too. The guy’s proper paranoid.
They met Sean soon after Amber started at secondary school. Jess was always a bit wary of him, but Amber loved his bad-boy style. It was all yes Sean, no Sean, eyelashes fluttering. He was 16 at the time while Amber was only 11, so he can’t have fancied her. But he acted like he did sometimes. Just enough to keep her hanging on, Jess always thought. A lot happened to Sean during that year, none of it good, and he went from bad boy to actual criminal. Jess was starting to worry that even Amber was in over her head, but then everything went to shit anyway.
Jess thought them moving to Chinnor would mean cutting ties with Sean, but he had other ideas. Now he comes to Thame, the nearest town to them and where their school is located, about once a month. Amber meets him – never the same place, but always away from any CCTV cameras – and he gives her a bag of skunk and sometimes some pills. On his say-so, she’s made it known at school that she can get drugs if anyone needs them, and someone usually does. So the next time Amber and Sean meet up, she gives him the cash she’s made, and he gives her a fresh supply – plus fifty quid or so in payment.
‘You don’t think he’s found out about the extra cash, do you?’ Jess asks. While Amber still idolises Sean, there are signs the spell is breaking. Like how she’s started skimming an extra fiver off every gram of weed she sells.
‘Nah,’ Amber says. She sounds confident, but her bottom lip gives her away. ‘I give him ten quid a gram, same as always. He doesn’t know anyone at our school, so there’s no way he could find out I’ve upped the price.’ She puts the phone in a sunglasses case, beside two long-finished lip balm tins, and drops it in her top drawer among her knickers and socks. It’s not exactly a secure hiding place, but they know that Molly and Bill would never rifle through their stuff. The right to privacy got at least half an hour on the foster carers’ refresher course. ‘I don’t reckon he’d care even if he did know anyway,’ Amber goes on. ‘Doesn’t change what he makes out of our deal, does it?’
Jess isn’t sure she agrees, because she doesn’t think that selling drugs is just about making money. It’s about control. Being more powerful than the other guy. Jess reckons that Sean would go batshit crazy if he found out that Amber had been cheating him. But she’s not going to risk antagonising her sister by saying that. ‘Suppose not.’
‘He probably wants to tell me when he’s next coming to Thame. We can go to the rec after tea, and I’ll call him from there.’
‘Uh, yeah, okay.’ Jess drags her front teeth along her bottom lip. She hasn’t told her sister that she’s already got plans for tonight. She and Amber do everything together, and she knows she’ll get an onslaught of questions if she leaves without explaining where she’s going. But she’s not ready to tell Amber yet. She doesn’t know why – or maybe she does, but she doesn’t want to think about it, her fear that Amber might try to ruin this one good thing that’s happening to her.
Her vague plan is to show her face at youth club with Amber like normal – it’s cringe dull, but it gets them a free pass from Bill and Molly every Friday evening – then claim a headache and pretend to go home rather than to the rec like usual. Then she can double back and head to the disused train carriages where she’s arranged to meet him. Amber isn’t the type to walk her home, or cut her own evening short, so all being well, that will give Jess at least an hour without Amber having to know a thing.
She will tell her soon – that goes without saying – but not just yet.
Amber crawls out of her bed cave and they head downstairs together.
‘You took your time,’ Molly complains, but with a fondness that means they’re not in trouble. As a foster kid, it takes quite a lot to get into any real trouble at home. Jess has never worked out whether that’s because their tragic start in life cuts them extra slack, or because not having any shared DNA means foster carers aren’t so bothered about the kids in their care doing well. But neither Lou and Justin, nor Molly and Bill, have ever moaned about disappointing grades, non-existent table manners, or the state of their bedroom. One of the reasons they moved to Chinnor was because Amber said she wanted to study Arabic at GCSE, but when she changed to Dance a day after she started at Lord Fred’s, no one even mentioned it.
Not that Jess’s actual parents would give a shit about those things either. Before she died, Jacqui might snuggle up in bed with them every now and again, but other than that, she limited her mothering to making sure they got the basics – food, clothes, to school on time most days. Beyond that, it was all about the vodka bottle and trying to make Tyler happy enough not to smash her face in.
Her dad has got an excuse for his crapness, Jess supposes. He joined the Army when he was 16, just a year older than she is now, and met her mum when he was based in a barracks north of Oxford. Jess was conceived just before he went on a tour of Afghanistan, which she’s always found quite romantic, even though that’s where the nightmare started. He was hit by shrapnel from some roadside bomb. Two other soldiers died, so he was lucky in comparison, but he still had to have a load of operations. He wasn’t the same after that. Jacqui threw him out on Jess’s first birthday – some over-the-top reaction to the party poppers apparently – and a couple of weeks later he tried to top himself. That’s when the Army stepped in, got him counselling and stuff. He’s more stable now, but he doesn’t have a job, and no one’s ever suggested he might want to take responsibility for his daughter.
Jess isn’t sure which is worse. Having a dad who doesn’t want to look after you, or not having a clue who your father even is, like Amber.
‘Great tea, Molly,’ Amber mumbles as she scoops up a forkful of cottage pie and shovels it into her mouth. For all her backchat, Amber must be a joy to feed because she eats anything. ‘You not eating?’
‘I’m going to wait for Bill – he’s at a church meeting – but I’m glad you like it. Give you some energy for whatever you kids get up to at youth club these days.’ Molly gives them a smile, then disappears into the kitchen. Jess can hear her running the tap.
‘I wish Lucy Rose would hang out at the rec on a Friday sometimes,’ Amber muses, now that Molly is out of earshot. ‘You can only cause so much grief at school.’
‘She never leaves that house though, does she?’ Jess slides a thin slice of mashed potato off the meat and drops it onto her tongue. She hates the texture of mince. Maybe she should become a vegetarian. ‘She’s too scared to leave the protection of Mummy and Daddy.’
Amber pushes air through her nose. ‘She’s pathetic. Do you reckon her parents are embarrassed that she’s such a baby?’
Amber is trying to disguise it, but Jess can hear the hope in her voice. Like she needs to believe that parental love isn’t all that special. But Jess knows that’s bullshit. Most parents, normal parents, love their children so much that they’re blind to their faults.
‘We should trick her, shouldn’t we?’ Amber says when Jess stays silent. ‘Get her to leave her cosy little house one night. Then we could be waiting for her.’
‘An ambush,’ Jess whispers, thinking of her dad, and that roadside bomb.
‘Oh my God, she’d crap herself, wouldn’t she?’
Then they both dissolve into giggles until Molly tells them to shut up and finish their tea.
‘We’ll need her phone number,’ Amber says thoughtfully. ‘Find a way to get hold of it at school next week, yeah?’
THE NIGHT SHE DIES
Friday 3rd May
Rachel
I’ve lived in this village for seventeen years – since we outgrew our little flat in north Oxford after Milla was born – and I’ve never felt scared here. Not on those solo walks back from The Crown after a class mums’ night out. Not even when I’m out on a trail run in winter before sunrise. But tonight, the dark streets feel ominous.
Where is she?
She’ll be in the recreation ground. Both Milla and Lucy have spent hundreds of hours there over the years, first with me, and then on their own as they got older. Lucy and Bronwen too. They would lie on the giant disc swing, heads together, discussing their futures. Lucy as a writer or architect, Bronwen, a detective or podcaster. I can imagine Lucy finding solace there this evening, staring at the stars.
I pick up my pace, and I’m almost running by the time I reach the entrance to the recreation ground. I don’t know if it’s exertion or fear, but my heart is racing, and I pause for a moment to take a few deep breaths. The sports pavilion on the left is just a black mass, no lights on, and the pitches in front of it appear empty too. But I can see people in the playground in the far right-hand corner, eerie silhouettes against the dim glow of streetlamps from Station Road. From this distance it’s impossible to tell if one of them is Lucy, so I up my pace again and jog across the field.
But when I push open the gate to the playground, I realise, with crushing disappointment, that she’s not there. There are about eight people in total, all teenagers, a mix of boys and girls, but none that I recognise. They stare at me with a mix of surprise and horror.
‘Sorry,’ I say instinctively, as though I need to apologise for trespassing on their domain. ‘I’m looking for my daughter.’
The crack in my voice gives me away instantly. Desperation. And with it, any authority my adulthood might have evoked disintegrates. Most of them back away, uncomfortable with the drama I’m bringing to their evening. But three girls don’t move, curious expressions settling on their faces. The one who’s sitting on the swing sucks on a vape, then blows out a huge cloud of fake smoke. A sickly sweet smell permeates the air.
‘Who is she?’ she finally asks. Even in those three words I can tell that she’s drunk. I dip my eyeline and notice the empty wine bottles and crushed cider cans on the asphalt. Not that I’m going to judge them. I’ve held Milla’s hair back too many times for that.
‘She’s called Lucy Rose,’ I say. ‘You might know her, she’s in Year 10 at Lord Fred’s.’
The girl squints for a moment, in thought, then relaxes her features. ‘Oh yeah, Lucy Rose,’ she slurs. ‘Milla’s little sister.’
‘You’ve seen her? Tonight? Do you know where she is now?’ I shoot out the questions like bullets.
‘Huh? Nah, I just mean that I know who she is. Never spoken to her. We’re older,’ she adds, as though that explains it. The regimental nature of school. Friendships across age groups firmly banned.
‘And she hasn’t been here tonight?’ I press. ‘You’re sure?’
