I sat in my car, smoking, thinking. Tuesday night was the ritual. There was a flutter of nerves in my stomach when I thought about it, a feeling like a rising crescendo, birds taking flight. Rupert had called me earlier and asked me if I was still intending to ‘go through with it’, as if I were contemplating hiring a hitman instead of meeting teenagers in a churchyard. He didn’t get it, and that was okay. ‘I just have to know,’ I told him. ‘I just have to slip into her skin. It might give me a clue. It might save her. It might even bring her home.’
As I drove back towards Lewes, I hesitated, just for a fraction of a second, before turning left on to the road that would take me up past the prison. I knew where Thorn House was, just outside town, over the humpback bridge. I’d driven past it before, on the days when I used to take Edie out to look at the horses in the nearby fields. She was much, much younger then, of course. Dewy-eyed but not frightened, not even with her small hand outstretched with a fistful of grass in it.
‘Keep your hand flat, honey, so it doesn’t bite,’ I’d told her. She had seemed so small as the horse bent its giant head to her, and I’d almost snatched her away. Edie had laughed, though, as that soft velvety muzzle had pressed against her skin. ‘It tickles, Mummy!’ she’d crowed. We must have passed Thorn House a number of times, but we hadn’t even noticed it then. There was a gate, of course, separating the big Georgian property from the road, and at first I drove right past it, making a turn on the right so I could drive around again and park a little way away, with the front of the house in view.
It was a quiet street, all the houses grand and imposing and concealed behind high hedges and gates and old stone walls. Behind them the woodland stretched out towards the hem of the South Downs and the soaring cliffs beyond. I leaned my car seat back a little and lit a cigarette, rolling down the window a few inches. By now the sky was turning a pale lavender colour, dusk-stained. I turned on the radio and watched and waited.
Edward Thorn’s car pulled up on the drive at four thirty, just as the streetlights were coming on. The car was one of those big ones, a proper family car, an old, well-used four-door, spattered with mud. I watched as the brake lights flared red and winked out before opening my own car door. I didn’t climb out just yet. I wanted to surprise him. I saw a man climbing stiffly from the driver’s seat wearing a wax jacket with the collar turned up, a pair of scruffy-looking jeans. He moved to the rear of the car and opened the boot and started to rummage inside. I slid silently out of my car and crossed the road quickly, hands in my pockets, face set in a grim, hard line. There was what felt like an electrical pulse running through me, crackling with charge.
Edward was pulling something from the boot, a large white object, a rectangle. As he turned it towards the road I could make out the writing on it: Private Property – NO Entry! written in thick black strokes.
‘Hey!’ I called out, starting to jog towards him, unable to keep myself from moving; it was a propulsion. I wanted to grab him, throw him against the car. But, of course, I didn’t. He turned and for a moment I saw the expression on his face change. Eyes widening, mouth opening in a slack zero. It was just a second and then he was blinking and smiling hesitantly, eyebrows raised.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you know me?’
‘I think I do, yes.’ Up close his face was heavily lined, like the gnarled trunk of a tree. His deep-set eyes were very dark, glittering like buried jewels. ‘You’re Mrs Hudson. The missing girl’s mother.’
I wasn’t expecting that.
He nodded, placing a large hand on my shoulder, his voice softening. ‘Of course I know who you are. I was sorry to read about your daughter in the paper. Edie, is it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So. How can I help?’
‘I want to know what your car was doing at the churchyard the night Edie disappeared.’
His face fell but his expression was hard to read. Disappointment? Fear? He crossed his arms in front of his chest. ‘You know I’ve already spoken to Tony about this.’
‘Well, now you can talk to me.’
‘I don’t think that’s wise.’
‘I’m not giving you a fucking choice!’ I shouted, my voice shaking with the force of it. I was suddenly furious with him, his calmness, that reasonable tilt of the head, the sympathy in his voice, oversweet. I was furious with Tony for telling me that goodwill is a currency and that Edward Thorn had a surfeit of it. I was angry with Edie and myself and with this stupid town for swallowing her up. My fists were tight, arms stiff and thrumming with tension. Edward didn’t raise his voice or step away
