‘I remember.’
‘Yep,’ Nancy says. ‘I was the only one who knew. Well, me and the father.’
‘Who was the father?’ I’m thinking of William with his hand in her underwear. Or Dylan? And who else was there? How many that I didn’t know about?
‘She wouldn’t tell me. I mean, Edie wasn’t a virgin. Most of us had – uh – a series of overlapping boyfriends. You know?’
‘But you must have some idea.’
Nancy shakes her head, sighs. ‘Honestly. She wouldn’t say and I didn’t push it because – well, because it was Edie. You didn’t push things with Edie.’
I have a flash of memory. Shoved into the corner of a room, something spilt across the carpet. It’s the table; Edie’s upturned the dining table. There’s spaghetti all over the floor, red sauce. I can see broken glass glittering on the rug. I’m saying, ‘Edie, stop, I mean it.’ I’m reaching into my back pocket for the knife. This is stupid, I’m thinking, even though my heart is beating at a hundred miles an hour, this is so stupid, it’s just homework. Why can’t she just do her fucking homework? Her face is so angry I don’t recognise her. It contorts her from the inside out. She’s a monster.
‘Yeah,’ I say resignedly to Nancy. ‘If she didn’t want to do something, she wouldn’t do it.’
‘Listen, I have to go. I’ve got Pilates,’ Nancy says, breaking the spell. Her voice is more precise again and she’s wrapping the scarf around her neck. This moment is over.
She stands, holding my gaze with her heavy-lidded eyes. ‘You need to try to move on, Samantha. Don’t lose your present to your past.’
Wow, I think. What a wise thing to say. It seems vaguely familiar and then I remember where I’ve seen it before. On Nancy’s Facebook wall, one of those quotes set against the backdrop of a waterfall, written in calligraphic script.
I almost laugh. ‘I appreciate your help, Nancy.’
‘I’m lactose intolerant but if you ever want to meet for coffee, I’m here. Always here.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘You look after yourself, Samantha,’ Nancy says, picking up her handbag, and I’m left alone again.
I walk aimlessly through the market stalls that are set up in the pedestrianised centre of town. I can’t face going home. I feel weak, like I’m getting sick. Edie, pregnant. It changes everything. It means that she could be out there somewhere, living with her own son or daughter, my grandchild. It was a catalyst for her leaving, quietly and without incident, that had nothing to do with my necklace or the argument we’d had that morning. My hope soars. I wish Tony was still here. He’d know what to do. I try to picture him, his soft grey eyes, the gentle burr of his voice. The first thing he ever said to me was, ‘I am here to help you find your daughter.’ At the time it was soothing, like a warm compress. I believed him.
I buy a paper and sit on a bench with it folded on my lap. Pregnant. She must have been so frightened. I remember how I felt. As though my own body was turning on me. Nausea, exhaustion, pain. All that sickness. And that strange, alien feeling of a life growing inside you. Cells dividing again and again and again, bones forming and hardening beneath soft, stretched skin. I’m unnerved to find that my face is wet with tears. I didn’t realise I was crying.
There’s a hand on my shoulder. I twitch, swiping at the wetness on my cheeks. It’s Frances, peering at me with concern.
‘I thought that was you. Are you okay? Did you speak to Nancy?’
‘Yes. What are you – why are you here?’
‘I had to get out the house.’ She sits beside me on the bench. ‘I had an argument with William last night. You look like you’ve been crying.’
‘Allergies,’ I say, straight-faced.
She nods. I don’t want to talk about it. Frances understands.
We sit side by side in silence, pigeons cooing softly in the eaves of the nearby buildings. The River Ouse runs beneath us, brown and tarry.
Finally, Frances speaks, without looking at me. ‘I think I’m leaving him.’
‘Okay.’
More silence. I reach over and awkwardly pat her hand. She smiles, closes her eyes. When she speaks again she doesn’t open them, doesn’t look at me. ‘There’s something I wanted to mention to you. There’s an old well in the woods near Thorn House. It’s very old and pretty much dry, from what I can tell. Edward Thorn boarded it up when the boys were kids because it was so dangerous. I think it mi—’
‘No. No more.’ I stand up, pressing the newspaper against my chest. When Edie first went missing the same newspaper buried her story in its pages, using the headline ‘Troubled Teen Runaway: Missing Edie Hudson may have fled to capital’. Troubled. So polite. So generous. That scar on Nancy’s neck, twisted like rope. ‘No more, Frances. I don’t have the energy. It’s the hope. I don’t know how much longer I can sustain it before I fucking sink. It’s making me sick, that hope. Sometimes I can lose hours just wondering what she looks like now, how she’s grown into a woman. Does she look like me or her dad? Sometimes I even think I see her; a woman who is lean and strong-looking, with dark glossy hair. I double-take when I see women with their jaws set hard like Edie when she was in a temper, or women with multiple earrings, little gold hoops and crosses. That was the kind of thing she loved, always trying on my jewellery when she was a little girl. When I see them, these phantom Edies walking their dogs or bouncing a baby on their knee, it’s like walking into a cold room. I can’t breathe. I try not to stare.
