He regards me with cool contemplation.
‘Go on, bugger off,’ I tell him, and when he moves away – slowly, tail raised – I see he has exposed something down there in the dirt. Four-year-old Edie loved the garden, and the two of us spent a lot of time squatting on the grass, pulling weeds free from the ground and making comical ripping sounds out the corners of our mouths. We dug and planted and pruned, and when I presented Edie with the stunted fruits of our first vegetable crop she glowed with excitement.
I sink down next to the flower bed, brushing the loose dirt away with my hand. She buried things all over this garden. I thought I’d found them all. I peer closer. It’s a watch. Cherry-red plastic, digital face. The screen is frosted with condensation, the strap partially chewed. I pull it out of the ground with a hand that doesn’t feel quite like my own. I remember this watch. It was in her stocking that Christmas. She was so wowed by it she barely looked at another present that whole day. It looks incredibly small in my hands, doll-sized. It’s hard to imagine it fitting her wrist. There’s a lump in my throat. The sun, pressing hot on my shoulders. Prisms of light through my closed eyelids, like needles.
I put the watch in one pocket and pull the phone out of the other. I swipe it open with that same distant feeling, as if I’m floating away from myself. Dis-ass-o-shi-a-shun, as my therapist had pronounced it. I know better, though. It’s my mind, breaking. I’ve been waiting for it to happen for a long, long time. At the base of my skull I can feel myself becoming untethered, as if some internal rope is working itself loose from the mooring to which I’ve secured it for eighteen years. I’m getting closer. I can feel it.
Frances – Now
She’s coming. I wait impatiently, one hand holding the torch against my hip. I flick it on, off, on, off. Come on, I think, although I’ve arrived at the spot early and still have a good ten minutes before the time Samantha said she’d be here. I reach for my phone and realise I have left it charging in the kitchen next to the kettle. Shit. Have I got time to head back to Thorn House before Samantha arrives? It’s a fifteen-minute walk in the other direction, along the narrow country lane. Samantha and I have agreed to meet here, next to the stile, which will take us over the ploughed field and eventually on to the bridle path that Edward Thorn fought so hard to keep to himself. Alex said it was because of his need for privacy. I wonder if perhaps there was a secret he’d been keeping. I touch the wood of the stile. It’s worn smooth by the passage of feet over the years, and warmed by the sun. I close my eyes. Edie, I think, hold on, girl. We’re coming for you.
There’s a car approaching. Good. I stand with one foot on the stile and my arm raised so she can see me in time to slow down. I’m nervous, excited. It sounds bad, but it’s true. I was once told that the neurological responses of panic and excitement are basically the same. Heart pounding, dry mouth, shaking hands, dizziness. It’s our brain’s interpretation that takes them into fear or joy. I don’t feel joy – I’m about to head into a dark wood on a late summer’s day to look for the body of a missing girl – but there is a sense of exhilaration as I stand here, shifting from foot to foot, urging Samantha to hurry up.
The gleam of a car over the top of the winding hedgerow, then it’s gone, hidden as it turns the corner. I hear the engine rattle as the driver changes gear and then I see it, a dark blue Ford, a solid, practical car for a solid, practical man, and my heart sinks. It’s not her. It’s William. What am I going to tell him? Now the panic rises, full-throated, and I wonder how I could ever have thought it was close to excitement.
He slows down as he drives past me and then I see the red brake lights come on as he draws to a stop in the middle of the dusty road. I hesitate before walking towards the car with legs that feel wooden and strange. I hear his window slide down. He is keeping the engine on, and I’m hopeful he’s just going to ask what I’m doing here, where I’m headed, hopeful he’s just caught me as he drives out towards Seaford and Eastbourne along the back roads. Just a stroke of bad luck. I smile tightly. Samantha will be here any minute and I don’t want him to see her. I look back over my shoulder, straining to hear her approaching car as I bend down to the driver’s window.
He is smiling. ‘What’re you doing, babe?’ he says.
I can hear the radio playing, smell the lemon air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror. His voice is steady, mildly surprised. Something is wrong. I can feel it. My hand instinctively goes for my phone and then I remember it’s back at the house. I tense, and William’s smile turns to a puzzled frown.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘What are you doing out here? You look like you’re waiting for someone.’
‘No, no.’ I laugh; it’s too high. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘Where to?’
‘Just – around.’ Is that her car coming? I lift my head and look back but see nothing except the hedgerows. A bird lands in the road and pecks at something there. A black bird; a crow, maybe. I think of the bird that flew into the roof of the greenhouse, that smear of blood it left
