Now he turns the engine off and sits quietly, his hands in his lap. I can’t take my eyes off the smears of blood on his fingertips. When I say his name he looks right at me.
‘What have you done with Samantha?’
‘Come on,’ he says.
We go into Thorn House together, and I’m immediately struck by how quiet it seems. Even the tick of the hallway clock appears muffled, as though everything is holding its breath. I stand in the hallway shivering, although I am not cold. William removes his sweatshirt but not his shoes, which are crusted with dried mud and dirt.
‘You left your phone behind,’ he says, quietly. ‘I wouldn’t have known about it if Alex hadn’t told me. “Oh, Frances has left her phone,” he said. “Where’s she gone?” I asked him. You know what he told me?’
I shake my head.
‘He said you were going “up on to the Downs”. But that isn’t what you told me. You said you were going into town, to the library. You were quite specific. And I couldn’t work out why you’d lie about where you were going. It made me wonder what you were hiding. So I picked up your phone.’
‘It has a passcode.’
‘It does, and of course yours is the same as your PIN. One – two – three – four. Theoretically, there are ten thousand possible four-digit combinations the numbers zero to nine can be arranged into, and you’ve gone right ahead and picked the most obvious. It’s asking for trouble. I’ve been telling you that for years.’
He’s right; he has. I keep saying I’ll change it and not getting round to it. Now look what’s happened. He’s got blood on his cuffs.
‘I found your messages to Samantha. I couldn’t work out who she was at first. I thought maybe it was someone back in Swindon, but then I saw the one that said that you were thinking of going out to the old well. The one in the woods, right?’
I nod. My hands hang limp by my sides. That’s the thing I always tell my patients about panic. There’s always a crash afterwards.
‘You know my father boarded that well up over twenty years ago? You know that because I told you the story of the sheep’s skull. So I thought to myself, what’s the deal, Frances? Why are you heading out there to go and look for it? What does that have to do with Samantha? And then I remembered. Edie Hudson.’
‘You were her boyfriend.’
He snorts.
‘I had a lot of girlfriends when I was a kid, if you can believe it. Edie was one of them. She was insane, so I dumped her. Edie was mad about it and ran away. Do I feel guilty? I did, for a while. Did I go and look for her? No. Did I want her to come back? Probably not, if I’m being honest. There you go, that’s it. That’s the story.’
His hand, the one with the gold band of his wedding ring on, lifts to his hair. He tugs at it gently, distracted. But I see it. I see it.
‘I don’t know how you got involved with Samantha. Seems to me like she’s a lot more trouble than she’s worth. I remember reading all that stuff about her in the papers after Edie went missing. Come on.’
I follow him silently down the tiled hallway. At the far end the sun slants through the large arched window that looks out on to Edward’s beloved rose bushes. My stomach is full of shrinking knots, pulling themselves tighter and tighter. When William puts the flat of his hand between my shoulder blades, the skin there grows cold with gooseflesh and it takes all my restraint not to pull away from him. He opens the door to our left, the one that leads into the kitchen.
‘Go on,’ he says. ‘In you go, Frances.’
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, grainy and diffuse. The curtains have been drawn to block out the light but I can make out the bulky shapes of the dresser, the dining table, the long old-fashioned range that heats the room in the winter. Then I see her. Samantha. She is slumped in one of the dining chairs, her chin resting on her chest, wiry hair falling over her face. A rope has been bound around her chest, restraining her. I stare in mute horror.
‘I intercepted her on her way to meet you,’ William says in a low voice, as if she were merely asleep. ‘Good job I found your phone when I did, otherwise I’d never have known where to find you.’
‘What have you done to her?’
‘I made her pull over and get out the car by pretending I was hurt. I flagged her down just two miles up the road. She didn’t know it was me at first. I guess I’ve grown up a lot since the last time she saw me. You know she carries a knife? She pulled it on me once, in the graveyard.’
‘You have to let her go. What is she even doing here? It’s kidnap, William.’
‘Kidnap. Listen to yourself. You’re always
