She swiped a hand across the mirror, leaving a streak of bile across the glass, fuzzing her own grotesque image from view.
Back in the sitting room, the silence jarring, Carolynn realized that the television was now off. Roger watched her gaze track to the blank screen.
‘I switched it off,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘We don’t need to see any more.’
‘What are we going to do, Roger?’
‘Do?’ His eyes registered surprise.
‘I need to understand what the police are thinking.’
‘You were acquitted, Carolynn.’
She nodded, concentrating hard on the brown vines twisting through the wallpaper like strings of DNA, not meeting his searching gaze. She hated this room, had always felt claustrophobic in it, and now she felt as if the vines were coiling around her, squeezing her throat with each rasping breath she managed.
‘That detective inspector—’ Even now, nine months since the collapse of her trial, since they had fled down here to anonymity, she couldn’t bear to say his name. The man who had hounded her, who was convinced of her guilt, still, no doubt. She had caught his eye as she’d left the Old Bailey a free woman, had recognized the cynicism and anger in his look. He would never stop hunting her.
And now. Now he had another reason. A second dead child. High-octane fuel to his fire.
‘That detective inspector said on the news that he would like to speak with me … with, uh, with us.’
‘He has to find us first, and he won’t be able to do that. Nobody knows where we are. We left no trace. They won’t find us. They won’t expect us to be living here in Bracklesham Bay, so close to where Zoe was murdered. It was a clever choice.’
Carolynn nodded distractedly. The location, a sprawling seaside town crammed with tourists and seasonal workers in summer, shuttered and battened down, locals retreating inside to their hearths and their television sets in winter, provided perfect anonymity. Roger had read about the beautiful, kilometres-long white-sand beaches that stretched from Bracklesham Bay to East and West Wittering in The Sunday Times a few years ago, and they had spent a long weekend here every September since, a last hurrah before Zoe went back to school.
‘My photograph was on the news. It will be in every paper. I can’t face it again. I can’t face that whole process, being treated like a side of meat.’
My body, the searches – they said that they wanted to make sure I didn’t have any hidden drugs, but really they just wanted to dehumanize me, remove every shred of my dignity.
‘I could never go through that again, Roger.’ Her voice shook. ‘I couldn’t—’
Complete strangers screaming at me in the street, calling me a child murderer, dragging at my clothes and hair, spitting in my face.
‘You won’t have to, because they won’t find us,’ he said firmly. ‘You don’t look like you used to. Your hair is different, your face, your body. There’s nothing left of your body.’ He emitted a brief, heartless laugh. ‘Remember that book we used to read to … to Zoe?’
Carolynn flinched at the sound of Zoe’s name on his lips.
‘Stick Man. Do you remember it, my Stick Lady love?’ His fingers and thumb pinched the skin of her upper arm. His grip left two white indents, which she knew would turn black. Was she bruising more easily these days? ‘You are virtually unrecognizable now, Carolynn.’
She tried to suppress the involuntary shudder as his arms slid around her waist and he stepped forward, closing the gap between them, pressing himself against her. She wanted to shove him away, dismiss him, but she couldn’t. She needed his support, his complicity. They were in this together.
‘And this little girl’s death is totally different,’ he murmured, his breath misting hot and damp against her ear, making her want to shudder all over again. ‘You were nowhere near West Wittering beach this afternoon, were you?’
She had been the one to find Zoe dead in the sand dunes of West Wittering beach two years ago. She had left footprints all over the crime scene, her DNA had been all over her daughter’s body – Well, it would have been, wouldn’t it? I’m her mother – her fingerprints on that disgusting doll with the moving eyes and the black marks around its neck. Roger was right. This was different.
‘You have an alibi. You were here, at home.’
Carolynn gave an uncertain nod.
‘Weren’t you?’ he pressed. ‘Apart from that quick trip to the supermarket?’
‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘But I was alone.’
‘It was dull, rainy. You had the lights on in the kitchen when I got back. Someone would have seen you through the window. Someone from the caravan park.’
‘Yes,’ she murmured listlessly.
She had been out running again, on the beach, down to East Wittering and further, to the west, pounding along the sand, the rain peppering her face, the beach deserted. Only a kite-surfer zipping backwards and forwards two hundred metres offshore, too far away to attest to the identity of anyone on the beach. Her breath caught in her throat. Oh God.
‘What?’ Roger asked.
‘Nothing.’
His eyes remained fixed on her face, weighing, judging.
‘Really, Roger, it was nothing.’
She pressed her hands against his chest and levered him away from her, trying to keep the relief she felt at the widening space between them from telegraphing itself to her face.
‘Take some of your pills and go to bed early. Stay away from the windows, away from television. An early night will do you good. And tomorrow …’ He paused. ‘Tomorrow everything will look better.’
She nodded dully. The last thing she needed was to sleep, to dream. She wanted to think. The news of the little girl’s death had brought back something about the day she had found Zoe’s body, something
