At least this other mother had been spared finding her daughter’s body. At least she wouldn’t suffer those other nightmares – the shallow sympathy that morphed to accusation, the arrest, the trial, the brutal destruction of her hard-won life.
‘Are you OK, dear?’ the old lady asked.
‘I’m fine,’ Carolynn managed, pushing herself upright, finding a television aerial fixed to the newsagent’s roof across the road, focusing hard on that one spot to keep herself from swaying, toppling. She needed to act normally, couldn’t afford to attract attention to herself like this. What if people noticed her odd behaviour and worked out who she was? The old lady was still watching her quizzically. Carolynn met her look with a fixed smile.
‘I’m fine, thank you.’ The voice that spoke, her voice, sounded distant, as if it was coming from someone else. ‘I’ve had a summer cold that went to my head and has been making me dizzy.’
She needed to get a paper, needed to know everything. She didn’t want to know, couldn’t bear to. She needed to not be recognized, felt an overwhelming urge to bolt, keep running until she had outpaced this nightmare.
Both supermarkets were full, people with too much time on their hands, lingering and gossiping, wallowing in shared shock and horror. Her chin welded to her chest, eyes cast to the ground, Carolynn ducked into Tesco Metro and snatched up a copy of the Daily Mail. Holding it in front of her, pretending to read the front page, she headed over to the self-service tills, a blur of tears obscuring everything but the huge black headline that screamed: SECOND GIRL MURDERED AT WEST WITTERING BEACH. A photograph under the headline showed the dunes, a white ‘InciTent’ – she remembered the term from two years ago – and that man, that horrid policeman, with the weird mismatched blue and brown eyes, an overgrown, malevolent raven in his black suit.
At the self-service till, she scanned the barcode, slid the paper under her arm and fumbled her purse from her bum-bag.
‘Please put your product into the bagging area …’
She froze.
‘Please put your product into the bagging area … please put your product into the bagging area …’
Oh God, everyone is looking at me. What am I supposed to do? Panic bloomed in her chest. She had never used one of these tills before, had only chosen it to avoid facing a shop assistant. She felt sick.
‘The paper, madam.’ A man in a blue uniform with a Tesco badge fixed to his chest had appeared beside her. ‘You need to put the paper in the bagging area.’
Where was the bagging area? She should have just gone to the normal till; it felt as if everyone in the store had turned to stare. She couldn’t be recognized.
‘There.’
Without raising her head, Carolynn’s gaze tracked down the man’s arm to his extended finger. She dropped the paper on to the metal tray and the electronic voice ceased.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured. She sensed that he was still watching her as she fumbled her purse open and found sixty-five pence. She wished he’d just go away. ‘I’m fine now, thank you,’ she repeated, a cutting edge to her tone.
A balloon of air eased from her lungs as he stepped away, turned his attention to another customer. She slotted the money into the till and took her receipt.
‘They’ll need to find the first little girl’s mother now,’ a loud female voice chimed right next to her. ‘The one who got let off due to lack of evidence.’
An answering voice, high-pitched and screechy. Uneducated – it was an uneducated voice – Carolynn couldn’t stop herself from thinking.
‘She’s disappeared though, hasn’t she? Says so, right here.’
Two women, she saw from the corner of her eye, both about her own age, early forties, overly made-up with brassy, box-dyed hair. They were both reading a red-top paper.
‘What was her name? D’you remember?’
‘Reynolds, wasn’t it? Karen, Caroline, summink like that?’
A concurring murmur. ‘Stuck up, she was, from what I saw on the telly. Stuck up and ice-cold.’
Carolynn’s breathing was too loud, as if her lungs had been replaced by a rasping pair of bellows.
‘I always thought she did it.’
They are all staring at me. I can feel Zoe’s weight in my arms. Heavy, she’s got so heavy these past few years. I haven’t held her. I hadn’t noticed.
There was a tear in the bellows that kept Carolynn from catching her breath.
‘You could tell from the way she behaved that she was guilty.’
Her hair is a mess, caught with seaweed. I hate her looking untidy, but I can’t untangle it because my arms are filled with her body and I can’t stop, I must keep going forward. Why are they all staring at me?
‘Well, you wouldn’t go hiding if you was innocent, would you? I wouldn’t if it was me, anyways.’
Carolynn let out a sob – she couldn’t help herself.
‘Are you all right, love?’ The woman’s forehead, under her choppy claret fringe, wrinkled with concern.
Carolynn nodded, fumbling her purse back into her bum-bag. She wanted to scream at them, to tell them how she had been haunted, unable to sleep without medication for two years, unable even to get out of bed for a month after Zoe’s death. How she had lost everything: her job, her friends, her home, her life, her sanity. Everything. How she was afraid, terrified, that it was all going to start again. She turned away, aware that hot tears were running down her cheeks, unable to hold them back.
There is something around her neck. Dirt? Is it dirt? No, bruises. There are bruises around her neck.
‘Hey, hold on, you’ve forgotten your paper.’ The woman’s eyes narrowed as she held out Carolynn’s Mail. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? I don’t mean to meddle, but you look awful, love.’
Shaking her bent head, Carolynn reached for the paper, mumbled a quick ‘thank you’,
