‘Holy shit!’
Jumping at the sound of Suzie’s voice, Holly’s cheeks blazed when she saw the disgust in her friend’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry, hon,’ Suzie said, pulling a face as she looked around. ‘I know I said I’d stay over, but there’s no way I’m sleeping in here. It needs fumigating.’
‘We can’t touch anything,’ Holly said, feeling nervous when Suzie started rolling up the sleeves of her pyjama top, as if she intended to start cleaning. ‘My mum’ll go mad if she finds out you’ve been in here. She doesn’t even let me come in.’
‘And how will she feel if social services come round and you get taken into care because she couldn’t be arsed cleaning up?’ Suzie asked bluntly. ‘’Cos that’s what’ll happen if they see this, I guarantee it.’
Holly shuddered at the thought of being sent to a children’s home. A girl at her last school had been sent to live in a home after her mum died, and she’d told Holly it was worse than prison.
‘Right, forget it, we’re going to mine,’ Suzie said decisively. ‘I know I told PC Spencer I’d stay here, but I doubt we’ll hear from him again tonight, so grab some underwear and toiletries while I look for a nightie, then we’ll get going.’
Squirming with shame when Suzie walked over to the bed and gingerly lifted a pillow with her fingernails, as if afraid that she might catch something from it, Holly rifled through the dressing table drawer and tossed a bra and a couple of pairs of knickers into the plastic bag before going to the bathroom to get her mum’s toothbrush.
There was no nightdress beneath the pillows, so Suzie went over to the wardrobe. A heap of clothes tumbled out as she opened the door, and an old, square biscuit tin fell out from the middle when she tried to catch them. The lid came off when it hit the floor and a pile of photographs and papers spilled out at her feet.
Scooping them together as Holly came back into the room, she peered at the photograph on the top of the pile as she straightened up. It was of a pretty young woman with long blond hair and sparkling blue eyes, and she was smiling widely at whoever was holding the camera.
‘Is this your mum?’ she asked, showing it to Holly.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ Holly murmured, studying the face. ‘She looks so young though, and I’ve never seen her with blond hair before. It really suits her.’
‘It does,’ Suzie agreed, leafing through the other photos. ‘Ooh, she doesn’t look so happy in this one.’ She turned it round for Holly to see.
Looking at it, Holly frowned. Her mum looked a lot older in this shot: her cheeks gaunt, her eyes dull, and the blond grown out to the extent that she looked like she was wearing a black skullcap on top of a straw wig. Wondering if it had been taken when she was pregnant and Holly’s dad had dumped her, Holly felt a twinge of guilt when she realized that she might have been the cause of their break-up and her mum’s subsequent misery.
‘Aw, this is sweet.’ Suzie showed Holly another image, this time of Josie smiling down at the newborn baby in her arms. ‘Is that your sister?’
‘I haven’t got a sister,’ Holly said, her frown deepening as she took the photo from her. ‘I’m an only child.’
‘Well, it doesn’t look anything like you,’ Suzie commented.
Holly agreed: it didn’t. Her hair was mousy brown but the baby’s was a lot darker, and its nose was a completely different shape than hers. But her name and date of birth were written on the back when she turned it over, so it had to be her.
‘God, I was an ugly baby,’ she muttered.
‘At least you’re pretty now,’ Suzie said, plucking a folded age-yellowed newspaper cutting out of the bundle and opening it out on the bed. ‘Hey, look at this.’
‘What is it?’ Holly asked, putting the photos down and looking over Suzie’s shoulder.
CHILD MISSING FROM SCENE OF DOUBLE MURDER, the headline read. An investigation has been launched after an anonymous tip-off led police to the scene of a double murder in the Shaw district of Oldham in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The bodies of Anna Hughes and her partner Devon Prince were found in a blood-spattered bedroom at Ms Hughes’s home. Both victims had been shot at close range in what police are describing as a targeted attack. Concerns were raised when it was discovered that Ms Hughes’s four-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, Charlotte, was missing from the house, and an intensive search is taking place in Shaw and surrounding areas. Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Forster has asked anyone who knows of Charlotte’s whereabouts to contact—
The paper had been torn at that point and the rest of the article was missing.
‘Did your mum know these people?’ Suzie asked.
‘No idea.’ Holly shrugged. ‘She’s never mentioned them to me if she did.’
‘It’s probably someone she knew before she had you. Or maybe she was related to one of them.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘I wonder if they ever found the girl,’ Suzie said, pulling her phone out of her pocket to google the names in the article.
Before she had the chance, Holly heard a key being inserted into the lock of the front door. Panicking, because it could only be her mum, she shoved Suzie out into the hall, then switched off the light and pulled the door shut a millisecond before the front door opened and Josie limped in looking like death warmed up.
23
‘Mum!’ Holly snapped out of her trance. ‘What are you doing home? The police told us they were keeping you in
