Slowly, Holly shook her head. ‘You can get a false negative if you take the test too early. It’s rare to get a false positive.’
‘So Sadie ran away. We haven’t worked out yet where she was going. Maybe she didn’t even know herself. I suspect she had a plan of some sort, depending on what she intended to do about the baby. But ultimately it hardly matters, because when she left her house in the middle of the night, her little brother heard her go. We’ve yet to get the full story from Luke about how it played out after that, but … Well. I doubt there will be any surprises.’
In fact, Fleet thought he knew exactly how it had all played out. When Luke had got up to check on Dylan, just as he’d described, it was Dylan’s door he’d found open, and his brother who’d been missing from his bed. Sadie would have made sure she’d closed her bedroom door behind her. A girl who went to such lengths to cover her tracks – with her bag, her bank records – wouldn’t have taken the chance that one of her family would so easily discover she’d sneaked out in the middle of the night. And perhaps when Luke had crept downstairs in search of his little brother, Dylan had already returned. Either that or Luke had ventured further, and when he’d found Dylan, his little brother had confessed what he’d done.
He’d heard Sadie leave, perhaps after waking from one of his nightmares, and he’d followed her into the woods, in precisely the manner Luke had told Fleet he’d followed Sadie himself. And when Dylan had caught up with her, or Sadie had realised he was there, they’d argued. Perhaps at first Sadie had tried to reason with Dylan, to explain why she needed to go away. Maybe she’d even mentioned Mason, which would have explained why Dylan was so angry with Mason at the end. But whatever she’d said, it hadn’t worked. Dylan had insisted she come home; Sadie had refused. Maybe she’d even shouted at him, lashed out in an attempt to get him to leave. And if Luke had had conflicting emotions about his sister, how much worse must it have been for Dylan? He loved her, unquestionably, but how he must have hated her on occasion, too – not least when he saw his parents adoring her the way they had never adored him. And then for her to tell him she was abandoning him – leaving him and never coming back … It was no wonder that when Sadie turned away, Dylan had felt such rage. And it was his rage – his sheer emotional turmoil – that had prompted him to pick up the rock.
Perhaps he never really meant the rock to hit her. Or, if he had, maybe he’d been aiming for her back. Certainly it was unlikely he understood how much damage a blow to the back of the head could cause. It would only have been after Sadie had fallen that Dylan would have realised what he’d done.
Except … Luke. Everything Luke did from that point on was designed to protect his little brother. He took Dylan back to his bed, telling him all the while it would be OK. And then he went into the woods himself, following whatever directions he’d been able to coax from his brother. When he found Sadie where she had fallen, at first he would have tried to help her. For some reason he had removed her jacket, perhaps to prop up her head. But when he realised he was already too late, he came to understand what he had to do. He concealed her body, in the best nearby hiding place he knew. He covered the hollow with branches, completely masking it from sight. Ideally he would have taken Sadie to the river, but there was no way he could have carried her that far – not by himself, and not while his brother lay waiting for him at home. But after Sadie was hidden, he realised he’d forgotten about her jacket. Perhaps he was reluctant to disturb the camouflage he’d constructed around the hollow, or perhaps he simply couldn’t face going back, but either way, he decided to toss the coat into the river, going via the stream to get cleaned up on the way. At some point, Sadie’s new phone had slipped from one of her jacket pockets, without Luke even noticing it had been there.
And then it was done. When Luke got home, there was only one task left: to convince Dylan that, when he’d got to the place Dylan had said he and Sadie argued, their sister had been OK.
She’d only been stunned, Luke told Dylan. You didn’t hurt her, Dylan. You didn’t. I spoke to her and tried to convince her to come home, but … but she left anyway. The way she was planning to all along. But she’ll come back. You’ll see. One day, some day, she’ll come home. I promise.
How desperately Dylan would have wanted to believe him. And perhaps, at first, he did. Except then people started saying Sadie had been murdered, and the entire town was looking for her body. But rather than blaming Dylan, they blamed Mason. Which meant … what? Dylan simply didn’t know. By the end – by the point the search party had set off – he would have been no clearer on what had actually happened than Fleet had been at that stage himself. It was no wonder Dylan had followed Luke and his friends, the same way he’d followed Sadie. He would have been as desperate to know the truth as anyone.
It’s the parents I feel most sorry for, Burton had said to Fleet, after Dylan’s body had been found. But in Fleet’s mind that was entirely back to front. Mr
