Mrs Stevens’ hands were shaking. ‘You have to take whatever job you can these days and she left school without getting the right grades.’ She moved to within a few inches of Karen’s face. ‘How long have you known her? I don’t remember her mentioning your name.’
‘Oh, not very long. Just a few weeks.’
‘You work at the Arts Centre, do you?’
‘No, I met Joanne at the club.’
One lie was leading to another. If she wasn’t careful she would give away the truth – that she and Joanne had never actually been introduced, even though she was starting to feel as though she had known her all her life. If Walter Stevens asked her where she lived should she tell him the truth and risk a phone call, answered by Alex or her mother?
But the problem never arose. Ann Stevens had lifted the photograph off the mantelpiece. ‘You only moved here quite recently did you? So you wouldn’t have known our other daughter.’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘But you know what happened? She was planning to leave that Liam, you know. We’d a room prepared for her and the baby. She was moving back here the following week.’
Somewhere at the back of the house a clock was striking the hour. At the other end of the living room Walter Stevens was tugging at a cord that was supposed to draw the curtains across but seemed to have stuck. When he turned towards his wife the expression on his face was a mixture of anger and disgust. He opened his mouth to speak, then decided better of it. A moment later he left the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Stevens. ‘He doesn’t like me talking about Natalie. They say when something terrible happens you should find people who’ll listen. People who don’t mind you going over and over . . . Walter says it’s best to try and forget.’
Forget? How could anyone forget their daughter had been hit over the back of the head, then pushed into the reservoir and drowned?
Mrs Stevens replaced the framed photo on the mantelpiece. ‘I know it’s an awful thing to say but I always feared for her safety. She wanted so much. Everything. New clothes, money to spend, people round her all the time, admiring her. And not always the people we’d have liked.’
She looked Karen up and down, as if she was deciding whether or not she was a suitable friend for her remaining daughter. The cat was back, pawing at her leg, catching its claws in the thick wool of her navy blue tights. Karen bent down to stoke it but it rolled on its back, showing its teeth.
‘Joanne’s so different,’ said Mrs Stevens. ‘At least we thought she was. Natalie was easily influenced, never stopped to think what might . . . Her father worshipped her. Used to call her his little princess. Well, you can’t love all children the same . . .’
She broke off, listening to her husband’s footsteps in the passage outside, and lowering her voice to a whisper that Karen could barely hear. ‘Walter couldn’t take it,’ she said. ‘Something inside him just snapped.’ Her eyes blazed.
Karen nodded and took a few steps back. Saying a hasty goodbye she stepped into the corridor, squeezing past Walter Stevens, and pulling open the front door.
As she hurried down the path she could hear shouting and something that sounded like a heavy object thrown against a wall.
Chapter Eight
If she’d had any sense at all she would never have left her bag at the table. She’d been too hungry, or too greedy, attacking the burger and chips as if she hadn’t eaten for a fortnight, and failing to notice that her bag must have slipped off the seat beside her. Realising that she had left her drink on the counter she had jumped up, squeezing past a queue of kids, retrieved the cup and returned to her table.
Tessie had been going to join her for lunch but something had come up and she had only had time to rush into the burger bar, apologise three times over and rush out again. It had crossed Karen’s mind that Tessie might be going through one of her phases when she worried about rain forests. The fact that none of the beef in the burgers came from South America didn’t seem to affect what had become a fixed idea in her head. Next time they met Karen would show her the article in the newspaper. She stretched out her hand to feel inside her bag – but it had gone.
With a supreme effort she managed to control the panic rising within. It was a recurring nightmare, losing her bag and all the stuff she carried round inside it. She would wake in the night, pathetically relieved that it had only been a dream, then go to sleep and have the same nightmare all over again.
Down on all fours she peered between the table legs, praying someone had accidentally kicked the bag, that it was lying in a corner, or had been picked up by one of the boys who wiped the tables. But she knew the chances of ever seeing it again were virtually nil.
‘Nobody’s handed in a bag, have they? It’s blue with a kind of orange and white pattern.’
The tall blonde girl behind the counter shook her head. ‘Sorry, love.’
‘Oh, well, never mind.’ Karen tried to look as though she wasn’t all that bothered.
The place was crowded. A baby in a highchair was bawling its head off and two men at a nearby table were glaring at its mother and muttering something unpleasant. Karen walked up to one of them and asked if he
