—
A few months before Hannah turned seven, Doug and I were summoned, yet again, to the school to talk about her behavior. We’d had a row earlier that morning and drove there in almost complete silence, Toby sleeping in his car seat behind us, Doug staring grimly at the road ahead. As we drove, I brooded over Hannah. Had I caused it, whatever “it” was? Had the pain of those years of childlessness affected how I’d bonded with my first child? I had felt so broken, so utterly alone back then; nobody had understood, not really—not even Doug. In my misery and isolation, had I put up such a self-protective wall between myself and the world that it’d made my heart harder, incapable of fully loving and accepting my daughter when she finally arrived? Is that what she sensed and railed against? I stared out my window, trying to fight my tears, until we finally drew up in front of West Elms Primary.
The school tried its best to be understanding, Hannah’s young teacher earnestly offering us strategies and action points to help deal with our delinquent, troubled daughter, giving us leaflets to read, suggesting counseling—before quietly intimating that Hannah would eventually be asked to leave if her behavior continued, that they had the other children to consider, after all. “Does she have any friends?” I asked miserably.
Miss Foxton sighed. “She tends to select a certain type of child with whom to attach herself: the more vulnerable and easily led types. Hannah can be very persuasive when she puts her mind to it. She’ll allow that child to be her ally for a time, and then she’ll grow bored and turn on them completely. It’s a pattern we’ve witnessed repeatedly.” Her eyes slid away to the pencil she was fiddling with. “Daisy Williams is one example, of course. But no, I’ve never seen her truly befriend anyone as such.”
I nodded, remembering Daisy. Shy and eager to please, she was a very pale, thin child with white-blond hair and red-rimmed eyes who reminded me a little of a skinned rabbit. Hannah had homed in on her during the previous school term, enjoyed her new friend’s admiration and slavish devotion for a few weeks, before Daisy had been found, tied up with her own skipping rope and soaking wet, in the playground toilet block. Hannah, all wide-eyed innocence, had maintained that they’d merely been playing a game of cops and robbers, and Daisy had eagerly backed up this claim, but from then on, the school had done everything they could to keep the two girls apart—reinforced, I was sure, by Daisy’s mother, who glared at me with open hostility whenever we crossed paths on the playground.
After our talk with Hannah’s form teacher, we walked back to the car in miserable silence. “Oh, Doug,” I said when I was sitting in the passenger seat.
He looked at me then and sighed. “I know.” He reached over and took my hand, and for a second something of the old closeness between us flickered. He opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment Toby woke and began to cry.
I glanced at Doug and began to open my door. “I better sit in the back with him,” I said. Doug nodded, putting the key into the ignition, and we drove home without another word.
A few days after the school meeting we sat Hannah down and told her what her punishment would be. It was always hard to discipline her, because it was difficult to find anything—any treat or toy—that she was genuinely attached to: she literally didn’t care if I confiscated any of her belongings. The only thing she really liked to do was watch television. So on that occasion we told her that there’d be no TV for a week. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look of fury, of pure venom, on her face when we gave her the news.
I found the bruise on Toby’s arm the next day. Earlier in the morning, I’d left him sitting in his little bouncy chair while I got Hannah ready for school. It was as I was fetching her some clean socks from the tumble dryer that I heard his howl of pain. I raced back up the stairs and there he was, red-faced and hysterical, though moments before I’d left him cooing happily. When I went to find Hannah, she was sitting in exactly the same spot on her bedroom floor, placidly doing a jigsaw puzzle. She didn’t even look up when I came in. It wasn’t until later that I found the bruise: a small angry purple mark on Toby’s upper arm—as though, perhaps, he’d been pinched very hard. I couldn’t prove it was Hannah, but I knew that it was. Of course I did.
SIX
LONDON, 2017
Shell-shocked, Clara and Mac walked back from the police station. When they’d arrived and told their story to the young officer at the front desk, he’d appeared unimpressed at first, listening with studied patience as Clara haltingly went through her story. His attitude had changed, however, when, putting Luke’s laptop on the desk in front of him, she described the hundreds of threatening e-mails, the break-in a few months before, the letter and the photographs stuffed through their door.
“I see,” he’d said then. “If you’ll come with me, please.” She and Mac had been ushered through to a small windowless room and told to wait. They’d sat in nervous silence as they listened to footsteps come and go in the corridor beyond the closed door.
When it finally opened, they were greeted by a slender black woman who introduced herself as Detective Constable Loretta Mansfield. Briskly she approached them and shook their hands with a firm, dry handshake, her eyes quickly searching theirs as she smiled, before sitting down and placing Luke’s laptop on the table between them. “Right, Clara,” she said, “I’ve had a chat with my colleague about Luke, and what we’re
