The second article, written a month later, is almost too much to bear, but again I make myself read it. Why should I get to hide it away? I owe it to her to remember.
East Anglian Gazette
30 May, 1981
BODY OF MISSING LOCAL MOTHER FOUND
A coroner’s verdict of suicide has been reached in the case of 19-year-old Bury St. Edmunds woman Nadia Freeman, whose body was found a fortnight ago on the beach at Dunwich, by dog walkers. Earlier sightings had put Ms. Freeman at a known suicide spot, “Widow’s Cliff.” She was last seen less than a mile away with her baby daughter, in a distressed state. Extensive searches are being held by police for the body of her three-week-old daughter, Lana, but fears are growing that the baby might have been washed out to sea. Nadia had been suffering from poor mental health at the time of her disappearance.
So there it was. I knew what had really happened to Nadia, of course, knew what really led to her death. And now, sixteen years later, the truth was about to come out. Why else would Hannah befriend Emily Lawson, if not to punish us all for what we’d done?
TWENTY-THREE
LONDON, 2017
Mac smiled encouragingly at Clara from the driver’s seat of the battered Ford Transit van. “Ready?” he asked. As they turned the corner out of Hoxton Square onto Old Street, the boxes of Luke’s belongings—his records, books, and clothes that had survived the fire—along with the few pieces of his furniture she’d been able to salvage slid and bumped heavily against one another in the back. She hadn’t known what else to do with his things. Her landlord, a middle-aged and heavily Botoxed Russian, had been clear he wanted the flat vacated sooner rather than later. “Decorators coming tomorrow,” he’d said, eyeing her disapprovingly when she’d met him at the flat, as though he suspected the damage to his property was more down to carelessness on her part than anything else. She and Mac had packed up her and Luke’s stuff in one grim and depressing afternoon, and while Mac’s had seemed the most sensible place to store her own belongings, Zoe not having the room, they’d been at a loss at first about what to do with Luke’s.
“How about taking them to Suffolk?” Mac had suggested. “Rose and Oliver could look after them until . . .” As his sentence tailed off, their eyes had met briefly, then skittered away. The unanswerable question of how and when this nightmare would end had hung in the air between them.
“I better start looking for somewhere to live,” Clara had said into the silence, turning back to the box she was packing with books.
“You know you can stay with me for as long as you need to, don’t you?” Mac had said.
She’d nodded. “I know. Thank you.”
“Have the police been in touch?”
“Anderson rang earlier. He said they’re doing more door-to-door inquiries, looking at CCTV, and so on. But it all feels pretty hopeless, to be honest.” She’d got up then, to carry the box to the door, where she paused, staring down at it for a while. “I don’t know what to do,” she’d said. “Perhaps I should go and see my parents for a while, although I need to go back to work soon. . . .” She broke off. It felt entirely impossible to comprehend a future beyond the question of where Luke was, her life on perpetual, agonizing hold until he was found.
Now, as they edged slowly through the Saturday afternoon traffic, her gaze flickered unseeingly over Kingsland Road. It would take them a couple of hours to get to Suffolk, and she sat back and closed her eyes, her tired mind mulling over the past two days. Once she’d confirmed that her keys had indeed been taken from her bag in Mac’s spare room, Anderson had said little to indicate they’d come any closer to finding who’d been responsible for the break-ins. On the subject of Tom, the detective sergeant had remained tight-lipped. “We are pursuing that line of inquiry, yes,” was all he’d say on the matter.
Although Mac had an impressive selection of new locks fitted to his door, her sleep had been plagued by dreams that someone was trying to break in, nightmares from which she’d jerk awake several times each night, heart thumping, to begin each new day feeling more exhausted than ever. As the van progressed through east London, she closed her eyes, her thoughts turning yet again to Emily. There’d been no word from her in the few days since they’d met, and Clara found herself thinking of her increasingly often. What if Emily had vanished again? Should she tell Rose and Oliver about her, or should she trust Luke’s sister that she would contact them herself very soon? Her tired mind struggled to find answers and finally she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
—
After she and Mac stopped for lunch, an accident on the motorway meant they didn’t arrive at the Willows until five. A cool breeze stirred the air when they knocked on the door, and Clara shivered inside her jacket as they waited. After a while they knocked again, but when there was still no sign of Rose and Oliver, she glanced at Mac in confusion. “Do you think they’ve gone out?”
He frowned. “They knew we were coming, though. Bit weird, isn’t it?”
Walking to the side of the house, she cupped her hands to peer through the window, and it was only then
