He leans forward, suddenly captivated by his own idea.

  ‘It would only be for a couple of weeks. She’d have to take all her revision with her and work all day. There’s a desk in my room in the B&B and literally nothing else to do. It’s in the middle of nowhere. I can keep an eye on her. She’s been banging on about being a podcaster and not needing exams. Maybe she needs to see how it all works, that it’s not at all glamorous. It will put her off, give you a break, and then she’ll know she needs to get some more education.’

  Allie laughs.

  ‘Stupid idea?’

  ‘Really stupid idea. But…’ There is something wistful and afraid in her voice.

  He ploughs on.

  ‘She doesn’t want us to fight the school. She isn’t going to go back there with those kids. Let’s just get her out of there, make sure she does the best she can in her exams, without that useless place.’

  She looks at him and the tiredness and tears in her eyes make his heart throb with loss.

  ‘I’m her mother. I should be able to help her fix this.’

  ‘Allie.’ He reaches for her hand and squeezes. ‘You are helping her. Your parents would have made you go back there, you know they would.’

  She nods, as they both picture the military convention she rebelled against.

  ‘I just wish she could turn to me. I’m failing her.’

  ‘She’s being a teenager, challenging you. It’s natural. It’s just hit at the worst possible moment because she needs us, too.’

  ‘She would have to knuckle down. She still has sketches to do for her portfolio and piles of English and history revision. Maths, past papers… she’s worked so hard. She doesn’t deserve this.’

  ‘We’ll take it all. I’ll call the school and guilt them into giving us anything we need.’

  ‘We should call them anyway. Give them hell.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s all happening so fast.’

  She lays her head on the table. Her curls fall onto the surface. He remembers wanting to push his fingers into the perfect spirals. It saddens him that he no longer feels that desire.

  ‘Allie? What do you think?’

  She lifts her chin and he sees the pain in her eyes.

  ‘I think I need to let her go.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  ‘Thanks for coming in and talking to us, Mr Lovett. It’s good to see you.’

  ‘No problem.’ He doesn’t think she means it. There’s a copy of the Sun on the table between them. Cal can see Andy’s treacherous face on the fold.

  He uses the plastic stirrer to agitate the insipid machine coffee they’ve put in front of him. Surely if anyone deserves a decent cup of coffee it’s victims and the bereaved, but no, the same crappy vending machine coffee seems to exist as standard in every police station he’s ever visited. Perhaps it’s designed for the perpetrators.

  Usually he comes to these places as an independent reporter; today it’s hard to connect with the thought that he’s here for his sister. Snapshots stutter from memory, more strange unleashed fragments. An earring catching the light, her tights drying on the radiator, the bow of her lips as she slicked on red lipstick. Somewhere in the background, raised voices and the wire of tension sit like sickness. He pushes those thoughts away, but they push back. Her laugh echoes and he clears his throat to dislodge her.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Detective Foulds in the flesh. She’s older than he expected, eyes creased in sympathy. He nods, wishing they would get on with it so he can stop his mind spinning.

  She smooths out the paper, looks up at him. Foulds unfolds, he finds himself thinking, hysterically.

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Well. I did tell Andy about my interview with Dubois, but I never expected him to do this.’ Cal lets the disgust show in his voice. ‘I had no idea it was coming out. He didn’t even have the decency to tell me what he’d done.’

  Foulds sighs.

  ‘The thing is, Mr Lovett…’

  ‘Cal.’

  ‘The thing is, Cal. We have looked into your suggestion, and I’m afraid we just can’t find any evidence that Marc Dubois was in any way linked with your sister.’

  ‘But, you have the recording, the letter he sent me. He makes reference to a scrapyard. There’s one only a mile from our house. I went to take a look and I think you need to search it. She could be in there.’

  Foulds holds up her hand to get him to stop.

  ‘You went to take a look?’

  ‘I didn’t go in…’

  The detectives look sympathetic but he feels hot and unsteady; the look in their eyes tells him he is overstepping.

  ‘You need to leave this to us now.’

  He nods, feeling he is trapped behind glass trying to get their attention. Foulds shifts in her seat. Cal pictures the tight-packed cube of a crushed car, swallows saliva.

  ‘We will look into all the information,’ she tells him. ‘After this,’ her gaze lands on the paper, ‘we are under additional pressure.’

  Good, he wants to shout.

  ‘So we’d like to ask some questions about your sister, if that’s all right with you?’

  He nods. The back of his neck prickles with sweat.

  ‘I was only nine when she went missing…’

  ‘I know.’ The detective is gentle. ‘Do you remember how she was at the time?’

  Again, his memory spirals. Her long legs up on the coffee table. Short skirt. A sharp voice. Margot, get your feet down.

  ‘She had a job at an office in town. She had lots of friends. I remember her getting ready, going out a lot. She was a good sister. Fun.’

  ‘Boyfriend, Andrew Cameron?’

  ‘Yes, Andy.’

  ‘How did they get on?’

  ‘Well. They were happy.’

  ‘Was it serious? Did he come round for dinner, stay over?’

  Foulds leans forward.

  ‘No. My parents… our parents wouldn’t have been okay with that. I don’t think.’ How does he know that? Does he know it for sure? ‘She never brought him home.’

  The detectives exchange a look.

  ‘Were they strict?’

  Cal feels that odd falling sensation inside. ‘They were okay when I was a teenager, but I remember it being different with Margot.’ They weren’t the husks of people they later became is what he doesn’t say. They still cared.

  ‘Did she get on with them?’

  His memory flickers once more and he’s kneeling on the landing in the darkness, gripping the spindles as they argue in the brightly lit hallway below. Margot’s crimson lips as she spits words he can’t remember now. Then the dark horrible feeling, the pictures spooling on so fast he can’t really see them. He swallows, shakes his head.

  ‘As well as teenagers and parents ever do.’ But he falters on the words and he wonders if they notice.

  ‘What about friends? Do you remember anyone in particular? Any names?’

  He shakes his head. ‘She kept them separate. Surely, from the old case file…?’ The detective inclines her head, makes a note on the piece of paper in front of her. Cal can’t see what it says. ‘I can ask my mother, Andy.’

  They focus on him now.

  ‘You still speak to him? Even though you were only nine. And she never brought him home?’

  Cal shuffles his fingers, pauses to think what this could mean. Has he missed something fundamental? ‘He’s never got over it,’ he tells them eventually. ‘We speak every year. On her birthday. Other times. She would have been fifty-four. This week.’

  The detectives look at each other.

  ‘Do you remember what car he drove? There was a car mentioned at the time, a Vauxhall that a witness said your sister got into. Do you remember anything about that?’

  Again, Cal shakes his head, pierced by the knowledge that he has hidden from these details. Yes, he was too young to take them in when they happened, but he has avoided researching them later. Surely, they can’t think that Andy…? Even though he hates him for cashing in, he knows Andy just wants to help. He can’t let them think that.

  ‘He loved her,’ he says. ‘He was there for me, afterwards. When no one else was.’

  ‘Do you remember how your parents seemed, after Margot vanished?’

  The second detective has been silent until now, but now he finds himself pinned by intense brown eyes, amber flecks at their core. She is kind, but her question makes him feel exposed, afraid.

  ‘They were devastated,’ he says, afraid to step across the gap, to bring life to the darkest, most hidden thoughts he didn’t really even know he had. ‘Of course they were.’

  But as he shifts uncomfortably on his seat, Cal’s thoughts flit back through the years. To raised voices and slammed doors. He accepted all of that, back then, as normal teenager–parent volatility. It was all he ever knew. But now he has a teenager of his own, and when he looks back it is from a different angle. Would he behave that way with Chrissie? Never; the thought makes him shudder. But times were different back then. You can’t judge them by today’s standards, can you?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Spat into the warm air outside the police station, Cal hesitates, unsure where to go now, what to do.

  Preoccupied, he takes an indirect series of loops through the streets, like the child he used to be, reluctant to return to the bleakness of home, kicking a twig or a pebble, taking his time before entering the marked house and absorbing its heaviness. He is exhausted by the interview, the emotion, the memory.

  The untamed green space that houses Margot’s bench is only a mile or so away, maybe there he can think properly, compose his thoughts before facing his mother. He sets off in that direction, but as he turns the corner, he can see in the distance that a man is already sitting on it, hunched over, swirls of cigarette smoke haloing him. Disappointment hits him; he will have to sit elsewhere, or wait for the person to move.

  But as he draws closer, he realises that the person sitting there is remembering her too.

  Cal is only metres away when Andy looks up, eyes red-rimmed, face stubbled and drawn. He feels a sweep of rage chased by despair.

  ‘Didn’t expect to see you here.’

  It’s strange to see the flicker of reluctance, fear even, in Andy’s face. But Cal feels the fight falling away. The search for Margot has always been their uniting cause and if Andy’s fucked up along the way, can he blame him?

  Wordlessly, Andy shuffles along to make room for him and stubs out his cigarette. They sit either side of the plaque. Cal waits for an apology that doesn’t come.

  ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ he says eventually, gets only the briefest shrug in return.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Andy?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking. When you told me, I just… There’s a bloke down the pub who’s a snapper. He said I should talk to his mate. I needed some cash. It got out of hand, I guess.’

  On the pond, a duck is plunging beneath the water and springing back up some distance away, shaking the drops from its feathers. Cal sighs.

  ‘I’ve just come from the police station. You’ve certainly put the pressure on. So maybe it’s not a bad thing. But Christ, Andy, I had to explain to my boss, my family. I could have done with a heads-up.’

  ‘What did the police say?’

  His voice is unsteady. Something is off-kilter. Cal wonders if he’s been drinking. Maybe the police have been pursuing their theory about the car. He thinks Andy did drive a Vauxhall back then. The other man rubs his hands on his trousers, which are threadbare and dirty. Unease germinates inside him.

  ‘Have you spoken to them yet?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’ Andy stares at the pond, hunched forward so that Cal can hardly see his face.

  ‘Are you all right? You seem…’

  Andy clears his throat and the sound is phlegm-filled, disturbing.

  ‘What did they say? Did they ask about me?’

  Cal pulls away a little. ‘What’s going on, Andy?’

  The older man rocks in his seated position. ‘They’re going to think it was me.’ The words on their own would be easy to dismiss, but such intense agitation sets an alarm off.

  ‘Andy,’ he says, dread seeping through him. ‘Why would they think that?’

  ‘I saw her.’ The words are almost whispered. Cal hears them, but he can’t take them in.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw her that night.’

  ‘I thought…’

  ‘I lied.’

  ‘But she left before you got there. When you came to pick her up, she was gone.’ He repeats the story he has always known. The truth his life is based upon. There is a singing sound inside his head.

  Andy shakes his head slowly.

  ‘Nah, mate,’ he says. ‘That’s not what happened.’

  Cal takes in tiny sips of air, afraid if he moves he will break the spell and Andy will clam up forever.

  ‘What happened, then?’ he says carefully, making it sound as if the facts are incidental.

  Andy buries his head in his hands. ‘I found her on the road outside yours. She’d had this row with your dad. It was over me, partly.’ Cal swallows down the rising memories, his dad’s anger. ‘I got angry. Said she needed to stand up to him. Oh Christ.’

  Again, the coughing. Blackness crowds into the edge of Cal’s vision. He grips the arm of the bench. When Andy takes his hands from his mouth, they are shaking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, over and over. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I got mad at her. I stopped the car. Told her if she wasn’t going to stick up for me then we were over.’ He groans. ‘I told her to get out.’

  Slices of memory cut into Cal’s brain. He can’t think quickly enough.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On one of the country roads.’

  ‘What? You just left her?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  Cal feels an intense urge to punch him. His hands curl into fists automatically, heat spreads through him. But he needs the information more than revenge, for now.

  ‘What happened after that?’

  ‘I don’t know. That was the last time I saw her.’ Andy buries his head in his hands and his body shakes with sobs. ‘It’s all my fault.’

  Cal feels winded, his chest heavy, something stuck in his throat.

  ‘Are you sure that’s all that happened?’

  Andy jerks his head up. ‘I swear, Cal, I never hurt her. Never. I would never.’

  He stares at him, previously solid facts drifting on a changing ocean.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything? Back then? It could have helped.’ Cal’s voice has risen so much that a woman walking a dog by the pond swivels to look.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Andy reaches his arm along the bench, touches the plaque that bears her name.

  Cal can’t sit there any longer. Not with this man. He left her and she stumbled into the path of a monster.

  ‘All this time. I trusted you.’

  Racked with coughs, Andy buries his head again. Cal doesn’t wait for him to lift it. He didn’t think Margot’s loss could possibly hurt any more, but as he strides away, he realises he was mistaken. Things can always get worse.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Cal gets home late, finds the house silent and reproachful. They have plans to leave early and though he is tired, it is a relief. In the morning Allie fusses, making too much toast, pressing sandwiches on them, a flask. When she asks Chrissie if she’s been to the toilet, their daughter snaps.

  ‘I’m not five, Mum. Back off.’

  Allie tries to laugh it off, but the notes fall flat and they all sink into uncomfortable silence. Cal drains his coffee cup.

  ‘Right,’ he says, standing. ‘We should get on the road if we’re going to manage the drive in one day.’ He looks from his wife to his daughter; the hostility between them is palpable. ‘I’ll put the bags in the boot.’

  Outside, the skies are heavy with rain and a pre-thunder closeness. The dog pads by his side, forlorn. It looks strange to Cal, Chrissie’s bag next to his, her rucksack in the front footwell.

  The door flips and then Chrissie is beside him, bending to hug the dog.

  Allie stands on the porch. Cal can’t bear the sight of how alone she looks. He takes the steps, pulls her into his arms and they squeeze tight. Just for a moment. The feeling of finality knocks the breath from him. By the time he is at the car door again, Allie has gone inside.

  The journey north passes in a blur. They talk about nothing, then eat the sandwiches far too early. Eventually, Chrissie plugs in her earphones and falls asleep, head against the door, her face drained of life.

  While she sleeps, Cal finally has time to confront the dead weight of dread he has been carrying around since Andy’s revelation. His career relies upon people divulging secrets they have kept for decades, but still he didn’t see it coming. Andy has been a constant since Cal was nine years old. He trusted him because Margot trusted him.

  When Chrissie is browsing at a service station, he makes the call from the car park, listening to the traffic while he waits to be put through to Detective Foulds.

  ‘Mr Lovett?’

  ‘Thanks for speaking to me.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I spoke to Andy yesterday. He told me some things and I thought you should know.’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘He did see Margot that night. He said that he picked her up and they argued and he left her by the side of the road.’

  ‘Which road?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere in the countryside.’

  ‘We will investigate every angle, Mr Lovett, I assure you.’

  ‘I think he drove a Vauxhall. You asked me, before, if he drove a Vauxhall? I think he did.’

  There is a beat of silence.

  ‘Mr Lovett…’

  ‘That would fit, wouldn’t it? If Dubois found her? If he followed her or offered her a lift, or…’

  ‘Cal.’ Her voice is gentle, and he knows she is managing him as he has managed others. ‘Leave this with me. We will explore every possibility, I promise you. We will do our best to get you the answers you deserve.’