The Night They Vanished, page 13
I’m not hungry but I drift down to the kitchen anyway, letting my restless feet pace the ground floor, stopping to stare out of the window. There’s a tap at the back door and my stupid heart starts its galloping thing again. I can see through the textured glass that it’s Ethan and my heart slows a bit. Has he found out who sent those messages already?
I unlock and open the door. “I’ve got a present for you,” he says with a smile.
“You’ve found who’s sending the messages?”
“Ah—no. Not yet. My friend’s working on it, though. No, I got you this.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small mobile phone.
“It’s a pay-as-you-go—cheap and cheerful, no good for anything but calling and texting, but something you can keep quiet from your dad.” He pauses. “Every teenager should have a phone.”
I stare at it, resting in his hand. Unexpected. Never thought my first ever phone would be a prison phone.
“Thank you,” I say, taking it from him. “You didn’t have to… I don’t have much money to pay you back. I—”
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing, seriously. I bought it on impulse for a few quid from my corner shop, that’s all. Owen pays me a decent wage and there’s not much I can spend it on while I’m on probation. There’s only a tenner credit on it—you’ll have to top that up if you want to make calls. And you can send texts and give the number to your mates.”
I open my mouth to thank him again and embarrass myself completely by bursting into tears.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve just had a really crappy day and then you gave me a phone and that’s so nice and I just… I’m sorry.” I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and take a deep, shuddering breath. God, get it together, Sasha.
He stares at me for a second, then sighs. “Listen, I’ve finished up and I’ve got a bit of time before Owen picks me up. Do you want to talk about it?”
He sounds horribly reluctant, but I don’t even care. I swear I’m going to explode if I keep everything bottled up. “I can’t leave the house, though—Dad’s going to call to check on me. And I can’t really…”
“Can’t invite me in? I get it. But it’s mild and dry enough outside—come and sit on the bench round the side. Leave the door open and you’ll hear the phone if it rings.”
I spill out the whole sorry mess to him sitting on the peeling wooden bench at the side of my house. It sounds small and ridiculous as I blurt it out to this grown man who’s just got out of prison and facing a screwed-up future. But he doesn’t laugh at me or act like I’m an idiot. He frowns and listens to the whole thing in silence, then waits a minute before responding.
“It seems like you just need a bit of time,” he says. “Kids forget things, they move on. If you’re out of sight for a few days, it all might settle down.”
“My dad will never let me stay off school. Not unless I was really sick.”
“Ring the school in the morning—put on a posh voice and pretend you’re your mum calling in sick.” He glances at me and grins. “I used to do it all the time.”
I shake my head. “Dad drops me off and picks me up.”
“Does he actually take you inside?”
I shake my head again and he shrugs. “So, wait till he’s gone and then leave. Take a change of clothes, hang out in town a few hours, then be back by the end of the day.”
He makes it sound easy, casual. Like it’s nothing.
Maybe it is—that easy and that casual. It’s not like I’m behind in school, it’s not like a few days off would affect my grades in any way. Maybe it really could be nothing. Maybe there is a bit of Hanna in me after all because I’m even considering it.
“This is my last week on full time here,” he says. “Owen should have other work for me, but I’ll only be here part time. If things are still bad after this week, I could borrow a mate’s car, take you out somewhere if you need more time away from school. Doesn’t matter, really, does it? You’ll be in a new school next year—this will just make the last few weeks of term easier for you.”
Oh God, it’s so tempting.
Chapter 17
HANNA—Sunday 3:30 p.m.
I look down at the list of names Mr. Garner gave me—it’s not everyone I used to hang out with, just the three other kids I met in his youth group. Jacob’s friends. Such a tight-knit group before I came along. The others I used to hang out with were just the local party-kids from town and the surrounding villages, the druggies, the drop-outs, the random older guys who’d latch on to our group to sell us drugs and drink as we were all too young to buy it for ourselves. I couldn’t name any of them now, but the three names on Mr. Garner’s list—Carrie Hayes, Owen King, Lee Brown—I remember them, a sudden flood of memories released on seeing their names. Along with Jacob, they became my inner circle in my bad old days. Actually, it was because of Jacob. They were his friends. All older than me, none of them still at school. Lee and Owen were seventeen and were friends with Jacob from way back and Carrie was sixteen. None of them worked, all of them except Jacob were from the dodgy estate at the edge of town. I liked to think me and Jacob were a bit different, both of us from what most people would consider to be stable homes, both of us bright but lost. Jacob was meant to stay on for sixth form but chose to leave at sixteen with his mates. They came as a set and I don’t think the others liked me trying to wedge my way in. Owen and Lee, in particular, used to take the piss and call me posh, a rich kid on the lookout for a bit of rough. But that’s not what I was. I was hurting and looking for oblivion just as much as they were, bored and destructive and always angry.
Poor Mr. Garner, desperately trying to help us, but by putting us together, he really just ended up creating a many-headed monster. If he’d never tried to help out us troubled youths, if Dad and Jen had never tried to help by sending me there, I’d never have met Jacob and the others, and my rebellion might have died a death much sooner. But maybe not. West Dean and Littledean were linked by more than just a B road and I think we would have ended up meeting somewhere. And it only took one meeting. It was like we recognized each other the moment we met in the old vicarage over tea and ginger biscuits, like something slotting into place, like we looked at each other and went, Oh, there you are. I’ve been waiting for you.
I think, sometimes, that Jacob’s friends saw it too, particularly the boys, and that’s why they were so quick to blame me for everything when he died. They severed all ties and by the time I left home, I hadn’t seen them for months. I refused even to let myself think about them. But now… whoever is targeting me now knows me or someone from my family. It makes sense that it’s someone from my bad old days. Perhaps even someone who might still be harboring enough hate for me to chase my family out of town…
I try googling them, but none of them have unusual enough names—I’d never find them in the dozens of results that pop up. If I want to find them, I’ll have to go back to the beginning. And I know exactly who to ask. There’s a reason Stephen Hayes hates me so much. Carrie was his big sister, the bad seed to his future model citizen. Even though I was his age, a year younger than Carrie, he decided, when everything went insane, that Jacob’s friends were right: I was the ringleader, I was evil. I think it was because he asked me out once, in Year Nine, and I laughed in his spotty face. Like I said to Adam—I was the worst teenager.
“I made a mistake winding Stephen up like that,” I say to Dee. “I could have asked him about Carrie.”
“Why? Why would you want to see any of them again?” I can hear the edge of worry in her voice. Although I pretty much pushed Dee away back then, in the same way Jacob’s friends rejected me, she still remembers the fallout from it all. And being my eternally loyal Dee, she blames them entirely.
“What if whoever is doing this is one of Jacob’s old friends? Owen or Lee… what if one of them did something or said something to scare them away?”
“But why now, after all this time? And thinking about it, if there really was anything suspicious about your family leaving, wouldn’t Stephen have said something? Not to you, but to Cardiff CID when they made their inquiries.”
“His sister was one of that group. If it is one of them, he’s going to want to protect her. You know that’s why he hates me so much—he blames me for her going off the rails.”
“I thought he hated you because you told him to get stuffed when he asked you out.”
“Wait—that guy asked you out?” Adam interrupts.
“Everyone asked Hanna out at school, Adam,” Dee says. “She told most of them to fuck off, so you should consider yourself very fortunate she said yes to you.”
I scowl at Dee and glance back at Adam. “They asked me out because they all thought I was a slut who’d have sex with them. Not because any of them actually liked me.”
“There you go again,” Dee says.
I shake my head. “I’m not putting myself down, Dee—you know it’s true. Don’t try to pretend I didn’t have that reputation by the time I was halfway through Year Nine.”
Dee folds her arms. “Stephen bloody Hayes is the main reason you had that reputation, spreading lies just because you turned him down. And how dare he try to make out everything was your fault? You were years younger than any of those others, for fuck’s sake. They should have been arrested for corrupting a minor.” She stops and goes red.
I sigh. “Take me to the estate, Dee. Let’s go and take another trip down memory lane.”
Instead of starting the car, Dee hesitates, then turns to Adam. “Will you pop over the road to Greggs and grab us some coffees? It’s open until four. This is turning into a longer day than I expected, and I’d kill right about now for a latte.”
It’s an obvious and clumsy attempt to get rid of him, but bless him, he goes with it, strolling across the road to the little row of shops that make up West Dean’s town center. I expect Dee to talk about Jacob, but that’s not why she sent Adam away.
“Listen,” she says, “it’s probably nothing, but it’s a bit odd, so I wanted to mention it while it’s still sitting in my head being all odd…”
I smile. “What are you rambling on about?”
“When Adam and I were in the shop in Littledean… Adam sort of lurked around the shop while I was asking about your family, but he came over as I was ready to leave, and Mrs. Thorpe looked at him and said, ‘Back again?’”
I look at her blankly.
“And I’d have thought nothing of it. I’d have assumed she was mixing him up with someone else, Seb even, although they look nothing alike, but his reaction…”
“What was his reaction?”
“He went red. And he looked guilty. He kind of mumbled something and nothing and left the shop.”
“And did you ask Mrs. Thorpe about it?”
Dee rolls her eyes. “Of course I did. She said he’d been in before, a few months ago. That she could have been mistaken, but they don’t get many strangers in, blah blah blah…”
“Yeah, right. She would have had a description of any stranger sent to everyone in the village.” I pause. “So—was Adam here before?”
Dee sighs. “He says no. He says she must have been mistaken, but…”
I bite my lip, thinking of Stephen Hayes looking at Adam and saying, “Do I know you?” I think of that photo on Adam’s website, taken months ago when the caravans were still there, of something or someone making my family do a moonlight flit… How long, exactly, was that listing about my family up on his website before I found it? Adam is coming back across the road balancing three coffees in his hands. He smiles when he sees me looking, the big smile that lights up his face.
He can’t have anything to do with this, can he?
“I’ll ask him,” I say. “Later.”
Stephen Hayes is not waiting at the outskirts of town with a flaming torch and a pitchfork this time, so we drive through unscathed. The estate the Hayes family used to live on is a couple of miles outside town, very much a halfway point between West Dean and Littledean, an ugly mix of terraced houses and blocks of flats. I can’t imagine Stephen still living here, stepping outside his front door in his shiny police uniform every morning. They’d eat him alive. I’m not expecting Mrs. Hayes to tell me anything about Carrie, if she still lives in the same place, but I am expecting someone to call Stephen to tell him we’re here, so I don’t bother trying to be quiet or subtle as we walk up the alleyway onto the estate.
“Excuse me,” I call, nice and loud, to the gang of kids hanging out on the bit of green in the middle of the estate. “Does Mrs. Hayes still live around here? PC Hayes’ mum? Or his sister, Carrie?”
“What do you want them for?” one of the boys calls back, a little shit who looks no older than nine. “Want to tell her about God?”
Do I look like a Jehovah’s Witness?
It’s quite impressive, really. I’d forgotten what living around here is like. Within three minutes, four people have come out of their houses and we’ve gathered quite a crowd, not quite hostile, but definitely suspicious. And it works wonders, because only a couple of minutes after that, someone’s coming out of a house, wiping wet hands on a tea towel.
I let out a breath as she steps closer and I recognize Carrie Hayes. She’s cut her hair and it’s blonder than it used to be, but she’s still a sharp-featured, prettier version of her brother. She doesn’t smile, but neither does she look surprised to see me.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says. “You’re going to piss everyone off if you keep nosing around, stirring everything up.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m looking for my family, that’s all. No one can find them and I’m worried.”
“I haven’t seen them.” She frowns and glances back toward the house she came out of. “I can’t hang about. My mum’s not well and I’m looking after her.”
“Please, Carrie—do you know if any of the others, Lee or Owen, might have seen them? Or—”
“Lee hasn’t,” she says, interrupting me. “And he’s not here. He’s working today. Putting in some overtime.”
“How do you know?”
She smiles faintly. “We’re married. Got married a few years ago and we’ve got two boys.”
“Oh. I…”
She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about offering fake congratulations. But seriously—we haven’t seen your family. I’m a teaching assistant at the primary school and I help take care of my mum. Lee works at the garage—we’ve all grown up and moved on. Please don’t try to open old wounds.”
“What about Owen?”
She sighs. “Don’t try to talk to Owen, okay? He’s… still angry. He still…”
“Blames me?”
She nods, pressing her lips together in a thin line.
“You know I didn’t—I wouldn’t…”
She’s torn. I can see it. She’s not full of hostility like Stephen was, like Owen and Lee probably would be. Carrie was the first one I tried to talk to, back then, after Jacob died. It wasn’t that we were particularly close, but because she was hanging out with Lee and I was with Jacob, we were often lumped together as “the girlfriends.” Maybe that was why she listened, or seemed to be listening until Stephen stepped in, her twat of a little brother, spewing his venom, still smarting with rejection because I’d turned him down. The poisonous little shit called his mum, called Owen, called Lee. He called in the bloody Littledean army to see me off their land, to hound me out of town.
And here we are, and I can see it again—she’s listening to me, and there’s something she wants to say, or wants to tell me. I can see it in her face, see it in the way she glances back at her mum’s house to check the door’s shut, in the way she leans closer to me.
“Look, some things with Owen have got a bit out of hand…”
But again, again, again, here’s Stephen Hayes, storming into shot, shouldering his way in front of his sister like he thinks I’m going to attack her. But it’s not Carrie I’d like to punch in the face right about now.
I look past Stephen, trying to get Carrie’s attention, but it’s too late. Stephen’s appearance has brought out more gawkers, and we’ve got an audience. The little brats are circling, but a few other people have popped out of their houses as well.
“She was looking for your mum, Steve,” the boy who accused me of being a Jehovah’s Witness calls out. “Wants to sell God to her.”
Stephen raises his eyebrows but looks at me. “I don’t think Hanna wants to sell God to anyone. But what is it you do want?”
“I came here to speak to Carrie, not you.”
Stephen shakes his head. “Christ, Hanna, my sister can’t help you find your family. She has nothing to say to you.”
“Oh—what, you know that for a fact, do you? You speak for her?”
“Come on, Hanna. I’m not even sure why you’re making such a thing about this. I heard your family just moved and didn’t bother telling you.” He pauses, folds his arms. “Can’t say I blame them.”
“Right. Great detective work there, PC Hayes. Of course, Cardiff CID got you checking out the old house because they just moved without telling me. Yes, they’re missing and yes, I’m trying to find them and yes, I believe someone who knew me or knows me is involved.”
“And you think that someone is my sister?”
He gets all hunched up and hostile but I refuse to back down. “No. But she might know who it is.”
He’s silent for an eternity and any second I’m expecting him to produce the flaming torch and pitchfork again, but in the end he sighs and tilts his head, beckoning us away from the estate, back down the alleyway.
I hesitate before following, scrabbling in my pocket for a bit of paper, an old receipt—anything.
“Can I give you my number?” I say to Carrie. “If you want to talk. About anything…”
Dee comes to my rescue, passing me both paper and a pen. I scribble down my number and pass it to Carrie, then turn to follow Stephen.
