The Night They Vanished, page 17
He sounds so sure. So convincing.
“Adam,” I say, “as this is our sixth date, if I ask you something, will you promise to tell me the truth?”
“Uh-oh, this sounds dangerous.” He’s smiling as he says it, because he thinks we’re still playing the game, but that’s a good thing. He hasn’t got time to invent a lie.
“Have you been to Littledean before? Before today, I mean?”
I can see the answer on his face—he doesn’t even need to say anything.
“Did I tell you how I originally got the idea for the website?” he says. “It was when I was visiting Seb’s family when we were at uni. I was already getting into urban exploring and he told me about a local house that had lain empty for years, the Romeo and Juliet love story that ended in the tragic deaths of a whole family.”
Oh, that stings. That Seb used my past as some story to impress his mate. We were hardly close then, Seb and I. I barely saw Dee in my lost years; I certainly hadn’t had time to get to know her boyfriend then, but still. It stings.
“I didn’t do anything for a long time,” Adam says. “But the story stuck with me. I ended up writing an article about it, about urban exploration and dark tourism, to tie in with the launch of the website. That’s when I went there. To Littledean. For research for an article, that’s all.”
I can’t look at him as I walk out of the room, out of the flat, leaning against the wall outside on sagging knees.
I’m not surprised to hear someone approaching seconds later, not surprised to see Adam in front of me when I look up.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I say before he can speak.
“I’m sorry.”
“Is that why you agreed to go out with me? Is that why you asked about me? More background for your fucking website? A follow-up to your bloody article?” I hunch over, clutching my stomach. “Oh God, I feel sick.”
“No, I didn’t know then. I swear. I had no idea at first who you were other than a friend of Dee’s.” He pauses. “It was only when Dee was trying to set up the blind date that Seb told me.”
“And what exactly did he tell you?” My heart is pounding as I wait for him to answer.
“Nothing much, I promise. It was more of a caution than information. He just told me that you were the girl in the story he’d told me. About the house from near his home town.”
“And when you knew—is that why you agreed to go out with me?”
His pause is too long. Heartbreakingly long.
“There was an element of curiosity so perhaps that’s why I initially thought about it… because I knew your history. But I was attracted to you, before I knew, I wasn’t lying about that. And within a few minutes of our date—none of it mattered anymore. I liked you. That was all that mattered.”
I shake my head, pull away from him when he reaches out a hand toward me. “But you chose not to say anything to me? When you were telling me all about your creepy hobbies and your stupid website? Not even when we went back to the village—you still didn’t say anything?”
“I should have, I know. I was going to come clean on that first date, when you were telling me where you grew up, but I didn’t because I liked you. I liked you too much. I didn’t want you to think I was a total creep. You were never likely to come across the article I wrote—there was no reason for you ever to know. And when the website got hacked—I couldn’t say anything after that. And none of it is on the current site. It was an earlier incarnation, more of an urban exploring site, that was where that original house was mentioned. Like an origin story.”
“But you knew. When you launched that bloody website, every house and place you put on there is the site of some-one’s misery. Do you never stop to think about how the families of the victims might feel if they came across your website? And you went out with me, the—what?—the tragic Juliet… and you said nothing. The police asked about us, any connections between us, and you didn’t say anything.”
He’s silent for a moment. “I told them. The second time I was questioned. I told them.”
I want to cry. I want to curl up in a ball on the ground and cry. “So, you talked to the police about my past, my history, knowing none of what really happened, only what was public knowledge, but you didn’t have the decency to mention it to me? When I talked about my family, my life, you said nothing.” I look away from him and take a deep breath. “I’m going to go back in and carry on. I don’t want you there. I don’t want to be in the same room as you.”
I turn back around as I get to the front door. “Did you tell me the truth about anything?”
“What?”
“Your ex-girlfriend—you told me you’d just broken up when you moved to Cardiff but Seb said something… Did you lie about that, too?”
He opens his mouth as if to answer then shakes his head and says nothing.
“Why?”
“Hanna…”
“Actually, forget it. I don’t want to know. You are a stranger to me and everything you’ve said has been a lie. I should have stuck with my original instinct and not trusted you the moment I saw that bloody website.”
Chapter 23
SASHA—December, two months earlier
“Sasha, what are you doing?”
I ignore her and carry on pulling drawers open and rummaging through them. And I know it’s stupid. What—do I think they’ll have hidden top-secret evidence of a fourteen-year-old lie in the kitchen drawer with the first-aid box and spare batteries? Of course not, but I have to do something, and slamming drawers feels good.
“Where is it?” I whirl around to face Mum when I’ve run out of drawers to slam. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“My bloody birth certificate,” I shout. “So that I can find out if you and Dad are actually my freaking grand-parents.” I take a deep, shaky breath. “Is it true? Is Hanna my mother?”
She doesn’t even need to open her mouth to answer. I can see the truth in how pale she goes as she sinks into a chair.
Well then. Well. No wonder Dad freaks out so much if I do the slightest thing wrong. He’s constantly waiting for history to repeat itself. Like mother, like daughter—that’s what goes through his head, like he has no skin in the game, like his precious DNA is somehow apart and separate from the women in his family, like Hanna and me are only descended from the first wife who left him and nothing to do with him at all.
And the stupidest thing—the stupidest thing of all—all these years I’ve wished, wished, wished that I was more closely related to Hanna, not just a half sister, because maybe then she’d bother with me, maybe then she’d care a little, when all along, I’m actually her daughter? Which makes the rejection, the dismissal, the abandonment a million, billion times worse.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I say, slumping into a chair next to her.
She has her hands clasped together like she’s about to pray, knuckles white. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Mum anything other than calm my entire life, but I can see she’s on the edge today.
“Your father felt the break should be clean,” she says.
I fold my arms and lean back. “So, you’re saying it’s Dad’s fault you’ve lied to me my entire life.”
She smiles at me very faintly. “No, we all agreed, Hanna included, to treat it as if it were a traditional adoption. I did suggest we talk to you about it earlier… but it was complicated because Hanna was still visiting. And your father said Hanna didn’t want you to know. If we had adopted you from a stranger, you would have had to wait until you were eighteen to see if you could find out about your birth parents.”
“So, you were going to tell me when I was eighteen?”
She nods. “I’m sorry you found out like this, Sasha. But I’m not going to apologize for bringing you up, for wanting to be your mother. I fell in love with you as soon as you were born, so I’m never going to apologize for that.”
I can feel my eyes fill with tears and I have to force myself to stare straight ahead and not blink so she doesn’t see. I’m not even mad at Mum, really. Because I know she loves me, that she sees me as her real daughter, of course I do. And if Hanna didn’t want me… if it weren’t for Mum and Dad, I would have gone to strangers or into care. But it’s like… they’ve taken away my sister, who one day, when I was old enough, when I got brave enough, when I grew cool enough, would actually like me.
And what do I have now? Hanna, when she visits, avoids looking at me, she actually flinches if I speak sometimes. It’s bad enough she was embarrassed by her half sister, but to find out I’m her daughter?
“So, how come…?” I have to pause and clear my throat. “How come Hanna let you keep me? If she didn’t want me, how come she didn’t just get rid of me when she was pregnant? And if she couldn’t face that, wouldn’t it have been better for her if a stranger had adopted me, then she wouldn’t have to face me every time she visited?”
Mum reaches over to touch my shoulder, my face. “Because I asked. Because I begged. I begged her not to get an abortion. I promised to help, and I even promised to help with social services, with arranging for you to be adopted… We went away together, me and Hanna. We took her out of school for a few weeks before the summer holidays, so no one would know, no one would guess. Mr. Garner arranged it as a discrete way of avoiding village gossip and all the scandal of a teenage pregnancy. We were supposed to come back from our time away without a baby, but then you were born, and I loved you so much. I could see Hanna wasn’t ready, wasn’t capable of looking after a baby. But I could and I was so ready.”
“And Dad?”
Her pause before answering is just a bit too long. “Of course he wanted to adopt you too.”
“So, you and the vicar came up with some murky baby-swap plan and that’s it?”
“Don’t, Sasha. Mr. Garner helped us, that’s all—he arranged for somewhere for Hanna and me to stay—away from the gossip of this town, away from all the horrible gossip about Hanna. It wasn’t that difficult. At the time, neither your father nor I had particularly close ties to the village. By the time I first took you into the village, you were six months old and Hanna had already left.”
“And my birth dad? He didn’t have a say, I take it?”
“You’ll have to ask Hanna about your birth father,” she says after a pause. “It’s not my place.”
“Oh, great, so what does that mean? Hanna doesn’t even know who my dad is?” Oh God—the photos. What if my birth dad is Owen and he doesn’t know, he just hates us all because Hanna left him?
“Daniel is your father,” Mum says. “He’s the one who raised you.”
“No wonder he’s always been so strict, so bloody terrified I’m going to turn out like Hanna.”
“Sasha, please…”
“Please what?”
Another one of those stupid damned pauses.
“Don’t talk to your father about this. He’s having a… difficult time. We’re having a difficult time.”
I shake my head. “You’re kidding? I find out Hanna is my mother, that you’ve all been lying to me—and I have to keep quiet because Dad’s having a difficult time? Fine. Okay. I’ll do that, Jen.”
I register her visible flinch as I call her Jen instead of Mum.
Good. I’m glad. I am.
But tears are already blurring my vision as I turn to storm out.
Chapter 24
HANNA—Sunday 10 p.m.
I insert a coin to unlock the trolley and trundle up the first aisle of the supermarket, straight past the healthy fruit and veg, heading for the bakery section. I’m not the only one. The Spar is the only shop open at ten o’clock on a Sunday night and anyone here is not looking to fulfill their five-a-day quota. My trolley, by the time I’m on the final aisle, contains enough sugar to give an elephant diabetes, so I add a couple of tubes of Pringles and some Frazzles as counterbalance.
I spotted Adam round about the multipack of Dairy Milk, but I ignored him and his stupid basket that has nothing in it but six eggs and a loaf of wholemeal bread. Dee must have told him where I was going. I couldn’t settle when I went back to hers after Adam’s confession, couldn’t eat any of the food she’d cooked. I didn’t tell her or Seb what had happened, so I can’t blame her for telling him. I like to think if she knew, she’d have kneed him in the balls instead.
I pick up a bar of Dee’s favorite chocolate. But maybe she already knows. Even if Adam was telling the truth—that all Seb told him was that I was the girl in the doomed teenage relationship that set off the tragic chain of events that led to his morbid curiosity in an abandoned house—wouldn’t Seb have told Dee before she set us up on that date? Of course he would—they tell each other everything. And he knows how protective she is of me. So, she knew. And Seb knew. And they all chose to say nothing to me about it.
I put the chocolate back on the shelf.
I can see Adam out of the corner of my eye, still following me around the shop. I don’t really want to be removed from the Spar for braining someone with a two-liter bottle of Fanta, but I swear if he comes up and starts apologizing again, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
He sidles up when I’m browsing the limited ice-cream selection, dithering between Chunky Monkey and Phish Food before chucking both in the trolley.
“I didn’t lie when I said I’d recently broken up with my girlfriend. Not completely.”
Fuck off.
“And I suppose I lied by omission by not telling you that Seb had… told me about you in the context of that house. And by not telling you I’d been to Littledean before.”
No shit, Sherlock.
“The thing is… I was a mess when I broke up with Natalie. There was other stuff going on, I was beyond stressed and I had, well, I suppose I had a breakdown. Couldn’t work, completely lost it. It took me a long time to get better. Seb knew that. He came to London to see me, saw what a mess I was. He planted the seed of me moving down here… but what he doesn’t know is that Natalie came back. Tried to start things up again. And I… There were a couple of weeks when we tried. But I could see this time how destructive the relationship was, how damaging for both of us. So I ended it again. And I never told Seb because I know he’d think I was nuts for getting back with her. Moving to Cardiff was the turning point, but it was tough because I’d opened old wounds by seeing Nat again. I think building that website was something to focus on and that’s why I became so obsessed with it for a while, visiting places I wanted to put on the website… And when I saw you—I didn’t know, at first, who you were, I just liked you. When Seb told me, I figured it didn’t matter, not really.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“I don’t mean what happened didn’t matter,” he says. “Shit. I’m saying this all wrong. It’s just that… It was something that happened fifteen years before we met. I did wonder if I should mention it when we went on our date…”
I look at him in disbelief and swing my trolley round, only avoiding ramming him because he leaps out of the way.
“But I didn’t want you to think I was a total weirdo.”
Too fucking late, mate. I march down the aisle to the checkout. There’s no queue, so I start unloading onto the counter. Adam comes up behind me and carries on talking.
“I’m not a hacker, or a murderer, or a stalker.”
The woman on the checkout pauses in scanning my shopping. I smile at her. “He’s just a creepy weirdo,” I say. “Likes lurking in empty murder houses. Likes lying to women.”
“Do I need to get security?”
I sigh and look at Adam still clutching his pathetic eggs and bread. It’s tempting. I’d quite like to see him get dragged out by security, bundled into the back of a police car.
“No, it’s okay. I can handle him.”
It’s no wonder I was attracted to him, I think as I pay and wheel my stuffed trolley away. I thought he was too nice, and I couldn’t figure out what it was about him… But, of course, it was my built-in ability to attract losers and psychos. I’d thought for a second I’d broken the cycle, but it turns out that loser radar was working just fine, better than ever, in fact.
I don’t look back again to see if he’s following as I load up the car and get in. I don’t even know if he’s got his car back from the police or if he walked. But I’m so mad as I pull away that I drive on autopilot and only realize as I turn down my own street that I’ve come home instead of driving back to Dee and Seb’s. Cursing myself, Adam, the world, I drive toward the end of the street to do a U-turn and slam on the brakes as I pass my flat because there’s someone outside my front door. Someone kicking my front door.
The anger that’s fueled my journey flares up and I’m out of the car, marching across the road before I can question the stupidity of my actions. It’s nearly half past ten and I’m raging over to confront a man kicking in my front door. The fury doesn’t get time to turn to fear, though, because the door-kicker turns and it’s only Liam, not a psycho-murderer-stalker-burglar, and he looks as mad as I must do.
“What the fuck?” I keep my voice low, mindful of the neighbors. “What the hell are you doing here? What the hell are you trying to do to my door?”
“What are you going to do—call the police again?”
Oh, that’s what this is about. “Oh, grow up, you self-pitying asshole,” I say, folding my arms. “Stop acting like a wounded victim. So, what—you had to answer a few questions? Big deal. If you weren’t such a dick, I never would have thought to give them your name.”
“Are you insane? I’ve been questioned twice. They wouldn’t tell me why, just kept asking where I was and what I was doing over the weekend. Asking me if I’d threatened you or slashed your tires.”
He looks genuinely freaked out as I push past him and unlock my front door, marching inside and leaving the door open for him to follow. I wait in my still-destroyed living room, moving my hands to my hips.
