It Could Have Been Her(37)
But I could feel it in the air, all the time, the heat building, the possibility of a spark setting off the whole tinderbox. Within a month, Naomi was gone.
* * *
Two weeks later, Allen came home late at night with another girl. Her name was Jane. She was very pretty, and older than the others; too old, I thought, to be of any use to us, and far too posh. She wasn’t a sex worker, she wasn’t itinerant; she was a divorcée, and felt too similar to myself for me to countenance sharing my home and my husband with her. I watched Allen that night, mixing her a drink, and I knew what he was planning. I knew it was a terrible mistake. Thank goodness for Jessamine tumbling out of bed, as she often used to back then. I saw the girl called Jane knock the drink from Allen’s hand and I realized we’d all been given a second chance. When Allen tried to get her to stay, I did not allow it.
I watched her from the front window running helter-skelter into the night and I hoped that there would be no more girls.
chapter thirty
After their drinks on the Heath, Jane says goodbye to Dexter and takes the tube into town. She alights at Charing Cross and walks through the buzzy backstreets from the Strand toward Seven Dials. Another glorious evening, another reminder that she has no one to share glorious evenings with, another opportunity to chastise herself for feeling bad about her aloneness.
Her mind tumbles with images and facts and not-quite-facts that flicker and fade through her thoughts with nothing to grab hold of. She pulls out her phone and types Helen Yaxley another message.
I know you said you’d let me know if you heard anything, hate to be annoying. Any word? Any news?
Then she messages Shannon. I’ll be back on Monday, she types. Hope that’s OK.
No reply from Helen, but a reply instantaneously from Shannon:
No probs! Me and the boys are having the best time! Bit of an issue with the tap in the kitchen sink though. No water coming. Using hose water instead for now. But you might want to get a plumber in. Also that bit of the ceiling in the room next to the kitchen that was hanging off—it’s finally come down. Looks a bit grim up there. Soz to bear bad news. Sure it’s fine! Have a good weekend!
Jane groans under her breath, adds a thumbs-up emoji to Shannon’s message, and puts her phone back in her bag. She can’t think about it all now. That bloody house. The decay and frailty of it. The money she doesn’t have to spend on it. The job she doesn’t have to earn the money to spend on it. The life she has lived that has made her indolent and work-shy. The time trickling through her fingers to change anything, fix anything. She thinks of Chloe Flint, the glamorous estate agent, her talk of Crittall windows and foreign buyers, and she knows that that is the only sensible solution, but she’s still not ready to face it.
* * *
Back at Tony’s house, Jane sits up on the roof terrace and watches the clips of Jessamine Black’s B-movie that she’d recorded onto her phone from Natasha’s laptop.
She casts her eyes across the rest of the actors; there’s Natasha’s now-husband, Jacob, playing a surly young neighbor, and a girl with red hair playing Jessamine’s stepsister, staying for the weekend, and a slightly older man with dark blond hair in thick millennium-style curtains playing Jessamine’s on-and-off love interest, Tristan. According to IMDb, his name is Oliver Bloom, and he appeared in a few movies during the nineties and early 2000s, but a quick google earlier showed that he was now an artisan cheesemaker living in the West Country. Natasha told her the cast had lost touch after filming, that only she and Jessamine had stayed friends. But was it possible, she wonders, that Jessamine might have said something on set, or done something that had stayed with anyone else, something they might remember? It was worth a shot. Jane goes to Oliver’s cheese website and sends a message via his contact form.
Hi, I’m investigating a missing girl and trying to find out more information about a woman called Jessamine Black who you shot a movie with in 2005/6. Wondered if you knew anything about her or had contact details for anyone you think might still be in touch with her? I spoke to Natasha de Large this morning and she couldn’t help. Do drop me a line if you remember anything. Thank you.
The film is still paused on Jane’s phone when she switches back from her browser, capturing Jessamine’s face in full detail. Jane stares at it again. It’s a fascinating face somehow. There’s something in her eyes that reminds Jane of herself. She feels an affinity with this woman, something pulling at her from her gut. She sighs and turns off her phone, then googles “how to find out who owns a house.” She fills in the form on the Land Registry website and pays her ?24.95 to get the title register emailed to her. Then she spends another ?19.19 (inc. VAT) to get a background report from 192.com for Jessamine Black. The temperature starts to drop, and she takes her empty wineglass down the tiny stairs and shuts the door to the roof terrace behind her.
She’s done as much as she can for one day.
* * *
When Jane wakes up the next morning, she’s uncomfortably aware that the air-conditioning has been on too high all night in Tony’s bedroom, that the air is too crisp, and her throat is dry and sore. She gets up and turns it off from the panel on the wall, then finds her reading glasses, picks up her phone, and sees that she has a message from Helen Yaxley.