It Could Have Been Her(64)
I leave doors unlocked deliberately and will her with the force of my consciousness to go to the door, to test the handle, to run. I make guarded comments to her during the time we spend together about the fact that I would be prepared to help her. But she is scared, and I am scared. We are all so, so scared all the time and I cannot bear it. And what is so strange is how quiet the monster is that keeps us trapped in this house. It smokes cigarettes in an open-collared shirt and cuddles its cat and calls it his best, best girl. It buys us gifts and tells us we’re beautiful. It smiles and laughs and looks around its home as if it cannot believe the gifts that it has been given. This monster calls me “baby boy” and kisses the crown of my head. This monster makes his wife a cocktail every night and arranges a glacé cherry on a wooden stick as if it were a work of art. This monster sits in the bosom of its family radiating calm and love.
But it is all an illusion, smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand, like the tricks that I perform when I am being Patch the Clown. Because however quiet and peaceful we all are, however much we all laugh at Catherine Tate, all of us know, each and every one of us in this blighted, terrible house, that he could kill us in a flash.
And none of us wants to die.
* * *
After a while, something changes, and Claire is taken downstairs into Daddy’s study. I don’t see her again for nearly another year, but I hear her. All the time. Just like all the other girls.
And then, at some point, I hear something new: a noise I’ve never heard before, a noise that makes me realize that this has all gone too far, that I have to do something, and then the next day, when the monster is at work and Mummy is at the shops, I take a tiny knife from the very back of a kitchen drawer, one I’m sure nobody will notice is missing, and I tuck it up my sleeve.
Somehow, I think, I will find a way to get it to her.
chapter fifty-two
The following morning Jane puts the journey to Dresden Close into her app. It will take an hour and forty minutes if she leaves her house now, and she should be back home with the dogs in four hours if she doesn’t spend too long there.
She puts on some smart jeans and a pink cashmere sweater; unthreatening is the look she’s going for. No red lipstick today, just a touch of something peachy, and her hair tied back in a bun. She stops at Helen Yaxley’s on the way, to collect the photograph that Daisy had left in her suitcase, and slides it into a plastic folder alongside the shred of letterheaded paper found in Jasper’s trailer, Patch the Clown’s headshot photo, and the photographs of the circus poster that she’d printed off.
She spots the fan palm the moment she turns onto Dresden Close ninety minutes later—it’s quite the feature—and she breathes a sigh of relief when she sees the shiny red car parked on the driveway. She collects her small document case and her handbag, checks her face in the rearview mirror, and then gets out of her car.
A woman, who looks so much like the woman that Jane had pictured in her mind’s eye that it almost makes her gasp, opens the door on a chain.
“Hello?”
“Oh, hi, I’m looking for Stella Madden?”
“Yes.”
“So sorry to disturb you. My name is Jane Trevally and I’m a…” She pauses just a beat. “I’m making inquiries into a missing girl in Dorset and I wonder if I could ask you a few questions. Nothing to worry about, I promise you.”
“I don’t understand. What would I know about a missing girl in Dorset?”
“Good question. It’s possible you won’t know anything. It’s just that I found a piece of paper, part of a letter, when I was looking for evidence yesterday, and for some reason that letter had your name and address on it. It had been sent care of you.”
Jane sees Stella’s eyes open wide. “I mean, gosh,” she says, “no. I can’t think of anyone who would use my address like that, apart from… you don’t mean Jasper, do you? Jasper Black?”
Jane flushes with delight and triumph. “Yes!” she says. “Yes! That’s exactly who I’m looking for!”
“Oh,” Stella says softly. “Right. I see.” There is a long pause and then Jane sees the chain lock being pulled back and the door opens and there is Stella Madden, in red corduroy trousers, a black turtleneck, and black-socked feet. “Come in,” she says. “Come in.”
She leads Jane into the living room and seats her on a gray felt sofa, brings her water, and introduces her to her cat, Mabel.
“So,” says Stella, pulling her hair back into a low ponytail. “What do you need to know? About Jasper?”
“Well, everything,” says Jane with a dry laugh. “All I know is that he used to live with his family in Hampstead and disappeared when he was a young man and now works for the Martello Circus as a clown called Patch.”
Stella nods. “That’s right. Yes. Apart from the bit in between. Which is when I met him.” She pauses and sighs. “He was our lodger. For about a year and a half.”
“Here?”
“Yes. Here. Our son had just moved in with his girlfriend; they’d bought an apartment together and we knew that his bedroom wouldn’t be needed anymore, so we redecorated it, put a little kitchenette in there, built ourselves an en suite so that the other bedroom had its own bathroom, and advertised it on an app. This young man replied, very well-spoken, told us he’d just left home, was about to start at the clowning school in Winchester, needed somewhere to stay for a few months. So we offered him the room.”