The Girls Who Disappeared
Claire Douglas
For my readers
The Accident
November 1998
They were singing. They were drunk. They were happy. That was what Olivia recalled most, afterwards. How happy her friends had been.
Sally was in the front. She always was. She said the back seat made her nauseous. And, as Olivia’s best friend, it was the natural place for her to be. Sally was chattering away about Mal, a boy she fancied who’d finally asked her out, not that this surprised Olivia. Men always gravitated towards Sally, with her huge dark eyes and bubbly nature – including Olivia’s own boyfriend, Wesley. It was still a bone of contention between them, a subject that was now off-limits to preserve their friendship.
Sally’s voice was high, excitable and a little slurred as she recalled the moment Mal had bought her a Diamond White. Olivia was finding it hard to hear her over the radio and the rain that was getting louder and heavier by the minute.
Tamzin and Katie were in the back, mascara smudged below their eyes, their glittery crop tops poking through their not-warm-enough coats, smelling of booze and perfume. Their arms were wrapped around each other’s necks, acting as though they were still at Ritzy’s as they crooned along to ‘Two Become One’ by the Spice Girls.
Olivia’s heart sank. They’d promised they wouldn’t drink too much tonight. It had been Tamzin who’d goaded the others. Olivia had noticed her at the bar ordering double shots and flicking her long, peroxide-blonde hair over her slim shoulders, obviously hoping one of her many admirers would pay. And they usually did. Hers was a different type of beauty from Sally’s: brasher and more in your face with her colourful Wonderbras and skirts that barely covered her arse.
It hadn’t been raining as Olivia had headed out to pick up her friends earlier that evening. And it had only started to drizzle as they left the nightclub ten minutes ago. But now the downpour was so heavy that Olivia was finding it increasingly difficult to see the road ahead. Rain gathered in rivulets either side of her windscreen nearly obscuring her vision, despite her wipers being on max. The road stretched out in front of them, dark and all-encompassing as though they were travelling through space. Even on main beam it wasn’t enough to cut through the mist that was beginning to hover above the ground like dry ice.
As it was Olivia’s turn to drive she’d only sipped one glass of wine all evening. But now she felt it burn the back of her throat, hot and acidic, as her little Peugeot 205 was buffeted by the strong winds. She wasn’t a nervous driver usually but she’d only passed her test a few months ago. And tonight felt different. She hated this road at the best of times. The Devil’s Corridor cut straight through the forest, and the tall beech and fir trees that reared up on either side made the road feel oppressive. Further on were the famous standing stones, and then their little town wrapped around it, a tourist trap full of mystical shops and tearooms.
The drumming of the rain drowned the music, splashing onto the tarmac like darts shot from the sky. Olivia clutched the steering wheel tightly, knuckles white. The rain was now so loud that the others stopped singing abruptly and Sally dialled up the radio.
‘Turn it down,’ snapped Olivia, and Sally did as she asked without complaint. It was too dark to see her expression, but Olivia knew she’d offended her friend. She experienced a twinge of regret: she hated upsetting Sally.
‘What a night!’ exclaimed Katie, leaning forwards, gripping Olivia’s headrest. ‘Look at that rain.’
‘Can you sit back?’ Olivia’s voice was unusually curt. Katie was the eldest and the leader of the group and didn’t like to be told what to do. Olivia couldn’t see her face but she imagined her rolling her eyes at Tamzin. Nevertheless she heard her flop back against the headrest. They weren’t wearing their seatbelts.
‘I hope I hear from Mal tomorrow,’ Sally piped up, in an attempt to break the tension, but she sounded more subdued now. ‘He said he would phone and – Shit! WATCH OUT!’
Someone was standing in the middle of the road.
It all happened so suddenly: Olivia slammed on her brakes and swerved. The car skidded and spun around, the wheels clipping the bank, causing it to flip over, metal scraping against tarmac as it landed on its roof, eventually coming to a grinding halt in a ditch. Olivia could hear the screams of her friends as pain ripped through her legs. And then she blacked out.
When she came round the car was the right way up. Her clock flashed amber in the darkness: 01:10. How long had she been out? There was a deathly silence. No sounds from her friends. Her heart hammered as she remembered. Oh, God, oh, God. Are they okay? Are they injured? Did I hit the person in the road?
Olivia tried to move but yelled in pain. One of her legs was pinned beneath the steering-wheel column, which had crumpled downwards, trapping her. ‘Sally?’ She turned towards the passenger seat. It was empty. Where was Sally? She tried to look behind her, craning her neck towards the back seat, expecting to see Katie and Tamzin, dreading that they might be dead, but they weren’t there. Panic welled within her as realization hit.
She was alone in the car.
Had they gone to get help? But they were in the middle of nowhere and Katie had a mobile, a pink Nokia. She was so proud of it. She had the best job out of the four of them: an assistant pharmacist. One of them would have used that to call the police or an ambulance. Their bags were gone too. There was nothing in the car to suggest they’d ever been there. But they wouldn’t have just left her. One of them would have stayed. Sally, definitely. Her best mate.
Olivia started trembling uncontrollably as pain and fear gripped her, turning her insides to ice as she remembered how the accident had happened: the figure in the road, which was now empty, stretching into the seemingly dark void.
Who had it been?
And where had her friends gone?
Day One
1
Jenna
Voice Memo: Monday, 26 November 2018
The Devil’s Corridor is an apt name for this long, straight A-road that leads to the market town of Stafferbury in Wiltshire. Over the years there have been reports of many strange happenings: unexplained accidents, apparent suicides, sightings of hooded figures and the sound of a child crying in the dead of night. But none more mysterious than the Olivia Rutherford case twenty years ago this week. Three young women disappeared from a crashed car and haven’t been seen since …
I pause the recording on my phone as I take in my surroundings. There is definitely something eerie about this road. It looks as though it’s been built straight through a forest and all I can see at either side are thickets of tall, dense evergreen trees that reach towards the bruise-coloured sky and the swollen black clouds. So far I haven’t spotted any houses or buildings along here. I could be somewhere Scandinavian rather than the depths of Wiltshire. I’ve been parked on the verge for the last ten minutes and only two cars have gone by.
A presence in my peripheral vision makes me jolt. A man is peering in at me through the passenger window and my heart races. He must have come from the forest. He looks early fifties, maybe a little older: craggy face, a bushy beard, shaggy grey eyebrows beneath a fisherman’s hat. His shoulders are rounded under a long waxed overcoat that reaches mid-calf. He’s holding the lead of a white whippet-type dog with three legs and a brown patch over its left eye. The dog stares soulfully at me. I reach down for the mace in my handbag and place it on the seat beside me, hidden by my thigh.