It’s not yet noon and I decide to try Izzy at the café and hope she isn’t too busy. I park by the standing stones and head into Bea’s again. The young girl, Chlo?, greets me at the top of the stairs – her hair has been newly bleached so that it’s almost silver. It would be ageing on anyone over thirty but it gives her an almost angelic look. It’s piled high on her head. ‘Sorry,’ she says brightly, when I ask if I can have a quick word with Izzy. ‘She’s not in today. She’s doing a course at the college. Beauty, I think.’ She frowns. ‘Or hair. Can’t remember.’
‘Oh, right. Do you know what time she finishes?’
She shakes her head, her topknot wobbling. ‘Nah, sorry. Although,’ she glances at the clock, ‘she did say yesterday she was going to the stones today at lunchtime.’
‘The stones?’
‘Yeah.’ She lowers her voice. ‘Her sister was one of the girls who disappeared back in 1998 and Izzy’s parents set up a memorial bench there.’
I wonder why Sally’s parents would do that when their daughter could still be alive. You hear stories of young girls being abducted by a psycho and kept in a cellar for years sometimes. It’s rare, but it happens.
‘Anyway,’ Chlo? is looking past me now to a couple with two young kids who have come in behind me, ‘got to get on.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, moving past the family and heading back down the stairs.
I can’t help thinking that as Izzy hasn’t rung me yet she has no intention of doing so. I’ll walk past the stones and see if she’s there. I don’t want to interrupt her memorial to her sister, but I might be able to catch her as she’s leaving.
There are a few people out and about on the high street. Two old ladies dawdling arm in arm in front of me. A group of smartly dressed young office workers walking as one entity towards the pub. I shuffle behind the pensioners, who are gossiping about a friend’s new widower boyfriend.
By now I’ve reached the stile. I climb over it and nearly rip the lining from my coat in the process. The field is expansive. And deserted. The stones spring out of the ground like something from Indiana Jones. Up close, they are huge and imposing. Brenda said they’ve been here for more than five thousand years. I walk between them, the ground crisp beneath my boots. I wonder when they were put here and for what purpose. There is a plaque attached to a post near the first stone and I stop to read it. It’s mostly folklore, about how it’s believed the stones were placed there to align with the sun and the moon. I move away, trudging further into the field, wandering in and out of the stones. The field is empty, and from where I’m standing I can no longer see the high street. From my peripheral vision there is a flicker of movement. I turn, hoping it’s Izzy, but I can’t see anybody. The sky darkens a shade and the cloud seems lower. I feel like I could reach out and touch it and the sensation is oppressive. I walk faster, unable to shake the disconcerting feeling that someone else is in the field with me. Someone who keeps darting between the stones so that every time I look round I can’t see them. A macabre game of hide and seek.
I try to concentrate on my surroundings and look for the memorial bench Chlo? mentioned. And then, towards the back of the field, I notice a large oak tree in the corner and, just to the side of it, half shaded by branches, a wooden bench. On closer inspection I see all three girls’ names etched onto a brass plaque with the words, ‘Always in our hearts’。 And then I see that someone has left a bunch of pink roses on the arm. Izzy must already have been. I sit down on the bench and sigh. And that’s when I see the note scribbled on lined paper almost hidden beneath the leaves. The writing is in block capitals and slanted to the left. There’s something familiar about it. I pick it up and read.
KATIE, TAMZIN & SALLY
And then, underneath, just two words.
I’M SORRY.
It’s the same handwriting as on the threatening note left on my windscreen.
24
Olivia
Olivia can’t stop thinking about Ralph. She knows people think it’s odd that she and Ralph are friends. Were friends. Were, were, were. Her heart contracts. Ralph was a good person, a kind person. He liked the simple life but he was surprisingly astute, yet all his life people had taken advantage of him. Even her, in the end. There’s so much she wishes she could change. Ralph had told her once that the truth would set her free. That was a typical Ralph statement. He liked to talk in slogans. But he was wrong about that. The truth wouldn’t set her free. Far from it.
The truth was a Pandora’s box and she had to keep the lid firmly closed.
Not for the first time she wishes she had someone to confide in. With a pang of sadness she realizes that Ralph was her only friend, the one person she thought she could trust. And now he’s gone. She feels more alone than ever.
She checks her watch. It’s five past twelve. Wesley said he’d meet her here by the stones: they could visit her friends’ bench, lay down some flowers, then grab a bite to eat before he has to go back to work. The bouquet feels heavy in her hands. Where is he? And then she catches him walking towards her with his familiar loping gait and his big puffy jacket that makes his top half look out of proportion to the rest of him, like one of those characters in the Guess Who? game. He’d texted her this morning to tell her to meet him here and she had assumed it was him being sweet and thoughtful, wanting to commemorate the fact it’s been twenty years since her friends’ disappearance. But from the look on his face as he approaches she sees she assumed wrongly. He looks furious.
‘Ralph Middleton is dead,’ he says curtly, when he gets up close. He grabs her arm and almost forces her over the stile and into the field. ‘And you were seen coming out of his caravan in tears yesterday. What the fuck, Liv?’
She feels like she’s been punched in the gut. Why is he so angry?
‘Has that fucker Dale been to see you? Because he came to my flat earlier.’
‘Why did he want to see you? You hardly knew Ralph. And weren’t you at work this morning?’
He runs a hand across his chin. ‘It was before I left for work,’ he says, too quickly. ‘It was just routine apparently.’
His eyes have gone flinty, like they always do when he’s lying. Instead he deflects the questioning back to her as deftly as a tennis stroke. ‘What were you doing at Ralph’s caravan yesterday?’
How did he know? Did Dale tell him? Her heart races beneath her waxed jacket and the arm holding the bouquet feels dead. ‘I’m devastated about Ralph,’ she says quietly. ‘And I’ll always feel guilty that our last conversation ended with heated words.’
‘Heated words about what?’
She toes the muddy grass. She’s still in her riding gear. ‘It was a stupid misunderstanding.’
‘He was murdered, Liv. Did Dale tell you that?’
She looks up and for the first time today she notices real fear in his eyes. ‘More or less.’
‘That fucker …’ He sighs, and she wonders if he’s talking about Dale or Ralph. She knows Wesley and Dale were in the same class at school and never liked each other. But Ralph … Wesley didn’t know him that well. It was she who kept in touch with him, who would visit him to make sure he was okay, that he wasn’t too lonely living in that caravan all by himself. It was she who had cared.