HELEN
I need to find my phone, to call the police. This could be important. Where is my phone? I used it to call Brian earlier. I rush over to the armchair, find it down the side of a cushion. I pick it up, dial DCI Betsky’s number, but then I remember the battery. Before the call connects, the phone dies, and the screen goes black.
I haul myself upstairs, the nagging pain in my back sharpening into something more, starting to move around to my front, like a belt tightening. I hold my bump to stop it weighing on my hips. The charger is at the top of the house, but halfway up, I find I need to stop and catch my breath. I collapse into the chair in the spare room, the one we were supposed to have made into a nursery by now. I look down at my hands and see that they are still shaking.
A smudge of blood, a nick of something else. Maybe hair. Maybe skin. Every cell of my being is trying hard not to think about what it could mean. I don’t want to think about it at all, in fact. I don’t want to be involved in the thinking. The finding, the analysing. I just want to hand it over, to give it to someone else. I can’t bear it pressing down on me any more.
I notice there is a charger plugged in by the door. It must be left over from when Rachel was here. As soon as the phone flashes back to life, I call Daniel. But it goes straight to voicemail. I hold my phone tight against my ear to stop the trembling. I wait for the beep.
‘Daniel? It’s me. Listen – you need to come home. I’ve found something, in the cellar – a mark. It looks … it looks like blood. I’m about to call the police. But please – come home.’ I feel a sob rising in my throat. ‘Please, I need you here. Be as quick as you can.’
As soon as I hang up, I dial DCI Betsky’s number again. It goes straight to voicemail too. I try once more, but after a couple of rings, the phone dies again. The ache is coming harder now.
I stumble back to the chair, try to slow my breathing, calm my thoughts. I remember a meditation exercise I learned once, something about focusing on fixed points, objects in the room. I look from one to another. The chest of drawers, with the changing top. The blinds, the books. The glass vase on the shelf.
When my gaze moves to the vase, something shifts in my mind. I walk over to take it down. As my hands close around its thick glass rim, it is as if a fog is lifting. I remember holding this. I remember turning round. And there it all was. It wasn’t just Daniel’s laptop. There were other things too – a note, money, boarding passes. Boarding passes – for who? And a passport. My passport, with my face cut out of it. But why?
But before I can even think about what it means, a new wave of pain drowns out the other sensations in my body. That’s when I realise. This is different. These aren’t just aches. The pains are radiating out, around from my belly and back and into the deepest parts of my abdomen. A tightening, squeezing pain. A pain that feels bright red. My bump is hardening. This is it, I know. It’s starting.
KATIE
I fill DCI Carter in as quickly as I can. He listens carefully, says nothing. He tips a little paper tube of sugar into the coffee I bought for him, then starts rolling the packet up very tightly with his thumbs and index fingers.
‘I think she came to Greenwich because she was after somebody,’ I say. ‘One of my friends. I’m sure it was something to do with what happened to her back then.’
I give him our names. Everybody. Me, Charlie, Rory and Serena, Daniel and Helen.
‘Can you think of any reason she’d have had to seek us out?’
He leans forward a little. ‘The names of the defendants in the previous case are a matter of public record,’ he says carefully, pointing to the article I’ve unfolded from my pocket. ‘Thomas Villar and Hector Montjoy. They both went abroad. Their parents got them jobs, you know how it is with that sort. One of them went to Hong Kong, went into banking. The other one to America – can’t remember what for. They managed to repair their so-called ruined lives, if you ask me.’
DCI Carter shakes his head. I sense he is starting to soften.
‘As for Rachel. I failed her, really. She was brave. Really brave.’ He stares out of the window. ‘She was drunk, of course. That was what did for her, in the eyes of the jury. But I never for one minute doubted she was telling the truth. She was completely consistent. Completely compelling. And her injuries … if we could have just found her witnesses, things would have been different.’
He takes the little ball of paper he has made between his forefinger and thumb and taps it on the table three times.