I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I stagger upstairs to the bathroom, slump down on the floor. My arms feel like dead weights. What is happening to me? I think I’m going to either cry or be sick. What is Rachel doing? Why is she wearing Mummy’s dress? What else has she stolen? A laptop? A photograph? A dress? My brother? Who is this person I’ve invited into our house?
When the nausea passes, I lie down on my side, one cheek against the cool tiled floor of the bathroom. I lie for a while, until my heart slows down. The smell of bonfire smoke, the thump of music, the noise of chatter floats in through the open window. My stomach settles into a hard knot of anger. I have stood this long enough. I am going to ask her what the hell is going on.
The spare room is on the other side of the landing. I push the door open, my eyes still swimming slightly. And then I notice something. Something that wasn’t there before, or it was, and I didn’t see it. A slight unevenness in the tilt of her bed. Is it just the mess of the sheets, making it look that way? I climb down onto all fours, check the legs of the bed. And that’s when I see it, under one of the legs. One of the floorboards is sticking up, as if there is something pushing up from underneath.
I shut the door behind me against the noise of the party. But I can still hear the bass, like the thump of a heartbeat. The room is hot. I get back down on my hands and knees. I wasn’t imagining it. There is a floorboard out of place. It looks as if it has been cut out, pushed up, like a jigsaw piece.
It takes all the strength I have to push the bed to the side. I try pulling up the board, and sure enough, it comes away in my hands. A swirl of sawdust flies upward, and I see what lies underneath.
The objects are set out neatly, between two dusty joists. The laptop is there, with its cable wrapped around it. And the envelope, the one I’d seen in her suitcase, the W neatly printed on the front. There are fifty-pound notes – loads of them, flat, perfect and as neat and unreal as monopoly money, stuffed into a polythene sandwich bag that looks as if it came from the roll in my kitchen.
I push the notes to one side. There is more underneath. A pile of newspaper cuttings, some new, some yellowed and curled with age, held together with a hair grip. I pull them out and lay them in front of me. The old ones are on the top. They are from a decade ago – when we were at university. When I look closer, I see they are dated 2008, the year we left Cambridge. And then I realise they are about Cambridge. About the case Katie was talking about. About what happened to that girl, the summer we left.
Then, I see more things. The photograph I found, of us after the college play. The one that had been stuck back together. And underneath that, more paper. What looks like a printout of some flight documents and boarding passes, stapled together, folded in half so I can’t quite see the details. As I reach for them, I see a passport. But as I do, I become aware of footsteps on the stairs, of someone getting closer.
My hands trembling, I abandon the flight details and pick up the passport, open up to the back page.
The name is HELEN MARY THORPE. The date of birth is 9 May 1986. The place of birth is London. The passport number is mine. It’s my passport. It must be.
But on the left-hand side, where my face should be, there is only a blank space. My face has been cut away.
The hinge of the door creaks. I spin around, my entire body shaking now.
It is her.
KATIE
Outside someone offers me a cigarette. I take it. I don’t really smoke. The fact I want one is a sure sign I’ve drunk too much. I thank them, and stumble down to the bottom of the garden. I feel like being on my own for a bit.
As I sit and smoke, I look back at the bonfire, the big, beautiful lit-up house. I have always loved Helen’s house, its red brickwork, its tall, wooden-shuttered windows, the pretty gables in the gently sloping roof. It is at its most beautiful now, in the autumn when the wisteria turns yellow and the brambles at the end of the garden are heavy with unpicked fruit. It’s silly, but I suppose I like to think of it as my childhood home, too.
I close my eyes, inhale the smell of wet leaves, bonfire smoke. I remember how the Guy Fawkes Night parties here used to be, when Helen’s parents, Richard and Anna, were alive. Rory, Helen, Charlie and I would be sent to Greenwich Park to find kindling, looking for the driest sticks, stuffing them into our backpacks. When we got back, we’d present our collections for Richard to inspect. He would decide who was the winner. He’d usually say it was me. I think he and Anna felt a bit sorry for me after my mum and dad split up. I think they knew I preferred their house to my cramped two-up, two-down house at the cheaper end of the street.