Mum glances at me in concern and the elation I’d been feeling just moments before melts away, replaced by unease. Snowy. I pick up my pace. Tom is standing in the middle of the kitchen with alarm on his face. The back door is wide open. Snowy is nowhere to be seen.
Everything has been turned out of the drawers in what looks like a hurry so that pens, old receipts, council tax bills and everything else we’d just stuffed into whatever spare drawer was available are scattered over the floor.
‘Where’s Snowy?’ I cry, looking around frantically.
Mum runs into the living room, then back to us again. ‘You’d better call the police,’ she says, her voice tight. ‘It looks like you’ve been burgled.’
‘Wait,’ says Tom, picking up a knife from the wooden rack by the microwave. ‘Call 999 and stay here. They could still be in the house.’
34
Rose
February/March 1980
Daphne was skittish and on edge as I guided her home. The strange wig looked unnatural on her, as if a wild animal had landed on her head. Her eyes kept darting to the hedges as though she was half expecting someone to jump out.
‘Joel told me a man came into the pub asking about me,’ she said breathlessly, as we walked as fast as we could. I wrapped an arm around her, trying to comfort her but I could feel her body trembling. She seemed so vulnerable, like when I first saw her on Christmas Eve. ‘He’s finally found me. Maybe I should leave, Rose. Maybe I should move on.’
Dread descended over me. I didn’t want her to go. ‘You can’t jump to conclusions. Not yet. Not until you know more,’ I said, trying to pacify her, even though I knew that if it was me I’d want to run away too. ‘Don’t go back to your job at the pub. Lie low for a while.’
She nodded, her shoulders hunched around her ears.
‘It will be okay,’ I said, over and over again as we strode home through the dark. I wish I’d been right.
Daphne was too scared to leave the house. She seemed on edge every time there was a knock at the door or a movement on the road outside. Her face was pale and drawn, and she smoked even more than usual. I spent hours trying to reassure her and, as the days passed, I felt I was getting through to her and that maybe she would stay.
And then one day, while you were at playschool, she came to me while I was dusting the living room.
‘I need to cut this off. It’s too identifiable.’
Her hair. Her beautiful thick straw-coloured hair. The hair I envied. The hair I dreamed about running my hands through.
I stopped what I was doing. Her big deep-set eyes were pleading. ‘Will you help me? I don’t want to go to a hairdresser.’
I stepped away in horror. ‘You are joking? You want me to cut your hair?’
‘Please.’
How could I refuse when she was looking at me like that? I wanted to help her. To keep her safe. To keep the three of us safe. But I was no hairdresser. I trimmed your fringe once and made a right mess of it – it was still growing out.
‘I’ve got a box of dye too. Chocolate brown. It was the only colour they had at the corner shop. I bought it a few weeks ago, just in case. He’s less likely to recognize me with hair like that. I’ve had long blonde hair most of my life.’
My heart sank. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Positive.’ She stepped forward, so close I could see the faint freckles on her nose, the flecks of green in her irises. My heart fluttered. And then she reached for my hand. ‘Come on,’ she said, leading me out of the room and towards the stairs. ‘Let’s do it now before you have to pick Lolly up.’
It didn’t look too bad. Better than I’d thought it would. When I was growing up, my neighbour had been a mobile hairdresser and I used to watch, fascinated, when she cut, using her two fingers as a kind of ruler against the scissors. The style really suited Daphne’s elfin face, even if I did have to keep going back to even it out. She didn’t care, though. She seemed totally disinterested in how she looked. I understood. I was the same since leaving my old life behind. It was about survival.