Page 11

CHAPTER 11

SALLY – D AY T WO

Sally’s staring at the ceiling, longing for dawn. For light. For the phone to ring. We’ve found her. She’s OK ...

In this darkness she keeps replaying every moment in Freda’s Fashions. Amelie’s face. The bad feeling between them over the dress. We don’t have time. Put it back ...

She turns her head to see that Matthew has his eyes closed but she knows he’s not asleep either. She can tell from the way he’s lying. Matthew does this weird thing when he’s asleep. He puts his finger against his nose as if to open his airways better. Maybe it’s to try to stop himself snoring. Whatever, he’s not doing that now. He’s still dressed – sweatpants and a T-shirt, pretending to be asleep to try to encourage her to rest.

‘Shall I make tea?’ She sits up as she speaks. Sally’s still dressed too. Leggings and a jumper. They climbed into bed in their clothes at about 2 a.m. as if being dressed would make the phone call more likely. The need to rush to the car to pick Amelie up.

Matthew turns his head. ‘No, no. I’ll get it. You stay here.’

They hold each other’s gaze and she’s not surprised that he doesn’t urge her again to rest. What’s the point? He’s said it over and over, as has the family liaison officer, but they all know there can be no rest until they find Amelie. Sally fears there’s going to be a lot of lying down and pretending to sleep.

She reaches to turn on the bedside lamp and watches as Matthew rolls from the bed and slowly leaves the room. She watches the way he moves, sluggish and unfamiliar. It makes tears prick her eyes, step after leaden step, like spooling forward decades to see Matthew move as he will as an old man.

She waits as he clicks the door closed and then she stares at the ceiling. The family liaison officer is due back at breakfast time. How long? Sally checks the time on her phone. 4.30 a.m.

She didn’t tell Matthew but earlier she googled the role of a family liaison officer and was horrified to see that they are normally assigned when someone is dead. She’d wanted to scream. To tell Molly to get out of her house. That Amelie is ... not ... dead. But she found another article that explained they’re sometimes assigned in cases of abduction or kidnapping and that made her think other dark thoughts. So they do believe that Amelie has been taken? By Dawn Meadows? Or someone else.

Sally shuffles up to a sitting position and pulls an extra pillow behind her back. It’s cool in the room, the heating off, and she pulls up the duvet. She’s thinking about the first time she saw Matthew all those years ago. The horrible ups and downs when they first met.

Her friend Beth had hired him to help them find an old school friend, Carol. They’d lost touch over a traumatic event in their childhood when they were at boarding school together. Matthew helped them not only to find Carol but to put it all right. Their secret. Their trauma.

Sally had bought this cottage, along with three more in a terrace, from an inheritance and redundancy pay-off. The properties were pretty much uninhabitable, but Matthew helped her with the renovations. She was surprised how handy he was. Anything bar electrics. Turns out his dad was a builder and he’d often helped. So Matthew did some of the work himself and helped her find good tradesmen for the rest.

They clicked instantly and fell in love very quickly too, and then there was this horrible time when he inexplicably pulled away. Suddenly told her it was over.

She fell to bits. It was Beth who challenged him. Made him come clean over why.

The boy who died . . .

In the end and very reluctantly, he shared it all with her. How he’d decided not to become a parent after the shock and the shame of Dawn Meadows shouting and cursing him outside the inquest. He felt guilty. To blame. That he didn’t deserve parenthood after Jacob Meadows’ death.

Sally listened and they talked and talked. And eventually over time he changed his mind. Or rather she changed his mind for him.

Sally sniffs and closes her eyes. She remembers the look of fear on Matthew’s face when she told him she was pregnant. How he would worry about her as her belly swelled. It’s going to be all right, Matthew. We’re allowed to be happy.

She wonders now how she could have been so naive. Is this her fault? It was terrible what happened to Matthew when he was in the police, but no one felt that boy’s death was his fault, apart from the grieving mother, and she, poor woman, could be forgiven for madness in the moment.

But she’s had nightmares ever since the anonymous letters started. As Amelie’s grown, she’s had more and more dreams, worrying that she miscalculated over Dawn Meadows. Was wrong to dismiss any risk. Imagining and dreaming of this very thing happening ...

At last Matthew appears, carrying two mugs. ‘I’ve put the heating on. Freezing downstairs.’

‘Is it all my fault?’ She is staring, unblinking. ‘Persuading you we’d be all right. To have a family. That Dawn Meadows was just temporarily mad with grief. That it would pass. I know they said those horrid letters weren’t from her. But what if they were ?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Do you really think this is Dawn Meadows?’