Page 42 of The Tapes

A nod. ‘Somewhere. Not just mail. There were a few things like fridge magnets and ornaments that were downstairs but survived. I didn’t really need them but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it all. I was focusing on the big things, like replacing furniture.’

The timing might work. Maybe . If Mum recorded the tapes a day or two before she went missing, she could’ve left one for me – and then mailed another to her friend. It would have taken a day or so to arrive, which would have been close to the time Vivian was evacuated.

We’re both nodding, having apparently come to a similar conclusion.

‘Were you writing the book then?’ I ask.

Vivian’s sideways flicker betrays her as she glances to the photo of the teenager with the nose rings.

‘Yes and no. After Pamela was killed, I kind of only wanted to talk to the other people who’d been affected.

There were husbands and boyfriends; parents, witnesses, all sorts.

I think it was my way of coping. I didn’t feel so alone.

Then I started to think that, maybe, I could tell their story.

People kept saying Pamela was number eight, and I wanted to say “No, she wasn’t.

” And the more I talked to other families, the more I realised they were the same.

They didn’t want the victims to be a number. ’

She speaks quickly and there’s suddenly a gravelly, frustrated tone.

Then Vivian takes a breath and starts again.

‘I started planning the book and I did ring your mum, for the first time in a long time. I left a message. We’d argued so much about books that, for some reason, I thought she’d want to know I was thinking of writing one. But I never heard back.’

Hardly a surprise, considering Vivian was evacuated not long after – and Mum disappeared. If Mum heard the answering machine message, she could’ve already stolen the jewellery box with the earrings.

‘If she did send you a tape…’

‘What’s on it?’

I can’t tell her it could be the identity of the Earring Killer, partly because I wouldn’t want to get her hopes up. And yet, if Mum really did hear an answering machine message from Vivian, maybe that explains why she’d send that tape. Who better to trust?

‘I’m not sure,’ I say. It’s a lie, maybe, but I catch Vivian’s eye and there’s something there. Perhaps she has an idea. Perhaps I’m a bad liar. Perhaps she just wants to make me happy because I’m my mother’s daughter.

Either way, it’s a long shot. ‘Where would everything be?’ I ask.

‘That’s easy,’ Vivian replies, peering upwards. ‘It’s all in the attic.’

I don’t have a fear of spiders, as such – but I think anyone would give a little shriek if they lifted their head, only for it to be immediately swamped with a mass of sticky, clammy webbing.

For the most part, I left the spiders to monopolise Vivian’s attic as I lifted down six boxes marked ‘flood’. The optimistic part of me thought we’d open the first to find a cassette tape, but nothing’s that easy.

Instead, the pair of us sit on the floor of Vivian’s living room, our joints and limbs creaking to various degrees as we pick through unopened electricity bills; crispy dried-out copies of the Radio Times and Kays Catalogue , plus things like cutlery and rolls of sticky tape.

‘It wasn’t me who boxed up all this stuff,’ Vivian explains as we pick through it.

‘The insurance company had someone who was going house to house. Some sort of liaison person because there were so many of us. She arranged this clean-up squad who went into the house and pulled together everything that was salvageable, while clearing out the stuff that wasn’t.

I got given those boxes while I was still at the hotel, but didn’t think there was any point in unpacking them.

I had nowhere for anything to go. By the time I was finally allowed to move back, I was stuck with these boxes. ’

I hold up the plastic spatula from one of the boxes. The end is curled from heat and there’s a dried egg splatter on the handle. ‘I guess that explains this.’

Vivian looks to it and laughs. ‘Why did I keep all this stuff…?’ She holds up a snowglobe as if to emphasise the point. ‘I don’t remember ever owning this.’

We unpack but, really, we talk.

Vivian tells me about her daughter, Pamela, and how they fought over all sorts. The argument on the morning Pamela died that Vivian thinks of every day.

‘Do you get on with your daughter?’ she asks.

‘Usually,’ I reply. ‘She wants to be an actor.’

‘Really?! That’s so ambitious. People round here don’t do things like that.’

I’ve never seen it like that before – but Vivian is right. Sedingham is known for one thing, and it’s not acting.

‘I worry about her,’ I say.

‘Everyone worries about their children.’

‘I know but I worry she’ll turn into me. I’ve had problems. Mum did as well.’

Vivian doesn’t ask, even though I’d tell her. ‘My daughter wasn’t me,’ she says. ‘I wanted her to be but she wasn’t. Your daughter isn’t you, no matter how much you might think she is.’

I bite my lip and pull out a pair of novelty plastic sunglasses from the box.

‘We have Find My Friends on our phones,’ I say. ‘She visited me at Dad’s house the other day and sometimes I’ll look at her dot when she’s at college. I worry that I’m spying but I don’t mean it like that…’

Vivian pulls a teapot from a box and holds it up, before shaking her head. ‘She has the choice to remove you, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘So perhaps she likes the idea of someone watching out for her.’ There’s a flickered glimpse to the photo above the fireplace again.

‘Maybe,’ I reply.

Vivian places the teapot on the floor and then reaches deeper into the box. It feels as if I’ve spent the best part of two weeks sorting out things that should have been in the bin years ago.

When I next look up, Vivian is holding a small, packed envelope.

I know the handwriting immediately – and so does Vivian. She offers it to me, where I turn it over. There’s no return address on the back, and it’s been sealed with a thin strip of tape.

‘It’s addressed to you,’ I say.

She shrugs. ‘You open it.’

And so I do. There’s no letter inside, no instructions, or extra information. Simply a cassette box, with ‘Viv’ written on the sleeve. I pass it across and Viv opens the case to remove the tape inside. ‘I don’t have a player,’ she says.

‘I do.’