Chapter Forty
Jane heads back to the Vale of Health, her head spinning with all that Tobias has just shared with her.
She knocks on the door of Spencer’s cream stucco cottage, and the tall boy called George opens it, holding his open laptop in front of him.
He gives Jane a look that says, “Give me a minute,” and she hears him talking to the laptop.
“Guys, I’m just going to mute myself, there’s someone at the door. Yeah. I’ll be right back.”
Jane catches a glimpse of the screen as George places the laptop carefully on a console table behind him. He appears to be on a Zoom of some kind.
“God,” she says, “I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Oh, no,” he says. “It’s fine. It’s really boring—I needed a break.”
“What is it?” Jane asks. “Studying? Or…?”
“Kind of. I’m doing an industrial placement as a part of my degree. Working in marketing.”
Jane nods encouragingly, but really has no idea what he’s just told her. “I wonder,” she says, “if you wouldn’t mind giving me a few minutes of your time. Just about Daisy Black…”
He nods. “Sure, do you want to…?”
He steps to one side to let her into the cottage, and she follows him through into a widely extended kitchen at the back filled with sunshine and potted plants.
She takes a seat and says she won’t have a coffee, she doesn’t want to keep him, and he makes a dismissive noise to suggest that he’s perfectly happy to miss the rest of the meeting.
“OK, then, an espresso would be great.”
He makes it for her and joins her at the table, and she says, “I realized, after my last visit, that I didn’t ask you what Daisy looks like. I mean, how would you describe her? Do you have any photos? Selfies? Social media stuff?”
“Er…” He drops a sugar cube into his coffee and stirs it. “I don’t think so. No. But I can check. Hold on.” He pulls his phone from his back pocket and starts to scroll. “I would say she was kind of pretty? Small build.”
“Small?”
“Well, average height. Slim.”
“Not chubby?”
“No. I mean, she used to be a bit, when we were at primary, but not when we were hanging out. And her hair is kind of dark?”
“Oh,” says Jane. “Not blond?”
“No, definitely dark, though she might have dyed it, I guess. I haven’t seen her for so long.”
“Was it long? Short?”
He squints. “I mean, I can’t really remember?
Both? Or, I mean, sometimes it was long, sometimes it was shorter, and I don’t know what it was like the last time I saw her but—oh!
” He looks up from his phone. “Hold on! I do have a picture. I’d forgotten about this.
It was one night when she was over and we were playing Fortnite, mucking about with the characters, like, cracking up.
I was taking a photo of the screen of my laptop, but she was in the shot too. Here.”
He turns the phone to face her. There’s a strikingly pretty girl with dark hair cut to her chin, big eyes, a sweatshirt with some kind of graphics on it, a nose ring, her mouth open in the throes of laughter.
She looks cool and cute and fun and everything that the girl described by Helen Yaxley and old Bill Newsome was not.
“That’s her?” Jane asks. “That’s Daisy?”
“Yeah, that’s her.”
Jane blinks slowly. Her head spins.
“Do you mind if I send this to myself? From your phone?”
“Sure,” he says. “Use WhatsApp.”
She sends it to the app and puts in her number, presses send. Then she knocks back her coffee, thanks George for his time, and leaves him to go back to his boring marketing Zoom.
As she walks back up to the tube station, Jane forwards George’s photograph of Daisy Black to Helen Yaxley:
Is this Rose White?
Then she takes the Northern Line from Hampstead to Angel, Islington, and heads back once again toward the Waterside Academy.
It’s too early for the lunchtime rush at the school, so she meanders for a while, drifting in and out of boutiques and interiors shops, touching beautiful things reverently, remembering the days when she had access to rich men’s money and could buy herself anything she wanted.
And she did. In both her marital homes (or, in fact, multiple homes) she’d had walk-in wardrobes, special places to store her shoes, drawers full of top-end cosmetics.
And was she happy? No, she was not happy.
Is she happy now? No, she is not happy now.
And she feels very strongly that a nice summer dress, or a vase, or a golden necklace with a solitary turquoise bead might lift her up for a moment, bring her the feeling of fullness and happiness that she craves, but she also knows that it won’t last. So she leaves the shops empty-handed, takes management of her own sense of emptiness, carries on along the way, her bank balance intact.
At midday she positions herself outside the academy and scans the trickle of kids leaving the front gates, looking for anyone who is the right age to have been here when Daisy was.
The children in the sixth form wear what is known as “business attire,” which is, Jane has often thought, a very warped concept, suggesting as it does that there is only one mode of attire for work and that it must always involve tailoring, when of course so few people have cause to wear tailoring in the real world these days.
Her phone buzzes as she waits, and she sees that she has a reply from Helen Yaxley to her earlier message asking about the photograph of Daisy.
I think so, says the response, or at least looks very similar. Just different hair and maybe a little lighter.
A mixed group of sixth formers emerges and Jane approaches them. The boys look at her curiously from under their matching haircuts and she gets their attention. “I’m looking for a missing girl,” she says. “I think she went to this school? Can I show you a photo?”
“Sure,” says one of the girls.
Jane turns her phone to the girl, with the photo of Daisy Black on her screen.
The girl squints and the two boys peer over her shoulder.
“Oh,” says one of the boys, “yeah. That’s Daisy Black!
Yeah! I remember her. She left like in year eight?
Nine? She was in my brother’s year. She was really pretty, I remember that.
Really pretty, but also like really, really weird.
She didn’t have any friends. I remember my brother, he was, like, scared of her.
He said it was like she was possessed by demons or something.
Do you remember?” He turns to his companions, and they both nod.
The girl says, “Someone once told me that her mum and dad were brother and sister.”
“What!” Jane claps her hand to her chest.
“No, like, I mean obviously they weren’t, but I just remember someone saying that once. Like, not true. But she was the sort of person that made people make stuff up about her, because she was so…”
“Mysterious?”
“Yeah,” says the girl. “That’s right. Mysterious.”