Chapter Seventy
I found a little studio for rent just outside the village.
The lady who owned it was really nice and told me I could give her a cash deposit when I got there and pay the rest later.
She said because it was so last-minute there was no need for her to put it on the system.
“We’ll just work it out as we go along,” she said when I told her I didn’t know exactly how long I’d be staying.
“And we’re dog friendly too if you wanted to bring a friend.
” Hugo was at my feet at the time, and a warm feeling ran through me.
A few days in the countryside, I thought, he’d like that, and I wouldn’t feel as alone.
I said yes, I’d bring my dog, and she said she would have bowls and a bed ready for him.
The day I left, I didn’t tell anyone. I waited until Stuart went out to the shops and then I quickly packed a case.
I wasn’t even thinking, just threw things in from Stuart’s laundry pile, ended up with an old school top, some of Jessamine’s leggings, and a pair of Grandma’s underpants.
Then I clipped Hugo onto his lead and we walked down to the station.
I felt bad about Stuart, but I knew he’d try to stop me if I told him what I was doing.
I made myself look nice that night for the circus.
I don’t know why, but I felt it was important.
I put on some makeup and brushed my hair.
I even put on some perfume. I left Hugo in the studio and told him I’d be back soon.
I walked across the village and out toward the fields where the circus was located.
The clowns came on for the first time around fifteen minutes into the show and my breath was held in anticipation.
There were two tall men, and one small, pushing each other about, making noises, pretending to fall over, and it was clear to me that the small one was Jasper, and he was the fall guy, that he was used by the taller men to get the laughs.
At one point, one of them held Jasper on his shoulders like a toddler and galloped around the ring with him while Jasper flapped around, exaggerating the flopping of his head on his neck, dropping and catching his hat numerous times, and the audience went mad with delight.
But I didn’t laugh. This was Jasper’s job, I thought, every night of his life.
At the end of the night, I headed back to the studio, to Hugo, who was very happy to see me. I felt shaken, unsure, and strangely sad.
The following day I took Hugo for a walk through the local park.
After barely leaving my house for six years, it felt incredible to be seeing new things, new landscapes, new buildings.
I bought a coffee from the village and then headed up toward the circus ground, where I sat on a bench for a while, pretending to be engrossed in scrolling through my phone.
There were messages from Stuart from last night and from this morning.
I sighed and replied to the latest. I’m just taking a break, I typed.
Please don’t worry about me, or Hugo. We’re fine.
I could see him immediately typing a response, so switched to another app. I couldn’t handle his concern.
Ahead of me I could see behind the scenes of the circus: people milling around, coming in and out of trailers with mugs of tea, babies, dogs, the echo of TikTok videos from smartphones, a hint of frying bacon in the air, somebody laughing, someone else shouting.
Behind one of those trailer doors, I thought, was Jasper, or Patch, or whatever he was calling himself these days.
Behind one of those doors was a person who could tell me about Claire Connolly.
It took nearly an hour, but then finally I saw him, emerging from a small yellow trailer, wearing a white T-shirt, green shorts, and a denim jacket.
I zoomed in on him with the camera on my phone.
He didn’t look like the boy in the photograph anymore; I suppose I hadn’t really considered that.
He was shorter than me, and closer to forty than thirty; his face was both youthful and old at the same time, a combination I found unsettling.
His hair was short at the back and sides, floppy on the top, with a small bald patch just showing at the back of his head.
I took some photos and then put my phone down before I drew attention to myself.
I noticed that nobody seemed to acknowledge him as he walked around and the same feeling of sadness passed through me that I’d felt last night watching him being manhandled by the bigger clowns.
What happened to him, I wondered, to make him like this?
I followed him over the next two days, trying to get a feel for what sort of person he was.
I followed him into the village, where I watched him buy sausage rolls and a four-pack of Coke Zeros from the local convenience store.
I watched him get a haircut and come out of the salon rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably.
I watched him eat a full breakfast in a café where nobody looked at him, nobody talked to him, not even the server who brought him his food.
As time went by, I began to feel an ache about him, an exquisite pitying.
I saw his brokenness, his loneliness, and I felt ready.
That night, the last night of the circus being in town, I left Hugo in the studio and waited at the circus grounds until there was nobody in sight, then I slipped through the winding paths of trailers and caravans to Jasper’s tiny trailer in the far corner.
The curtain at the back was slightly open and I stood on my tiptoes to peer through.
I saw a pot on a tiny stove with a lid on it and an upturned wooden spoon on the counter next to it that had been used to stir whatever was in the pot.
I ducked down when he passed the window, and when I looked up again, Jasper was sitting on a small stool in front of a mirror, his hands finding boxes of greasepaint and makeup from a drawer beneath, squeezing something white onto his fingertips and rubbing them together.
I watched him paint circles of red onto his cheeks, his dead eyes staring at his reflection in the mirror for a moment, before flicking toward me, sharp and quick as a rattlesnake’s tail. And in that split second, I saw it. Darkness.
I ducked, my breath ragged and harsh in my lungs, and the words he was there pass again through my consciousness.
I’d seen that child in the photograph with his wide, innocent eyes, his slick of floppy hair, the colorful mask on his lap, and I’d assumed him to be a victim in all of this too.
But at the time that Claire Connolly was trapped in his house, he was not a child—he was a teenager, almost a man—and suddenly I felt the chicken sandwich I’d bought from the village shop at lunchtime start to rise up the back of my throat.
I heard the door of the trailer opening, a man’s voice saying, “Hello? Is there someone there?” and slowly, I made my way to the front of the trailer.
“Hi,” I said. “My name is Daisy Black. I think I’m your niece.”
His face contorted with fear when I introduced myself. He went to shut the door, but I pushed back against it.
“Please,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
“I have nothing to say to you. Just leave.”
His voice was young and reedy for a grown man.
“Please. You’re the only person who can help me.”
“Go away,” he said, pushing against the door again. “I don’t want to talk to you. Just leave me alone.”
I sighed and let the door shut between us.
“I can tell the police where you are,” I said, breathlessly, through the closed door. “I’m sure they’d like to talk to you. The case is still open; the police searched the house just a while ago. They were asking about you. I could tell them where to find you.”
It fell silent inside the trailer and then a moment later the door opened a crack. “I’ll talk to you,” said Jasper. “OK. But not here. Let’s meet tomorrow.”
“OK. Where?”
“Give me your phone number. I’ll send you a location.”
I didn’t have time to stop or think or work out if this was really what I wanted to do, and I called out the digits of my number through the plastic door.
“Promise me you’ll message me,” I said.
“I promise you.”
I dreamed hard that night, and when I woke the following morning, I felt rough and hollowed out.
I fed Hugo and looked at my phone while he ate.
More messages from Stuart. I felt bad, but I was going to get what I needed here and then I could go home.
I checked my phone constantly for the next hour and a half, waiting for something from Jasper.
And then finally, just as I was beginning to give up, my phone vibrated and there was a set of map coordinates.
I put them into my app and saw that it was an area of woodland just behind Waterfowl Park.
My stomach lurched and roiled with anxiety, fear, excitement. I knew I was putting myself in danger, but I also knew this was my last chance to find out the truth about my mother. I went to the private subreddit where I’d been posting about my search for Jasper Black and said:
I’ve found him. I’ll post afterward.
An hour later I clipped a lead to Hugo’s collar, and we set off.
The day was warm, and the sky was blue. The combination of nerves and heat from the sun was making me sweat, so I stopped and took off my hoodie and tied it around my waist. I followed the footpath from the back of the local park and out toward the surrounding countryside.
I got multiple notifications as I walked, mostly from Reddit people telling me not to go, telling me I was mad. I sent replies as I walked.
I’m fine.
Please don’t worry.
I’m safe.
The map took me off the footpath a few minutes later and into the cool shade of some woodland. And there was Jasper, sitting on a fallen tree. My heart rate soared at the sight of him; he looked both helpless and terrifying.
He got to his feet as he saw me approach. “You brought a dog.”
“Yes. This is Hugo.”
He looked flummoxed by the very concept of a dog. “Does he bite?”
“No, of course he doesn’t bite. Are you scared of dogs?”
“No.” He stared at me for a few long seconds before abruptly turning his gaze back to the middle distance. “You look like her,” he said.
My breath caught. “Claire?”
“Yes.”
“Then Claire…?” I pause. “She was my mother?”
Jasper nodded.
My voice left my body in a desperate wave. “So, where is she? What happened to her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Just that. I…”
He sat down again on the fallen tree, and I sat down next to him.
“Our family. Our home. All of it was wrong. All of it. And one day I just couldn’t take it anymore. I just left.”
“You ran away to join the circus.”
“Yes.”
“And when you left, Claire Connolly… was she… in the house?”
He gave a small dip of his chin and said, “I think so.”
“And was she…” I could barely breathe. “Was she safe?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was she safe?” I repeated, louder. “As in, not in danger?”
He recoiled a little at the sound of my raised voice. “Please don’t shout at me.”
“I’m not shouting. I’m just… Please. Just tell me what you know. Don’t make me drag it all out of you. You were there. You were there!”
He shuffled slightly, rearranged his limbs, looked up to the sky, then back down to the ground.
“You need to ask Mummy.”
“Mummy?”
“Annie. Ask Annie. She knows what happened. I don’t know what happened. Ask her.”
“I’ve asked her. I’ve asked everyone. Nobody will tell me anything. You’re the only one left I can ask.”
His body language was becoming fraught, tense, his limbs twisting themselves together. I felt anxious again. I needed to get him to trust me. I needed him to be calm.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is difficult. I can see that. But my childhood has been difficult too.”
He snapped his head toward me. “In what way?”
I sighed. I didn’t know where to start. “Jessamine is an alcoholic. She has a nice boyfriend who she abuses—she hits him, spits at him, tries to kill him, stops him from seeing his own children, locks him in rooms. Annie treats him like a slave. Jessamine lives in bed now. She makes Stuart bring her alcohol and she sits in bed and drinks it until she’s comatose.
Our house is dirty. I left school and nobody taught me; I didn’t do any exams. And then six years ago I saw a photograph of Claire Connolly and I knew that she was my mother, and you are the only person who can tell me what happened to her. So please, I beg you, just tell me.”
I stared at him. I saw his jaw clench and unclench, a muscle in his cheek twitch.
“There was a fight,” he said. “A big fight. And I don’t really know what happened, but at the end of it”—he picked up his hair in his fists and tugged at it slightly as he talked—“something bad happened… That’s why you need to ask Mummy.
Because she’s the only one who knows. And I just…
I packed a bag, and I left because I was scared.
I was so scared. I thought the police would come.
I thought there would be prison and newspapers and that everything would suddenly explode into a million pieces and I should have stayed, to protect them, to protect my mother and Jessamine, but I was a coward, and I ran away.
I ran away and left them all. To deal with it. ”
“Deal with what?”
“With all of it. All of it.” He was becoming fraught again, his voice high-pitched and catching with the sound of desperate tears. “All of it.” He began hitting his temples with the heels of his hands.
“What?” I asked urgently. “All of what?”
“Ask Mummy! Ask Mummy!”
“Ask her what?”
“About all of it!”
And then he was on his feet and trying to run and I could not let him run, I could not, and I chased after him and grabbed his jacket from behind, grabbed it and pulled him back, and he fell, and I fell too, and for a moment we were rolling around in the undergrowth, the dead leaves and twigs of the woodland floor scratching and rubbing at the bare skin on my arms, and suddenly he was on top of me, his hands hard around my throat, and he was trying to throttle the air out of me.
Hugo was frantically running in circles around the pair of us, not knowing what to do, and I saw Jasper throw out his left leg and kick Hugo out of the way.
I heard a high-pitched yelp and then the scuttle of his paws across the woodland floor and I tried to call out his name, but no noise came.
I looked back at Jasper, and I saw it again, that blade of darkness in his eyes, and I knew that I had to fight back harder than I’d ever fought in my life.
My knee made contact with his groin and I felt what little strength he held in his puny body dissipate; the hold around my throat was suddenly loose enough for me to breathe, and in that moment I managed to throw him off.
I got to my feet and ran.