Chapter 11
A CCTV camera stares down on us as Otis unlocks the front door. I gulp as I imagine it watching me before, skulking around like a woman possessed. Shame bathes me, increasing when Otis shoots a wary look in my direction before opening the door.
When we step inside the house, it takes everything in me not to react.
The entrance of the Clarkes’ home is as impressive as the exterior suggests it would be.
A grand staircase sweeps up the centre of the foyer, leading to a mezzanine with a cosy seating area and tall doors that must lead to the bedrooms. I don’t have to see them to know they will be more luxurious than any hotel I’ve ever stayed in, even the fancy one my publisher put me up in for my London book launch.
While I try not to gawp, Otis leads me through to the open-plan living area. My attention shifts to the messy table, but Otis is clearing the papers away before I can get a look at them.
‘You have a lovely home,’ I comment, my adjective of choice a poor description of such modern splendour.
‘Thanks. Lex and I designed it. The project was a nightmare. Two years of meetings and builders and mud, but it was worth the late nights and extra cost. Do you want a drink?’
As Otis indicates to the tap, I shake my head.
An awkward silence rings out, one I’m not sure how to fill, and not just because these days I seem to have lost all my social skills.
Part of me can’t believe that I really am here, inside Alexa Clarke’s house.
The opposite of where I should be on a random Tuesday when I have a mountain of work waiting at home, I’m sure.
‘The place is Lex’s dream house,’ Otis says eventually to fill the silence. ‘She lost her parents when she was seven. She’s dreamed of her own family home ever since. When we got married, I promised her we’d build the perfect one.’
Otis’s voice catches when he speaks about his wife.
To stop himself from falling victim to his upset, he gestures to the vast expanse on the other side of the glass bifold doors.
The garden is well designed but clipped back at this time of year.
Dead leaves litter the frost-bitten grass, making me shiver.
‘Lex loves the garden. She’s even more obsessed with the view past the trees. Fields that go on forever, she describes it as. Not my kind of thing, but Lex would sleep under the stars if she could.’
‘Was Alexa getting out much before she disappeared?’
Otis turns from the garden, but he doesn’t meet my gaze. ‘I don’t know. I’m at work for most of the day. Weekends, too. Lex is at home at the moment, but I don’t know what she does with her time.’
Politely ignoring the resounding sadness of Otis’s admission, I take in my surroundings once more. My eyes come to rest on the papers, now neatly piled up.
What was Otis looking at? What doesn’t he want me to see?
When I sense Otis watching me, I force myself to look away from the table.
‘We should start by making a timeline of the day Alexa went missing,’ I say.
‘Sure, but I can’t add much to it. Once I left for the office, I don’t know what she did.’
‘I noticed a CCTV camera on the way in,’ I say, burning as I think of how it will have tracked me snooping around the property. ‘Does it show Alexa going out on Saturday?’
Otis nods. ‘CCTV shows her leaving the house at eleven through the bifold doors in here. She goes into the garden.’
My eyebrows arch. ‘The garden? But it’s the middle of November.’
‘I thought it was weird, too, but that’s what happens on the recording.’
‘Do you see where she goes from there?’
‘No. The cameras only show points of entry to the house. I don’t know if Lex sat outside, if she went for a walk, if someone came to see her.
I don’t know where she went.’ Otis’s shoulders slump, the words knocking the life out of him.
‘The next person you see is me arriving home from work at seven. It’s like Lex steps outside, then she vanishes. ’
An eerie chill tickles my bones at those words. ‘Could she have dodged the CCTV?’
‘Maybe,’ Otis replies, but he doesn’t sound sure.
‘The cameras are only on the doors to the house and garage. To be honest, when we moved here, we thought installing CCTV was excessive. I know the house is near a public footpath, but it’s on the edge of a village where nothing happens.
You’ve as much chance of something exciting kicking off here as you do a UFO landing on your roof. ’
I smirk at Otis’s assessment of Bramblethorpe. ‘Did you check CCTV from the days before Alexa left to see if anything unusual happened?’
‘I did, but there’s nothing. Every day is the same. I go to work, I come back. Lex goes out once a day, every day. She’s never gone for more than an hour. Judging by her clothes, she’s out for a walk, but that’s a guess.’
‘Does she meet anyone?’
‘I told you, I don’t know how Lex spends her time. I wish I did, but I don’t.’
While Otis deflates over how little he knows his wife, a dense sorrow clogs the air.
I try not to be affected by the sadness, but I can’t avoid breathing it in.
Part of me wants to judge Otis for knowing so little about the woman he married, but I can’t.
If someone asked Kamal what I did all day, his answer would be just as clueless.
‘It’s not that I don’t care what Lex does,’ Otis says as if he can hear my thoughts.
‘I just thought that leaving her to grieve was for the best. She goes to a miscarriage support group once a week, but other than that it’s like she doesn’t want anyone around her at the moment.
Especially me. Everything I do or say is wrong.
Eventually I just… stopped speaking, I guess. ’
Otis’s shame quadruples under my gaze. I want to comfort him, but I can’t when his words mirror my own life a little too closely for comfort.
‘We both want a baby, but since losing her parents, all Lex has wanted is a family,’ Otis continues, leaning against one of the bifold doors as if it’s the only thing holding him upright.
‘If Lex isn’t crying, she’s researching how to make sure she doesn’t miscarry again.
Supplements, exercises, prayers. You name it, she’s doing it.
She left her job because she thought stress might be to blame.
The doctors said that wasn’t the reason she miscarried, but still, she blamed herself. ’
‘Still, she’d try anything if it meant she could be a mother.’
‘Exactly. A few months ago, Lex fell pregnant again. We really thought it was going to work out for us that time.’ Otis doesn’t need to say what happened. The gut-wrenching end of the story is ingrained into his every pore.
Pushing himself away from the door, Otis looks across the garden, scouring the scenery as if searching for something. His wife, his child, a reason why this is happening.
‘Okay, so external CCTV is drawing a blank,’ I say. ‘Are there cameras in the house?’
Otis blinks. ‘Are you asking if I spy on my wife?’
My cheeks burn. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘No, we don’t have them in the house,’ Otis replies, his tone more spiked than before. ‘Like I said, they’re only near points of entry. They’d have picked Lex up if she went down the driveway or to the garage, but she didn’t go near those places. Her car is still here, too.’
The unusualness of the situation prickles my skin.
There’s no denying Otis is devastated. My gut sympathises with every word he says.
If I were a betting woman, I would put money on him telling the truth.
But a person doesn’t just vanish. And if Alexa is in as bad a way as he says she is, then simply waiting for her to come home isn’t enough.
‘Otis, I have to ask, why haven’t you gone to the police with this?’
Otis sighs. ‘Right now, I don’t know. The choice made sense a few days ago.
After all, I’ve been in this position before.
Lex taking off when things get too much isn’t unheard of.
She once stayed away for almost a week and didn’t contact me the entire time she was gone.
What if that’s what’s going on here? What if she just needs space?
She’ll be mortified if she comes back to a big fuss.
She was livid when she found out I’d asked if anyone had seen her last time she left.
It’s going to hurt her even more when she finds out that everyone in the village is talking about the babies. ’
The thought of how I would react to everyone knowing about my struggles makes me wince.
I can’t exactly blame Otis for not wanting to give the gossips of Bramblethorpe even more to talk about.
But still, this is the third day where Otis has had no contact with his wife.
He doesn’t know where she’s sleeping. What she’s eating. If she’s okay, hurt, or worse.
Fighting a shudder, I force myself to speak. ‘You said Alexa retreats when things get too much. What situations make her feel like that?’
I expect Otis to reply with a retort about me knowing what Alexa’s going through, but instead, he gulps.
‘Lex takes off like this whenever we… well, whenever we argue.’ Casting his gaze to the floor, Otis continues.
‘We had a row Saturday morning. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I came home and Lex wasn’t here.
I almost expected it. I let myself be angry all weekend, but when Monday rolled around and I’d cooled off, I…
well, I realised how ridiculous I’d been. I thought I’d better check on her.’
There’s a layer of guilt to Otis’s words that I don’t have it in me to appease, because he’s right – he should have checked on Alexa. Tough times and personal frustrations or not, she is his wife, and she is not okay. Clearly.
‘What did you fight about?’ I ask.
‘Me thinking we should stop trying for a baby,’ Otis admits.
The words plough through me. The thought of Kamal coming to me and saying that… I can’t imagine my reaction. I try to keep my composure, but my face doesn’t lie.
Otis shrinks. ‘Lex looked at me like that, too, but you have to understand – I can’t stand seeing her like this anymore. It’s killing me.’
‘And that’s what you said to her on the morning she disappeared?’
‘That’s what I tried to say, but Lex shut me down. That’s why when I came home to an empty house, I left her to it. I didn’t even message around to see where she was until Monday.’
As Otis stews in regret, it’s hard not to draw parallels between him and Kamal. Kamal, who moved his entire life to the countryside because I said fields and clean air were what I needed. Kamal, who gives me all the space I need, even though the distance between us crucifies him.
‘I know how it sounds. A grieving woman alone all the time, married to a husband who doesn’t know where she is – how can they be happy?
But I swear to you, Lex and I might be in a bad place, but we’ve never stopped loving each other.
It’s the losses that are killing us, but we’ll get through it. We just need a fresh start.’
I wrestle my thoughts into submission, even though they warn me that Otis might be too close to the situation to face the truth.
I’d never admit it out loud, but there have been many times when I’ve thought about leaving Kamal.
Not because I don’t love him, but because walking away from our shared heartache seems easier than living with it.
Maybe Alexa Clarke felt the same. But how do I tell her husband that?
‘You said you thought Alexa might have gone to a friend’s house or to the B&B,’ I push. ‘Have you asked anyone if they’ve seen her?’
‘I have. Everyone’s said they haven’t heard from her, and she’s not checked into the B&B, either. Something I’m sure you, and the rest of Bramblethorpe, already know.’
My sheepish expression tells Otis the answer to that. ‘And I’m guessing you’ve tried asking Alexa yourself? Called her, texted her?’ I ask.
‘There’s no point.’ Otis opens a drawer in the kitchen and reaches inside for something. When he holds the object in the air, my eyebrows dart upwards.
‘Alexa left her phone?’
‘It’s not as suspicious as it sounds if you know Lex. She hates technology, especially social media. Thinks it’s ruining society. She often leaves her phone when she goes out. That’s why I didn’t panic when I found it.’
An icy wave rolls from my head to my toes at the strangeness of Otis’s explanation. ‘But leaving home with no phone and no car? And no one’s seen or heard from Alexa in days? It doesn’t make sense that you haven’t gone to the police yet.’
‘I know it sounds bad, but—’
‘Bad? Otis, it sounds more than bad.’
Suddenly, I’m painfully aware that I am in a stranger’s house and no one knows I am here. That a knife block stands on the kitchen counter, closer to Otis than to me.
With that thought ringing in my ears, I can’t help thinking that, despite a long list of recent stupid decisions, the choice to come to Maple Crescent today might have been my most stupid choice of all.