Chapter 21
Bella sat in her car outside her dad’s house and had the sudden, uncomfortable sensation that she was being watched.
She brushed it off as paranoia, brought on by the argument she’d just had with her dad and all the stuff about Jamie Clarke being released, and being here, all alone, in Streatham – which might well not even be where Clarke was now living.
But she no longer wanted to feel spooked by any of this, that was the thing.
She started the engine and drove to her old home in Blenheim Road, where she parked opposite number seventeen and looked across at the front-room window.
She hadn’t dared to come back at first, partly because of the trauma of her final day there, and also because she hadn’t wanted to run into any of the neighbours.
But after she’d learned to drive, she would come back from time to time.
She would just park up and sit there, gazing at the house, feeling nostalgic as she tried to remember her life with her mother.
She sometimes had a flash of herself in the living room as a child, the sun casting a globe of light over the carpet as she lounged on her tummy and elbows, drawing.
But usually it wasn’t long before all the other thoughts would crash in.
She remembered the police arriving. The sirens and flashing blue lights outside the living-room window.
The tight knot of fear in her chest as strangers in uniforms flooded the hallway, the living room, the kitchen.
The deep, all-consuming ache in her gut as she was led up the stairs to her bedroom and told to pack up her belongings.
How badly and suddenly she had needed the toilet; how mortified she had been at having to ask permission from the policewoman, who had watched her from her bedroom doorway.
But she couldn’t remember what she’d packed, or what she’d owned, or even what her bedroom had looked like.
She could only remember the atmosphere of fear and shame – the same atmosphere that still lingered in her nightmares – and so, in the days and weeks that followed, she had been left with little choice but to accept what people were telling her, to go along with their version of what had happened to her.
She had done so without question because she was a child in a world full of adults who claimed to know more, and to know better.
Even Jenny seemed to know more, though she hadn’t met Bella’s dad until the following year.
She looked over to the house next door, which was where she had run to that morning.
She remembered the lady who had lived there, Mrs Barlow.
She had been kind, Bella remembered. Warm.
Gentle. Different from the other neighbours, who had all seemed a little too interested in the drama that had unfolded in their street.
They kept turning up at her dad’s house, pretending to have been good friends with her mother, which Bella knew wasn’t true.
On a sudden whim, she got out of her car and walked over to the house.
She paused, briefly, then opened the front gate and began to walk up the path.
She knocked on the door, feeling weak with fright as the panic she had felt that day began to resurface.
This was where she had stood. This was where she had rung the doorbell and knocked on the door repeatedly until Mrs Barlow’s shocked face appeared.
A young woman with a pixie haircut came to the door, holding a baby.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Bella said, holding back tears. ‘I was looking for Mrs Barlow.’
The woman shifted the baby across to her opposite hip. ‘I’m afraid she doesn’t live here any more. We’ve been here five years now.’
Bella nodded and swallowed hard.
‘Are you OK?’ the woman asked.
Bella nodded again, not trusting herself to speak.
‘I used to live next door,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Years ago. Twenty years ago, actually.’
‘Oh. I see,’ the woman said, recognition clouding her features. ‘I’m sorry. I mean, if it was your mother who …’
‘Yes. It was.’
The baby leaned forward and reached out a hand towards Bella, who smiled and held out her car keys, which the baby grabbed at, looking delighted. And then she and the woman both laughed as the baby snatched them.
‘No, Livvy,’ the woman said. ‘Give them back.’
‘My fault,’ Bella said. ‘I shouldn’t have put temptation in her way.’
‘She just loves people.’ The woman managed to extract the car keys from her baby’s chubby fist and handed them back to Bella.
‘I love her. She’s so cute.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Anyway, I’m sorry to have bothered you.’ Bella turned to leave.
‘Wait,’ the woman said, her face softening in pity. ‘You look like you need a hug.’
And then she stepped out of her house and put one arm around Bella, and Bella clutched the woman and the baby, who tugged at her hair, and she cried. And then a memory surfaced, as clear as day. Mrs Barlow holding her in her arms on that same doorstep, telling her she was brave.
‘Do you know where she went?’ Bella asked. ‘The lady who lived here?’
‘I’m not sure,’ the woman said. ‘But I might have a phone number somewhere, from around the time the sale went through. If you’d like to leave me yours, I could have a hunt for it?’
‘Thank you. If you don’t mind.’
As Bella walked back into the street, she saw a black saloon car driving slowly past. She felt sure she had seen the same car an hour earlier as she had driven to Blenheim Road from her dad’s.
She felt a rush of adrenaline as she tried to catch a glimpse of the driver, but the windows were too dark.