Before You Were Gone Read online

  ‘Mind if I sit down?’ Robert said.

  Emer nodded, and he pulled out the chair by her dressing table and sat down heavily.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘My old legs aren’t any good for standing these days. Emer love, I know what grief can do to a person. I think it’s perfectly possible that you imagined seeing Kitty that night. You were only a child. How on earth were you meant to process the fact that your sister had drowned – that she was dead and never coming back? No, don’t look like that. Hear me out. It sounds to me as if you’re never going to rest until you know whether or not that woman could be Kitty. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let me help you. But not the way you want. Involving your cousin – some journalist we don’t know anything about – that’s not the way to go about this.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘I’ll hire a private detective,’ Robert said. ‘Someone who’s really good. Throw a bit of money at the problem.’

  Emer smiled. ‘Your solution to everything.’

  ‘Because it’s usually the best solution. So, what do you say?’

  ‘You think a detective might be able to track her down?’

  ‘I think it’s worth a shot. You said you followed her?’

  ‘To a pub in east London.’

  ‘Okay.’ Robert nodded. ‘Tomorrow morning, we’ll sit down in my office, you can tell me everything you remember about her, and I’ll take it from there.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back,’ Emer said. ‘Whatever money you spend, I’ll give you back every penny as soon as I can.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. I want to do this for you, Emer. So let me. Please?’

  For the second time this evening, Emer’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘That’s so kind, Robert. Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘And maybe we’ll say nothing to Ursula for now. No point upsetting her until we know the truth, is there?’

  He said good night and left her alone to drink her cocoa. She was suddenly exhausted. She climbed into bed, hugging the mug of cocoa to her chest. Letting the warmth seep into her body, soothing her. A few minutes later, she put the mug down and switched her light off. The last thing she saw before she drifted into sleep was her sister, running away from her down a long corridor.

  Eight

  ‘Canada.’ Dee repeated the word, as if doing so might help her make more sense of it. But it was just as incomprehensible the second time round.

  ‘Toronto,’ Ella said. ‘It’s such a wonderful opportunity, Dee. There’s no way Tom could turn it down. I always thought we’d never leave here, but this job is too good for him to pass up.’

  ‘It’s so far away.’

  ‘But you can visit,’ Ella said. ‘Think about that. You could come and have the most amazing holidays. We’ll have a huge house. The company’s paying for all our travel and accommodation. Besides, it’s not as if it’s forever. Two years, that’s all.’

  But it wouldn’t be just two years. They would never come back. How could they? Tom’s career would go from strength to strength out there. Jake would start school there. He’d have friends and a new life. The first years of his life here in Eastbourne would soon fade. He would forget about Dee and what she’d meant to him, what they’d meant to each other.

  From the little bits of information Dee had been able to retain through the fog of shock, the Toronto film industry was booming. Tom was good at his job as a set designer, and Dee knew he’d already outgrown the industry here in the UK and Ireland. Moving somewhere bigger was the logical next step. As Tom had said time and again. He hadn’t been looking for work in Canada. Hadn’t even considered it, apparently. Then this job offer had come up and the opportunity was too good to turn down. He’d accepted it and, in less than four weeks from now, they would be moving.

  Dee felt a sudden flash of hatred for Ella’s partner. If he’d never come back into their lives none of this would be happening. But then Jake would have grown up without knowing his father, and Dee wouldn’t have wanted that, either. Besides, Tom was a good man, and no matter how much she didn’t like it, Dee couldn’t begrudge him doing what he thought was right for himself and his family. Which meant she’d have to find a way to accept this.

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ she heard herself say. ‘Like you say, a great opportunity. And Jake will love it.’

  ‘You really think so?’ The relief on Ella’s face was painful to observe.

  ‘I really think so.’ Dee twisted her mouth into something close to a smile.

  ‘Promise you’ll come and visit?’

  ‘Promise.’

  Ella jumped up, crossed the short space between their chairs and threw her arms around Dee’s neck.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much, Dee. You don’t know what it means to me that you’re okay about this.’

  ‘Okay is pushing it,’ Dee said, returning Ella’s hug. ‘But I’ll get used to it.’

  Because she didn’t have a choice. Then, before that thought had time to set up home inside her head, she extricated herself from Ella and stood up.

  ‘This calls for a proper celebration,’ she said. ‘Lucky for you, I keep a bottle of Prosecco in the fridge in anticipation of any reason to celebrate.’

  The Prosecco tasted like vinegar. Dee managed to swallow a few sips before giving up. Somehow, she got through the next forty minutes, smiling when required and making occasional comments, pretending she was interested in whatever Ella was talking about. While all the time her heart was cracking into thousands of tiny pieces.

  ‘You still okay for this evening?’ Ella asked, as she was leaving.

  ‘This evening?’

  ‘It’s Friday,’ Ella said.

  Every Friday, Dee and her neighbours got together for pizza and a chance to catch up and celebrate the start of the weekend.

  ‘Of course.’ Dee frowned. ‘I’ve totally lost track of the days this week. Tell Jake and Tom I look forward to seeing them later.’

  She couldn’t do it. She’d call later and make an excuse. Tell them she had a headache or something. She gathered up the empty glasses and the bottle, pouring the remains of the Prosecco down the sink. Moving on autopilot. Refusing to stop and think about what Ella had just told her, knowing if she did that she’d fall apart.

  She’d known Jake since he was a tiny baby. Back then, Ella had been living alone in the mobile home next door to Dee’s house. They were only two properties on this lonely stretch of beach between Eastbourne and Pevensey Bay. The two women had become friends. Dee already had a family of sorts – her cousin Louise, and Louise’s two children Ben and Daisy. But they lived the other side of town and Louise was so scarily competent she had never needed Dee in the same way Ella had.

  The three of them – Dee, Ella and Jake – had formed a special bond. Not having children of her own, Dee knew the love she felt for Jake was the closest thing she’d ever get to having that feeling other women spoke about so reverentially. When Jake was two years old, Ella was reunited with his father, Tom, who had moved into the mobile home with Ella and Jake. Foolishly, Dee had allowed herself to believe they would continue living there.

  Any time she pictured her future, her neighbours were always there. Jake would grow older and Dee would be there to witness every stage of his life. She would be part of it. Driving him to school and picking him up whenever his parents couldn’t do it. Being a confidante during his teenage years. Watching him grow and become a young man. It was this vision of her future that had given her the strength to break up with Ed Mitchell. She’d convinced herself she didn’t need him, that having Ella and Jake in her life was enough.

  Then, just like that, this imagined future had been rewritten. And that hurt. The urge to pick up the phone and call Ed was overwhelming. She picked up her mobile, her thumb hovering over his name as she imagined telling him about Tom’s job. She knew he’d understand immediately how she felt. Just as she kn
ew, even after all this time, he would come over if she asked him to. And he would do and say all the right things to make this news seem bearable. No. She couldn’t do it. She’d made her decision six months ago, and she was going to stick to it. Ed Mitchell was out of her life and that was all there was to it.

  She needed to do something, though, to distract her mind. Putting her phone down, she sat at her desk, opened her laptop and scanned the last few chapters of her work in progress. The story was coming together, but writing it had proved harder than she’d expected. Like she’d told Emer, writing a book required a different discipline to writing for newspapers. Plus, she’d now reached the part where she had to decide how much to say about Graham Reed, the young man wrongly accused of one of the murders Dee was writing about. She knew she had to deal with ‘the Graham problem’, as she’d started calling it, but she kept putting it off. Mainly because every time she tried to write about him, she got distracted by thoughts of Graham’s nephew, Ed Mitchell.

  ‘God damn you, Ed,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Why can’t you get out of my head and stay out of it?’

  Ed didn’t answer. Which was just as well, because if he had, Dee would have really started to think she was losing the plot.

  She read back through the notes she’d written, expecting to hit the same brick wall again, when suddenly she realised how she could do this. Writing about someone like Graham was what Dee did best – which was unpicking a mystery, digging into people’s lives and motivations, working out why bad things happened to good people. Because whatever way you looked at it, what had happened to Graham Reed was tragic. A young man with learning difficulties who had been falsely accused of a brutal murder, and then killed in a misplaced act of revenge by a gang of local thugs.

  Dee spent the next two hours bringing Graham’s story to life, exploring his personality, his strengths and weaknesses and – finally – the tragic circumstances leading up to his death. When she was finished, her fingers ached from typing and her body was crying out for a coffee.

  She made coffee and, while she drank it, she read over what she’d written, making the odd tweak but generally satisfied with her work. In two hours, she’d written 3,000 words. One thousand more than her daily word count. Which meant she could stop there for today and not feel bad about it.

  Still needing to keep her mind occupied, she carried the laptop onto the deck outside. The deck ran along the entire length of the back of the house, overlooking the shingle beach and the English Channel. This was where Dee liked to sit whenever she needed to think. The clear, uninterrupted views of the ocean, the growling of the waves as they rolled in and out over the shingle, the squalling of seagulls overhead, and the tangy flavour of salt in the air – all of it helped calm the endless swirl of noise from too many thoughts competing for her attention.

  Going back through the stories she had bookmarked, Dee pulled out two faded photos – one of Kitty Doran and one of Lucy Ryan. She organised her screen so that the two photos were side by side, both girls smiling out at her. Two girls. Friends. Both missing.

  Dee had read through everything she could find about Lucy’s disappearance and Kitty’s death. She hadn’t found a single thing that indicated any connection between the two events. But surely someone must have suspected the disappearance of two young girls was more than just a coincidence?

  It was time to call Emer, and ask her what she knew about Lucy Ryan.

  Nine

  June 1997

  ‘Don’t be such a sissy.’

  ‘I’m not being a sissy,’ Lucy said. ‘I don’t want to do it, that’s all.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Lucy pulled a face, the one she always made when she didn’t want to answer a question.

  ‘Why not?’ Kitty persisted.

  ‘I just don’t, okay?’

  No. It wasn’t okay. Kitty didn’t want to be by herself when she found them. She needed Lucy with her, because otherwise no one would believe Kitty when she told them. And Kitty was planning on telling everyone.

  ‘Why is it so important, anyway?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Because it’ll be fun,’ Kitty said. ‘And because we’re not allowed to go in there and I’m sick of always being told I’m not allowed do anything.’

  It wasn’t fair, because adults got to do whatever they wanted – even really bad things like Mr O’Brien and her mum – but kids were always being told what they could and couldn’t do. Besides, Kitty didn’t see why she should do what her mother told her. It wasn’t like Mum never did things she wasn’t meant to. Kitty knew this because she’d seen her. Seen them. And heard them. Her stomach twisted, remembering it. She thought for a moment she was going to be sick.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Kitty said.

  ‘You look like you’re about to spew.’

  They were sitting in the tree house at the bottom of Lucy’s garden. Lucy’s dad owned a hotel, which meant Lucy’s family had lots of money. So when the girls played together, Kitty usually came here. Because Kitty’s house was tiny, but Lucy had this huge house with a garden and a tree house that her father had built her.

  Kitty’s stomach hurt and her throat ached from biting down the scream of pure rage that was fighting to get out. She wanted to hurt someone. They were sitting on the wooden floor of the tree house, their legs dangling over the side. Kitty imagined shoving Lucy forward, over the edge, and watching her fall to the ground. Lucy was smaller than she was. Skinnier too, and definitely nowhere near as strong as Kitty. All it would take was one good shove.

  She might have done it. She really might have. Except suddenly Lucy took her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘Sorry, Kitty.’

  ‘Why are you sorry?’

  ‘For being scared. It’s just, I promised my da, you know?’

  Fuck him, Kitty wanted to say. But she knew how bad it was to say that word and she didn’t want to upset Lucy, after all. Because Lucy was her best friend and she was holding her hand tight, like she really loved Kitty. And Kitty knew that she loved Lucy too.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said.

  ‘No.’ Lucy shook her head, her mouth set in a straight line. ‘We should do it. They’re knocking it down in a few weeks. This will be our last chance.’

  ‘Really?’ Kitty looked at her friend carefully, checking her face to make sure she wasn’t joking.

  ‘Yep.’ Lucy smiled. ‘You can come here and say you’re having a sleepover. Then, after my parents are in bed, we’ll sneak out. We’ll get some sweets and cake in the shop during the day. We can have a midnight feast like they do in Mallory Towers. It’ll be great.’

  ‘What about Martin Coyne’s ghost?’

  ‘That ould fella?’ Lucy grinned. ‘Sure we both know he doesn’t really exist, right?’

  Kitty smiled, even though everyone knew the ghost was real. Even Mr O’Brien said he he’d seen Martin’s ghost wandering around upstairs when he was at the house last week. Mr O’Brien owned the huge house that had once belonged to the Coyne family. He’d bought it ‘for a song’ according to Kitty’s mother. She would know. As well as having sex with him, she also worked as his PA, which meant she organised all his meetings and things. Mum said he’d bought the house as an investment. He was going to knock it down and build modern houses on the land.

  But before it was knocked down, Kitty’s mother and Mr O’Brien went to the house when they wanted to have sex. And now Kitty and Lucy were going too. Friday night, when Mum and Mr O’Brien were going to be there. Kitty had heard her mother on the phone, arranging the whole thing.

  ‘Nine o’clock,’ her mother had said. ‘All you need to do is turn up. You really need to stop worrying, Robert. It’s all in hand. No one will ever find out.’

  Well she was wrong about that. Kitty already knew. And soon, everyone else would know too.

  ‘Are you okay, Kit?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I’m fine.’ It was a lie, but she couldn’t tell Lucy about yest
erday. Or all the other times when her mother’s anger and mood swings made life at home seem like an unbearable nightmare.

  She’d finished the last of the milk, forgetting her mother liked milk in her tea.

  ‘You stupid, stupid girl.’ Her mother had screamed when she’d found out. She’d screamed lots of other things too, but Kitty couldn’t remember all of them. Mum’s face scrunched up when she got angry and her cheeks became really red. When she’d grabbed the wooden spoon, Kitty had tried to get away, but Mum had held on tight to her arm, screaming at her while the wooden spoon smacked down on Kitty’s shoulders and back, again and again.

  ‘I wish I’d never had you.’

  Smack.

  ‘You were a mistake.’

  Smack.

  ‘You ruin everything. Why do you have to ruin every single thing?’

  Her father was there too, sitting in the corner of the room. Watching, without doing a single thing to stop it. She’d tried to understand why he didn’t ever do anything when her mother got like that. At first, she’d thought that maybe because he was drunk he didn’t really notice. But then she realised it wasn’t that. Because even drunk people could still see what was happening in front of their eyes, couldn’t they? No. He didn’t do anything because Mum had told him so many bad things about Kitty he’d started to believe them.

  That would change after Friday night. When Dad knew what Mum was really like, he wouldn’t sit back and let her get away with whatever she wanted. He’d jump in and protect his daughter and keep her safe. He would become the sort of father Kitty had always wanted. Finally.

  Ten

  It was Sunday morning when Emer returned Dee’s phone call.

  ‘Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you, Dee. Work’s been crazy.’

  ‘You’re working at the weekends too?’ Dee said. ‘I hope you’ll manage to find some time for sightseeing. London’s a great city.’

  ‘Maybe when my contract’s over,’ Emer said. ‘I haven’t done a job like this before. That’s why I’m putting everything into it. I keep thinking they’re going to see through me and realise I’m not up to it. Anyway, in your message you said you wanted to ask me something?’