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The old crumbling brickwork of an outbuilding lies off in the distance where there is a white incident tent erected. Figures – I can’t tell if they are male or female – are walking into the tent in identical white suits.
A reporter can be heard describing the scene before we see her, standing behind a police cordon, the tape vibrating against the wind sweeping in over the fields.
I hear the reporter’s words, but only snippets linger on in my head after she has spoken them.
Crude grave . . . pit . . . four bodies . . . female . . . decomposing . . . exposed to the elements . . .
My gaze drops to yesterday’s newspaper on the countertop, its edges curled. I stare at the headline.
Still Missing.
I touch the paper, turn it to face me. I look at their photographs, now filled with a deep sorrow.
I scan the headline again and the faces of each teen staring back at me, all smiles. So young.
My gaze lingers on the first girl who had gone missing, Caroline, aged just seventeen. She has been missing four weeks . . . and now, inside, my heart is aching. I know her mother, Ruth. I’d worked with her for years and we’d grown to be friends. When Caroline had first gone missing, we’d assumed she was fighting to be independent. Ruth and I had had many talks about how giving her space would lead her back to her mother when she was ready.
I think of all the words of comfort I’ve given her and feel like a fraud.
‘It’s going to take a while to ID them,’ Iain says. I look at him and his eyes meet mine. He shrugs. ‘Well, they say the soft parts are always the first to go.’
‘Eww,’ Elle says.
He must know what I’m thinking and immediately looks regretful.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Poor Ruth and Mike.’
I struggle to find any words. In this moment, all I can do is helplessly stare at the TV just as the reporter says unconfirmed reports suggest the police have every reason to believe these are the bodies of the missing girls.
Like we needed to hear that. I already knew. Things like this just don’t happen around here.
I think of Elle as a sharp twinge pulls at my insides. I feel the pain as if it were a personal loss to me. ‘God help their poor families,’ I say, snapping back into life.
Elle reaches for her drink. ‘This is yesterday’s news,’ she says between sips.
We both look at her. She shrugs.
‘Was on the internet late last night. It was a rumour going around Facebook.’
‘Elle,’ I say, ‘why didn’t you mention this?’
She shrugs again. ‘It was just a rumour then. And what’s that you’re always telling me? Don’t believe everything you see on social media?’
I look at her and remind myself that she’s soon to be seventeen, like Caroline. Three other girls will never see that birthday. I fight back tears as my mind takes me back to the day of the crash.
‘I should call Ruth.’
‘Is that such a good idea right now?’ Iain says.
‘She’s a friend and we know Caroline.’
Knew. Knew Caroline, I say to myself, and immediately feel wrong for thinking it.
‘Ruth and Mike are probably being inundated with calls and visits from the police and immediate family, Charlotte. They’ll be overwhelmed.’
‘All the more reason I should be there for her. For them both, her and Mike.’
Iain shakes his head. ‘I feel just as sad for them, as much as you do, but you’re not in their immediate circle of friends, Char.’ He looks at me with a degree of sympathy, but there’s something else there as well and I know he doesn’t want me to get too involved.
He’s right, I guess, but it feels wrong not to do anything.
I’ve helped Ruth on and off, just going out and driving around, searching. In the beginning, I helped stick up missing posters and went out walking with a group of Ruth and Mike’s friends, just to do something, to feel like there was still a chance Caroline would come back at any moment.
Then the second girl had gone missing. We didn’t know her or her family personally but we had seen them around the area.
It feels wrong not to try and salvage something positive out of this. Ruth couldn’t protect her daughter but I know I’ll do anything to protect mine.
I glance at Elle. Her eyes are glued to her iPad screen.
‘You’re not going to that party Friday,’ I say as I turn back to the sink.
Elle is naturally cross. ‘What?’ She looks at Iain. ‘Why?’ she bleats.
I turn, nod at the TV. ‘There’s someone out there killing girls your age, Elle.’ She rolls her eyes but I don’t care. ‘I need to know you’re safe and under my roof.’
‘Mum!’ Her brow is furrowed. ‘I’ll be, like, the only one not going.’
‘Kenzie isn’t going,’ I say.
Kenzie is Elle’s best friend and a bad influence on her – not that Iain agrees with me on that front.
Elle makes a face to silently ask me how I know that.
‘I saw her mother yesterday. She feels the same as me about these house parties.’
‘Her brother will be there.’
I scoff. ‘Oh, that’s a real comfort.’
Elle turns to her father then. ‘He’s eighteen, Dad, an adult.’
‘Barely,’ I say as Iain looks at me. If he doesn’t back me on this, I’ll bloody lose it. I’m tired of looking like the bad guy all the time. Lately I feel like this every day. It doesn’t help that Elle is now making puppy-dog eyes at me. She unfolds her arms and is now putting them around me.
‘I know you worry, Mum.’
Little bleeder. I love her to death, but she sure knows how to play me.
‘If I get a ride home with Jade’s mum, can I go?’
I frown, avoid her eyes. Still nothing from Iain.
‘Pleeeease, Mum?’
I look to Iain for help. I want him to say no and save me the moody silent treatment I’ll get for the rest of the weekend from Elle if I stand firm.
‘No,’ I say as I flick the television off. I can’t bear to see or hear any more right now. I feel Elle’s eyes on me just before she storms out of the room.
Iain sighs as he comes towards me. I let him hug me from behind as I stare out of the window. I can’t bring myself to look at him in case I break down.
‘Arguing with Elle isn’t going to help you,’ he says, resting his chin on my shoulder. ‘I know it’s hard with what’s going on around the villages, but we have to try and carry on.’
I suck in a deep breath. ‘I didn’t move out to the village to feel afraid,’ I say.
‘You’re saying you don’t feel safe here?’
‘It’s not about me feeling safe, Iain,’ I say, my hand now resting on his arm around my middle. ‘It’s always been about what’s best for Elle.’
I think back to the faces in the newspaper. The pixilated smiles of those teens. My heart could break for their parents.
I think of my own mother. I think of how my family was broken apart by a loss that I have never fully understood. All I know is how I will never take my eyes away from Elle, not like I used to.
This is something I fear Iain will never fully understand.
I know more than anyone the grief and fallout that comes from losing a child, no matter the circumstances.
We can hear Elle thundering around above us, the floorboards overhead creaking in protest.
Iain’s arm pulls away from me. He’s torn between staying with me and going to check on Elle.
‘I could drive Elle to this party and pick her up,’ he says. He moves away but watches me carefully. ‘She’ll be fine.’
I shrug. ‘How can you possibly know that? How can any of us?’
He looks at me, exasperated, but does his best to try and hide it. I know he’s trying to be supportive, but I also know I’m not the easiest person to placate right now.
He’s treating me like I’m glass, though, and that’s one thing I can’t stand. Being made to feel like everyone needs to tread carefully around me.
‘Elle is not Miles,’ he says. ‘She’s not any of these girls either.’
I shudder as he speaks Miles’s name.
‘This place is safe.’
‘What’s going on now—’
‘Stop obsessing about it,’ he snaps. ‘You’re going to lose Elle, if you’re not careful. Keep pushing and she’ll clam up completely. You have to let her live a little.’
I hold his stare now.
‘We did that once.’ I watch his face fall, now less assured of his own words. ‘You remember how that turned out?’
He nods. ‘Yeah, but I also remember the reasons behind it.’
He sees the hurt on my face.
‘I know it wasn’t your fault,’ he says, now coming towards me. ‘Besides, this is different.’ He looks deep into my eyes. ‘It’s just a party. Give her that little bit of freedom.’
I risk a glance at the newspaper again. Iain sees and shoves it in the bin. He avoids my eyes as he comes over and kisses me on the cheek.
‘The worst didn’t happen to you, Charlotte.’ He pats my arm, then leaves me standing there alone.
The worst didn’t happen . . .
I could have died in that crash. I didn’t. I could have been left with life-changing injuries. I wasn’t. I could have left my daughter without her mother. I didn’t. I’m here and all I can do is try to carry on as usual.
Easier said than done.
How do you completely come back from being so close to death? How can you just act like nothing’s happened? Iain suggested six months ago that I might need counselling.
I declined.
I don’t need a therapist to tell me what I already know.
I could have died – would have done, had I not been dragged from the wreckage. It’s freak events like that that make you question your own mortality, and that of the ones you love.
Is it any wonder I obsess about our daughter’s safety when there’s someone out there hurting girls our daughter’s age? Is it any wonder I put all my energy into protecting her, when I’ve seen this kind of pain before? Iain knows what happened to my brother when I was small. He knows what I saw with my own mother, and yet . . .
Carry on as usual, he says . . .
Easier said than done.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_cf22dc95-e6b1-599e-a4e5-339f19fd8e1b)
Detective Inspector Madeleine Wood’s Tyvek paper suit rustled with each tentative step she took towards the incident tent.
She’d been warned what to expect by officers who had already been on the scene for several hours, since the initial call had come through.
A group of teens had taken a haul of alcohol and drugs up to the wasteland in the middle of the night, planning on making their mark on the world. In their heads, they’d thought they were making a stand against society, or some such rubbish.
Stumbling across a makeshift shallow grave in the dark had scared them shitless, and reduced them to crying wrecks, begging for their mummies.
Twisted limbs, flesh riddled with insects, and a smell that would stay with you no matter how many times you washed would do that to anybody, even if these teens were usually as hard as nails.
Madeleine tucked a few strands of long auburn hair that had worked loose from her ponytail back inside the suit’s hood.
‘Guv,’ said DC Braithwaite as she approached.
Madeleine nodded. ‘Charis.’
