People think the over-forties are all digitally illiterate, unable to comprehend the advances in technology. It isn’t true. In 2002 I taught myself code and built a simple website: ‘Where is Edie Hudson?’ A counter at the bottom racked up how many hits it had, and a primitive message function allowed me to categorise all the tips and sightings it garnered. It allowed me a worldwide reach, for the first time throwing a net out there, a lure, a beacon to Edie. I still think of you. Come home.
I managed to find Moya, too – not on Facebook but in a national newspaper. She’s a columnist, her byline photo showing a pretty young woman with good skin and a wide smile. You wouldn’t know it was the same person if it weren’t for the tight curls of her black hair. Her surname is King now, and she’s married with three beautiful children. I think about writing to her often, just to pierce the normality of her life, to take a blade to it the way we did to the palms of our hands that night in the churchyard standing around Quiet Mary’s grave. I SEE YOU, I would write, just that, those three short words. And she’d know. She’d remember.
I looked for Charlie Roper for a long time. Beautiful Charlie, a serpent with glossy black scales, the high witch with her curled fist knocking on the tree to call the soul of a long-drowned woman. I searched through all two thousand of Nancy Renard’s friends and even went through the marriage sections of the local paper as far back as the year 2000, when all three girls would have turned eighteen.
It took me a long time to find her, and when I did she was dead. She’d died in a fall from a second-storey window in the early hours of the morning, aged just twenty years old. The article said she’d been living in Brighton and had called her death a tragic accident, although later reports cast doubt on her rationality at the time. One witness, who didn’t want to be named, had said of Charlie, ‘She seemed like a party girl, always on the lookout for a good time.’ It had sent a shiver through me. They’d used similar language to describe Edie when they’d reported on her disappearance, camouflaged words to conceal the weight of what they were trying to say. Like thinly veiled threats whispered into your ear with a smile.
I closed the paper when I’d read the short article and studied the scar on my hand, white and hair-thin, puckered tissue forming a narrow ridge you can run your finger along.
One, two, three, four,
Rattlesnake hunters knocking at your door.
Give them meat and give them bone,
And pray that they leave you alone.
Earlier this morning I switched on my computer with no intention of seeing Nancy Renard. I’d planned to spend the day wallowing in my unexpected hangover and eating the cold Chinese takeaway I must have brought home last night and promptly forgotten about. You’re too old for this, I thought to myself as I logged in; you’re not eighteen any more. You’re not a party girl, not like Charlie or Edie.
Nancy’s status was the first thing to pop up as I scrolled through the feed on my other, anonymous, account. Looking forward to brunch with this bunch! she’d written. There was a photograph of her with three other similar-looking women – slim, white, neat hair, gold jewellery, teeth as large and polished as marble tombstones. She’s unrecognisable as the girl she once was, thin and stooped, peering out at me from under the cloak of her hair. Nancy, the baby bird with the broken wing. Logging in again now, I see she’s checked in, too, of course. Nancy Renard is at Le Petit Patisserie. 11:02 a.m. I look at my watch. She must still be there. I can’t allow myself too much time to think about what I’m doing. If I do, I worry I won’t be able to go through with it.
Le Petit Patisserie is just off Lewes High Street, round the corner from the brewery that fills the air with rolling, malty steam. I make my way through town with my head down and my hands in my pockets, cap pulled low over my face. It’s not a disguise, but it acts as a deterrent to anyone who wants to stop and talk to me, which happens more often than you’d think. It’s a small town; we all know each other. You ever hear the expression ‘familiarity breeds contempt’? There it is. That’s your little market town in a nutshell. I step through the doors of the patisserie breezily, noticing Nancy’s table right away. Clean pressed shirts worn with fine scarves of linen or silk. They look like colonial missionary wives with eating disorders. I move to the counter as if I am about to order so I can better listen to their conversation. I’m sweating beneath the band of my cap.
‘Don’t,’ Nancy is saying, theatrically rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t get me started.’
‘Oh, do get started. We want you to get started,’ another woman coos. There is a low ripple of laughter and Nancy tucks her hair neatly behind her ear.
‘I just think,’ she says, urgently, ‘that if you’re going to charge someone that much for a service then you bloody well need to make sure you’re doing what I’ve asked you! How long does it take to upholster a chair, really? I mean, it’s staples and a glue gun, isn’t it? How hard can it be?’
More cooing and nodding. Another voice, strident and high, pitches in. ‘When we tiled the en suite I went to Morocco myself to source them. I can buy tiles for twenty pence a time in the souk at Marrakesh, darling, so don’t try to play a player, right?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘It’s a joke.’
I turn around so that Nancy can see me properly. I know she knows who I am, even now. I saw her that day with Frances opposite the pharmacy and I saw the way her face changed when she recognised me. Like a door, slowly closing.
‘Hi, Nancy,’ I say brightly. She sits up. I allow her that pause, that moment of recognition. I savour it. I like the way her baby-blue eyes widen, the way her long fingers play with the collar of her shirt. I know she got divorced last year because the news was all over her Facebook feed, and I wasn’t surprised. From the pictures I’d found of him he was a boring-looking, weak-jawed man at least a foot shorter than Nancy, who wore golfing jumpers and long leather shoes. At least Charlie went out with a bang.
‘Mrs Hudson?’ she says, unevenly. ‘Samantha, right?’
‘That’s right.’
All the women are looking at me with mild interest. I’m the equivalent of the mantelpiece you run your finger along for dust. My smile aches.
‘I was just thinking about you the other day,’ I tell her, reaching out to shake her hand. She puts hers in mine with no enthusiasm. It’s like holding the hand of a corpse. ‘I was hoping we could have a talk sometime. About Edie.’
‘Oh?’ She’s reaching for her phone. ‘I’ll check my calendar. It’s a busy time of year. The kids are heading back to school, you know?’
‘I’m free any time. I’ve just got a few questions.’ Firm. Refusing to be fobbed off. My pulse throbs in my neck. I realise I forgot to put make-up on before I left the house. I must look deranged. Nancy is scrolling through her calendar wordlessly, her cheeks bright pink as if they’ve been slapped. I’ve ordered a takeaway coffee and the waitress brings it over to me.
‘Shall I get you a chair?’ she asks me, and Nancy looks up sharply.
‘No,’ she tells her. Then she smiles at me, weakly. ‘How about later in the month? After I come back from Capri?’