‘Looks like we’re in,’ she says.
Our feet pound against the concrete stairs. We reach the top floor. My heart is thumping but it’s not just exertion making it race. It’s fear.
‘Marie?’ I knock on the door but my gloves muffle the sound and so Carly raps with her knuckles instead while my fingers spider-crawl across the top of the door frame, hoping that it’s still there.
It is.
‘Spare key.’ I slot it in the lock while Carly rolls her eyes and mutters about security.
The smell hits as soon as I open the door.
‘Marie?’ I call into the stale air and dust, somehow knowing that she won’t answer.
There are only four rooms and it doesn’t take us long to conclude she isn’t in any of them.
‘Something is wrong.’ I know it deep in my gut. The mug I had left here two days ago is still on the coffee table. Still half-full of grey tea. The plate of biscuits I had carried through, stale.
Back in the kitchen I see the washing-up piled in the sink is exactly as it was, crusted baked beans line a saucepan, the frying pan coated with burned egg.
‘It’s as though she left after our visit and never came back.’ Momentarily I cover my nose with my hand. The overflowing bin is pungent. ‘I’m going to check the bedroom.’
I really don’t know what I’m checking for as I yank open drawers and rifle through Marie’s belongings. It feels as though I’m intruding as her underwear, black and lacy, spills out onto the floor; the sort of things I’ve never worn, even before I’d had Archie. There isn’t a wardrobe, the room is too small for that, but there are clothes piled everywhere; on the rickety chair by the window, on the bed that clearly hasn’t been slept in. It’s impossible to know whether anything is missing. My stomach convulses as I realize I no longer know my twin well enough.
‘I’ve found something!’ Carly shouts from the kitchen. I hurry back through.
‘Look.’ She thrusts a notebook towards me. On the top page is scrawled in Marie’s handwriting: Stand-in for lead. Broken ankle. Leave tonight. Six-week run! Circled around each sentence are flowers and hearts. I remember the way her schoolbooks were always covered in doodles.
‘So she’s just… gone?’ I shake my head.
Carly shrugs. ‘It seems that way.’ She looks as upset as I feel.
‘But it was only a couple of days ago we saw her. We got on so well. She promised she’d see more of us. Archie.’
‘If she got a call for work we can’t blame her for taking it. Remember her phone kept ringing while she was here? We know she needs the money.’
‘She’s left her washing-up. The mugs in the lounge.’ I open the fridge. There’s a half-empty carton of milk and some drying ham. Two cans of cherry Coke. The sight of the logo makes me feel ill. How can she bear to drink it? To remind herself? Or is she punishing herself? Still, punishing herself.
‘Perhaps we all deserve to be punished,’ Carly says quietly. I must have spoken my thoughts aloud.
I slam the fridge shut. Slam the door on my memories but the lid springs open when I am faced with fridge magnets of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto with his lolling tongue. We never did make it to Disneyland. Archie is longing to go but even if we could afford it, I’ll never take him.
‘Did you find anything else?’ My gaze is drawn to the worktops. ‘A four-day letter?’
‘No but ours only came today. She must have left pretty soon after we did because she doesn’t seem to have made any food since we were last here.’
‘But she must have got one. It doesn’t make sense.’ I scan the room again. Nothing makes sense.
‘Maybe he tried but the letterbox downstairs is taped up and he can’t get upstairs without being buzzed in.’
‘He?’ It’s not just my paranoia, she’s thinking the same as me.
‘She. They. Whoever,’ Carly says unconvincingly.
‘Don’t you think it’s odd she didn’t let us know she was going?’
‘She doesn’t usually.’
‘Shall I call Mum?’
The question surprises me as it pops out of my mouth and my surprise is mirrored on Carly’s face. We don’t really see or speak to Mum although Marie still does. A trauma is like a magnet. It has the ability to pull a family together or repel them apart. Our parents are divorced. I don’t think any of us speak to Dad since he left Mum. They blame each other, blame themselves, blame us. Blame is a game we pass between us like a parcel and the one left holding it has to peel off another layer of the lie. Nobody wants to be left holding the truth.
Although I hadn’t wanted to speak to Mum straight after Graham had rung me, this time is different. This time instead of imparting news I need answers. I hold my mobile out to Carly – there’s no way I’m taking my gloves off in this filthy kitchen – and she swipes through my contacts and presses Mum’s number. Neither of us are expecting her to answer, but she does, her voice tinny over the speaker.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she says sharply. She hasn’t even said hello.
‘You don’t,’ I cut in quickly. She’ll be expecting this to be one of my usual anniversary phone calls when I call her crying, sometimes drunk – the only time of year I allow myself to be out of control – asking her why she allowed us to be taken. I’d never, never let anyone take Archie. It’s part of the job as a mother, isn’t it? To protect. I don’t meet Carly’s eye. She doesn’t know about my phone calls. I don’t know if she makes them herself. ‘I’m calling about Marie. Do you know where she is?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know the name of her current agent?’
‘I thought she’d been dropped again?’
‘Are there any friends you can think of that might—’
‘She hasn’t got any friends. You girls—’ I hear the spark of flint as she lights a cigarette, a long inhale. She never smoked. Before. ‘You girls used to be enough for each other.’
My eyes water as though I have smoke in them.
‘I’ve got to go, Leah. I can’t do this.’ She cuts the call. I want to redial and ask her what she can’t do. Cope with the prospect that again, she doesn’t know where one of her daughters is.
Carly closes the keypad and hands my mobile back to me. ‘Let’s go.’
‘I wanted Marie to know. That he’s out there again.’ Now there’s six weeks until she comes back. She’ll miss the anniversary. In a way I’m envious. Rather than putting the spare key back on top of the door, I slip it into my pocket as we leave.
Something draws my eye as I’m starting the car. I try to speak but I’m too frightened. Instead I clutch Carly’s arm.
It’s him. Through the teeming rain. The face of my nightmares on the opposite side of the road. He spots that I’ve noticed him, turns and rushes away. Climbs into a black car. The same sort of car I’d seen after I left the BP garage.
He was watching us go into Marie’s flat.
Had he followed her?
Had he taken her?
Is he coming for us all?
I have to know. My foot squeezes the accelerator. I yank the wheel and we lurch into the traffic.