Prologue
Beth
June 2018
Something is wrong. The house is silent; too silent. It’s never quiet in Beth Lawler’s house, not with a boisterous four-year-old running amok. Even when her daughter is taking an afternoon nap – a habit she must get her out of before she starts school – there’s still always background noise of some sort; daytime TV, the radio station that Marta likes to listen – sometimes sing along – to or the low hum of white goods.
‘Hel-looooo?’ she calls out instinctively, throws her keys and handbag down on the console table in the hallway, kicks off her gym shoes, even though she hasn’t been anywhere near the gym today.
‘Marta? Hel-loooo…’ She feels a trickle of something inside the pit of her stomach; it’s not fear exactly, but it’s somewhere approaching it. ‘Marta?’
She calls out to her housekeeper again. Well, housekeeper-cum-nanny-cum-friend as it had turned out. The nanny part hadn’t been in the original job description though; neither had the friend bit, but both of these things had transpired quite organically, something she was now extremely grateful for. Initially it had been Evan who had suggested they hire in some help.
‘I want you to put all your focus on Lily,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t want you to have to worry about stacking dishwashers and keeping the place clean and tidy. We can pay someone else to do all the menial, day-to-day stuff.’ She was aware that usually this would be music to most women’s ears, but secretly she had been disappointed. She had hoped to return to her job as a nurse six months after giving birth, maybe just part-time to begin with.
‘You never need to go back to work, Beth,’ he’d said when she had gone on maternity leave. ‘Not now you’re about to embark on the most important and rewarding job of all. Besides, it’s not as if we need the money, is it?’
She had missed the sense of purpose her job had provided though, and her colleagues at the hospital, so having Marta on hand had turned out to be something of a godsend. Lily had been a tricky baby, plagued by colic and reflux, and she had spent the best part of the first year of her daughter’s life in a cranky, sleep-deprived fug as a result. She didn’t know how she would’ve coped without Marta back then and in truth feared she might not have coped at all. Now she was glad that Evan had insisted on an extra pair of hands because she had bonded with the kind and intelligent Norwegian girl who shared her dry sense of humour and happened to be blessed with the patience of a saint. She trusted Marta; trusted her with the things that were most precious to her. Including her secrets…
She calls Marta’s name again but the cold, unsettling silence remains. The pushchair is in the hallway and Marta’s Fiat 500 is still in the driveway. Odd. This is an indicator that something’s definitely not right. She takes the stairs, two by two, calling out her name intermittently. She’s not overly concerned at this point.
She moves along the landing towards the nursery. The door is shut and she opens it with an unfamiliar trepidation, the source of which she doesn’t fully understand. The room is dark, the ridiculously expensive handmade unicorn appliqué curtains are drawn, daylight straining to filter through them. Creeping towards the cot bed on the balls of her feet, she peers into it and is relieved to see her daughter sleeping. Lily immediately stirs as if she senses her mother’s presence, causing her to spring backwards. She studies her daughter’s perfect face from a safe distance, her eyes closed, like two ticks on a page, her lashes dark like her own, curling upwards. Lily is undoubtedly a beautiful child – everyone says so – and this makes her feel proud, she supposes. She wants to touch her tiny face but is scared she’ll wake her. The rush of love she feels watching her sleeping daughter soon dissipates into something else though; a terrible gnawing guilt that pulls at her lower intestines, tugging at her guts. Lily will forgive her, won’t she? She’s only four years old; she won’t remember this time in her life. She’ll understand when she is older, she tells herself in an attempt to appease her nagging conscience – and yet she can’t shake the feeling that she’s directly betraying her own daughter. She’s not a bad person, is she?
She takes a breath, snaps herself out of her maudlin moment as her eye wanders to the baby monitor on the changing table next to the cot bed. It’s not illuminated. It’s not switched on. Now that is odd. Marta wouldn’t leave Lily sleeping without turning the monitor on; it’s a big house and they always switch it on in case Lily wakes up startled and they cannot hear her call out.
A sense of unease is gaining momentum inside of her, pushing past the guilt and up from her guts through to her diaphragm. She calls Marta’s name again, loudly and more urgently this time. ‘Marta! Marrr–ta! Where are you?’ Nothing. Silence.
Leaving the nursery, she checks the bathroom as a matter of course, plus Marta’s bedroom, but it’s empty. She takes the stairs, her blonde hair swishing around her shoulders with her increasing momentum – and panic.
‘Marta!’ She pokes her head around the living-room door. It looks neat and tidy and smells freshly cleaned, but she’s not there. She checks the downstairs cloakroom. No joy. Her initial perplexion has morphed into something more frantic now and she heads into the large, open-plan kitchen diner, the hub of her home. Her laptop is open on the oak table where she’d left it that morning. Marta’s handbag – a colourful fabric hippie-type thing that she’d picked up in Camden Market – is still slung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She hasn’t taken it. She must be in.
She notices that the sliding doors that lead out onto the landscaped garden are open – another oddity, given that it’s chilly and drizzling outside, even though it’s well into June. She scans the garden: nothing. She slides the door shut behind her, locks it. Beth shakes her head, confused, concerned. Even in the highly unlikely scenario that Marta has nipped to the shops and left Lily alone for five minutes, she certainly wouldn’t have left the doors unlocked, let alone wide open. Were they open when she had left that morning, the doors? She doesn’t recall. She doesn’t think so. No. Definitely not, why would they be? Suddenly she feels cross. Marta would never be so irresponsible, would she? She trusted her friend with her child and her home. She trusted her with her life.
She tries to push back the nagging fear that something has happened. Something horrible. Maybe she’s left a note. She checks the kitchen table for one, but there is nothing; no note. Marta knows Beth’s schedule better than she does. And Marta knows where she has been today…
She stands still for a moment in a bid to gather her thoughts. Surely if there had been an emergency of some sort then Marta would’ve called her? Marta’s handbag… her phone! She fishes around inside the bag for it but it’s not there, nor her purse. She runs into the hallway, retrieves her own phone from her handbag and dials Marta’s number.
‘I’m sorry but the mobile number you have called is currently unavailable…’
Shit! She dials again and is greeted by the same parrot-fashion reply. Shit, shit, shit. Why is her phone off? Marta’s phone is never off. In fact, she cannot recall a time since she’s known her when she hasn’t been able to get hold of her – not once.