The Flower Girls Page 13

  ‘Would being in a cave have been enough to keep her warm? It was bitter outside. Minus four the coastguard said.’

  Gordon exhales, staring at the ceiling. ‘Maybe she had a blanket or coat?’

  ‘She didn’t have one when I found her.’

  ‘Perhaps she left it behind? You said she was gripping on to the bodies of the kittens. If she dropped it, though, it’ll have gone out with the tide by now.’

  Hillier is silent, considering this. After a minute she asks, ‘Can she speak?’

  ‘No – it’ll be a day or so before she can. But she will eventually. We’ll have to take it easy, though. She’s so little.’

  Hillier sets her chin. ‘Yes. But then we’ll know.’

  ‘What happened?’ Gordon asks.

  ‘Who did this to her,’ Hillier says.

  A flicker of respect flashes over Gordon’s face. ‘You don’t think she just got lost? Wandered off with the kittens and couldn’t find her way back in the storm?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Hillier answers. ‘No, I don’t. Someone is behind this, Sarge. Someone took her. And I intend to find out who.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The milk is sour and thick and Hazel holds her breath, her nose wrinkled as she pours the lumps of congealed dairy down the plughole.

  She’s only been gone from the flat for four days, even if it does feel like years. But the one-bedroomed space seems musty and close, as if it has been shut up and empty for much longer. For once, she wishes that Jonny lived with her, that she didn’t keep putting off moving in with him. She has always resisted the suggestion, saying she needs her space. But tonight she feels too alone, too susceptible to her thoughts.

  She turns the tap on and watches the water flush away the rancid milk, and then stands for a while gazing down at the liquid swirling in the sink. Finally, she shuts it off and turns to face the small kitchen. The sun has cracked like a yolk onto the horizon. She hasn’t switched on any lights and the place is lit only by the street lights by the windows with the blinds still up. The night outside is amber and glowing, filled with noise from the never-sleeping city.

  When they left Devon, she had to give the police her address and contact details, her work phone number, her mobile. She had done it – would have done anything to be gone from that place – but the fear remained, cold and slippery as a stone inside of her, that she was still far from out of danger. That even though the girl had been found, the police still suspected Hazel of having something to do with her disappearance. When Jonny had dropped her at her flat, she had almost expected swathes of reporters to be waiting there but the street was empty. They hadn’t found out where she lived.

  Yet.

  She had let herself in and stood in the middle of her living room, watching the gated gardens down below, listening to the thud of footsteps in the flat above, the murmurings of their television, the roll of a car engine outside – listening to it all, but never moving, standing quite still as if a spell had been cast upon her. After a while she had moved at last and gone into the kitchen, opening the fridge and letting the cold light fall on her face.

  How strange it is, she thinks, looking at her kitchen walls, the landscape print, the photo of her and Jonny on a beach holiday last summer, how all of her possessions look exactly as they did before when now – in reality – everything is entirely changed. The turmoil might be yet to come, but it hangs above her like a spider waiting in its web. As soon as the lights are turned on and everyone knows who she is, it will begin to crawl slowly down until it engulfs her life and her sanity.

  She looks back at the hallway in the centre of the flat. Lying on the seagrass carpet are a few envelopes, the final bills and statements of the year. There is a thick white envelope that must be a late Christmas card from her accountant. Hazel blinks, considering it as it lies on the floor. She doesn’t get Christmas cards from anyone other than businesses, hotels she has stayed in, her local Chinese restaurant. Apart from the odd amicable acquaintance, she doesn’t have friends in the way people in her office do. Their desks seem to be wallpapered with cards, hundreds of jaunty, colourful missives, packed with exclamation marks and wishes of the season. Her desk is always empty. Since Jonny’s arrival in her life, she has adopted his friends as her own, meagre in number though they are. Before him, there was no one. No one that she could ever let her into her life, allow close to her.

  When will it start? she wonders. The abusive mail, the smashed bottles through her letterbox. She has saved the stash of hate mail she has received from her anonymous sender: the dead pressed flowers; the cards containing violent messages. She has printed off the emails from the Primrose Bowman account. She doesn’t know what to do with them. Show them to the police? Now they know who she is, they will revile her just as much as the people who sent those things.

  She accepted a long time ago that it was impossible for her to have a real relationship with anyone. There would always be the dread that one day they would find out who she was. They could be in a Starbucks, or having lunch, or drinking in a bar, and then her old school photograph might pop up on the news and they would glance at the screen, shoot a quick look at Hazel. Realisation might pass over their brow, sudden nausea be apparent on their face. And then they would wear the expression she’d seen many times before. On the faces of people interviewed on salacious documentaries she has tortured herself watching on YouTube and online.

  That look.

  The look that says: You’re not human.

  You’re wicked.

  She has never wanted that moment to arrive with anyone she’s classed as a friend. And so she has protected herself from it by shutting herself off. The only person who has ever managed to get through the barrier is Jonny. And she can’t bear to lose him, to lose the companionship.

  She doesn’t think she can live like that again, so lonely and spare. Is this what this journalist Max is offering her? A different way of living her life? A path she can take where she doesn’t have to hide any more. Where she could actually be herself. Not Rosie Bowman, because Rosie doesn’t exist any more. But Hazel. Legal secretary, expert Thai cook, a faster-than-average swimmer. Can she be her? Can she be allowed to live that simple life, without the hatred, the disgust, the malice thrown at her? Will the world accept what she could tell them?

  Hazel sinks to her haunches, a twist of despair coiling inside. Sometimes she thinks she knows the truth about that afternoon, that she can grasp it, slippery though it is. But other times it slides away from her, leaving her scrabbling at its smooth and undefinable shape. She had been six years old, and her brain had hardened around that day like a turtle shell, wrapped around the soft tissue of those memories, preventing her from prodding them, rousing them from their sleep. Now they – Max and the police and all the panting journalists – are asking her to poke a stick into those memories. After all this time. They want her to force her brain to split open the shell. And she’s not sure she really wants to do that. Not now.

  Hazel gets to her feet and moves to the desk in the corner of the room where her handbag sits. She reaches inside for her mobile and dials a number. She is about to give up when her father finally answers. He sounds breathless.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ she says softly. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Hazel? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, Dad. It’s me. Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Just a bit puffed. Nice to hear from you, Hazel. Are you well down there?’

  From where she stands, Hazel can see the top third of the lofty plane tree that overhangs the gardens her windows overlook. She studies its shape in the darkness, the street lights pooling their shadows at the foot of its great trunk. Without warning, a wave of tears rises up within her and she hiccups, taking a ragged breath to stop the sound from spilling out of her.

  ‘Hazel? Are you all right? What’s that noise?’

  She tries to breathe, to calm the storm inside. In through her nose and out through her mouth.
/>   ‘Hazel? Come on, now. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, Dad,’ she forces herself to say. ‘Just had a bad experience, that’s all.’ She looks again at the plane tree, its black branches. ‘I wanted to tell you. Oh . . .’ She stops talking, not sure how to say it, how even to start. ‘Dad, I’m sorry. I really am. But there’s going to be stuff about us. In the papers. About me and Laurel—’

  ‘Laurel?’ Gregor interrupts, his tongue tripping over the two syllables. ‘What about her?’

  ‘I’ve been in Devon, Dad, and a little girl went missing. The police came, and when they did, they interviewed us all. And they . . . they found out who I am. Who I was. Before.’

  ‘What have you done, Hazel?’

  ‘Nothing! I haven’t done anything, Dad! I swear . . .’

  Hazel can hear Gregor’s harsh breathing down the phone line. She puts up a hand as if to comfort him.

  ‘Daddy?’ she says. ‘I’m not Laurel, Daddy. I’d never hurt anyone.’

  He is silent and Hazel watches the plane tree, those immense branches reaching into the sky. She says nothing, trying to feel the tree rooting her in history; feel that she witnesses it today like hundreds and thousands have done before her. She is connected to those people in history because she observes the same tree. Her life is not a game to be played at the expense of her sanity. She is real and she is valid.

  ‘As you say,’ Gregor finally responds. ‘So, going to be a lot of funny business, is there now? Lots of press and what have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hazel whispers. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy.’

  ‘Right then. Well, if that’s it . . . ?’

  The tree is a gnarled and weary skeleton. Stripped of colour by the winter, it reaches its fingers into her flat, pointing at her, whispering: You. You are to blame.

  ‘Yes, Daddy, that’s it.’

  ‘Look after yourself then. All right?’

  ‘I will. You too.’

  Hazel stands, waiting for something, but there is only the white noise of the phone line in her ear.

  ‘Hazel?’ her father suddenly blurts out.

  ‘Yes?’

  He releases a long sigh, filled to its edges with frustration. ‘Night-night, girlie.’

  ‘Night, Dad.’

  Hazel puts the phone down and leans against the wall as a sound leaps into the room, growing louder and louder. For a moment, she can’t work out whether the noise is real or in her head, and then she realises that it is the sound of her doorbell, buzzing incessantly at the same time as her phone begins to ring. She traces her fingers over the wall by her shoulder, standing in the darkness, the sounds of city life filtering in underneath the clamour of the phone and the doorbell.

  So it begins, she thinks. Now they have come.

  She thinks of her mother for the first time in many months. Of the way she would stand at windows herself, always looking out, always searching for something better.

  ‘One day, your prince will come,’ she’d sing softly to Hazel as she sat in her nightdress, brushing her dark hair. ‘He’ll come right up to the house on a white horse, sword in hand. And he’ll swoop you away to live in the fairy palace where the roses grow and nobody ever gets old.’

  Hazel drops to her knees, blind with tears. She thinks about Max and what he is offering her with the book. How it could mean she might finally be free from her past. But then she thinks of her father, sitting in his cold armchair in his cold house with his cold, stitched-together heart. And she thinks of the pack of wolves that will descend on them all, picking over her bones, tearing at the sinews of their lives.

  And then she thinks about Jonny and who he is and what that means for her.

  Mummy, she thinks, as the doorbell continues to ring and ring and her phone vibrates with endless calls on the carpet.

  Oh, Mummy, what should I do?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Georgie sits in the middle of the hospital bed. Her face is washed out, her lips still pallid, her black hair an indelible stripe down the starched white of the pillows she leans against. A thick white bandage in the middle of her forehead covers the stitches she needed for a gash to her head.

  Jane Greenstreet sits to one side, her hands on Georgie’s arm, her chair pulled in as close to the bed as possible. Declan Greenstreet is on the other side, his expression dark. At the end of the bed stand DS Gordon and DC Hillier, who is suddenly conscious that, in comparison to the tiny girl, they look like giants, rearing up from the ground like leviathans.

  ‘Let’s sit,’ she says to Gordon, gesturing to the chairs on the other side of the room. They pull them over, sitting down primly together, outwardly relaxed.

  ‘How are you, Georgie?’ Gordon’s voice is level and kind. ‘Bit warmer now, eh?’

  The little girl looks at her mother, who nods at her reassuringly. ‘Yes,’ she answers in a small voice.

  ‘You had us all really scared for a while back there.’ Gordon smiles at her and Jane. ‘But you’re safe now and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘Thankfully,’ Declan murmurs.

  ‘And now you’re feeling a bit better, we just want to ask you a few questions about what happened to you there, at the hotel. Find out how you came to be outside in that weather. Do you think you could answer some questions about that for me?’

  Again, Georgie glances at her mother, who squeezes her hand. ‘It’s all right, darling. I’m here. Just try and think back to what happened. Tell the nice policeman.’ As she says this, though, Hillier catches Jane glancing at Gordon, sees how an unchecked glint of fear moves across her face while she thinks she’s unobserved. As quickly as it appears, however, it is gone.

  Gordon settles in his chair, shoulders back, relaxed and easy. ‘Georgie, sweetheart. Have a think. Can you remember what you did with your mum and dad on New Year’s Eve? Were you having a nice time in the hotel?’

  Georgie nods, her face serious, her brow crinkled with the effort of concentrating. ‘Yes. We went down to the beach but it was cold. So we came back up to the room where there was the fire and I went on the iPad for a bit. Mummy and Daddy had a drink and Charlie was having his nap. And then . . .’

  ‘That was when you remembered the kittens, wasn’t it?’ Jane cuts in. ‘Right during Charlie’s nap. The kittens in the kitchen?’

  Hillier looks at Jane, willing her to keep quiet. They need Georgie to tell them in her own words what happened that afternoon. ‘Had you seen the kittens beforehand, Georgie?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. They were so cute.’ She slides her eyes towards her mother. ‘Mummy and Daddy were talking and I didn’t want to play or watch the iPad any more so I went to find them.’

  ‘We said she could,’ Jane interjects, and it occurs to Hillier that she is embarrassed that they were drinking in the afternoon and letting their children run amok in the hotel unsupervised. Is that all it is – shame for a momentary lapse of attention? Or is there something else Jane Greenstreet is reluctant for them to discover?

  ‘We thought it would be safe, didn’t we, Declan? The kitchen is only just down the corridor from the lounge. I feel so bad about it now, of course,’ Jane says, her voice breaking, shaking her head.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Greenstreet,’ Hillier says, her face the picture of reassurance. ‘You aren’t to blame in the slightest. Why would you imagine anything could happen to Georgie in the hotel? It was a safe enough place.’

  Jane looks down at the hospital blanket on the bed without answering, her fingernails white where she is digging them into her palms.

  ‘So, you wandered along to the kitchen,’ Gordon continues. ‘And did you see anyone in there?’

  ‘There was a man dressed in white. With hair like this.’ Georgie touches her shoulders.

  ‘Long hair? Longer than mine?’ Gordon asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  Kaczka, thinks Hillier.

  ‘He showed me into the cupboard where they keep all the food. And there was the box with the kittens in.’


  ‘And did the man stay with you?’ Hillier asks, her heart-rate increasing a little.

  ‘No.’ The child shakes her head. ‘He gave me some milk to put down for the kittens and then he went outside and left me there to play.’

  Hillier nods. ‘And then what happened, sweetie? How long did you stay there?’

  ‘Don’t know. One of the kittens was crying and they’d drunk all the milk. They needed more.’

  ‘From the kitchen?’

  Georgie nods.

  ‘So you left the pantry. The cupboard.’

  ‘I picked the kitten up and came outside. But they were shouting in the kitchen. I didn’t want to get in trouble. And the man was gone . . .’

  Hillier’s thoughts hover over the image of Kaczka’s face, questioning whether this means he’s out of the frame or whether he came back, after Georgie thought he’d left.

  ‘. . . So I wanted to find Mummy and ask her. But then I walked out of the door and I couldn’t find my way back. ’Cause I was in the room where we eat and I didn’t know which way to go.’ Georgie is crying now, tears falling down cheeks still raw and red from the ice storm.

  Jane Greenstreet shifts abruptly on her seat, her hands picking at the bedclothes. ‘Is this really necessary? Georgie’s tired. She’s exhausted. Look at her. You’re upsetting her.’

  ‘It’s all right, Georgie,’ Gordon says. ‘I know it’s hard remembering. You were frightened, weren’t you?’

  ‘We do need to ask these questions, Mrs Greenstreet,’ Hillier puts in. ‘I’m sorry but it is important.’

  ‘I realise that,’ Jane says, her fingers now tight on Georgie’s arm. ‘But I don’t want her distressed any more than she already has been.’

  Hillier says nothing. After a beat, Gordon nods at Georgie encouragingly.

  ‘The kitten was crying,’ the girl continues, ‘it jumped out of my hands and ran off and then the other ones came and followed it because it was miaowing, making this funny noise. I picked them up and I tried to find the first one but he was gone and then I was outside and it was cold and dark.’ She breaks off, her face crumpling in a sob. ‘And I just wanted Mummy.’