Since Megan went missing I’ve avoided walking this way whenever possible – it gives me the creeps passing that house – but to get to the café it’s the only route. Tom walks a little way ahead of me, pushing the buggy; he’s singing something to Evie, making her laugh. I love it when we’re out like this, the three of us. I can see the way people look at us; I can see them thinking, What a beautiful family. It makes me proud – prouder than I’ve ever been of anything in my life.
So I’m sailing along in my bubble of happiness, and we’re almost at number fifteen when the door opens. For a moment I think I’m hallucinating, because she walks out. Rachel. She comes out of the front door and stands there for a second, sees us and stops dead. It’s horrible. She gives us the strangest smile, a grimace almost, and I can’t help myself, I lunge forward and grab Evie out of her buggy, startling her in the process. She starts to cry.
Rachel walks quickly away from us, towards the station.
Tom calls after her, ‘Rachel! What are you doing here? Rachel!’ But she keeps going, faster and faster until she’s almost running, and the two of us just stand there, then Tom turns to me and with one glance at the expression on my face says, ‘Come on. Let’s just go home.’
Evening
We found out when we got home that they’ve arrested someone in connection with Megan Hipwell’s disappearance. Some guy I’d never heard of, a therapist she’d been seeing. It was a relief, I suppose, because I’d been imagining all sorts of awful things.
‘I told you it wouldn’t be a stranger,’ Tom said. ‘It never is, is it? In any case, we don’t even know what’s happened. She’s probably fine. She’s probably run off with someone.’
‘So why have they arrested that man then?’
He shrugged. He was distracted, pulling on his jacket, straightening his tie, getting ready to go and meet the day’s last client.
‘What are we going to do?’ I asked him.
‘Do?’ He looked at me blankly.
‘About her. Rachel. Why was she here? Why was she at the Hipwells’ house? Do you think … do you think she was trying to get into our garden – you know, going through the neighbours’ gardens?’
Tom gave a grim laugh. ‘I doubt it. Come on, this is Rachel we’re talking about. She wouldn’t be able to haul her fat arse over all those fences. I’ve no idea what she was doing there. Maybe she was pissed, went to the wrong door?’
‘In other words, she meant to come round here?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Look, don’t worry about it, OK? Keep the doors locked. I’ll give her a ring and find out what she’s up to.’
‘I think we should call the police.’
‘And say what? She hasn’t actually done anything—’
‘She hasn’t done anything lately – unless you count the fact that she was here the night Megan Hipwell disappeared,’ I said. ‘We should have told the police about her ages ago.’
‘Anna, come on.’ He slipped his arms around my waist. ‘I hardly think Rachel has anything to do with Megan Hipwell going missing. But I’ll talk to her, OK?’
‘But you said after last time—’
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I know what I said.’ He kissed me, slipped his hand into the waistband of my jeans. ‘Let’s not get the police involved unless we really need to.’
I think we do need to. I can’t stop thinking about that smile she gave us, that sneer. It was almost triumphant. We need to get away from here. We need to get away from her.
RACHEL
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
Morning
IT TAKES ME A while to realize what I’m feeling when I wake. There’s a rush of elation, tempered with something else: a nameless dread. I know we’re close to finding the truth. I just can’t help feeling that the truth is going to be terrible.
I sit up in bed and grab my laptop, turn it on and wait impatiently for it to boot up, then log on to the internet. The whole process seems interminable. I can hear Cathy moving around the house, washing up her breakfast things, running upstairs to brush her teeth. She hovers for a few moments outside my door. I imagine her knuckles raised, ready to rap. She thinks better of it and runs back down the stairs.
The BBC news page comes up. The headline is about benefit cuts, the second story about yet another 1970s television star accused of sexual indiscretions. Nothing about Megan; nothing about Kamal. I’m disappointed. I know that the police have twenty-four hours to charge a suspect, and they’ve had that now. In some circumstances, they can hold someone for an extra twelve hours, though.
I know all this because I spent yesterday doing my research. After I was shown out of Scott’s house, I came back here, turned on the television and spent most of the day watching the news, reading articles online. Waiting.
By midday, the police had named their suspect. On the news, they talked about ‘evidence discovered at Dr Abdic’s home and in his car’, but they didn’t say what. Blood, perhaps? Her phone, as yet undiscovered? Clothes, a bag, her toothbrush? They kept showing pictures of Kamal, close-ups of his dark, handsome face. The picture they use isn’t a mugshot, it’s a candid shot: he’s on holiday somewhere, not quite smiling, but almost. He looks too soft, too beautiful to be a killer, but appearances can be deceptive – they say Ted Bundy looked like Cary Grant.
I waited all day for more news, for the charges to be made public: kidnap, assault, or worse. I waited to hear where she is, where he’s been keeping her. They showed pictures of Blenheim Road, the station, Scott’s front door. Commentators mused on the likely implications of the fact that neither Megan’s phone nor her bank cards had been used for more than a week.
Tom called more than once. I didn’t pick up. I know what he wants. He wants to ask why I was at Scott Hipwell’s house yesterday morning. Let him wonder. It has nothing to do with him. Not everything is about him. I imagine he’s calling at her behest in any case. I don’t owe her any explanations.
I waited and waited, and still no charge: instead, we heard more about Kamal, the trusted mental-health professional who listened to Megan’s secrets and troubles, who gained her trust and then abused it, who seduced her and then, who knows what?
I learned that he is a Muslim, a Bosniak, a survivor of the Balkans conflict who came to Britain as a fifteen-year-old refugee. No stranger to violence, he lost his father and two older brothers at Srebrenica. He has a conviction for domestic violence. The more I heard about Kamal, the more I knew that I was right: I was right to speak to the police about him, I was right to contact Scott.