Page 58 of All the Things We Never Knew

Hastily, I pulled on yesterday’s clothes and hurried downstairs, the cats trailing behind me, blinking in surprise but amenable to the prospect of an early breakfast. I had my phone in my hand, my finger on the emergency call button just in case.

But when I opened the door, it was Lulu Graham standing there.

She was wearing her usual jeans, extravagantly ripped and slung low on her hips, and a top cropped so high it almost exposed her breasts, the fashion now that is becoming on only the very young. Her make-up was heavy – or it had been; now it was blurred and smudged – and her long hair dishevelled. Her eyes were wide with alarm and something else I cannot now identify.

I’m sorry, Orla, she whispered. Sorry to disturb you. But I didn’t know what else to do.

Feeling almost lightheaded with relief, then prickled with concern, I told her it was all right, and invited her to come in.

She told me that she’d lost her keys, that Barney was out with a friend and her mother… She hesitated. Her mother must be asleep, she said.

Asleep, I wondered, or something else?

But I didn’t get a chance to respond. Lulu kept talking, jabbering almost, her words coming in a rush.

I tried calling and texting her but she didn’t wake up, she said. I was going to go and find a café or something and wait until morning but I feel – I didn’t feel safe out there. So I knocked on your door. I hope it’s all right.

I assured her that she had done the right thing, and offered her a hot drink; I could see that she was shivering, although even at what my phone told me was three a.m., the night was warm.

Just a glass of water, please, Orla, she said. And to use your bathroom, if that’s okay?

Poor girl – the need for the loo would have made her wait out in the street feel even more urgent.

She hurried upstairs, and I fetched a glass from the kitchen and waited on the landing for her to emerge. She seemed calmer when she did, although her eyes still had that wide, hyper-alert look.

Gently, I suggested that she might feel better if she got some sleep, and we could get her home in the morning, and she reluctantly agreed to stay.

So I put her to bed in Beatrice’s room, and I expect she will be there for a good few hours, sleeping as only an exhausted teenager can. Now I will need to figure out what to say to Anna – whether to dissemble about the time Lulu arrived home, whether to tell her about that car and the man’s voice.

THIRTY-FOUR

ANNA

‘Where were you?’ My voice came out angry and shrill.

‘I was at Aisha’s. I told you, Mum. We were talking. We were messing about on TikTok. I lost track of the time – her mum and dad were in bed and it was too late to ask for a lift home. I knew you’d go off on one if I stayed over and you wouldn’t want me getting a bus home so I got an Uber.’

I looked at my daughter. Her skin was peachy and glowing, but there were violet shadows under her eyes – partly tiredness and partly last night’s make-up. She was still wearing yesterday’s clothes and, when I’d pressed her body against mine in a hug that was almost frantically tight, I’d noticed that she smelled different from usual – a hint of sourness, a fragrance that wasn’t hers.

I’d woken up at nine that morning with a pounding head. The house was silent. I’d overslept. As soon as I moved, Augustus jumped up off my pillow and began yowling for his breakfast.

‘Has no one fed you?’ I muttered in confusion. ‘Hold on.’

I pressed my throbbing head into my hands, trying to recall the night before. Barney had been staying over at a friend’s place. Lulu had been out. Loneliness descending on me like a weight, I’d made myself a vast, ice-cold dry martini and then another, then opened a bottle of wine – and then another. I’d longed to cry, but tears wouldn’t come, so I’d found an old DVD Gray had filmed of the children when they were small and put it on to watch, hoping it would jerk me out of my numb inertia. But it hadn’t – all it had done was remind me how happy we had been, how innocently oblivious of what was going to happen to us.

It was too much to bear. The way I’d felt then – so full of joy and hope and confidence – was too different from how I felt now, lonely and resigned and bitter. And it told me nothing about what Gray’s life had been before those days, when he stood with his camera filming Lulu chasing a bumble bee in the garden, me pushing Barney on a swing in the park, tiny Augustus furiously attacking his own tail.

There were no answers there, on those silver discs of memories. There had been nothing on the computer in Gray’s study. But there might be some elsewhere in the house. There was some stuff of Gray’s, up in the loft in storage boxes. His emails might have post-dated him meeting me, but those boxes didn’t. I could go up there and investigate.

I’d gone upstairs with my bottle and glass, determined to make a start. But I must have got sidetracked, and sat down on the bed and gone to sleep. Or blacked out.

‘Just a second,’ I told the still protesting Augustus. ‘Let me check on Lulu, then I’ll give you breakfast.’

But when I eased my daughter’s bedroom door open, expecting to see her sprawled on the bed deeply asleep, the room was empty.

She wouldn’t have got up without seeing to the cat – he wouldn’t have let her.

I snatched my phone from my bedside table, finding that the battery had given out at some point during the night. I connected it to the charger, feeling sweat breaking out on my palms as I tried again and again to bring it to life. Then I saw five missed calls from Lulu at just after three in the morning.