The golf club’s function room is a large, open space and not really suited to the intimate nature of a wake. Below rows of photographs of stern-faced former captains are pockets of mourners talking amongst themselves. Being around so many unfamiliar faces makes me nervous but I’m at least grateful nobody has recognised me from the newspapers.
Five months have now passed since the bodies in the attic were found, but as the owners of the house, we are still getting media attention. I’m sure they’d have left us alone by now had they not realised early on who my ex-boyfriend was. ‘Ellis Anders’ Ex Caught Up In House Of Horrors’, ‘Ellis’s Former Fiancée In Babes In The Attic Terror’ and ‘House Of Horrors Mum Was Engaged To Ellis Anders’, read some of the headlines, all illustrated with historic photos of us together. Ellis and I split up what feels like a lifetime ago and I’d assumed my fifteen minutes of fame by proxy were over and I’d been forgotten about. I was wrong.
We have all been forced to change our telephone numbers to stop the press from contacting us despite the police informing them we didn’t want to make a statement. Most weeks, they’re still pushing notes through our door offering us money for our story or for photos taken inside the house. When I’m wearing my PR hat, I understand they’re only doing their job and perhaps giving them one interview might shut them up. But Finn and his parents were
adamant that we didn’t. I also appreciate the money would be useful, as almost every penny we have is tied up in a house we can’t live in. But we can’t in good conscience cash in on those children’s deaths.
My eyes flit around photos of Abigail Douglas in a framed montage. Next to me is a pile of orders of service with her black-and-white image on the cover, alongside her date of birth, but the date of her death is absent. I guess it’s unlikely her family will ever know exactly when she died or how much she suffered. That must be one of the hardest parts of coming to terms with your child’s murder, I think, not knowing if it was swift or cruel and drawn out.
There must be around eighty people here, a good turnout for a little girl who made more of an impact in death than life. I wonder how many mourners are family members and former school friends or who, like me, don’t belong here.
A cold shiver creeps up my back when I contemplate whether the killer is also here amongst us. If some murderers get their kicks from attending search parties for their victims, then it stands to reason they’ll gain something from attending a funeral too. And now my imagination is doing somersaults, questioning if they’ve also been to our house – perhaps even when we were working inside it – to relive their crimes. I do a headcount and there are at least ten men in this room who would’ve been the right age in the 1970s and 1980s. No, I tell myself, I’m being silly.
I try to redirect my thoughts by picking up the order of service again. The ceremony at the crematorium took around half an hour. It was difficult not to be moved by the vivid recollections of Abigail by her two older brothers. Her father died soon after she vanished and their use of phrases like ‘never forgave himself’ and ‘couldn’t live without his daughter’ suggested he either died of a broken heart or took his own life. Like my old friend Lorna Holmes’s family, they too have been irreparably damaged.
By the time Abigail’s coffin disappeared behind the curtain to the sound of her favourite song, Michael Jackson’s ‘Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough’, a huge hit at the time, there wasn’t a dry eye left in the building. I know I’m never going to hear that song again without thinking of a little girl I never knew.
From a selfish perspective, I hope that witnessing her being laid to rest will help bring an end to my preoccupation with this case. I want to move forwards, so I’ve googled therapists and have a shortlist of half a dozen I’m going to look into.
I gravitate towards two women who, like me, appear not to know anyone. Their faces share a similar shape and I assume they’re related. I envy the older one’s beautiful, unblemished skin. Since having Sonny, my cheeks and forehead have been prone to acne break-outs. It’s hormonal, but along with the extra weight I’m still carrying, it doesn’t help with my self-confidence. The other woman is much younger and in a wheelchair. She stares into the distance, her limbs twisted and a faint transparent thread of saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth.
‘Hello,’ I begin. ‘Do you mind if I join you? I don’t really know anyone here.’
‘Please do,’ the older woman says warmly in a lilting Caribbean accent. She introduces herself as Jasmine Johnson and her daughter as Precious.
‘Were you at the crematorium?’ I ask.
‘No,’ says Jasmine. ‘There are certain situations Precious struggles with and I thought that might be one of them. It wouldn’t have been her fault, but I didn’t want her to make a scene and take away from the family’s grief.’
‘I understand,’ I reply. ‘How did you know Abigail?’
‘She and Precious went to the same school. Although Precious was a different girl back then to the one you see now.’
‘How so?’ I ask before realising how nosey that might’ve sounded. ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ I add quickly.
‘She vanished at the same time as Abigail,’ Jasmine says so matter-of-factly that I think I’ve misheard.
‘Vanished?’
‘Three days after the girls didn’t return from choir practice, my daughter was found by the side of the road with head injuries, a broken leg and pelvis. Hit and run, the police reckoned. She’d also suffered an extensive bleed to the brain, and when she came out of her coma, she was as you see her now. And she was never able to tell us what happened to her and Abi or how she ended up where she was found. Everything she knows is locked inside her head.’
When I tell her that I don’t recall reading about this, Jasmine says it was barely reported on. ‘Back in the early 1980s, if it was a choice between putting a blonde, blue- eyed pretty little white girl on the front of a newspaper or a little black girl, you can guess which one was going to sell more copies. Even though she isn’t the same girl as she was, by God’s good grace she’s still with us. Despite what happened to her, I give thanks every day that my daughter survived.’
When she asks why I am here, I feel embarrassed, ghoulish even. ‘It was my house where Abigail’s and the other children’s bodies were found,’ I say quietly, hoping I haven’t been overheard.
Jasmine cocks her head, regards me more closely and then nods slowly, as if she now recognises me. She picks up a school photograph from the table, a picture of Abigail and Precious’s class lined up in two rows, one behind the other. She points out her daughter, a wide-eyed, vibrant twelve- year-old. Her hair is tied into bunches and she wears a school uniform with pride. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ she says, and I nod.
I examine the rest of the photograph when a face in the row behind Precious and Abigail catches my eye.
‘That little boy looks like my father-in-law,’ I say.
‘Which one?’ Jasmine asks and I point to a child with a port-wine stain on his forehead and eyelid. ‘Oh, you know Davey Hunter?’
I take a short gasp of air but, before I can reply, a sudden, high-pitched noise rings out around the room, snagging everyone’s attention. Only when it’s followed by a thumping sound do I realise it’s Precious, banging her fists against the armrests of her wheelchair. Her squeal is as shrill as a smoke alarm.
‘Whatever is the matter?’ her mother asks, and her knees crack as she kneels down to calm her daughter. It has little effect. Instead, Precious takes to jerking her head back sharply again and again. ‘She gets like this sometimes.’
Jasmine hands me the framed photograph and turns her daughter’s chair around, offers her apologies and tries to say goodbye but it’s hard to hear her above the screaming. Precious accidentally bats the picture out of my hand as she passes and the glass shatters as it hits the floor.
As mother and daughter leave, I pick up the shards and place them into a napkin. When I decide that everyone has at last ceased staring at us, I slip the photo into my handbag. I’m thinking about my father-in-law, racking my brain to recall if Dave ever mentioned, when her name was released to the media, that he went to school with one of the missing children. I know that I’ve been in a fog lately but I’m sure I wouldn’t have forgotten something that important. And if Finn knew, he would definitely have brought it up, as he tells me everything. I’m adamant Dave has said nothing.
So why would he deliberately keep this quiet?
