stay for another slice. She saw Valentina’s eyes flick to her watch again.
‘Mr Vickers had a meeting in Stoke this afternoon and he’s not going back to the office before coming home.’
Edie understood. She got to her feet and thanked Valentina for the cake.
*
The smell of stale tobacco drifted from under their front door. Edie felt the gloom before they even stepped inside. Tess ran over to Dad and kissed him. He patted her on the head, cigarette still in hand; a little ash fell into her hair.
‘Hi, Dad,’ she said.
‘Hi, girls.’
He spoke softly, as always.
‘We’ve got some cake, do you want some?’
‘Not now, Tess,’ he said.
‘I’ll put it in the kitchen.’
Edie followed her. She had just got the plates out for a second slice when the shouting began next door.
‘I can smell it. Baking all day for those bloody urchins and what do I get when I get in? Sardines on effin’ toast.’
They couldn’t hear Valentina’s reply.
‘What’s the time got to do with it? I don’t work every hour God sends to feed the neighbourhood waifs and strays.’
A door slammed.
Tess and Edie looked at each other. Tess looked like she was about to cry. Edie started to giggle.
Tess: June 2018
I lie in bed. Dad brings me cups of tea I don’t drink. Cassie and Max make calls I don’t answer. Dad will have told them what’s happened by now and anyway, it’s all over the news. DS Craven comes in and asks if he can have a word. I say no and Dad tells him to leave me alone.
‘You should really eat something,’ Dad says.
I’m sure he’s had nothing himself. He leaves a plate of Welsh rarebit on the side table.
I turn over and stare out of the window; the rain trickling down my reflection in its pane provides the tears I’m unable to cry.
The only reason I moved to London was because I thought I’d find Edie. She’d dreamed of living in the city and it didn’t matter how many millions of people lived there, I knew one day I’d bump into her on Oxford Street or at Waterloo Station.
But she was never there. The whole time she was lying at the bottom of a reservoir, wrapped in plastic and weighted down. She would still be there now if the police hadn’t dragged it after a tip-off about a drugs stash, but there were no drugs, just the body of a young girl, another one. We’ve had many messages from the police over the years. An unidentified young female, you may need to prepare. And then you hate yourself for being relieved at another girl’s death. Anyone’s as long as it isn’t Edie’s. And now it is.
Anger rushes through me. How could this happen? How can Edie be dead? I find the energy to get up and go to her room. There have to be answers somewhere, she must have left me something. Where’s the photograph, where are the missing pages from the scrapbook? I start with the tallboy. I find a couple of old Record Collector magazines and an NME from 1998 with Blur on the cover. I turn every page, to see if anything’s cut out or ringed. Nothing. Her make-up bag’s still here. A Rimmel eyeliner pencil and mascara in black, cherry-red Boots Seventeen lipstick, dried and cracked. I leap on a scrap of paper crunched up in the corner. It’s covered in silver powder from a long since disintegrated eyeshadow. I press it flat against the wall and hold it to the light. I can just about make out a till receipt from Topshop dated April 1998. I screw it up and throw it back then pull the drawer out completely, turn it over and shake its contents on the floor to make sure I’ve not missed anything.
I start pulling out the other drawers, rifling through them, spreading old birthday cards, mismatching earrings and desiccated cough sweets across the carpet. Nothing.
I go to the wardrobe. Her faux suede jacket is still hanging there and her dress with the fitted body and full skirt, that was unfashionable back then but everyone wanted when they saw it on Edie. I go through the coat pockets and a couple of bags: more receipts and a few bus tickets. Flinging the clothes on the floor, I then run my hands in the corners to make sure I haven’t missed anything. It’s empty.
I start pulling books from the shelves. She could have hidden the missing pages from the ‘Cakemaker’ scrapbook in their leaves. I flip through the pages then hold their spines and shake each one out. A couple have magazine clippings slipped inside, mostly about bands, but no loose pages from the scrapbook. I try her school exercise books. A little hope. A phone number and address I don’t recognise. No names, though. I take a photo with my phone anyway.
The last things left are her records. I don’t touch them. Edie wouldn’t have written anything on those or stuffed something inside the sleeves. They were too important to her.
I sit down in the pile of clothes, books and junk in the centre of the room. Is this all that’s left of Edie? This and the necklace I’m not allowed to have because it’s evidence. I pull my knees to my chest, lay my head on them and start to cry. I can’t believe she’s gone. Every last thread of hope has been pulled from me. DS Craven told us the DNA and dental records are a match. This is all there is, a pile of clothes and some junk.
‘Here you are.’
The door opens and Auntie Becca comes in.
‘I was worried when you weren’t in your own room.’
She kneels down next to me and I raise my head; her eyes, too, are puffy from crying. She takes my head in her hands.
‘At least you know now. You won’t have to keep wondering forever.’
‘I don’t want to know. I always thought we’d find her. I always believed that.’
‘Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. When’s Max coming?’
‘He’s not.’
‘I didn’t think he’d leave your side at a time like this.’
I could not tell her, but she’ll just keep asking questions until she knows the truth. Dad hasn’t asked me about Max, which is why I know he’s already spoken to him.
I curl up tighter.
‘Has something happened?’ she asks.
‘He’s met someone else.’
I can’t be bothered with the details. Somebody else is easier to blame than my failure to meet his ultimatum, and what other conclusion can I draw from another woman’s perfume clinging to him?
‘Oh, Tess, and at a time like this.’
‘I don’t care any more,’
