face exploded with anger. ‘Don’t play the holier than thou act with me, not you: the daughter of a junkie who got knocked up as a teenager just like her mother.’ Estelle looked at him, shocked. She’d only told him about her parents after he’d forced it out of her a few months ago, moaning she never talked about her past. Now he was using the information she’d been so desperate to keep to herself against her. He stood up, pointing his finger at her. ‘Clearly history likes to repeat itself with your family. Be careful, Estelle, or your dreams could come collapsing on top of your head like a pack of cards and you might well find yourself back in that scummy council estate you grew up in.’
Estelle opened her mouth to retort but found she couldn’t. As Seb looked her up and down in disgust, she suddenly felt like that pregnant girl again, huddled in the corner of her room, the shame of her situation washing over her in dark ugly waves.
‘That was cruel,’ she finally said, finding her voice.
A brief flicker of remorse showed in Seb’s eyes. But then his face hardened again. ‘I’m going to the pub,’ he hissed. Then he stormed out.
Estelle took some deep breaths then she forced herself to walk upstairs, making her way to the bedroom and curling up on their bed, going over Seb’s cruel words in her head. Was he right? Could she find herself back to square one again because of all this, despite all her hard work?
But that wasn’t what mattered now, even though the thought terrified her. All that really mattered was Poppy getting home safely.
After a while, she found herself falling asleep. She dreamt she was standing outside a small room. Inside, Poppy was held captive with her hands bound, masking tape pressed over her lips, the walls around her shaking. Estelle banged desperately on the window but Poppy wouldn’t look at her. Then, as she watched, Poppy suddenly grew younger and younger until she was a newborn, her tiny body wrapped in masking tape, desperate eyes turned to look at Estelle, then the walls of the room started to crumble.
Estelle woke to darkness, strangling a scream. She grappled for the light switch, turning it on as she calmed herself. Seb’s side of the bed was untouched. She looked at the time. Five in the morning. She’d slept that long? And was Seb still out? She checked her phone, no calls or messages from him. Then she checked for updates on Poppy, but nothing. She found the photo of the Polaroid she had on her phone, staring into her daughter’s eyes.
Her daughter.
Poppy was in danger; Estelle could feel it in her bones.
She got up and grabbed an overnight bag, shoving as many items into it as she could fit, and slung it over her shoulder. Then she stepped out into the darkness of the hallway and walked down the stairs. She saw Seb asleep on the living room sofa. So he was back. She paused, watching him for a few moments. She realised she felt nothing. When she’d left Lillysands, her heart had ached for Aiden. It seemed to her as though that intensity of feeling had been there from the very first moment she’d seen him, the first afternoon she arrived in Lillysands eighteen years ago. He’d been scrunched up in a cave, tears falling down his face, his long blond hair dirty. He’d looked up at her with green eyes that were vivid against his tanned skin, holding her gaze as he continued to cry, and something had gone ‘pow’ in the core of her. She’d felt nothing like it since.
As she watched Seb sleeping, she wondered if he was just another man in a succession of men who weren’t Aiden.
She sighed and scribbled a note for him, sticking it to the fridge.
Going away for a couple of days. Need some space. xx
As she opened the door to step outside, something inside her told her she might be saying goodbye to this place forever. A look in Seb’s eyes the night before. The exasperation in her own voice. The writing had been on the wall for a while: arguments, not as much affection as there used to be. She looked around her. Could this really be goodbye?
She’d learnt to leave places behind, to see them as simple, emotionless roofs over her head as a child in care. But as she thought of her kitchen, the pretty rooftop garden, she felt the grief, just as she had when she left Lillysands all those years before. She’d created that kitchen, that garden. They’d played a role in the making of her these past two years. And now she was turning her back of them, and had no idea what she was heading for.
She stepped outside and closed the door, inhaling the early morning air. Then she strode to Waterloo Station. When she got there, she was quiet for a few moments, aware this was another pivotal moment in her life, another ending. There had been so many, one chapter to the next, another door closing. But she kept moving, kept running, because that’s all she knew.
No more running. It was time she faced her realities.
It was time she returned to Lillysands.
Thursday, 4 May
Estelle stared out of the window as a taxi drove her through Lillysands four hours later. She felt tears flood her eyes, her tummy tingling with nerves. She hated this jumble sale of feelings: trepidation and excitement, sadness and giddiness. She hadn’t felt that in such a long time. The past few years had been plain sailing, very clear, no confusing emotions. But now everything seemed to be unravelling … including her relationship with Seb. The fact she’d barely thought of him during the long train journey suggested she’d made the right decision. She’d instead tried to focus on looking through a copy of her book to find quotes to read out at her upcoming launch party. But it was impossible, her mind filled with Poppy, Poppy, Poppy.
And Aiden.
She needed to tell him face to face about the child they’d conceived. It felt unimaginably cruel for him to hear it second-hand from the police.
But this trip was more than that. She had a feeling all the answers to Poppy’s disappearance lay in Lillysands. The people who knew about Estelle giving birth all lived in Lillysands. Even her social worker hadn’t found out, she’d kept it so carefully concealed. But the information must have got out somehow and someone was using it against her. But why? And who? She didn’t have any enemies in Lillysands, not that she knew of anyway. But Lillysands was a strange place, close-knit and judgemental. She’d learnt that a long time ago.
The air inside the taxi felt close and stale. She powered down the window.
‘You all right, love?’ the taxi driver asked, a local man with greying dark hair.
‘Fine, thanks, just breathing in the seaside air.’
The air seemed to rush in at her a million miles an hour, bringing with it a montage of memories, like the first time she’d been driven to Lillysands by her social worker that freezing December day eighteen years ago. She hadn’t been delighted at the prospect of staying by the sea. The first seven years of her life had been spent in a grotty seaside town, sand in her sodden nappies, shoulders red raw from sunburn, the echo of screeching seagulls the backdrop to her stoned mother’s snoring. So the seaside just meant neglect and pain for her. But as her social worker’s car had rounded the corner and the whole town came into view, Estelle realised Lillysands was nothing like the rotting town of her childhood. Colourful houses dotted the cliff; sailboats gleamed under steel skies; people strolled by
