chapter twenty-four
Jane leaves Natasha’s house and heads to the tube station at Chiswick Park. As she is exiting the tube at Covent Garden a short while later, her phone buzzes with three WhatsApp notications in a row: two are messages from stepkids saying yes to her invitation to lunch at the weekend, and the other is from Dexter asking if she’s busy, would she like him to come over and help her with her case.
Jane’s heart soars, and she replies, as she walks, Yes pls! Come now! and then adds in a row of party poppers and throbbing hearts.
She redirects herself to Marks & Spencers, where she lls a basket with crisps and dips and tubs of tiny brownies and millionaire’s shortcakes. She also picks up a carrot cake and some decent teabags.
The house in Seven Dials sparkles with dust motes when she walks in a moment later. She can smell chemical cleaner and wood polish, and remembers Tony mentioning that the cleaner comes on Wednesday mornings. She thinks with a ash of embarrassment of her used underwear pooled on the oor in the bedroom, and can’t quite recall if she ushed the toilet this morning. She shudders. She’s forgotten what it’s like to have a cleaner. She lived with her rst husband for seven years, her second for ten, and in all those years she never had to lift the seat of a toilet or push a mop around a tiled oor. She didn’t know where the vacuum cleaner was kept or where to nd a bottle of bleach. But she has lived alone for ve years now and cleaned her own lthy house and she’s forgotten about the weird intimacy of cleaners, forgotten that, actually, she never really liked it.
Dexter arrives an hour and a half later in a Ganni T-shirt that Jane is sure used to belong to her. His hair is tucked under a baseball cap, and he is wearing oversized Dior tortoiseshell sunglasses that Jane is also fairly certain used to be hers.
“You look gorgeous, sweetheart,” says Jane, ushering him into the cool of the town house. “How are you?”
He has a gleam of sweat on his forehead and wipes at it with the back of his hand. “It’s bloody roasting out there,” he exclaims, dropping a scruy canvas bag on the back of the sofa and kicking o a pair of dirty Crocs. “What’s going on with this weather?”
“It’s going to be sixty degrees and raining next week,” says Jane. “Make the most of it!”
Jane pours him a tall glass of cold water, and they sit for a moment in the shade of the living room, where the shutters are closed against the sun. “Haven’t been here for ages,” says Dexter, his eyes trailing around the place.
“You haven’t?”
“No,” he replies. “When Dad’s in town we tend to meet up my way for dinner. He never invites me here. I forgot how nice it was.”
“How often do you see him? Your dad?”
“Once or twice a year, I suppose. Maybe three times? Not much. And always kind of quick.”
“Oh.” Jane blinks. She’s long entertained fantasies about the rich lives her lost families have lived in her absence, not rushed suppers à deux in Belsize Park dineries. Dexter’s sister, Romy, is at university in Leeds, so it’s only Dexter left stranded here in London. “That makes me sad.”
“It’s ne.” Dexter smiles tightly. “I’m a big boy. And I’ve got you.” He leans toward Jane and squeezes her kneecap.
“You have,” says Jane. “One hundred percent.”
“Well, maybe twenty percent, after Brian, Bluto, Reggie, and Beamish.”
Jane laughs wryly. “Well, yes, maybe… But I’m so looking forward to the big get-together next weekend. It will be great for you to catch up with the others.”
“I was always in awe of your other stepchildren. They were so cool. With their posh names and ponies and country houses.”
“Ponies and country houses don’t mean anything,” says Jane. “I should know that. But in spite of it all, they’ve turned into lovely, levelheaded adults. Do you want something to eat, by the way? I have crisps and stu.”
As she lays out a selection of snacks, Dexter asks her about her investigation.
Jane tells him about nding the hoodie, going to the school in Islington, the student movie starring Jessamine Black, her third visit to the house in the Vale of Health, and another frosty doorstep interaction with creepy Stuart Tucker.
Dexter nods enthusiastically as Jane talks. “Wow,” he says. “Sounds like you’re really getting somewhere.”
Jane sighs. “Well, no, not really. Precisely nowhere in fact. So far I have a young woman called—possibly—something beginning with D, who lives— possibly—with her mother, Jessamine, and stepfather, Stuart. She—possibly— took the family dog, absconded to the countryside and made herself at home in an Airbnb paid for in cash, and then somehow—possibly—got entirely lost while walking the dog. The police seem to have stopped looking for her, and as far as I know they haven’t followed up with the man in the Vale of Health even
though the vet gave them his details.”
“So, what next?”
Jane blows out her breath. “Good question. Any ideas?”
“Don’t you know people? Like, you know, Dad’s people?”
“Well, yes,” Jane replies, thinking of the man Tony had once paid to keep him safe, both personally and professionally, a man called Tobias who had access to high-security corners of the internet, to police records, to people with information. She’d used that very man earlier in the year when she was trying to identify the marriage scammer, but this is dierent. She’s not looking for a crook this time; she’s looking for a young woman who may or may not be a runaway.
It’s all just feelings and ideas, there’s nothing substantial enough for Jane to throw at a third party and say: Here, check this for me, get me stu. “I’m not sure it’s appropriate to use him here,” she says. “I think this is down to us. Well, me.”
“No! Us!” Dexter replies. “Denitely. But we need to nd out more about Jessamine and Stuart. About Rose White, Black, whoever. We could always, maybe, ask their neighbors?”
“We could,” says Jane, sitting up a little straighter. “Yes, we actually could.
But we’d have to be careful. I wouldn’t want it getting back to Stuart. I mean,” she says thoughtfully, “if there is someone in peril in this situation, we really do need to tread carefully.”
Dexter nods. “I could pretend to be an old friend, maybe? Like, the girl and I used to go to school together? And lost touch?”
“Yes!” Jane claps her hands. “That could work. Though we still don’t know what her real name is. I’ve been thinking, you know—White/Black—maybe she’s swapped the rst name for something similar too? Maybe a oral thing, to go with Rose? It might be, I don’t know… Dahlia? Or Daodil? Or…” She runs
out of ideas.
“Daisy?” Dexter suggests.
Jane nods. “Yes,” she says brightly. “Maybe. Let’s just assume that it is something owery and take it from there.”
They start at the farthest end of the terrace that leads toward Stuart Tucker’s house. Here there are three small stucco-fronted cottages in a row, each one a dierent shade of cream. It’s four o’clock and Jane hopes they’re in time to catch people at home after the school run or maybe working from home. Nobody comes to the door of the rst house. At the second house an au pair or nanny opens the door. She has an accent and no idea about the neighbors. She tells them her boss will be home at six, but that her boss has lived in their house for only a year.
At the third cottage, a middle-aged man answers the door. He is handsome and stylish in a T-shirt and shorts, horn-rimmed glasses, and a deep suntan. He looks at Jane and Dexter curiously. “Yes?”
Dexter begins: “Sorry to bother you, but I used to have a friend who lived down here. About my age. I’m not sure which house she lived in, I can’t quite remember. But we were both at Waterside Academy. She lived somewhere up there with her mum, Jessamine.”
“Hold on,” says the man. He turns slightly and looks over his shoulder. Then he calls out, “George?”
There is no response from behind him and the man calls out again. “George?
Can you come here a minute?”
“What?” a disembodied male voice calls back.
The man sighs. “Just… come.”
Jane hears a loud groan and then a second later a beautiful boy appears.
Stupidly tall—why are young men all so tall these days?—with black eyes peering out from beneath a dark blond fringe.
“These people are asking about Daisy Black.”
Jane’s heart jumps in her chest and she resists the urge to share a triumphant smile with Dexter.
The boy’s face brightens, and he nods. “Oh. Yeah. Daisy! I know Daisy. She’s like”—the boy points to the left with one long nger—“down there. In the end
house.”
“Is she there now, do you think?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I think so. But like, yeah, I also haven’t seen her for a
while.”
“Did you used to see her?”
“Well, yeah, like every day. We went to the same primary school. She was in the year below me. And then we went to dierent schools after that. Didn’t see her as much, but we still hung out sometimes. We played Fortnite together. But yeah, now you say it, it’s been a while. I haven’t really seen her since lockdown. I think she might even have moved out?”
“Oh,” says Dexter, feigning disappointment.
“You could ask the guy who lives there. He might know?”
“Yeah. Right. I’ll try that. What’s his name?”
“Stuart? I think? He’s kind of like her stepdad? Or something. I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, he was, like, her primary carer. The mum was…” He squints and pulls at the back of his neck, awkwardly. “I don’t know really. Not
around?”
“Is she still alive? Her mother?”
The man and the boy exchange a look, and the man sighs. “Who knows?
That family”—the man shifts his glasses a little up the bridge of his nose—“was always a little strange. There were… rumors.”
The boy shifts awkwardly from one huge, socked foot to the other.
Dexter says, “I do remember her saying that things at home were dicult.”
“Well, I don’t know the ins and outs of it,” the man continues. “You want to stay clear of things like that, in a community like this. So close-knit, everyone cheek by jowl. You can go mad knowing everyone’s business. But one thing I do know is that that house is not somewhere I’d want to spend any time, and those people are not people I’d want as friends.”
“The parents?” Jane asks.
The man nods. “Well, her mother, mainly. I don’t remember ever seeing her father.”
The boy called George interjects. “Daisy liked that guy though—Stuart. I think he was the only one who really took care of her? I think they were quite close.”
Jane absorbs this unexpected observation. She had assumed that Stuart was the bad guy in relation to Daisy, the reason for her running away from home.
But maybe it wasn’t that simple?
George continues. “We saw the police there a few years ago. During the rst lockdown. They were there for, like, a long time. And I don’t know what it was.
Daisy wouldn’t say. But, like, it felt really bad. The whole atmosphere. You know? And Daisy was—yeah, when I think about it now—she was like really dierent after that. Not as friendly?” George turns to Dexter. “How do you know her?” he asks.
“Oh,” Dexter replies. “We went to school together too. Waterside Academy?”
“Oh yeah. I remember. She was there till… I dunno—year eight or nine?”
“Yes.” Dexter nods. “And then she…”
“Left. Just after lockdown ended.”
Dexter nods. “That’s right. I remember that. And that’s when we lost touch.”
The boy nods too.
“Any idea,” Dexter begins, “where she might have gone? Did she know anyone? Outside London?”
“No idea,” says the boy. “We didn’t really talk about things like that. We didn’t really talk about anything. Just played games. Chatted shit. But I mean, she was your friend. She must have said stu to you, right?”
Jane gulps. Good question. But Dexter doesn’t break his stride.
“She said some stu, but yeah, she wasn’t very open about things. I could sense it, you know, that things weren’t right at home. That she wasn’t happy.”
“That’s for sure,” says the boy.
“I think,” says the man, “that your friend Daisy has done exactly the best thing she could have done and gotten the hell out of that house.”
