Forget Me Not Page 15

  They looked disappointed. As did the police. Constable King arrived and sat opposite me at my kitchen table, barely touching the coffee I’d made for her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered. ‘She didn’t give me much choice and I was just so frustrated by it all. If anyone else had been hurt, I’d never have forgiven myself.’

  Constable King was as pleasant as she could be about it, I suppose.

  ‘The difficulty now is that our investigation lines have been rammed with calls from people wondering if they’re at risk, or what measures they should take, or just trying to find out all the insider information. The team is flat out trying to sift through all that.’ She rubbed her neck, the tension obvious in her face. ‘We fear the attention might make the killer bolder. They might thrive on it, take risks.’

  I felt wretched. Had I inadvertently made things worse?

  ‘They’re very clever,’ Constable King continued. ‘They’ve left us no clues. We still haven’t been able to locate Clare Taylor’s phone or laptop, and nothing of use showed up on the records from her phone company.’

  ‘I’ve done this all wrong,’ I said and I could feel my composure slip.

  I was just a stupid old woman. It wasn’t the first time I’d been called that, but it was the first time I truly believed it.

  ‘You’ve been manipulated by a very clever journalist,’ Constable King soothed. ‘Try not to feel bad about it.’

  Her facial expression didn’t match the comforting nature of her words, however. She was clearly annoyed. DI Bradley was probably fuming.

  I was angry with myself. I never seemed to be able to do anything right any more. I deserved everything my life had become.

  ‘So, where do we go from here?’ I asked, hoping she wouldn’t suggest I leave the house.

  I wanted to cling to it even more now. It felt like the only constant in a world that wasn’t making much sense.

  She took a breath and told me patrols would be increased further. Police would look into fitting panic alarms to the house and I’d be given a panic mobile phone for when outside the house.

  ‘I know this must sound scary, Elizabeth, but we’d rather be overly cautious than sorry. Normally, these measures are reserved for when a direct threat has been made to someone’s life. I want to stress, we don’t feel this is the case for you, but given that the suspect still hasn’t been identified and is therefore still at large, we don’t want to take any chances. Extra resources are being drafted in to work on this investigation. I want you to understand that we’re doing everything within our power to get this person apprehended. We’d ask, again, if there’s someone you could stay with or who could come and stay with you? Being here must feel quite isolated at times.’

  ‘It never has before,’ I said, and it was true.

  I was able to cope with the isolation before – I’d spent too many years caught up in noise and trauma and constant activity. I didn’t know if I could take it any more. I cursed Paddy for being dead. Laura for leaving me. Aaron, too, for running away and not working through his grief properly here.

  ‘Okay,’ Constable King nodded. ‘Now, Elizabeth, you’re aware that it seems to be the opinion of Ms Devlin that there’s a direct link between this murder and your daughter. What do you think?’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t see how that could be the case,’ I said. ‘And I told Ingrid as much. I think it’s just some twisted coincidence. Laura was never friends with Clare.’

  ‘Can you give me any names of any of Laura’s friends from school who’d have any information about the girls from back then?’

  ‘I don’t see how it’s relevant,’ I bristled. ‘It was more than twenty years ago. They left school in the mid-Nineties. Built their lives.’

  ‘Mrs O’Loughlin, the notes the other ladies received seemed to make reference to their schooldays. I know this is difficult for you, but any information, any names you can give us, may really help to close the net on who did this.’

  I didn’t want to tell Constable King. It felt wrong. It felt as though I was betraying Laura. It felt as if I was telling the world she was anything less than perfect and worthy of love, which was nonsense. She’d always been perfect to me. She’d always been worthy of love. She’d been the sunshine in my life.

  ‘I can’t tell you the names of her school friends,’ I said, my heart cracking a little. ‘Because she didn’t have any.’

  A couple of friends had come and gone, but Laura had struggled to maintain friendships. She’d tell me that people would like her for a few months but then grow bored. She wasn’t cool enough. She didn’t have the same interests. She preferred to stay at home on the farm. She didn’t wear her hair in a perm, or follow Bros or Take That or any of the bands her classmates did.

  I reassured her as often as I could that it was okay to be her own person. That I was exceptionally proud of her for being so steady in her beliefs, in walking her own path. But I knew she was lonely at times. I thought things would get better – in that way mothers do. I thought she needed some time to settle in. To find her tribe. There was bound to be someone she could bond with …

  Every time she brought a friend home it was almost as if we welcomed the prodigal son to the house. I made sure we had the best spread in for tea. I knew I was stupid playing a game to fit in when Laura had been happy enough to be her own person, but I didn’t want to give any of them even half a chance to cast aspersions about her.

  We had branded treats – Coca-Cola, Tayto crisps, McVitie’s biscuits – even though times were tough and we normally stayed with supermarket own-brand goods or value-pack treats. I’d hire movies from the video shop, make big bowls of popcorn. I’d encourage them to listen to music as loudly as they wanted, but every time I heard some pop tune I knew that Laura didn’t like blast through the house my heart would sink.

  Every now and again she’d try to fit in. She’d mould herself. And although I’d always been proud of her individuality, a part of me hoped that these changes would make the difference.

  After a while she stopped bringing people home for tea. When I asked her about friends, she’d tell me that she had a few people she chatted to in class and at breaktime. She’d smile and then we’d go back to talking about our usual subjects. She seemed content.

  It was only when my friend at work took me aside one day to ask if Laura was okay that I realised I’d been kidding myself all along. Even as I smiled and said my daughter was happy and settled with friends, I knew it didn’t ring true.

  ‘It’s just my Fiona says she wanders around the hockey pitch alone at breaktime. In all weathers. She looks a bit lost.’

  Of course ‘her Fiona’ didn’t think to reach out a hand of friendship.

  When I asked Laura about it, her face had burned red. Tears pooled in her eyes and then she’d stomped off defiantly, shouting that it was none of my business and I should ‘just keep my bloody nose out of things’.

  I wanted to go to the school – see what they could do to help her – but she’d refused to allow me. ‘I don’t want people being friends with me out of pity,’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m happy enough on my own.’

  She’d smiled so brightly when she’d said it that I’d believed her. I liked my own company; it stood to good reason that my daughter would, too. And there was always someone to talk to in the farmhouse, so it wasn’t like she was totally isolated. She’d smile and tell me that as she helped me cook the dinner. It was only after she died that I came to realise that Laura had been incredibly good at faking smiles.

  Tuesday, 12 June

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Rachel

  In three weeks it would be the end of term. If they hadn’t been caught by then we’d all move to Belfast until they were, or rent a house in Donegal, or do something to get away from the oppressive nature of what was our home.

  But going away would mean leaving Michael. It would mean spending more time with Paul and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel
about that. I could barely look at Paul, let alone try to play happy families in front of the girls for intense periods of time.

  The girls.

  I was trying my best to protect them, but it wasn’t enough.

  Beth jumped every time a car drove past or there was a knock on the door. Molly, although not quite aware of what was going on, sensed something was very wrong in her universe, and had become increasingly clingy and tearful as the day had gone on. For the first time in over a year she’d wet herself during the night and sobbed into her daddy’s chest while I stripped her sodden bed sheets and put them in the washing machine.

  ‘I want to sleep with you,’ she’d sobbed as I told her I’d fixed her bed and put her favourite My Little Pony blanket on it.

  I was too tired to argue, so I lay down beside her and stroked her hair until her eyes fluttered and she drifted back off to sleep.

  ‘This isn’t good for them,’ Paul said.

  A part of me wanted to bite back that of course it wasn’t good for them. It wasn’t good for any of us. I couldn’t switch my brain off, not even for five minutes. No matter how heavy my eyes felt. Everything just ran over and over through my head.

  Laura O’Loughlin – it was a name that didn’t mean much to me. Had she been the girl who’d spent every lunchtime reading Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters and hadn’t been interested in reading Just 17 or More magazine? A little odd in her demeanour.

  Not like us.

  Was that her?

  At around 3 a.m., I got up and slipped downstairs. At least it was a little cooler there. I sat and watched as the first strobes of light started to break through the night sky then I made myself a coffee and pulled out a dusty cardboard box from the cupboard under the stairs. It had been a long time since I’d looked in it, but I knew exactly what it contained. Photo albums, everything from my teenage years until my late twenties when digital cameras took over. Yearbooks from school. I knew exactly which album I was looking for – one that had two Forever Friends teddy bears on the front – and I pulled it out before sitting back on the sofa. The memories contained in those pages – they’d been such innocent times.

  I flicked through the album. Bad haircuts, unkempt eyebrows, teenage skin and thickly applied make-up. The three of us pulling poses and laughing at the camera, together, individually, in pairs. At birthday parties, or on the beach, at concerts. Dressed up for Halloween. Pictures from school – faded now. The colours muted as if they’d always been that way. Slightly out of focus. Just like my memories of that time.

  A group of our classmates, pulling poses and grinning outside the school canteen. Set on hills that rolled down to the River Foyle, our school site – now closed, just a collection of decaying buildings and overgrown grass. On warm days – days just like the day that was dawning – the all-girl school population would lay our coats down on the grass banks then sit and soak in the sun at lunchtime. Hundreds of milk bottle-white legs, our regulation grey socks pushed down to our ankles trying to catch a bit of colour. Girls rubbing cooking oil into their white skin in the hope of getting a tan, long before SPFs were thought of.

  Innocent times. There were pictures of us making daisy chains. Heads bowed in concentration. Pictures of us messing about in the science lab – an old, dark room with high ceilings and a permanent musty smell. No doubt we should never have been messing around in there or taking pictures. But it was harmless, our harmless rebellion.

  I looked at the picture closely, at Clare’s smile. The braces on her teeth still evident then. She only really bloomed into herself when they were gone. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, her skin shiny. She was so young. We all were.

  It was only then I saw another face, at the bench behind. Long hair, greasy strands, hanging around her face. No silly smile. No friends posing beside her, just a head bent forwards. Doing her best to avoid eye contact with the camera and the person behind it. There was a paleness and a sadness there; or maybe the lack of sleep was causing my brain to play tricks on me.

  I blinked and I swore, even though I knew it was impossible, I saw her lift her head and stare directly at the camera, directly at me, with such hurt in her eyes that I wanted to look away but couldn’t.

  It was the flash of a memory, maybe. I was the person who’d taken the picture after all, back then. It pinched at me. Her face. That expression. In the background of my schooldays. I’d paid no notice then. Had looked away. Had continued in my selfish teenage bubble.

  I flicked through more photos and again and again I saw that lonely figure in the background. The person not laughing. The person not posing. The person we were happy to ignore, but not out of badness. The person looking at me occasionally in those pictures with something akin to sadness on her face – or was it disgust?

  Laura O’Loughlin. Seeing her face, I remembered her in a way I hadn’t at the mention of her name. I felt my stomach sink. I recognised her. Remembered her. Remembered the things we’d said and done. Or hadn’t said or done. We’d been so silly then. Immature. Bitchy at times, but no more than other teenage girls.

  I blushed at the memory of it now. Ashamed. I remembered Clare snatching Laura’s beloved book from her, mocking her by reading the passages out in an exaggerated posh voice. Everyone had laughed. Even Laura had cracked a smile. Hadn’t she?

  She’d been less happy when Clare had declared the book rubbish and threw it in the bin. But Clare hadn’t damaged it. Laura had been able to retrieve it just fine. She’d stuffed it into the bottom of her bag and laughed along. I remembered that, sitting in my living room that morning. I remembered her laugh and I remembered that I’d thought it was a bit cruel of Clare. Out of character for her, too. I remembered that I wanted to say something to her about it, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember if I had.

  Jane Eyre … that was the book. I think. Or Wuthering Heights, maybe. Something suitably gothic and brooding. No Judy Blume or battered copy of Flowers in the Attic.

  I don’t think I’d given her a second thought in years. I probably hadn’t given her much thought while at school, but now our lives were linked. Our fates linked too, maybe.

  I lifted my phone and typed her name into Facebook; even though she was dead, I wondered would her Facebook account, if she had one, still be there? Maybe I’d see her as she looked now, maybe it would ring some more bells. I scrolled through a number of accounts until I found a Laura O’Neill from Derry.

  Her profile picture was of two children, a boy and girl, dressed in school uniform and smiling at the camera. It was the same school uniform that Beth had worn when she was at primary school. The same that Molly would wear the following year. Was it possible I’d seen Laura at the school gates when Beth was still a pupil there? I tried to count backwards, guess the age of her children.

  If I had seen her at the school, I hadn’t paid attention. I was fairly sure we hadn’t spoken. Or if we had, it had been small talk, the way anyone would talk to a stranger.

  I clicked into the profile, dormant since 2016. There wasn’t much to see, except that it appeared that she’d sent me a friend request, to which I still hadn’t responded. I didn’t even remember seeing it. But there it was, with an option to accept it, or not.

  My finger hovered over the button. It would be wrong to accept now. What good would it do? But would I see more of her profile? Get more of an idea of who she’d been?

  I shivered. I didn’t want to dig deeper, so I closed the Facebook app and slipped the photo album into my bag. What I’d do with it, I didn’t know. But there was a part of me thinking of the look on her face when Clare had tossed her book into the bin. There was a part of me that wondered whether I’d sensed her vulnerability then, or had the knowledge of what had happened since coloured my faded memories? Was there more in our past that I’d filed away to the deep recesses of my brain? Was I an unknowing guilty party in whatever had driven Laura to take her own life all these years later?

  It seemed absurd, and yet the pol
ice believed there was a link between us all now. That whatever had happened to Laura may well be linked to what had happened to Clare. Where did that leave Julie and me?

  I was still on edge when I woke the girls; caffeine was surging through my veins to try to keep me focused on what I needed to do. We’d decided they still needed to go about their daily routine but that Paul would drop Beth at school and I’d pick her up. We wouldn’t leave her to walk on her own.

  Beth had rebelled against it, of course. I couldn’t blame her, but I didn’t want her to be home when the police came to fit the panic alarms. If I could get just one more day of normality out of this madness, I would.

  I’d leave Molly at daycare. She’d be safe there. Distracted. Keeping things as normal as possible for her was key. I’d hung her washed sheets out on the line first thing, tried to reassure myself that her accident was just one of those things and didn’t mean she was being damaged by the atmosphere that hung all around us.

  Paul had agreed to cut his hours in Belfast. Only be there when necessary. I’d have preferred it if he’d worked at home, but he said he couldn’t let his clients down. He wouldn’t be drawn further on it.

  But at least if he was away for a few hours I might get a chance to see Michael. I hadn’t been able to get him out of my head since we’d last seen each other. His plea for me to run away with him. Maybe if he wanted the girls to come too, we could?

  My head hurt. I took a couple of paracetamol. I knew this was a flight of fancy – even to think I could run away to be with him – but it provided some comfort.

  I was making the breakfast, plastering on my biggest, fakest smile, when my phone rang. The number was listed as private and my heart hammered as I answered. What if it was Clare’s killer? They knew where I lived, who was to say they wouldn’t get my phone number?

  I was relieved, at first, to hear Constable King’s voice on the line. The familiarity of it soothed me.