‘You’ve seen Alice?’ said Evi, stepping back because the other woman was so close it seemed impossible not to. ‘Look, Tom is missing, we have to get people looking.’
‘Evi, calm down, they are. Listen to me.’
Evi made herself look at Jenny, at her calm hazel eyes. Something about the other woman’s composure seemed catching. Evi’s breathing began to feel more under control.
‘A group of us bumped into Alice in the lane just now,’ said Jenny, speaking slowly, as though she were the psychiatrist and Evi the hysterical patient. ‘Me, Dad, Mike, one of Mike’s men. They’ve all gone to help her look. Tom can’t have gone far.’ She stopped speaking and ran a hand through her long, blonde hair. It was loose, sprinkled with snowflakes, damp around the crown. ‘Especially if he’s gone with Heather,’ she went on. ‘She hasn’t the energy to go any distance. And the police will be here any second.’
Thank God. What did she have to do now? Check on Millie. Evi turned to the stairs, took two steps forwards and grasped hold of the banister. Behind her, Jenny pushed the front door shut.
‘Heather?’ repeated Evi, turning back as Jenny’s words finally sank in. Heather – pronounced by a two-year-old – Ebba. ‘The girl who took Tom,’ she went on. ‘Her name is Heather? You know who she is?’
Harry pressed himself against the door of the hut and watched as Gareth began pulling on the rope. At first nothing happened, then the length of board the two men had been hammering through started to judder. Another tug from Gareth and then the entire floor, apart from a twelve-inch strip around the edge, started to lift up. It was a huge square trapdoor, hinged near the far wall. Once it started moving it came up easily and within seconds Gareth had raised it until it fell with a dull thud against the rear wall.
Harry stepped forward on to the rough stone of the original hut floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Gareth tying the rope and then moving round to join him. Suddenly nervous of the chasm at his feet, Harry dropped to his knees and moved forward on all fours.
A smell that made him think of churches long since abandoned rose up from beneath the ground. He’d expected the bore hole – if indeed they found one – to be perfectly circular. This one had been crudely dug and looked unfinished, the stones around its edge roughly cut and angular. He could see two, maybe three feet down into the hole. After that lay a blackness so solid he could almost have stepped out on to it. By this time, Gareth was kneeling at his side.
‘Pass me the light,’ said Harry, still not taking his eyes off the well. Gareth didn’t move. ‘I need the light, mate,’ Harry tried again. ‘I can’t reach it.’ He prodded the other man on the arm and pointed to where the torch lay on the ground. Like a man moving in his sleep, Gareth turned, reached out and then handed the light to Harry.
Despite the cold, Harry’s hands were damp with sweat. He gripped the torch and moved forwards until he could lean over the edge. The beam seemed to fall like a rock, plummeting away from him into the depths of the earth. Harry saw stonework, roughly held together with crumbling mortar, and could just about make out the clinging slime of some form of vegetation that could exist without light. He thought he might even be able to see water, many feet below. But the only thing he could be sure about was the one thing he couldn’t take his eyes off: the rusting chain, hammered into the wall nearly two feet below the edge and disappearing further than the torch beam could reach.
He glanced round and knew that Gareth had seen it too. Speaking seemed like a ridiculous waste of time and energy. Harry made his way round the well until he could lie down flat and reach the chain.
Jenny was standing just inside the front door. The street lamp outside shone through the coloured hall window, turning her hair a strange shade of purple. Her face, though, was as white as the snow outside. ‘Of course I know who she is,’ she said sadly. ‘We lived in the same house for nearly ten years. She’s my niece.’
For a second Evi thought she might have misheard. ‘Your niece?’ she repeated.
Jenny nodded and seemed to pull herself together. ‘Christiana’s daughter,’ she said. ‘Shall we go up? Alice did make a point of saying we should check on Millie.’
Evi could only stare. She and Harry had talked about isolated farmhouses, cottages way up high on the moor, yet the girl had been living round the corner all this time, right in the heart of the town.
‘Her condition, it’s congenital hypothyroidism, isn’t it?’ she said.
Jenny took a step closer. ‘A direct result of the soil up here,’ she said. ‘It’s been the plague of our family for donkey’s years. If we’d just buy some of our food at Asda it wouldn’t happen.’ She’d reached Evi at the foot of the stairs.
‘But the condition can be treated now,’ said Evi, taking a small step to the side and planting herself firmly in the other woman’s path. ‘It’s picked up on antenatal scans and the baby can be given medication. It’s practically been eradicated.’
Jenny sighed. ‘And yet we have a fine specimen right on our doorstep. I really should check on Millie, you know. Can I get past?’
‘How did it happen?’ asked Evi, not sure why finding out as much as she could about the girl was important, only knowing that it was. ‘Did Christiana refuse treatment?’
‘Christiana was never offered treatment,’ said Jenny. ‘She spent her entire pregnancy shut up in the house and she gave birth with a local midwife who was paid a lot of money to keep her mouth shut. The birth was never registered.’ Her eyes moved upwards to a spot on the landing. Evi resisted the temptation to turn round.
‘How many people know about her?’ asked Evi, hardly able to believe that no one had mentioned the existence of Heather to the Fletchers, especially after Tom had started seeing his strange little girl.
‘Relatively few, I think,’ replied Jenny. ‘Even Mike has no idea she exists, not that he’s the sharpest knife in the box.’
Somehow, Evi had taken a step backwards. She was on the bottom step and was shaking her head. ‘How can that be possible?’ she said.
‘Oh, Evi, you’d be amazed what you can do if you own a town,’ said Jenny, her hand reaching out to the banister. She put it down, inches away from Evi’s. ‘She’s not allowed to leave the house, of course. Christiana spends most of the day with her, reading to her, playing simple games. Christy has endless patience, but if she needs a break, Heather watches CBeebies.’
‘She’s kept in the house all day?’
Jenny nodded. ‘None of the staff ever go upstairs,’ she said. ‘Christiana looks after the upper floors. When everyone has gone home, Heather gets to play in the garden,’ she went on. ‘To be honest, I think one or two people do know about her – as she got older, she got pretty good at sneaking out at night, even in the day sometimes. She’s clearly taken a fancy to Alice and Gareth’s children. But people keep quiet, they don’t want to get on the wrong side of Dad.’
Something was tightening inside Evi’s chest, something that went beyond concern for the Fletcher children. A young girl had been kept a prisoner her whole life – a prisoner inside an unnecessarily damaged body, as well as in her own home. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why on earth would your family break the law in that way?’
Jenny blinked her clear hazel eyes twice. ‘You’re the psychiatrist, Evi,’ she said. ‘Have a guess.’
Ebba unlocked the door at the back of the gallery and began to climb the short, spiral staircase. The wind caught at her hair, spinning it up and around her head like a flag. Tom stopped. It would be madness to go up.
Tommy, please come.
Before he had time to think what to do, Ebba had grasped hold of his hand and was pulling him on to the roof. She dropped to her hands and knees and he did the same. Snow squeaked beneath him as the wind rushed inside his sweatshirt. Ebba was crawling along the edge of the roof, in a sort of lead-lined guttering. To her left, the roof sloped gently upwards; to her right was a four-inch stone edging that wasn’t nearly high enough to offer any sort of barrier if she slipped. Was he expected to go too? He was, because she was looking back, waiting for him. Oh shit.