‘She wanted to know about Selena’s parents. The police have her mum’s address but they wanted to speak to her dad too.’
My chest feels even tighter when I think of Uncle Owen. ‘They were estranged.’ There’s so much I haven’t told him. About Selena’s eighteenth-birthday party and her lies.
‘They’ve found her mum but still can’t get hold of the dad.’
‘Mum might know. She kept in touch with him.’
I take out my phone and scroll to the photo I took earlier in the library. I show it to Adrian. ‘Nancy mentioned something so I looked it up,’ I say. He takes the phone and reads.
‘Blimey,’ he says, when he’s finished, handing me the phone. ‘That’s tragic.’
I put the phone back in my pocket. I’m still wearing my coat. I inhale deeply and rub my chest. Adrian notices. ‘Are you all right? Is it your asthma?’
‘My inhaler’s run out. I have another here.’ I get up and fumble around in my top drawer. It’s usually tucked down the side of my underwear. I rummage around, relieved when I find it. And that’s when I see the note. It’s small and folded into four. I pick it up, puzzled, and unfold it. For a second I wonder if it’s a little love note from Adrian. We used to leave them for each other all over the house when we were first living together. Adrian would write me poems, sometimes funny, sometimes romantic. Even if we only reminded each other to get milk we’d declare how much we loved each other at the end, signing off with hearts and kisses and nicknames, But that faded away after we had the children, and now our notes have turned to perfunctory texts.
My heart feels like it’s being squeezed when I see the note isn’t addressed to me but to Selena.
26
I scan the words. The writing is messy and it ends abruptly with no name at the bottom.
Selena,I read.Talk to me. I can’t bear not knowing where I stand with you. You promised me. I know too much, remember? I know about your dad.
‘Adrian!’
He turns in alarm, his mouth open. ‘What? What is it?’ He stands up and hurries over to me, knocking his hip against the bed frame.
I thrust the note at his chest. ‘Read this.’
He takes it from me, confusion flitting across his face. ‘What is it?’
‘It was in my drawer.’
He hands it back to me. ‘Who do you think it’s from?’
I glance at him. Could it be from him and he’d hidden it, forgetting about it because of what happened to Selena? I can’t tell if the writing is his.
‘I – I don’t know.’ I frown as it suddenly dawns on me. ‘Why is it in my underwear drawer?’ Did Selena put it there? But why? ‘We’re going to have to give it to Rachel.’
‘Yep.’
‘I know too muchsounds threatening, doesn’t it?’
Adrian moves away from me and back to his desk. ‘We don’t know anything.’
I sink on to the bed, overcome with a mixture of sadness and anger. Could it be from Dean? But, if so, how did it find its way into my bedroom? The only person who’s here during the day is Adrian. ‘Why couldn’t Selena have been honest for once in her fucking life?’ I cry, surprising myself and startling Adrian. ‘We could have helped her.’
He sighs and swivels his chair round to face me. ‘She sounds like she was a complex person. I got the impression that she was lonely.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘Then tell me,’ he says gently.
So I do. It’s a relief to speak the words I’ve kept to myself for so many years, and they tumble out on top of each other. I can see that Adrian is trying to keep up with my garbled account of what happened on her eighteenth. When I’ve finished he doesn’t say anything, just looks at me with those big brown eyes.
Eventually he says, ‘You didn’t believe her when she said her dad was abusing her?’
I stand up. I pull the curtains open and look out over the garden. The sun is low in the sky, highlighting the brown leaves scattered across the lawn, and the bare trees looking on, almost forlornly. The hills and mountains look bleak and threatening. My back is to him when I say, ‘She was always making up stuff. She was drunk. I thought she wanted to hurt me because she knew how much I loved Uncle Owen.’
