The Girl Who Came Back

  The Girl Who Came Back

  A totally gripping psychological thriller with a twist you won’t see coming

  Kerry Wilkinson

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Search For Missing Girl Continues

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  2008: Lily, 11

  2009: Lily, 12

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  2010: Lily, 13

  2011: Lily, 14

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  2012: Lily, 15

  2013: Lily, 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  2014: Lily, 17

  2015: Lily, 18

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  2016: Lily, 19

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  2016: Lily, 19

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  2016: Lily, 19

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  2016: Lily, 19

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Two Sisters

  Also by Kerry Wilkinson

  EMAIL SIGN UP

  A Letter from Kerry

  The Killer Inside

  Vigilante

  The Woman in Black

  Think of the Children

  Playing with Fire

  The Missing Dead

  Behind Closed Doors

  One

  Tuesday

  My mother doesn’t recognise me.

  She’s on the other side of the café, almost hidden behind her MacBook. She sips her cappuccino, then puts it down and frowns at the screen as if whatever she’s looking at is in a foreign language. Her eyes narrow and her nose twitches, then she sucks in her right cheek but not the left. I wonder if I do that when I’m concentrating. It’s a long, long time since we saw one another and there’s that whole nature-nurture thing.

  How much of her is me?

  I’m trying to think of the best thing I could say to her when she looks up from the computer, catching my eye before I can turn away. She smiles in the way people do when they realise they’re being watched. Lips together, only the merest of upturn and then she focuses back on her laptop. She’ll give it a couple of seconds and then check on me once more, making sure I’m not some maniac stalker.

  There’s no recognition there.

  The waitress chooses that moment to drift by, picking up my empty teacup and saucer. She’s somewhere around my age – late-teens or early twenties, slim with long red hair, freckles and an apron tied tightly around her.

  ‘Would you like anything else?’ she asks.

  She sounds perfectly polite but has that passive-aggressive ‘paying customers’ vibe about her. It’s not as if the café is busy. There’s only my mother, me and a gossipy part mothers’ meeting, part crèche at the back by the door to the toilets.

  I ask her about the teas they have and then settle on an Earl Grey. She’s about to turn back to the counter when I point towards my mother.

  ‘Can you tell me who that is?’ I ask.

  The server turns between us. ‘That’s Sarah.’

  ‘She’s the boss…?’

  ‘Right. If you’re after a job or something, I can get you a form…?’

  ‘No, I was curious. That’s all.’

  She gives me a glance as if to say ‘weirdo’ without actually saying it, then she disappears back behind the counter with my empty cup. I quite like the level of disdain she manages to conceal under a mask of politeness. Takes a blagger to know a blagger, I reckon.

  I wonder what my mother is working on. Perhaps the accounts for this place, or a new version of the menu? I watch her in a not watching her kind of way. She never leaves my peripheral vision as I look through the large window at the front of the café towards the street. There are a couple of empty tables out there and someone walking their dog.

  The espresso machine is made from shiny aluminium, which makes it a pretty good mirror as I manage to keep an eye on her while facing the opposite direction.

  It’s hard to work out whether she looks like me. Her hair is a brighter blonde than mine but it has that almost white shade of bleach. Our noses are similar, slim and narrow, rather than squashed. I’m not sure beyond that. Her taste in clothes is brighter than mine. I went black and have never gone back; she’s in a floaty, summery sunflower yellow dress that would look awful with my pale skin. She either has a fake tan or has been on holiday recently.

  There’s a burbling of liquid from behind the counter and then the waitress reappears with my drink and a smile. The napkins have been printed especially, with a logo that reads ‘Via’s’ in the corner. I fumble through my purse for some pound coins and apologise my way through paying, then go back to watching my mother.

  She’s a two-finger typist, one of each hand, like one of those drinking bird toys that bob back and forth on a pendulum. Not technology-illiterate, more technology-befuddled.

  There’s not much between us – a few metres, a couple of tables – but it feels like an ocean. She doesn’t recognise me now, so what if she never does? Her blank gaze flits across me dismissively and that’s it. I’m a nobody.

  I should leave. Push my way through the door and follow the High Street back to my car. It was wrong to come here. I was wrong to come here.

  When she glances up again, I’m too slow in turning away and there’s a moment in which it feels like we’re locked together. Something squeezes my stomach and there’s a second where I can’t breathe.

  She looks at me and I look at her.

  There is a strange electricity that we both feel, magnets being dragged together.

  She pushes her glasses up from her nose so that they’re resting on top of her head. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks.

  I stand and move around the tables, leaving my untouched tea until I’m standing in front of her. I’ve forgotten how to talk. Like those people in comas who wake up and suddenly know a foreign language but not their own. Even my thoughts are a crumpled, muddied mess, as if they’re in another language, too.

  ‘Are you Sarah Adams?’ I ask. I’ve surprised myself at being able to talk.

  She squints and then lines are engraved into her forehead as she frowns slightly, trying to place me. I’m someone she met at a conference once, a daughter of someone she knows, some customer with whom she’s exchanged words before.

  ‘It’s Sarah Pitman now,’ she replies. ‘Do I know you?’

  I want to say the name but the words are stuck – and then I don’t have to.

  My mother’s eyes widen and she takes a huge gulp of breath. ‘Oh my God,’ she says, ‘It’s you. It’s really you.’

  She blinks and there’s a moment where it feels as if everything has stopped. The infants at the back are no longer babbling, the waitress isn’t clinking cups into the dishwasher, the man walking past the café has frozen in the moment.

  The space-time continuum itself has glitched.

  Then she says it: ‘Olivia.’

  Search For Missing Girl Continues

  24 May 2004

  The hunt for a missing six-year-old Stoneridge gi
rl has entered a third day as police focus on a stretch of woods on the outskirts of the village.

  Olivia Adams was playing in the back garden of her family home when she disappeared a little after four o’clock on Saturday afternoon. The girl, who has long blonde hair, was wearing green shorts with a cream T-shirt featuring a cartoon of a fairy on the front. She was also sporting a red hairband.

  Reports say the girl’s father, Daniel Adams, was watching the FA Cup Final inside the family home when his daughter disappeared.

  Police are looking into reports of a suspicious car left outside the Adams home. A spokesman added that a 27-year-old man was helping them with their inquiries, although he insisted that there had been no breakthrough. The identity of the man is yet to be released.

  Mother Sarah said: ‘We just want our daughter back. If anyone’s seen anything, however insignificant it may seem, please come forward. She’s a friendly child and is used to being around adults. She’s never run off and is often in the garden. We always keep the gate locked.’

  The search for Olivia continued through the night on Saturday and all day Sunday, finishing at sunset. It was due to begin again this morning. The police have been aided by a large group of Stoneridge residents, who have helped comb through the Canvey Estate as well as fields that back onto the busy A622. The search has now moved further out of the village to centre on the western edge of Stoneridge Woods.

  The disappearance of Olivia, a pupil at Stoneridge Primary School, has left the village in shock.

  Georgina Hooper, a teaching assistant who has a daughter the same age as Olivia, said: ‘It’s devastating. This sort of thing doesn’t happen here. Everybody knows everyone else and it’s a proper little community. None of us can believe it. Olivia’s a lovely little girl and I hope she’s found soon.’

  Despite the search party continuing largely uninterrupted for more than twenty-four hours, sources close to the investigation have admitted that authorities are baffled by a lack of clues.

  ‘It’s like she vanished into thin air,’ one observer noted.

  Police have distributed maps of the immediate area and are focusing on a lane that runs along the back of the Adams home. More than a hundred officers have been brought in from neighbouring forces, with a helicopter deployed on Saturday evening to help with the search.

  On the ground, however, morale appeared to be dimming. A woman who did not wish to be named said: ‘Everyone’s acting as if it’s already too late. One of the officers said the first three hours were critical but we’ve gone way beyond that.’

  Ashley Pitman, who owns Pitmans Garage in the village, has been helping out with the search since the beginning and remains hopeful. ‘We’ll find her,’ he said. ‘We’ll keep searching for as long as it takes. Someone, somewhere must know something.’

  A candlelit vigil and service to pray for her safe return is due to take place at Ridge Park at sunset this evening.

  Police are asking for anyone with information to come forward.

  Two

  Mum pushes up out of her seat. She’s a little shorter than me but only by an inch or so. She shuffles around the table, her gaze not leaving me for a moment, then she tugs at the longer parts of my fringe. It’s as if she’s making sure I’m real, not a ghost or a figment of her imagination.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispers.

  She lets go of my hair but then cups my cheek with her hand. It’s warm and her touch is soft. When she realises what she’s doing, she apologises and hugs her arms across her front, like she’s trying to comfort herself.

  ‘You have the same eyes,’ she says, tears in her own. ‘All these years on and they haven’t changed.’

  Of all the things I thought might happen, it wasn’t this. I had a speech planned about being back – and yet none of it has been necessary. She said the name and then she recognised my eyes. Now I’m here, and away from the, I’ll say this and she’ll say that, so I’ll reply with this, it’s obvious how silly all that was. I doubt I could’ve got even half a sentence out, let alone an entire speech.

  ‘I never stopped hoping,’ she says. Her voice is croaky, like that of a lifelong smoker.

  I realise everyone’s watching and the silence I imagined is real. The waitress is holding a dirty cup in mid-air and the mothers have stopped gossiping among themselves. I don’t think they can hear anything that’s been said but the spark from across the room is too obvious to miss.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asks. The number one question, of course. I have a speech for that, too.

  ‘Shall we go somewhere else?’ I reply. They’re the first words I’ve spoken since I asked her name.

  It only takes a glance towards the back of the café for Mum to get the message. She stares at me for a moment more, blinks, and then launches into action. She snaps her MacBook lid shut and then fumbles with a bag that was underneath her seat. The laptop and papers are crammed inside and then she flusters her way back around the table.

  ‘I have to head out, Nattie,’ she says. The waitress still has the empty cup in her hand and it takes a moment for her to realise she’s being spoken to.

  She jumps a little: ‘Oh, um…’

  ‘I’m on the mobile if you need anything.’

  Nattie glances towards me and I wonder if she could hear us after all. She looks towards my table, where the tea sits untouched. She’s far too sensible to say anything even if she did overhear, so she smiles her waitress smile and says it’s not a problem.

  The bell above the door jangles as we head out into what feels like a new world.

  I have a mother and she has me.

  It’s warm, the sun high and the sky blue. Stoneridge has a small High Street of a few dozen shops. There are hardly any chains; no McDonald’s or Starbucks, no tacky yellow arches or weird green and white mermaid thing. It’s all very Britain in Bloom; hanging baskets suspended from shop awnings and perfectly manicured strips of lawn dividing each side of the road. A summer of bunting and street fairs; bell-ringing on Sundays, with a packed house for the carol service every Christmas Eve.

  We walk alongside each other and it’s as if we’re both too scared to say anything. Mum is a little shorter than I thought – she’s wearing low heels that clip-clop across the paving slabs. I’m in flats.

  We pass an Italian restaurant that’s already open, with metal chairs and tables cluttering up the pavement. There’s one bank, then another; a hairdresser, at least three charity shops, a bakery and a WHSmith. There’s a pointy stone obelisk seemingly plonked at random at the end of the strip of grass, separating one side of the road from the other. It’s all very cosy and comfortable.

  ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ Mum says eventually. ‘I suppose… how did you know I was in the café?’

  It’s not the question I expected.

  I’ve almost forgotten. It was only this morning and yet everything’s a muddled mess in my head. ‘I went to the old house and—’

  ‘You went there?’

  ‘I didn’t know it was the old house. I thought you might still live there.’

  Mum slows her pace by half a step. ‘Oh… of course. After your father and I divorced, we—’ She stops herself. ‘Sorry, there must’ve been a better way of telling you. Did you know we were separated?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh…’ She stumbles over her words, starting to explain a couple of times but interrupting herself until she goes quiet again. ‘I have a new husband,’ she says. ‘His name’s Max. We moved to a new place on the other side of the village a couple of years after you, um…’

  I wonder what word she’s thinking of. After I left? Disappeared?

  ‘Do you remember the old house?’ she asks.

  She stops and glances sideways towards me and there’s the sense that she wants me to say yes but I can’t do that. Her eyes narrow and then open wider. She’s not sure what to make of me.

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘I saw the name of the road online an
d it was easy enough to find. A woman opened the door and I asked for you. She said you’d moved out years ago. I thought that you’d moved away completely, another town or city, something like that – but she said you owned a café on the High Street and that you were sometimes there during the afternoons.’

  ‘That’s Janet,’ Mum says, starting to walk again. ‘She’s lived in the village all her life. She bought the house for the asking price when we put it up for sale. Did she recognise you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. That was this morning. I poked my head into the café then but you weren’t around, so I tried again at lunch, then again now. The waitress probably thought I was casing the joint.’

  Mum laughs. ‘Nattie’s your age,’ she says. ‘You were in the same class at primary school. Used to play together during the holidays.’

  ‘Oh.’