The Girl in the Picture - Kerry Barrett

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I’d heard laughter from the front of the house, so I’d gone to the opposite side of the room and looked out of the smaller windows there.

      Outside Mabel was talking to an older woman who looked just like her, only a bit shorter and more squat, and who had to be her mother. There were two little girls playing in the lane, running up and down with their hair flying behind them – it was their laughter I had heard. A slightly older boy with fair hair like Mabel’s leaned against a tree and watched the girls – his sisters, I assumed – with an expression of disdain.

      Mabel, who was the oldest of her siblings, I knew, was talking to her mother in what seemed to be an urgent way, waving her hands about as she told her story. The older woman listened, and she took Mabel’s hands and held them still as she replied. Then she brushed a stray hair from Mabel’s forehead and tucked it up under her cap, talking all the time.

      Mabel nodded and threw her arms round her mother as I watched. Her mother extracted herself from Mabel’s embrace, kissed her on the cheek then walked off in the direction of the village. The little girls ran after her waving goodbye to Mabel gaily and, after a few seconds, the boy followed, giving Mabel a salute that she returned.

      Mabel watched them go, then she adjusted her cap and walked back into the house, smiling.

      I had stood at the window wondering what it would be like to have a mother who listened to your woes, who gave advice, and who made sure your hair was neat. Imagining having little sisters who played with you, or a younger brother to torment. I pictured our echoey house full of noise and laughter with children in all the rooms and my mother looking after them all, and I felt a pain in my heart so acute that I had to sit down on the floor for a moment to recover.

      ‘I miss my mother,’ I whispered to myself.

      I stayed on the floor for a little while, feeling lost and alone. Then I got up, brushed the dust from my skirt, and carried on with my painting.

      Present day

      Ella

      The puppy was called Dumbledore. Stan had pushed hard for his name to be Batman but when Oscar suggested Dumbledore, the puppy bounced around the lawn and we all agreed he’d chosen his own name.

      He was sitting on my lap in the kitchen a few days later when Priya came round. Mike was mending the back door, which was sticking, and we were chatting about not much as he worked.

      When the doorbell rang, Dumbledore stirred slightly in my lap. Gently I picked him up – he was still just a little bundle of fluff and too-long ears – and put him in his basket where he burrowed into the blanket and went back to sleep. Then I ran to the front door.

      For as long as I’d been writing my thrillers, I’d wanted a massive whiteboard so I could scrawl ideas for my twisty-turny plots and check everything made sense. I pictured it like the incident boards I’d seen in CID offices, only with fictional incidents recorded instead of real-life crimes. So I was absolutely delighted to see Priya in our drive wrestling the very thing I’d imagined out of the boot of her mud-splattered car.

      ‘We’re moving offices so we’re having a clear-out,’ she said. ‘Thought you could probably make use of this.’

      I was speechless with delight.

      ‘God it’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘Can I give you something for it?’

      Priya shook her head. ‘Honestly, it was heading for a skip.’

      ‘Cup of tea at least?’

      She shook her head again.

      ‘Midwife,’ she said, pointing to her bump, which seemed to have got bigger in the few days since I’d last seen her.

      ‘Later?’ I asked.

      ‘Definitely,’ she said. ‘Or, come and see me at work one day this week? I want to know more about this mystery of yours so I can do some digging.’

      ‘Deal,’ I said.

      Mike helped me carry the board up to the attic, and lent me his drill so I could fix it to the wall. I put it on the far side of the room – on the wall with the extra window, or air vent. I half expected – or hoped perhaps – the drill to go right through and prove the wall was just plywood but it didn’t. The wall was definitely brick – the dust drifting down onto the floor proved that. Slightly disappointed that our mysterious window was simply for ventilation after all, I shoved rawl plugs into the holes I’d drilled, and with Mike’s help, screwed the board to the wall.

      ‘Not bad,’ I said, standing back to admire my work.

      ‘Dead straight,’ Mike agreed. ‘What are you going to use it for?’

      ‘Plotting,’ I said with a grin.

      After Mike had gone, I checked on the puppy, then I took a cup of tea, some biscuits, and feeling faintly ridiculous, Stan’s old baby monitor so I could hear if Dumbledore woke up, upstairs. My heroine, Tessa Gilroy, was a private investigator. She mostly worked on divorces but occasionally – and usually reluctantly and inadvertently – got involved in something more dangerous. I was well aware my sort of writing was enjoying its moment in the sun right now, and I knew my next book had to be good enough to appeal to readers on its own merits, rather than being just another thriller.

      I’d been collecting cuttings about crimes and mysteries, and jotting notes about stories Reg had told me for months, and started sketching out an idea involving a woman being set up for something. Probably a murder, I thought, but the alleged victim would still be alive. I thought the ‘murderer’ would contact Tessa from prison and ask for her help in proving the victim was still breathing …

      I pulled out the whiteboard pens Priya had brought with her and wrote a few ideas on the board, feeling the rusty cogs in my mind beginning to whir. But all the time I was writing, at the back of my mind, was the stuff I’d heard about our house, and the story of the Hargreaves family and poor motherless Violet.

      ‘How’s it going?’ Ben said as he peeked round the door of the study an hour or so later.

      I was hunched over my laptop trying to write a synopsis. I jumped, not expecting Ben to be home.

      ‘I’m going back to the training ground in a minute,’ he said. ‘I just had to go and pick up some equipment in Brighton, so I thought I’d pop in and say hello. You look engrossed. Is it going well?’

      ‘Not bad,’ I said, reluctant as always to discuss a book while I was still thrashing out the plot.

      ‘I thought you’d like a cup of tea,’ Ben said. He came over to my desk, put a mug down next to my coaster, and peered at the screen of my laptop.

      Pointedly I moved the mug on to the coaster and shut my screen.

      ‘Don’t look,’ I said. ‘I’m not ready for you to read it yet.’

      Ben chuckled. ‘What’s it about?’

      I looked up at him. ‘Tessa’s working in Sussex,’ I said. ‘That’s all you need to know for now.’

      Ben grinned at me. ‘So you’re writing?’

      I nodded then made a face. ‘It’s words,’ I said. ‘But I’m not convinced they’re quite right yet.’

      ‘It looks better in here,’ Ben said. ‘Like you’ve settled in.’

      ‘I have,’ I said in satisfaction, looking round at the room. ‘But I want to open that cupboard. It would be good to stash some books and stuff in there.’

      I pointed at the cupboard nestled under the eaves in the corner of the room. The one with the door painted shut.

      ‘Mike’s still downstairs,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll get him to have a look at it if you like?’

      ‘Brilliant,’

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