Where the Memories Lie (7 page)

to say something like that. So, although I was sure it was nothing, and Tom couldn’t possibly have killed anyone, I still wanted to find out why he was so obsessed with such a horrible story and where

he’d heard it from.

I followed Ethan into the kitchen and went through the motions

of drinking beer with him and making the food for the picnic −

although I burnt one of the quiches − answering questions when

I was asked, nodding in the right places, but my mind was firmly

fixed on Georgia Walker. When Ethan headed upstairs for a shower

and the final quiche was in the oven I went into the living room and found Anna watching a YouTube documentary on the laptop about

prisoners on death row.

‘It’s terrible, Mum,’ she said sadly, eyes watering. ‘This man was

accused of killing this girl who lived in his town, and he says he’s innocent.’

‘They all say they’re innocent.’

‘But what if he really is? And there was this case study I’ve been

reading about where the lethal injection caused such massive pain

to the patient when he was—’

‘Prisoner, not patient.’

‘OK,
prisoner.
And he had loads of heart attacks and it took him about forty-five minutes to actually die in excruciating agony. Don’t 42

Where the Memories Lie

you remember watching
The Green Mile
, when they were trying to electrocute a prisoner and bits of him caught fire and stuff but it didn’t actually kill him for hours?’’

‘It wasn’t hours. That would’ve taken up the whole film, and

I seem to remember it being about a lot more than just that.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, a long time, then. Imagine how

painful that is. And what if you really did kill an innocent person?’

Anna looked horrified at that prospect. ‘I mean, what if
I
was wrongly convicted of murdering someone and I got the death

penalty?’

‘You wouldn’t kill someone, sweetheart. You can’t even kill

those disgusting ticks we find on Poppy, and they serve no purpose

in life except to be horrible parasites that spread disease.’

‘Actually, everything has a purpose in our ecosystem.’

‘Yes, but not ticks. They should be banned. Like scratchy labels

in clothes.’

‘Yes, but what
if
they were innocent, Mum?’

‘Can we talk about this another time? I really need to use the

laptop. I can’t use the Internet on my phone − it’s too slow using

the touch screen.’

‘But it’s just getting to a—’

‘
Now
, Anna!’ I said, my words coming out harsher than I

intended.

She looked up at me sharply. It wasn’t often that I lost my

temper, and she could sense something was wrong.

She made a big show of pausing the film, and passed the laptop

over to me in pouty silence.

I took it into the kitchen and typed in Georgia Walker’s name,

along with
missing person
and
Dorset
.

I looked down the hits. There was a LinkedIn site for an Emily

Walker, a Facebook page for someone called Georgia Williams, a

blog about Dorset Walks and, bizarrely, a link to a page about

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Sibel Hodge

American slavery. There was also a link to a missing persons

website in Georgia, USA, a Walker County Sheriff’s Facebook Page

(also in the USA – what was that about? I’d thought Google

knew everything except, apparently, where Dorset was), and a

plastic surgeon in Savannah which was – yes, you guessed it – in

the USA!

I deleted
Dorset
and searched again. Maybe she wasn’t even local. This time I found a Twitter account for George Wilmington,

a website for a dental surgery in London, an article about a man

on death row in Georgia (don’t tell Anna) and a story about a

man called John Hamilton who’d gone missing a week ago from

Scotland. Nothing useful at all.

I sat back in the chair with a frustrated sigh. If Tom had heard

about this woman, she must’ve been local, surely. I found British

Telecom’s online directory. It asked for a surname and location so

I typed in
Walker
and
Dorset.

Too many search results. Please try again,
it said.

I tried her surname and narrowed it down to Portesham. There

were four Walkers but no G. I tried Dorchester next, where I hit

fifteen Walkers but no G.

I gave up after trying Weymouth with the same result. She

could be anywhere. Or the phone could be listed in her husband’s

name. Or she could be ex-directory.

Oh, this is stupid
. I was just letting my imagination run away with me. I closed down the search tab and shut the laptop as Ethan

wandered in wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, hair still damp from the shower. I felt a jolt of desire hit me. Despite the fact that his long working hours meant he didn’t have much time to exercise, he

had a naturally muscular body. At forty-three, his stomach was still flat and toned.

‘I’m sorry about snapping earlier. It’s been a nightmare week.’

‘It’s OK. It’s forgotten already.’ I smiled.

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Where the Memories Lie

He pulled me to my feet and slid his arms around my waist,

nuzzling behind my ear, his lips seeking that place that made me

want to melt. Maybe it was an erogenous zone. Whatever it was,

I definitely appreciated him doing, oh, yes, that thing right there.

45

Chapter Five

The doorbell rang at 9 a.m. the next day as I was packing

the food into a large cool box. Poppy barked and rushed

to the front door, ready to greet the visitor with an

excited wagging tail and a wet nose. She’d never make a good

guard dog. She’d welcome any intruder into the house with a lick

and nuzzle.

‘I’ll get it!’ Anna’s feet thundered downstairs.

From where I stood at the island I had a clear view down the

hallway to the front door. Anna wore a pink sun top and tiny

denim shorts.

‘Hi, Anna.’ Chris, my brother-in-law, stepped inside and shut

the door. ‘How’s things?’

‘Good, thanks. We’re almost ready.’ She kissed his cheek.

He set down his own large cool box on the floor.

‘I’m just going to get my bikini on.’ Anna rushed back upstairs.

‘Hi.’ I waved.

‘Bikini?’ Chris pulled a face at me.

‘What, haven’t you got your leopard-skin Speedos?’ I arched an

eyebrow.

‘Yeah. Sexy.’

Where the Memories Lie

‘It’s going to be another scorching day according to the weather

forecast.’

‘I’m loving this weather, but I doubt very much I’ll be going in

the sea. It’ll be bloody freezing.’

Ethan came in through the back door carrying some fold-up

chairs. ‘All right, Chris?’

‘Yeah. Do you want a hand with anything?’ Chris asked.

‘No, I’ll just put these in the car and then load up with the cool

boxes and we’re all set.’ He nudged me with his elbow, a warm smile plastered on his face. ‘Come on. You’re always running late.’

Ten minutes later we all piled into Ethan’s Range Rover Sport

and drove up the road to Nadia and Lucas’s house to meet them

before driving in convoy through the beautiful Dorset countryside.

We headed past Corfe Castle and finally onto the picturesque sand

dunes at Swanage.

It was already starting to get busy with families and couples, the

promise of a rare spurt of summer weather bringing everyone out of

hiding, looking pasty and anaemic. I wondered how many people

on the beach would end up with sunburn and heatstroke today.

We found an empty spot in between a couple of dunes and set up

towels, blankets and chairs.

‘Are you coming in the sea?’ Charlotte asked Anna as she

stripped off her sundress to reveal a black halter-neck bikini.

I lay on a large picnic blanket and watched the two girls

walk to the water’s edge and test the temperature with their feet,

shrieking and giggling as they realised it was colder than they

thought.

Nadia lay next to me. ‘What a week!’ She smiled as if she didn’t

have a care in the world. As if she hadn’t told me the horrible suspicions of Lucas’s affair a few days ago. She slathered a high-factor sun tan lotion on with great concentration since she had a tendency to burn. Thanks to my genes, I was dark with olive skin and could

47

Sibel Hodge

get a tan sitting in the shade. I think there was some Mediterranean blood in our family way back.

I turned onto my side, propping my head up with my hand as

Lucas, Chris and Ethan stood to one side chatting about football

scores or something equally yawn-inducing.

Although Ethan and Chris were brothers, they didn’t look alike

at all. Ethan was more like his Dad − tall, dark, lean but broad-

shouldered, with brown eyes below thick eyebrows. Chris was

shorter, stockier and blond like his mum, right down to his pale

eyelashes that almost looked transparent. When Chris was younger

he was bordering on overweight, which he’d been very self-

conscious about. As soon as he hit sixteen he started boxing and

doing physical work on the building sites with Tom every day so

he’d soon lost the puppy fat. Nadia was a mixture of both parents:

blonde like Chris but tall with dark brown eyes like Ethan. Lucas

looked as if he could be Chris’s brother instead of Ethan’s best mate.

Nadia always thought Lucas looked like the actor Ewan McGregor,

although I couldn’t see it myself.

I tuned out their conversation, which was now about some

football player who was a right-back, whatever that was. ‘So, how

are you?’ I nodded my head in Lucas’s direction. Even though I’d

promised her I wouldn’t mention it again, technically, I wasn’t, even though the meaning was clear.

She glanced over at him and her smile wavered a little,

although she tried really hard to hide it. ‘We’re fine.’ Her gaze

flicked back to me and she lowered her voice. ‘We’re meant to be

together. You can’t argue with that, can you?’ She stood up and

said cheerfully, ‘Now, who wants a drink? I’ve got a huge bottle of Pimm’s in here.’ She crouched down next to one of the cool boxes.

Knowing her, she probably had enough food in there to feed us all

three times over.

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Where the Memories Lie

After a couple of Pimm’s for Nadia and me, and Cokes for the

boys, we all played a family game of bat and ball − although

the Pimm’s had gone to our heads on an empty stomach and Nadia

and I spent more time giggling and missing the ball than actually

contributing to the game.

Ethan put his hands on his hips in mock annoyance. ‘What are

you two like? If you can’t play then leave it to the boys.’

‘Oooh,’ I mocked back, grinning as I handed him my bat. ‘I’ve

had enough, anyway. I’m going to read my book.’

‘Yeah, I’d rather sunbathe.’ Nadia swatted Lucas’s backside

playfully as we walked back to our blanket.

Lucas called Charlotte and Anna out of the sea to take our

places and I lay back on my towel next to Nadia, closing my

eyes. The comforting sun on my skin permeated my bones, relax-

ing me, and I was soon drifting off into that pleasant pre-sleep

drowsiness.

I was woken a while later with sand being kicked on my leg and

the sound of screeching. I sat up abruptly and found Anna being

chased round and round by Lucas. In her hand, held high in the air, was his baseball cap.

‘Give it back!’ Lucas chuckled.

‘Nooooooo!’ She ran towards the sea as Charlotte grabbed a

towel from her beach bag and wrapped it round her wet body. Her

hair dripped seawater onto Nadia.

‘Ew, that’s cold!’ Nadia wiped it off, laughing, and tickled

Charlotte’s stomach.

‘Stop it!’ Charlotte wriggled away, trying to be serious but

erupting into fits when Nadia chased after her.

Ethan kneeled down on the edge of my towel and offered me a

bottle of water. ‘Here. Don’t want you getting dehydrated after that alcohol.’

49

Sibel Hodge

‘It was only two Pimm’s.’ I raised an eyebrow but took a long swig.

He was probably right. Didn’t want the sunstroke victim to be me.

Lucas flopped onto one of the fold-up chairs with a can of cider

in his hand, putting his cap back on. ‘Right, I think the girls should drive back and the men can have a few drinks. What do you think?’

he asked Ethan with a grin.

Ethan shrugged. ‘I’m not fussed about drinking on the beach.

We could all go to the Kings’ Arms later when we get back, anyway.

Grab some dinner there?’

‘Sounds good to me.’ Lucas took a swig of cider. ‘But I’m having

a few of these. It’s not very often I actually get a weekend off so I’m going to make the most of it.’ He winked at me.

I wondered what he made the most of when he was at work.

Patty? I bit back the urge to say something. I couldn’t betray my

conversation with Nadia since she’d sworn me to secrecy, but still, part of me couldn’t quite believe it, part of me didn’t want to believe it and part of me was seething with anger, wanting to slap some

sense into him. Give him a right mouthful about what an affair

would do to his family.

‘We should get to the beach more often.’ Ethan slung his arm