“I told you it wouldn’t be a stranger,” Tom said. “It never is, is it? In any case, we don’t even know what’s happened. She’s probably fine. She’s probably run off with someone.”

“So why have they arrested that man, then?”

He shrugged. He was distracted, pulling on his jacket, straightening his tie, getting ready to go to and meet the day’s last client.

“What are we going to do?” I asked him.

“Do?” He looked at me blankly.

“About her. Rachel. Why was she here? Why was she at the Hipwells’ house? Do you think . . . do you think she was trying to get into our garden—you know, going through the neighbours’ gardens?”

Tom gave a grim laugh. “I doubt it. Come on, this is Rachel we’re talking about. She wouldn’t be able to haul her fat arse over all those fences. I’ve no idea what she was doing there. Maybe she was pissed, went to the wrong door?”

“In other words, she meant to come round here?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Look, don’t worry about it, OK? Keep the doors locked. I’ll give her a ring and find out what she’s up to.”

“I think we should call the police.”

“And say what? She hasn’t actually done anything—”

“She hasn’t done anything lately—unless you count the fact that she was here the night Megan Hipwell disappeared,” I said. “We should have told the police about her ages ago.”

“Anna, come on.” He slipped his arms around my waist. “I hardly think Rachel has anything to do with Megan Hipwell’s going missing. But I’ll talk to her, OK?”

“But you said after last time—”

“I know,” he said softly. “I know what I said.” He kissed me, slipped his hand into the waistband of my jeans. “Let’s not get the police involved unless we really need to.”

I think we do need to. I can’t stop thinking about that smile she gave us, that sneer. It was almost triumphant. We need to get away from here. We need to get away from her.

RACHEL

•   •   •

TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2013

MORNING

It takes me a while to realize what I’m feeling when I wake. There’s a rush of elation, tempered with something else: a nameless dread. I know we’re close to finding the truth. I just can’t help feeling that the truth is going to be terrible.

I sit up in bed and grab my laptop, turn it on and wait impatiently for it to boot up, then log on to the Internet. The whole process seems interminable. I can hear Cathy moving around the house, washing up her breakfast things, running upstairs to brush her teeth. She hovers for a few moments outside my door. I imagine her knuckles raised, ready to rap. She thinks better of it and runs back down the stairs.

The BBC news page comes up. The headline is about benefit cuts, the second story about yet another 1970s television star accused of sexual indiscretions. Nothing about Megan; nothing about Kamal. I’m disappointed. I know that the police have twenty-four hours to charge a suspect, and they’ve had that now. In some circumstances, they can hold someone for an extra twelve hours, though.

I know all this because I spent yesterday doing my research. After I was shown out of Scott’s house, I came back here, turned on the television and spent most of the day watching the news, reading articles online. Waiting.

By midday, the police had named their suspect. On the news, they talked about “evidence discovered at Dr. Abdic’s home and in his car,” but they didn’t say what. Blood, perhaps? Her phone, as yet undiscovered? Clothes, a bag, her toothbrush? They kept showing pictures of Kamal, close-ups of his dark, handsome face. The picture they use isn’t a mug shot, it’s a candid shot: he’s on holiday somewhere, not quite smiling, but almost. He looks too soft, too beautiful to be a killer, but appearances can be deceptive—they say Ted Bundy looked like Cary Grant.

I waited all day for more news, for the charges to be made public: kidnap, assault or worse. I waited to hear where she is, where he’s been keeping her. They showed pictures of Blenheim Road, the station, Scott’s front door. Commentators mused on the likely implications of the fact that neither Megan’s phone nor her bank cards had been used for more than a week.

Tom called more than once. I didn’t pick up. I know what he wants. He wants to ask why I was at Scott Hipwell’s house yesterday morning. Let him wonder. It has nothing to do with him. Not everything is about him. I imagine he’s calling at her behest, in any case. I don’t owe her any explanations.

I waited and waited, and still no charge; instead, we heard more about Kamal, the trusted mental health professional who listened to Megan’s secrets and troubles, who gained her trust and then abused it, who seduced her and then, who knows what?

I learned that he is a Muslim, a Bosnian, a survivor of the Balkans conflict, who came to Britain as a fifteen-year-old refugee. No stranger to violence, he lost his father and two older brothers at Srebrenica. He has a conviction for domestic violence. The more I heard about Kamal, the more I knew that I was right: I was right to speak to the police about him, I was right to contact Scott.

I get up and pull my dressing gown around me, hurry downstairs and flick on the TV. I have no intention of going anywhere today. If Cathy comes home unexpectedly, I can tell her I’m ill. I make myself a cup of coffee and sit down in front of the television, and I wait.

EVENING

I got bored around three o’clock. I got bored with hearing about benefits and seventies TV paedophiles, I got frustrated with hearing nothing about Megan, nothing about Kamal, so I went to the off-licence and bought two bottles of white wine.

I’m almost at the bottom of the first bottle when it happens. There’s something else on the news now, shaky camera footage taken from a half-built (or half-destroyed) building, explosions in the distance. Syria, or Egypt, maybe Sudan? I’ve got the sound down, I’m not really paying attention. Then I see it: the ticker running across the bottom of the screen tells me that the government is facing a challenge to legal aid cuts and that Fernando Torres will be out for up to four weeks with a hamstring strain and that the suspect in the Megan Hipwell disappearance has been released without charge.

I put my glass down and grab the remote, clicking the volume button up, up, up. This can’t be right. The war report continues, it goes on and on, my blood pressure rising with it, but eventually it ends and they go back to the studio and the newsreader says: “Kamal Abdic, the man arrested yesterday in connection with the disappearance of Megan Hipwell, has been released without charge. Abdic, who was Mrs. Hipwell’s therapist, was detained yesterday, but was released this morning because police say there is insufficient evidence to charge him.”

I don’t hear what she says after that. I just sit there, my eyes blurring over, a wash of noise in my ears, thinking, They had him. They had him and they let him go.

•   •   •

Upstairs, later. I’ve had too much to drink, I can’t see the computer screen properly, everything doubles, trebles. I can read if I hold my hand over one eye. It gives me a headache. Cathy is home, she called out to me and I told her I was in bed, unwell. She knows that I’m drinking.

My belly is awash with alcohol. I feel sick. I can’t think straight. Shouldn’t have started drinking so early. Shouldn’t have started drinking at all. I phoned Scott’s number an hour ago, again a few minutes ago. Shouldn’t have done that, either. I just want to know, what lies has Kamal told them? What lies have they been fool enough to believe? The police have messed the whole thing up. Idiots. That Riley woman, her fault. I’m sure of it.