There are a few other quotes, including one from Tara Epstein, the friend with whom Megan was supposed to stay on the night she disappeared. She says that Megan is ‘a lovely, carefree girl’ and that she seemed ‘very happy’. ‘Scott would not have hurt her,’ Tara says. ‘He loves her very much.’ There isn’t a thing Tara says that isn’t a cliché. The quote that interests me is from one of the artists who exhibited their work in the gallery Megan used to manage, one Rajesh Gujral, who says that Megan is ‘a wonderful woman, sharp, funny and beautiful, an intensely private person with a warm heart’. Sounds to me like Rajesh has got a crush. The only other quote comes from a man called David Clark, ‘a former colleague’ of Scott’s, who says, ‘Megs and Scott are a great couple. They’re very happy together, very much in love.’
There are some news pieces about the investigation, too, but the statements from the police amount to less than nothing: they have spoken to ‘a number of witnesses’, they are ‘pursuing several lines of enquiry’. The only interesting comment comes from Detective Inspector Gaskill, who confirms that two men are helping the police with their enquiries. I’m pretty sure that means they’re both suspects. One will be Scott. Could the other be B? Could B be Rajesh?
I’ve been so engrossed in the newspapers that I haven’t been paying my usual attention to the journey; it seems as though I’ve only just sat down when the train grinds to its customary halt opposite the red signal. There are people in Scott’s garden – there are two uniformed police just outside the back door. My head swims. Have they found something? Have they found her? Is there a body buried in the garden or shoved under the floorboards? I can’t stop thinking of the clothes on the side of the railway line, which is stupid, because I saw those there before Megan went missing. And in any case, if harm has been done to her, it wasn’t by Scott, it can’t have been. He’s madly in love with her, everyone says so. The light is bad today, the weather’s turned, the sky leaden, threatening. I can’t see into the house, I can’t see what’s going on. I feel quite desperate. I cannot stand being on the outside – for better or worse, I am a part of this now. I need to know what’s going on.
At least I have a plan. First, I need to find out if there’s any way that I can be made to remember what happened on Saturday night. When I get to the library, I plan to do some research and find out whether hypnotherapy could make me remember; whether it is in fact possible to recover that lost time. Second – and I reckon this is important, because I don’t think the police believed me when I told them about Megan’s lover – I need to get in touch with Scott Hipwell. I need to tell him. He deserves to know.
Evening
The train is full of rain-soaked people, steam rising off their clothes and condensing on the windows. The fug of body odour, perfume and laundry soap hangs oppressively above bowed, damp heads. The clouds that menaced this morning did so all day, growing heavier and blacker until they burst, monsoon-like, this evening, just as office workers stepped outside and the rush hour began in earnest, leaving the roads gridlocked and tube station entrances choked with people opening and closing umbrellas.
I don’t have an umbrella and am soaked through; I feel as though someone has thrown a bucket of water over me. My cotton trousers cling to my thighs and my faded blue shirt has become embarrassingly transparent. I ran all the way from the library to the tube station with my handbag clutched against my chest to hide what I could. For some reason I found this funny – there is something ridiculous about being caught in the rain – and I was laughing so hard by the time I got to the top of Gray’s Inn Road I could barely breathe. I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that.
I’m not laughing now. As soon as I got myself a seat, I checked the latest on Megan’s case on my phone, and it’s the news I’ve been dreading. ‘A thirty-five-year-old man is being questioned under caution at Witney police station regarding the disappearance of Megan Hipwell, missing from her home since Saturday evening.’ That’s Scott, I’m sure of it. I can only hope that he read my email before they picked him up, because questioning under caution is serious – it means they think he did it. Although, of course, it is yet to be defined. It may not have happened at all. Megan might be fine. Every now and again it does strike me that she’s alive and well and sitting on a hotel balcony with a view of the sea, her feet up on the railings, a cold drink at her elbow.
The thought of her there both thrills and disappoints me, and then I feel sick for feeling disappointed. I don’t wish her ill, no matter how angry I was with her for cheating on Scott, for shattering my illusions about my perfect couple. No, it’s because I feel like I’m part of this mystery, I’m connected. I am no longer just a girl on the train, going back and forth without point or purpose. I want Megan to turn up safe and sound. I do. Just not quite yet.
I sent Scott an email this morning. His address was easy to find – I googled him and found www.shipwellconsulting.co.uk, the site where he advertises ‘a range of consultancy, cloud and web-based services for business and non-profit organizations’. I knew it was him, because his business address is also his home address.
I sent a short message to the contact given on the site:
Dear Scott,
My name is Rachel Watson. You don’t know me. I would like to talk to you about your wife. I do not have any information on her whereabouts, I don’t know what has happened to her. But I believe I have information that could help you.
You may not want to talk to me, I would understand that, but if you do, email me on this address.
Yours sincerely,
Rachel
I don’t know if he would have contacted me anyway – I doubt that I would, if I were in his shoes. Like the police, he’d probably just think I was a nutter, some weirdo who’s read about the case in the newspaper. Now I’ll never know – if he’s been arrested, he may never get a chance to see the message. If he’s been arrested, the only people who see it may be the police, which won’t be good news for me. But I had to try.
And now I feel desperate, thwarted. I can’t see through the mob of people in the carriage across to their side of the tracks – my side – and even if I could, with the rain still pouring down I wouldn’t be able to see beyond the railway fence. I wonder whether evidence is being washed away, whether right at this moment vital clues are disappearing for ever: smears of blood, footprints, DNA-loaded cigarette butts. I want a drink so badly I can almost taste the wine on my tongue. I can imagine exactly what it will feel like for the alcohol to hit my bloodstream and make my head rush.