60. Now

I go in through our side entrance, taking in a deep breath and letting it go slowly. The last thing the policeman said to me was to try to get some sleep, but my eyes are wired open, my teeth have been clenched for so long my jaw aches, and there's a feeling in my brain like a spring being twisted tighter and tighter.

I check my phone: just after three. I have a voicemail. It's the head, Mr Whitlow. ‘Frances, I'm so sorry about the bullying. I can't believe we didn't know. I'm going with a group to search Piskie and the coves round there.'

The need to see Jenna is as real as the swelling ache from my cuts. It feels as though my intestines are being drawn out of my stomach, pulling me down, emptying me.

In our little kitchen, an IKEA job put in when Dan moved in, I try to make a coffee but I scatter grounds across the counter with my shaking hands. The kettle begins to boil and I watch it juddering, wondering if I'll manage to pour it without scalding myself.

I think again that it's odd, isn't it, that my daughter is missing yet I'm here on my own. It has taken this to see just how alone I am in this family.

And the funny thing is, I feel sick but I have no desire right now to take a knife and run it across the soft skin of my upper thigh.

There's a thud from upstairs and my heart stops. I stare up at the ceiling.

Is she home? Is she back?

My heart swells and as I run out and up the stairs, I hear a strange, warbling sound that I realise is me, calling her name. ‘Jenna?' I almost fall as I let go of the banister at the top, spinning round the final twist of the stairs.

Her light is on. It wasn't when I drove up. I run in, ready to take her in my arms?—

But it's Mina, standing over the jumble on Jenna's desk. Tears spring into my eyes immediately. She jumps and spins round. ‘Oh God – Fran you scared the life out of me.'

‘What are you doing in here?' I choke.

I'm suddenly taken with the urge to strangle this woman who was so eager to lie for my brother, who probably knew better than me what he had done and then married him, this friend who moved into my home and kicked me out of my nice rooms and lives off my parents' money while my husband and I scrimp to afford our share of the heating bill.

‘I…' She shakes her head, her beautiful, silky hair swishing like a sheet of water.

‘Mina?'

‘I was looking for the necklace.'

‘The necklace?'

‘Ava's necklace, that you found?—'

‘Mina, you were there – the detective took it.'

She clenches her teeth.

‘Can we get out of here please? The police said we shouldn't come in here.' And when was the last time Mina had come over to this side of the house?

She takes one last glance around the room and follows me back down to our kitchen.

She sits at the table and crosses her legs and adjusts her hair.

‘Would you like something?' I ask. Is it odd that I'm the one asking her that? My child is missing.

‘No. That's okay. Well, actually, some water.'

I don't know why but now I press slightly on my cuts again before reaching into the cupboard and filling two glasses.

She picks hers up and peers at it, twisting it in the light. The glass is slightly uneven, blue stripes and bubbles spiralling up the sides. ‘Oh, it's nice when that happens, isn't it?' she says.

‘When what happens?' I say.

‘Well, obviously these are from TK Maxx but they could be genuinely handmade.'

I blink. We were so close once. Now she says this kind of thing and I'm expected to take it as a compliment. But today my daughter is missing and I just stare at her.

A red flush spreads up her neck. She looks away and sips her water. ‘Did you go out?'

‘Why were you looking for the necklace?'

She shrugs, sets down the glass, starts examining her wedding ring. It's a square-cut emerald bordered by diamonds. It was my grandmother's.

‘Mina?'

She twists her head away and stares at the kettle. I wonder if she's going to make a comment about that now. It's a white plastic Breville that has seen better days.

‘Well, it's Ava's, isn't it?'

‘But the police said not to touch anything. Why are you worrying about it now?' Ava has a hundred necklaces.

Mina shakes her head again. ‘Why do you stay here, Frances? Why do you take it?'

‘Take what?'

‘Living in this bodge-job coat cupboard while we redecorate the castle for the sixth time?'

I sit very still. It had never occurred to me that she might understand how I feel. ‘Where else would I go?'

‘Anywhere? You're probably poorer here than you would be stumping up for a mortgage anywhere else.'

‘Or you could stop spending all of my family's money on fancy candles.'

She laughs but then stops abruptly. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘For what?'

She looks at me but just lifts her hand from her glass in an unreadable gesture and says nothing.

‘Mina, why were you looking for that necklace?'

She bites her lip, and then I see something I don't think I've ever seen before. Her eyes take on a shine. ‘I don't think it's Ava's.'

‘What do you mean?'

She looks at her ring again. ‘It was just a touch too pink. And that sparkle…'

‘It looked like Ava's necklace to me,' I say. ‘She didn't say it wasn't.'

‘I know my stones these days.' She laughs and it seems a little apologetic. ‘Same setting, different gem. That necklace you found in Jenna's room was a ruby, not a garnet, I'd bet my right hand on it.'

I nod slowly, seeing what she means, ice trickling into my veins. Ava's birthstone is a red garnet. Red garnets for January. But a ruby is for July. Jenna's birth month. And a ruby costs ten times a garnet.