33

June 2018

SHE TAKES A DEEP breath and I steel myself for whatever she’s about to say.

‘This is going to sound bad … I found out recently that Gavin took a key to Mary Murphy’s house and let himself in one night when they were out.’

Ellen is talking again as though I know all these people. Presumably she means Gavin Bowman, the boy who Mark punched, so I don’t interrupt her.

‘Gavin was fixated on Mary. She’d been nice to him once when he was doing their garden, and that was it, he was infatuated. Even though he was sixteen and she was an adult. And married. And a mother.’

‘Ugh. That’s a bit odd.’

Ellen gives me a funny look. ‘It was harmless enough until he broke into her house. He took the key from the Burkes next door – they used to keep a spare. He wanted to take something from Mary’s room. A keepsake. Stupid, really. But we were kids.’

I nod, though this doesn’t seem like any kind of normal behaviour to me.

‘He got the wrong room though. He ended up in Lily’s bedroom and when she woke and saw him, he hid in the wardrobe. He told us all about it the next day.’

This is taking a very different direction from what I expected. I want to ask about Cynthia but I hold back.

‘You think Gavin did something to Lily? To stop her telling that she saw him in her room?’

Ellen sighs. ‘Yes. Maybe. A sixteen-year-old boy in a three-year-old’s bedroom doesn’t look good, no matter what way you spin it. And there’s such a lot I don’t think was properly looked into at the time.’

‘So people back then didn’t know Gavin broke into the Murphys’ house?’

‘Exactly. But more than that. Things I didn’t know at the time. Things I only found out when he was gone.’

‘Gone where?’

Ellen looks puzzled, then smiles. ‘Sorry, I’ve done it again. I keep forgetting how little I put on the blog. Gavin is dead. We were married for twenty years, and then one morning, he just didn’t wake up.’ Her voice is clear. Dispassionate, almost. As though she is used to telling this story, or she’s warning her audience not to get emotional.

‘I’m so sorry.’

She waves it away. ‘That’s when I found out.’

‘Found out?’

A neat, careful intake of breath. ‘In his will, Gavin left an old but expensive watch, a little ceramic lighthouse, and a significant financial bequest for Lily Murphy, if she was ever found. With very specific wording – an instruction to tell her “I’m so sorry for what I did, I should never have locked you in.”’

‘Wow. Do you know what he was talking about?’

She nods. ‘After Gavin died, Aoife came to stay with me for a bit, and we were reminiscing about old times, the good bits and the bad. How Gavin was back then, the way he obsessed over Mary Murphy that summer. I used to see him from my bedroom window, standing outside their house. Then Aoife reminded me of the morning Lily went missing; that we saw Gavin in the building site, talking to her. To Lily.’