I’d kept the newspaper cuttings. I don’t know why. Doug had no idea, of course – he’d have been livid if he’d ever found them. We were supposed to forget all about it, pretend we’d played no part in the whole horrible tragedy. But it didn’t seem right to throw them away. I felt I owed it to her – Nadia – to remember, that I shouldn’t get away guilt-free or ever be allowed to forget what happened that day. Her poor family. Her poor mother. They never found out the truth. And I had to live with that – we all did. So I hid the cuttings in between the pages of a book tucked away at the top of the bookcase in our bedroom. I never looked at them, I didn’t need to. I knew what they said by heart.

But after I overheard Hannah on the phone to Emily, after it all fell into place, I took down the book – a thick Jackie Collins I was certain neither Doug nor Hannah would ever want to read – and there they were, the two separate folds of newspaper, yellow with age. It had been sixteen years since I’d last read them. I smoothed out the first one and even the headline brought it all back, those awful feelings, the guilt.

East Anglian Gazette, 25 April 1981

FEARS GROW FOR LOCAL MISSING WOMAN AND CHILD

Police have discovered no new leads on the whereabouts of Nadia Freeman, 19, from Bury St Edmunds and her three-week-old baby, Lana. Ms Freeman is said to suffer from complex mental health issues that had intensified following the birth of her daughter in March.

Nadia’s mother, Mrs Jane Freeman, 56, said, ‘We are all desperately worried for my daughter and granddaughter. They are both so vulnerable. I want Nadia to know that she’s loved, that we will help her, no matter what she’s done. I only want to see my daughter and my baby granddaughter again. We are all so dreadfully worried.’

Police are urging any members of the public with information to come forward.

It’s that bit from Nadia’s mother that’s so awful to read. Knowing the pain she must have felt, the uncertainty. Knowing I could at least have given her the information to end her suffering, that it had been my own selfish desires that had prevented me from doing so. The picture of Nadia, too, is almost impossible to look at, but I force myself to. That young, pretty face, so familiar. Those eyes that haunt me still.

The second article, written a month later, is almost too much to bear, but again I make myself read it. Why should I get to hide it away? I owe it to her to remember.

East Anglian Gazette, 30 May 1981

BODY OF MISSING LOCAL MOTHER FOUND