The Girl Next Door. Phoebe Morgan

It had surprised her, at the time. Now, it makes her feel sick. Clare’s future is gone, over before it began.

      The forensic team arrive and begin sealing off the area, their white suits bright in the darkness.

      Gently, Madeline lifts the blonde hair, exposing the wound at the back of Clare’s head.

      ‘She looks so young,’ Lorna mutters quietly, and Madeline nods.

      The torchlight lands on her rucksack, a black faux-leather bag, thin straps. Inside are a pile of school books; her name is all over everything, the neat blue handwriting re-emphasising Clare’s youth.

      ‘No mobile phone.’ Lorna hands her Clare’s wallet – a purple zip-up from Accessorize. Carefully, Madeline thumbs through her cards: her provisional driver’s licence, a Nando’s loyalty card, plus an old Waterstones receipt, long out of date.

      ‘Shaw. I’ve been on the phone to her mother. Fill me in.’

      DCI Rob Sturgeon appears at her side; quickly, Madeline begins sliding the exercise books into evidence bags, turns to face him.

      ‘Have you told her yet?’

      He shakes his head. ‘No, not until we’ve formally ID’d. Shit.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘Is Alex here?’

      They both look around, and spot DS Alex Faulkner a few metres away, talking to one of the forensics team.

      ‘Faulkner!’

      At the DCI’s shout, Alex heads over, the expression on his face grim.

      ‘Looks like someone’s repeatedly slammed her against the ground,’ he says, nodding to Madeline. ‘Back of her head’s not a pretty sight.’

      There is a blue ink stain all over Clare’s left hand, and her unpainted fingernails are dirty, from where she’s presumably clawed at the ground.

      ‘You don’t think there was a weapon?’ the DCI says, and Alex shakes his head. ‘Doesn’t look like it to me.’

      ‘Suggests unplanned, then,’ Madeline adds, and he nods.

      ‘Quite possibly. Fit of anger, perhaps. Crime of passion.’ There’s a pause. ‘We’ll be testing for rape, of course.’ He swallows, spreads his hands in the semi-darkness. ‘Or else it was planned, and our killer just decided to cut out the middle man. Less evidence that way.’

      ‘Someone who trusts their own strength, in that case,’ Rob says. The guys are placing markers on the frosty ground, marking the places Clare’s blood has spilled. Trusts their own strength, Madeline thinks. Nine times out of ten it’s a man.

      ‘You said Nathan Warren phoned it in?’ she asks Lorna, frowning.

      ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Lorna says, and catching the expression on her colleague’s face, ‘d’you know him?’

      ‘Yes,’ Madeline says slowly, stepping to one side as they begin to erect a little white tent over her body, looking out to where the stile leads to the footpath down to the town centre, ‘I do know him. I know exactly who he is.’

      Clare Edwards is pronounced dead at 8.45 p.m. Madeline closes her eyes, just briefly, remembering the day Clare spoke to her at the school, their conversation in one of the empty classrooms, the curiosity in her eyes as she asked Madeline what being a police officer was really like. How can that girl be lying here on the floor, pale and lifeless? The two images will not connect in her brain.

      ‘I want you with me, Shaw,’ the DCI says, breaking the memory. ‘Let’s get this over with, for God’s sake. Keep the tent up,’ he barks, his eyes scanning the meadow, ‘we don’t want anyone seeing this.’ Gloved hands are combing the ground for her phone, lights are picking out the spots of blood in amongst the leaves. The blood on her head is darker now, dry and blackening. Madeline’s mind is already on Mr and Mrs Edwards, knocking on their front door, ready to deliver them the worst news of their lives.

      ‘We can walk there,’ she says at last, ‘it’s only ten minutes.’

      ‘Right,’ Rob says, ‘Campbell, Faulkner – update me soon as you can. Send a car after us to the house, we’ll need a family liaison officer. I want everyone on this. Jesus, sixteen. The press’ll have a bloody field day.’

      Madeline leads the way, back across Sorrow’s Meadow, out of the wooded area and down Acre Lane towards where Ashdon High Street meets the river. The small town is quiet; it’s a Monday night. Driving through, you’d have seen nothing, heard nothing. The Edwards house looms in front of them, one of a pair set back slightly from the road, and the DCI puts his hand on her arm at the edge of their drive: a gravel affair, primroses either side, stiff with the cold. There’s a bird bath to the left, frozen solid in the February air. Madeline looks to the house next door, separated from the Edwards’ by a thin grass strip. Lights off, except for one. The Goodwins’ place. Both houses are huge in comparison to Madeline’s; security systems glow in the darkness. Behind the garage doors lurk expensive, silent cars.

      ‘Just the basics for now,’ Rob says, ‘until we have the full picture.’

      ‘Are we mentioning Nathan Warren?’

      Madeline’s question goes unanswered; the door opens before either of them can even knock and then there they are, framed before the police in the bright light of the house, Rachel Edwards and her husband Ian. Rachel looks like Clare – that same striking face, beautiful without needing to try. They recognise her from the town; she can see the flash of hope on their faces. Madeline steps forward.

      ‘Mr and Mrs Edwards. This is DCI Rob Sturgeon, my colleague at Chelmsford Police Force. We have news on your daughter. May we come in?’

Chapter Three

      Jane

       Monday 4th February, 9.00 p.m.

      The curtain is thick and warm between my fingers from my vantage point at the living-room window. The minute I closed the door on Rachel and Ian, I texted Harry to come home, my fingers fumbling slightly in my haste. I wish I hadn’t had the glass of wine earlier, wish my mind was clearer, sharper, ready to help the neighbours. There is no sign yet of the police. What’s taking them so long?

      What’s happened, Harry replied, why do you need me home? I told him to use the back door, to be as quick as he could. I want all my children under my roof, where I can see them.

      As I wait for him at the window, blue lights spill suddenly across the pavement, illuminating our house in their morbid glow. My heart thuds. It might be good news, I think. But nobody comes to start a search party; I don’t hear the whirr of helicopters out looking. Just two detectives crunching up the drive, followed by a third woman who quickly gets out of the police car. Then the slam of the Edwards’ front door, the flicker of lights in their living room. Still, I think to myself, you never know. I keep telling myself that, although my insides feel cold. Eventually, when there is no sign of further movement, I draw the curtains, blocking the police car out, then check on Sophie and Finn in their beds, listen to their breathing for a full minute. My babies. I don’t go into the master bedroom; Jack has closed the door. I don’t want to disturb him now, there is no point. My husband doesn’t take well to being disturbed.

      ‘Mum?’ I jump at Harry’s voice; the gruffness of it always surprises me now; how quickly he has lost the boyish tones of his youth. Still only seventeen, he looms above me in the corridor. He must have come up the stairs behind me, his socked feet soundless on the thick white carpet.

      ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ I say, gesturing to him to come back downstairs, away from the rest of our sleeping family.

      Downstairs, I lock all the doors and windows, check them twice as Harry fetches a glass of water from the sink, drinks it greedily in exactly the same way he did as a ten-year-old.

      ‘What’s