Dorrit studies me sadly. ‘You have so many questions, dear. I wish I could give you answers, but I can’t. Sometimes I’d see Alexa walking down Maple Crescent, other times through the fields opposite. I suspect she went into the fields at the back of the house, too. There was never a pattern. I think she just forced herself to go outside once a day.’
‘Dorrit, I need you to think carefully,’ I say, trying to keep composed despite the pounding in my chest telling me we are getting close to something significant. ‘In all the times you saw Alexa go for a walk, did you ever see her with anyone?’
‘No. I told you, Alexa Clarke is as lonely as they come.’
‘Did you ever spot anything unusual about Alexa’s walks?’
‘Unusual about a walk? I don’t understand.’
‘It sounds silly, I know, but was there anything you can think of that struck you as odd? Anything at all?’
Dorrit’s wrinkled skin creases more than ever as she concentrates. ‘There is one thing that was a bit odd, now you come to mention it. Once or twice, I saw Alexa walking with a tennis ball. She’d throw it in the air and catch it as she went.’
My breath catches in the back of my throat. ‘Did you say a tennis ball?’
Dorrit laughs. ‘Is that not strange enough for you? I’ve never known anyone take a tennis ball for a walk. Not anyone who doesn’t have a dog, anyway.’
My focus darts to Magnus. He lifts his head to stare back at me, the light catching his brown eyes.
‘But what do I know? Maybe a tennis ball isn’t odd after all,’ Dorrit says, offering me a biscuit, but my mind is racing too much for me to take one.
It hits me like a bolt of lightning: the tennis ball the police found wasn’t left behind by a dog walker or group of children. Alexa had it with her the day she went missing. She had it with her because shewasmeeting someone that day.
And I think I might know who.
CHAPTER 45
My chair scrapes across the floor tiles as I launch myself to my feet.
‘Is everything okay?’ Dorrit asks, but I’m so busy scrambling to leave that I only answer her with a quick nod.
Rushing out of the house, I leap into the world outside. It’s as chilly as it was earlier, but after Dorrit’s revelation the air feels icier than ever. I leave her garden behind, cutting down the gravel path and heading back to Maple Crescent.
My shoes slap the pavement as I race down the road, passing the Clarkes’ house, the police and the nosey bystanders. They watch me with an even keener curiosity than before.
‘Running to Otis? You’ve just missed him,’ Sonya shouts after me, but I don’t care what she has to say. I’m too preoccupied by looking for the sign that points out the public footpath running down the side of Otis’s house.
I sprint down the dirt track, sending dead leaves scattering behind me in all directions, until the bare branches of trees overhead knot into an eerie canopy of winter woodland. The woods at the back of the Clarke house, otherworldly but most importantly, narrow.
As the road behind me disappears, Bramblethorpe is swallowed by nature. I keep my gaze fixed ahead, looking through the trees to the fields that I know are coming. Twigs break underfoot, the only sound that can be heard in this silent slice of countryside.
Breaking through the final wall of trees, I reach the first field.
The blessing of a clear day means I can see what Alexa meant when she described this view as fields that go on forever. Long grass stretches ahead of me as far as the eye can see. But it’s not what’s beyond the field that I want to find – it’s who I suspect is in it.
I push forward into the grass, my head turning this way and that, searching for a figure in the distance, but all I can see is the serenity of nature. I walk deeper into the field, straining to see far ahead, but no one comes into view.
‘Hello?’ I call out, waiting for a reply that never comes.
Dejection overcomes me as I realise the only thing keeping me company is the panting of my own breath. Folding at the waist, I rest my hands on my knees and fight to catch my breath as well as steady my wavering emotions.
I was so sure I was onto something. So sure this was it.
Straightening up and turning around, I stumble back towards the trees. Their trunks are dense, a barrier blocking me from the rest of the world. My gaze focuses on their hostility until a movement in the shadows makes my heart stop.
Slowing, I edge forward until the woodland draws closer. That’s when I see the shape that’s hidden in the trees.
The shape that’s moving closer to me.