Looking For Lucy: Unlike any other thriller you'll read this year by Jane E James

Author:Jane E James [James, Jane E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-30T22:00:00+00:00

48

Trudging wearily, kicking off my damp clothes as I go, I open the bathroom door and peer cautiously inside. I can hear the ominous drip of a leaking tap. The sides of the rolltop bath are so high I wonder how people haven’t drowned in it before now. Perhaps they have, but that isn’t something I want to think about right now. Grabbing my cheap satin wrap off the back of the door, hastily purchased for a hen weekend I never attended, I slip it on, careful not to glance into the bathroom cabinet mirror before closing the door behind me.

Back in the bedroom, I check out the wardrobe doors, relieved to see that they remain closed. The pillows on the bed have been plumped to double their size, and the peacock eiderdown has been folded back as if nobody had ever slept in it. A result of Jane’s tidying, no doubt. I don’t like her coming in here when I’m not around, but it’s her house, after all.

But Jane can wait. I’ve more important things to worry about. Lord of the Dance, for one thing. Knowing that he’s real and not simply a vision dreamt up by me and my daughter fills me with a sickening unease. I need to find Grace so I can find out why she drew him in the picture alongside Lucy. Does she know more than she’s letting on?

I’ve got to make her tell me how many times she’s seen him. He could be the key to everything, so the more I know about him, the better. The trouble is, whenever Grace thinks I’m getting any closer to finding the little girl, she clams up on me. It’s a hopeless situation.

Where are you, Grace? Hiding to punish me, is that what you’re up to? On a sudden hunch, I walk out of the bedroom and continue along the galleried landing until I reach Lucy’s bedroom. The door is open, so I walk straight in. There’s no sign of my daughter, but I’m struck once again by how tragic and upsetting a child’s bedroom it is. I can’t imagine Lucy, or any other child, being happy here.

My eyes are drawn to the doll’s house, remembering how distressed Jane was when the baby doll in the cot went missing and it turned out Grace had taken it. I peer down at the fake grass, grazing horses, and white geese and shudder, making a promise to myself that when life goes back to normal, I’m throwing out Grace’s Sylvanian Families doll’s house, felt rabbits and all. I won’t care how much she complains.

When I see a pair of unmoving eyes staring straight at me through one of the windows in the doll’s house, my knees buckle, and I feel my heart race ahead of me as if it wants out.

‘Grace. You made me jump.’ I laugh nervously when I get over my shock, not liking the deadpan stare my daughter is giving me. ‘I was looking for you.

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