Chapter 14: The Hairbrush

I didn’t call Mason that afternoon.

Natalie wanted me to. She said it would be smarter to confront him, to put the card on the table and watch his face. But I wasn’t ready for the explanation he’d give. He would have a good one. He always did. I’d already heard two good ones, and each time I’d felt a little more like a child being gently handled by someone who knew far more than I did.

Instead I asked Patience for one more thing before we left.

“If I wanted proof,” I said. “Real proof. That I’m not a Coker. What would I do?”

“A DNA test.” She said it at once. “Your sister, your father. Anything that carries a sample. If you’re not related to them by blood, it will tell you.”

“My sister’s hairbrush,” I murmured.

“Amelia.” Natalie stared at me. “You want to break into your own house?”

“It’s not breaking in if I used to live there.”

“was it when your dad called you a thief and told you to leave your key on the table?”

I’d forgotten that. I touched my empty pocket and felt a wave of grief so sharp I had to sit down on the church steps. Patience came out and pressed a paper bag into my hands, a few sandwiches, an apple, a bottle of water, as if feeding people were the only apology she knew how to make. I ate half a sandwich and couldn’t finish it.

I told myself it was only a test. Hair, a swab, a label. In three days I’d know, one way or the other, and the whole mess in my head would settle into something solid.

But when Natalie’s Corolla turned onto our street that night, my stomach folded in on itself.

Baldwin Hills in the dark was all hush and sprinklers. The big houses sat back from the road behind clipped hedges and wrought-iron gates, their windows warm and gold. Ours was the third from the corner, a white stucco two-storey with red tile and the hibiscus I’d watered every morning since I was fifteen.

Every window was black.

“Wow,” Natalie whispered. “Nobody’s home.”

“Mum’s car is gone.”

I wasn’t surprised. After the storage unit, she would have gone somewhere to hide. I felt a quick, shameful pang of relief that I wouldn’t have to look at her.

Natalie parked down the block. We walked toward the gate, and my pulse thudded in my ears. The wrought-iron bars were cold under my hand. The gatehouse light was on.

“Idris?” I said softly.

The door of the little hut opened. Idris stepped out, a thin, grey-haired man in a blue windbreaker, a flashlight in one hand. He had worked at our gate since before I could walk. He used to slip me butterscotch candies wrapped in tissue when Mum wasn’t looking.

When he saw me, his flashlight clattered to the ground.

“Miss Amelia,” he whispered. “God in heaven. You must not be here.”

“I need something from my sister’s room. Five minutes.”

“They have been watching the house.” He glanced down the empty street. “Two days now. A man in a car. Sometimes two.”

“Grey Land Cruiser?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes a black sedan.” He rubbed his face. “Your father told me, the night before they took him, that if you ever came, I should let you in. He gave me his keys.” Idris dug in his windbreaker and pulled out a ring. “He said you must not be afraid of the house. It’s still yours.”

My eyes stung. “Did he say anything else?”

“He said he was sorry.” Idris pressed the keys into my palm and folded my fingers over them with his dry hand. “Go. Quickly. I will watch the road.”

The house smelled of lemon polish and absence.

I crept up the stairs with Natalie’s phone torch cupped in my hand. The family photographs on the landing seemed to follow me with their eyes: Dad with his arm around Mum at a wedding, Vanessa in a graduation gown, me at the far end of every frame, smiling, always smiling. I had always been so careful to be easy to love.

Vanessa’s door was open.

Her room was a mess of clothes and half-packed suitcases. A London Underground map was pinned above her desk. On the dresser stood a photograph of the two of us at thirteen and fourteen, with ice-cream cones and sunburned noses. I picked up the hairbrush from beside her mirror. A dark thread of hair was wound around the bristles. I slid it carefully into a sandwich bag.

My hand brushed her desk. A sheet of paper slid sideways and drifted onto the carpet.

I picked it up. It was a photocopy. Somebody had folded it, then unfolded it so many times that the creases had worn through the paper in places.

My dear child,

If you are reading this, then Grace found you and I did not. Forgive me.

The same letter. Mrs. Ruth’s letter, the one Grace had given me on the church wall, word for word, down to the signature. But this copy was marked up. Someone had underlined the line about the hospital register in red. In the margin beside I will find her mother, in handwriting I had known since childhood, round and loopy, the same hand that had signed every birthday card I’d ever received from her, my sister had written three words.

Don’t tell Amelia.

At the top of the page, small and neat, a date. Two years ago.

My knees gave way. I sat down hard on the edge of Vanessa’s bed, the letter shaking in my fingers.

Two years. Vanessa had known for two years. She’d sat across from me at dinner while I helped her with her university application. She’d cried on my shoulder over her visa. She had let me carry her coursework through a hundred late nights and never said a word.

“Amelia.” Natalie’s voice, tight, from the landing. “Headlights.”

I scrambled up. Through Vanessa’s window I saw a pair of white beams swing around the corner of our street, slow and sure, sweeping across the hibiscus. The engine was a low, heavy growl.

I shoved the letter and the hairbrush into my bag. We tore down the stairs, and I nearly fell on the last step. At the kitchen door Idris was waiting, white-faced, waving us toward the back garden.

“This way! The side gate! Run!”

We ran across the damp lawn, past the lemon tree, through a gap in the hedge. Behind us I heard the front gate groan open, and a man’s voice, low and polite, say, “Good evening, sir. We’re looking for Miss Amelia Coker.”

I didn’t wait to hear Idris’s answer.