feeling of being cradled and lulled, but Coralie was opening her door, and Brett was pulling the keys out of the ignition.
Reluctantly, she climbed out of the car and watched Topaz get out and walk round toward Brett, who was unloading a few sleeping bags and backpacks. Topaz stretched upward, her crop top riding up to show her tanned stomach, and then turned round to face away from him. She leaned forward to touch her toes.
Aurora saw Brett’s eyes drop to Topaz’s backside, where some of her buttocks and the very bottom of her lace underwear were visible.
“I’m soooooo stiff,” Topaz said. She straightened up slowly, and looked at Brett over her shoulder. “Coming?”
“Uhhh…Sure.”
Coralie hurried round the car and took Topaz’s hand. The two of them swayed ahead down the forest path.
3
Jonah took Hanson with him to the Jackson house outside Lyndhurst. He could have left informing next of kin to a couple of community-support officers, but he felt a powerful need to be there. Perhaps to comfort; perhaps because he’d waited thirty years for a conclusion.
The Jacksons had never left the New Forest. It was the more common outcome in disappearance cases. Where a murder often drove a family away, an unresolved missing person bound them to the place where the missing one had been. There was always that dwindling hope that they would one day arrive back home again.
The half-mile driveway was almost impassable now. The sand-and-hardcore surface had disintegrated into a minefield of potholes. Hanson swore when the front-left tire dipped deeply enough into a pothole that the bottom of the car scraped the hard-baked mud. She pulled the wheel sharply to avoid another, and Jonah steadied himself against the dashboard.
“Doesn’t the council resurface this?” she asked.
“Private road,” Jonah replied. “The Jacksons have never believed in tarmac. They’re a bit alternative. Though I’m not sure if it’s about a love of nature or just laziness, to be honest.”
“I don’t mind nature when it keeps its hands off my car,” Hanson muttered.
She pulled up in a half-cleared area in front of a single-story house. Jonah opened his door over a dried-mud crater. Stepping into it, he felt corners of stone press into his foot through the sole of his shoe.
He had half emerged from the car when the battered front door opened. A round, uncertain figure in a thick-knit cardigan and home-dyed dress stood in the doorway, blinking into the sun.
“Good morning, Mrs. Jackson. Sorry for bothering you, but is it all right if we come in?” he said as neutrally as he could.
“I…Yes. Yes, I suppose so.” She emerged further from under the shadow of a scorched-looking wisteria. Then she stopped. “It’s not Topaz, is it?”
Jonah shook his head, but Hanson answered for him.
“Your daughter’s just fine, Mrs. Jackson.” She said it with a warm smile, and Jonah was glad he’d brought her along.
“We just wondered if we might chat about some developments in Aurora’s disappearance,” he added.
Joy Jackson’s head turned back toward the house briefly, and her hands reached for her cardigan pockets.
“Yes. Yes, of course. Why don’t you—”
She stood shifting as Jonah and Hanson navigated the overgrown stones of the path. Two of them tipped under Jonah’s feet.
Up close, Joy was ruddier and more lined than he’d remembered her. Round cheeks underscored by webs of red; eyes that constantly shifted in creased sockets.
Lavender came off her clothes as she turned. “Come in. I’ll find Tom. Tom!” Her voice was shrill as she dipped into the shadow of the hall. “Tom!”
The hallway was barely possible to walk along. Most of the floor was covered with assorted coats, shoes, boxes, and eclectic outdoor items. Joy picked her way past without looking at her feet, long practiced at this arrangement.
“Come into the kitchen. I’ll put some tea on. Tom!”
The kitchen was no less cluttered. There were two or three spare feet of clear space at one end of the huge oak table, and a mountain of newspaper, letters, and shrapnel on the remainder.
“Don’t trouble yourself over tea unless you want one,” Jonah said as Joy opened three cupboards in turn before finding a box of tea. She turned round with it, and came to a stop again.
He moved around the edge of the table and let his eyes scan the kitchen. The work surfaces were under a layer of visible grime, with dirty crockery spread out like ornaments. Larger objects interspersed them at intervals. An old piece of plumbing. A table-tennis racquet. A hammer.
The stooped