nding Tilly. She called her daughter’s name over and over, but the silence that rang back made her blood run cold.
She rested her head against the wall for a moment, trying to recover her cool. This was no time for hysterics. She needed to think, plot her next move, try and climb into Juliet’s head.
Why had she come here? Where had she gone? Where had she taken Tilly?
David was on his phone, dialling Juliet’s number again and again, but she was not picking up.
‘Keep trying,’ pleaded Amy, knowing that Juliet was far more likely to speak to David than to her.
‘I can’t get through,’ said David with undisguised panic.
‘Bloody Rosemary. Why did she leave Tilly alone with her?’
She didn’t need her husband to tell her the answer to that one. Juliet and Rosemary had known one another for over twenty years. On Tilly’s birthday, when Amy always threw a tea party for close friends and family, the two women would huddle in a corner for almost the entire time. Amy had occasionally thought darkly that perhaps Rosemary would have preferred her son to marry Juliet.
Rosemary knew how close David and Amy were to their old Oxford friend, how they moved in the same circles and shared the same high-flying lifestyle; it wouldn’t have seemed so unusual to her for Juliet to turn up to the house and offer to relieve her of her babysitting duties. That was what friends did.
‘Try Peter,’ she said, snapping out of her thoughts and grabbing the car keys.
‘Where are you going?’ David said.
‘Hampstead.’
‘To their house?’
Amy nodded. ‘You wait here in case they come back.’ But she didn’t believe for a minute that they would.
Thank God she hadn’t had a drink at the Design Week party, thought Amy as she drove up Elgin Avenue. She had driven this way hundreds of times before, and could almost have done the journey blindfolded, which was just as well, since she could hardly see through the clouds of emotion in her eyes.
She wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand as she tried to concentrate on the road, cursing every red light and parked car that slowed her down. She had no idea why she was driving to Hampstead. She should just have called the police, even though they would have been unlikely to take her report seriously; so her best friend had taken over babysitting duties from her mother-in-law and they now weren’t where they were supposed to be – it was hardly the stuff of Crimewatch.
But there had been something nagging at Amy ever since Janice had told her that Juliet was going to be the new editor of Mode; the pieces of the puzzle beginning to fit together. Josie working at Genesis, the car on the train tracks, even the small details of the fashion party that had not gone to plan: it all told her that Juliet would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.
But where did Tilly fit into this? Juliet and Peter had never had children. ‘We can’t,’ was the only explanation that Juliet had ever given. Amy had always assumed that it hadn’t bothered them too much; they’d never tried to adopt or look into surrogacy. But perhaps Juliet was desperate for a child in the same way she had clearly been desperate for the Mode job.
Tilly, oh Tilly. Where has she taken you?
Amy was in Hampstead now, the Heath to her right like a gaping black hole in the city. As she turned into Juliet’s street, she looked around for her car and saw it parked just a few feet ahead under a street light. She glanced at the house. The living room shutters were closed, warm light shining through the slats.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called David.
‘I think she might be home,’ she said breathlessly. ‘The car is here and the lights are on.’
She ran up the stone steps, pushing her phone back in her pocket, and knocked hard on the door.
‘Juliet,’ she cried, hearing the desperation in her own voice.
When there was no reply, she plunged her hand into her bag and produced the spare set of keys that Juliet had given her years ago – back in the days when they had trusted each other. Her fingers were trembling, but she managed to slot the metal into the lock and pushed the door open slowly. She could hear soft classical music coming from the living room. Someone was home.
‘Juliet?’ Her heart was hammering, but her voice was steady and controlled as she called out.
The music was louder now: soaring violins and a melancholy cello that sounded half familiar: David, Max, Juliet – they would all know the piece, the composer, but now it felt like another way in which Juliet was shutting her out.
She stood at the door of the living room and took a moment before she stepped inside. She could feel the warmth of the fire, crackling in the semi-dark, before she saw Juliet sitting in the club chair in the corner, her face ghostly pale like the moon.
Amy gasped. Relief and fear combined to make her shiver.
‘You’re here.’