Have You Seen Her: The new psychological thriller from bestseller Lisa Hall

With a rush the events of the previous evening come back to me and I force my stiff body round, placing my freezing cold feet on the floor, the wood warm beneath my bare skin. We had all been questioned separately, but informally, over the course of the evening about what had happened and what we had seen, and it had left me feeling almost drunk with tiredness, reliving those terrifying first moments when I looked down and Laurel was gone. My head aches, and I wince as I sit forward, taking in the scene in front of me.

Everyone is pretty much in the same position as they were last night, when Fran told me roughly to go to bed, that there was nothing I could achieve by staying up. I had refused, wanting to be there if any news came in, wanting to know if Laurel was OK, but her voice had a familiar hard edge to it, one that she uses to remind me that she is the boss, that she is in charge, not me. Instead of doing as I usually would and hurrying away upstairs to my room, I had folded myself into the hard, uncomfortable armchair in the corner of the room, for once daring to disobey Fran. Dominic had given me a tiny smile of solidarity as he watched me tuck my feet up underneath me, making it quite clear that I wasn’t going anywhere, that I would stay awake all night. Obviously, exhaustion had overtaken me at some point, even if it had only been for a few minutes.

Now, my head throbbing so hard it makes me feel queasy, I look to the tableau in front of me. Fran still sits curled into the huge, squashy sofa, while Dominic stares out of the front window. As I follow his gaze I see DS Wright pacing outside the front of the house, mobile phone clamped to her ear. Both parents look exhausted and grey, with slight wrinkles that I’ve never noticed before appearing at the corners of Fran’s eyes.

‘I take it there isn’t any news?’ I ask.

‘No.’ Fran shakes her head and dislodges a tear that runs slowly down her cheek. ‘Nothing.’ The door swings open and a tall, slim girl appears. She gives me a small smile, before asking if anyone would like some tea.

‘You remember DC Barnes, from last night,’ Fran says, her voice dull, as she leans down and picks up the mug of tea, now stone-cold, that I left by her feet an hour or two ago. ‘Apparently as well as a DC, she’s a “family liaison officer”.’ I can hear the quote marks she puts around the words.

‘Would you like a hand in the kitchen, DC Barnes?’ I ask, the atmosphere in the living room suffocating me in the few short minutes I’ve been awake again. She smiles her thanks and I follow her through into the huge, clinically clean kitchen where she looks around for the kettle, confused when she can’t seem to find it.

‘Here.’ I lean past her to the sink, turning on the boiling water tap. ‘No need for a kettle.’

‘Oh, fancy!’ She throws tea bags into the mugs laid out on the counter and starts to fill them. ‘Enough with the DC stuff for now,’ she says, raising her voice over the sound of rushing water. ‘Just call me Kelly. So, you’re Anna? Laurel’s nanny?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you worked for the Jessops for long?’

‘About three years,’ I say, thinking back to the day I got the job. I wasn’t sure if I’d even turn up for the interview, after what had happened before. I didn’t think I was cut out for nannying, not anymore, but working in a bar wasn’t for me as I had soon discovered, and a chance meeting with an ex-boyfriend, where he revealed that an old friend of his was looking for a nanny, meant that I decided to bite the bullet and take a chance. ‘Laurel was a year old when I started working here. It doesn’t seem like that long.’

‘And how is it?’ Kelly slides a hot mug of coffee towards me and leans against the counter, her blonde hair falling over one eye.

‘It’s OK. Good, I mean. I enjoy it.’ I sip at the coffee. ‘Laurel is a little sweetie. It wasn’t meant . . . It was only supposed to be temporary, a stopgap, you know? But . . . I liked it. So, I stayed.’ I’m more attached to Laurel than I ever thought I would get. I was conscious in the beginning that I shouldn’t let myself care for her too much, that it was bound to go wrong. Now look what has happened. I take another, bigger sip of coffee and let it scorch my tongue.

‘What about Fran and Dominic?’ Kelly asks, her eyes never leaving my face. ‘How are they to work for?’

‘Oh, you know,’ I shrug, but she gives a nod as if to say, go on. ‘Mostly fine. Fran is a bit . . . highly strung at times. She’s an actress, she’s always busy learning lines, meeting directors, that sort of thing, so things can get a little stressful for her. Dominic isn’t here a lot of the time. He’s always at the hospital.’

‘So, neither of them is about much?’

I think for a moment. ‘Not as much as they’d like, maybe. Fran loves being with Laurel, she just isn’t able to much of the time, not with auditions and meetings and things. And Dominic . . . well, he has to put his patients first quite often.’

‘And how are they together? Do they get along OK?’

‘Most of the time. Everyone has their ups and downs, don’t they?’

‘And what about you? Have you got a partner, boyfriend, significant other?’

‘No,’ I let out a little huff of laughter, ‘definitely not. I spend all my time with Laurel.’

‘So, did you live in the area before you started working here? Or did you move here especially?’

I snap my head up from where I am staring into my coffee and meet her gaze. I should have known that she wasn’t simply being friendly, I need to remember that she’s not my friend – she’s only here to do a job. I could kick myself for letting my guard down.

‘Am I being questioned?’

‘No,’ Kelly says, a faint blush rising in her cheeks, ‘nothing like that. I’m sorry. I just wanted to get a feel for how things are usually in the house. Obviously today it’s tense, and everyone is under a lot of strain. I don’t think Fran has taken too kindly to my being here.’

I let out a long sigh of relief. ‘She doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s simply the way she is. Prickly.’ I let out a tiny huff of rueful laughter. Fran is unpredictable at the best of times, and I often find myself walking on eggshells around her in case I inadvertently do something to upset her. Frequently I find myself making the wrong decision – taking Laurel to the park for half an hour on Saturday mornings after Fran has come home late, in order to let her have a lie in, only to come home and find her pacing the kitchen, demanding to know why Laurel wasn’t there when she woke up, or all the times I’ve bathed Laurel and put her to bed, only for Fran to waltz in earlier than expected and then demand to know why Laurel wasn’t kept up to see her. You don’t always know which Fran you’re going to get.

‘Did you know them before you worked for them?’ Kelly asks, before looking away. ‘Sorry. I’m honestly not interrogating you. I just need to get a feel for things, it’s an important part of the investigation. You know we need to do everything we possibly can to find Laurel.’ She gives me a reassuring smile and I stare into my coffee cup, shaking my head.

‘No, I didn’t know them. I’d never even heard of Dominic, although apparently he’s top of his field and well known for what he does.’

‘But you grew up round here?’

‘No.’ I’m puzzled now. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Sorry.’ She gives me a proper smile now. ‘It’s just that you look familiar, and I thought maybe we went to school together or something. You must have one of those faces.’

‘That’ll be it.’ I manage to force the words out, the blood freezing in my veins. ‘We definitely don’t know each other.’ I slide off the stool the moment Dominic pokes his head around the doorframe, his face grave.

‘Anna? DS Wright wants to talk to us all. Can you come in?’

I nod, and follow him through into the living room, my heart starting to thunder in my chest. Has there been a development? Or has DS Wright found out what I so desperately wanted to keep a secret?

DI Dove is standing in front of the log burner, his hands clasped in front of him as I totter into the room on shaking legs. DS Wright looks small and frail next to his large frame. Fran still sits huddled up on the sofa, her face pale and drawn, already looking thinner, diminished somehow.

‘OK,’ DI Dove speaks, his voice a rumbling baritone that matches his dark, brooding looks. Italian, I think, or maybe Spanish. ‘I think we all know that now we are looking at the very real possibility that Laurel hasn’t simply wandered off. That someone else might be involved in her disappearance.’

There is a little squeak, and Fran presses her hands to her mouth, as Dominic sinks onto the cushion next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, trying to pull her in towards him. Sitting alone on the armchair opposite, I feel cold and sick, the headache I woke up with still pounding away at my temples.

‘We had people searching the field well into last night, and again since early this morning, and we have yet to uncover anything that might lead us to Laurel, or give us some idea about what might have happened to her. We still have a team of volunteers down at the site, all willing to continue the search and we have officers doing door-to-door questioning to see if anyone saw anything that might be of use.’

‘Well, that will help, won’t it?’ Fran asks, a note of desperation creeping into her voice. ‘Someone must have seen something, surely? It’s not like Laurel could just vanish into thin air!’ Her voice rises to almost a shriek and she cuts off abruptly.

‘There isn’t any CCTV footage along the lanes that lead to the field, which is not ideal, but this is a fairly close-knit community and I’m hoping that someone will have seen something, and even if it seems insignificant, that they’ll report it to us.’

To me, this doesn’t sound terribly hopeful at all, and the mention of CCTV makes my heart sink. The field is well away from the main roads, surrounded on all sides by tiny country lanes that lead miles into the surrounding areas of Surrey. An abductor could have travelled for miles in any direction before being picked up on a CCTV camera. Laurel could be anywhere.

‘We’ll also need to have a team of officers search the house,’ Dove says, as Dominic gets to his feet.

‘What? Why?’ Dominic demands, as Fran stands, reaching out a hand to him. ‘She didn’t go missing from here, did she? Why would you need to search our house?’ He is bemused, looking between the two investigating officers, as Dove tries to explain that it’s all part of the process.

‘Dominic, please,’ Fran cries, ‘please sit down and let them do their job. Please.’ Her voice breaks, and Dominic sits back down next to her, pulling her tight, even though her shoulders are rigid. I say nothing, my mind working overtime at the thought of there being a search of the house.

‘Is there anybody I can call for you?’ Kelly has slipped quietly into the room. ‘Anybody who you might like to come and sit with you, your parents or . . .’

‘No,’ Fran says shortly, shaking her head. ‘I haven’t seen my father for years, and my mother lives in Dubai. There’s not a lot she can do from there.’ Despite her faded pallor, and the way she wrings her fingers together, there is a hint of the old Fran in her clipped tone.

‘What about Polly?’ Dominic asks.

‘Polly?’ Fran snaps back at him. ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous!’

‘Sorry, can I ask . . . who is Polly?’ Kelly asks, as I look on in confusion. I have no idea who Polly is either.