Rachel thought again of the video and remembered the expression on his face when he’d turned on Janie. She could see it so clearly. The face of a monster: leering, malicious, cruel.
And now look at him. Connor Whitby was very alive and very happy, and why wouldn’t he be, because he’d gotten away with it. If the police did nothing, as it seemed likely, he would never pay for what he’d done.
As she got closer, Connor caught sight of Rachel and his smile vanished instantly, as if a light had been snapped off.
Guilty, thought Rachel. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
This came by overnight courier for you,” said Lucy when Tess was home unpacking the groceries. “Looks like it’s from your father. Fancy him managing to send something by courier.”
Intrigued, Tess sat down at the kitchen table with her mother and unwrapped the small bubble-wrapped package. Inside was a flat square box.
“He hasn’t sent you jewelry, has he?” asked her mother. She peered over to look.
“It’s a compass,” said Tess. It was a beautiful old-fashioned wooden compass. “It’s like something Captain Cook would have used.”
“How peculiar,” said her mother with a sniff.
As Tess lifted up the compass she saw a small handwritten yellow Post-it note stuck to the bottom of the box.
“Dear Tess,” she read. “This is probably a silly gift for a girl. I never did know the right thing to buy you. I was trying to think of something that would help when you’re feeling lost. I remember feeling lost. It was bloody awful. But I always had you. Hope you find your way. Love, Dad.”
Tess felt something rise within her chest.
“I guess it’s quite pretty,” said Lucy, taking the compass and turning it this way and that.
Tess imagined her father searching the shops for the right gift for his adult daughter. The expression of mild terror that would have crossed his leathery, lined face each time someone asked, “Can I help you?” Most of the shop assistants would have thought him rude, a grumpy, gruff old man who refused to meet their eye.
“Why did you and Dad split up?” Tess used to ask her mother, and Lucy would say airily, a little glint in her eye, “Oh, darling, we were just two very different people.” She meant: Your father was different. (When Tess asked her father the same question, he’d shrug and cough and say, “You’ll have to ask your mum about that one, love.”)
It occurred to Tess that her father probably suffered from social anxiety too.
Before their divorce, her mother had been driven to distraction by his lack of interest in socializing. “But we never go anywhere!” she would say, full of frustration, when Tess’s father once again refused to attend some event.
“Tess is a bit shy,” her mother used to tell people in an audible whisper, her hand over her mouth. “Gets it from her father, I’m afraid.” Tess had heard the cheerful disrespect in her mother’s voice and had come to believe that any form of shyness was wrong—morally wrong, in fact. You should want to go to parties. You should want to be surrounded by people.
No wonder she felt so ashamed of her shyness, as if it were an embarrassing physical ailment that needed to be hidden at all costs.
She looked at her mother. “Why didn’t you just go on your own?”
“What?” Lucy looked up from the compass. “Go where?”
“Nothing,” said Tess. She held out her hand. “Give me back my compass. I love it.”