Amanda Brittany - Traces of Her

I walk to the bottom of the stairs. It’s silent above me, no music blaring out. Perhaps Becky is out. I grab my laptop and head back into the kitchen to print off a map of the area. I’ll use my satnav to get to Cornwall, but I want to get an idea where Willow’s staying.

I key the address into Google maps. It’s about twenty miles north of Newquay, near the sea, and one of a handful of cottages just outside the village of Bostagel.

‘Hey, Mum.’ I jump, not hearing Becky’s approach. She sits down, opens a bottle of black nail varnish, and begins painting her nails. It hardly seems worth it. Her nails are almost bitten away. ‘I’ve been packing a few things,’ she says. ‘Will I need stuff for America too?’

‘No, we’ll be back before then. Take enough for about a week, and we’ll see how things go. We may only stay overnight.’ I close Google maps, and nod towards the garden. ‘Thanks for hanging out the washing.’

‘Wasn’t me. Must have been Aaron.’

‘Ah!’

‘He’d done it before I got home, Mum. I would have hung it out.’

‘I know, love.’ I pat her arm, unsure if she would have. She’s going through a lazy stage. But I know she could be a lot worse, so I’m rolling with it.

‘Have you seen the parcel?’ she says, screwing the lid back on the bottle of varnish, and blowing on her nails.

‘What parcel?’ I glance around the kitchen, which Aaron has cleaned until it sparkles. Sometimes I think he’s the one with OCD.

Becky races into the lounge, and I follow. ‘I opened it, sorry,’ she says. ‘It was addressed to Ms R Lawson. I thought it was the Blu-ray I ordered, but it isn’t. It must be for you.’ She picks up a cardboard box from the coffee table – the kind Blu-rays come in – and hands it to me. ‘I glanced inside,’ she says. ‘It’s photos.’

‘Photos?’

‘Mmm. Did you order any?’

I shake my head and, sitting down on the edge of the sofa, I look inside the box. She’s right. It’s photographs. I pull them out one at a time, and lay them in a row on the coffee table. There are four – all of men I’ve never seen before.

‘Who are they?’ Becky says, sitting down by my side. ‘Do you know them?’ She tucks her wayward curls behind her ears as she stares down at them.

I shake my head again. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘So who sent them?’ I hear a twang of apprehension in Becky’s voice. ‘Why have you been sent them, Mum?’

‘I’m sure there’s an explanation, sweetheart,’ I say, although I don’t know what it is. I turn the photos over one at a time, looking on the backs, hoping to find names.

There’s a colour photograph of a boy of about seventeen, with white-blonde hair styled back from his face with gel, and blue eyes that seem a little too close together. I take in his baggy pale blue jeans, the way his hands are stuffed in the pockets of a black bomber jacket. I turn it over. ‘It says Justin, 1999.’

‘No surname?’ Becky asks, and I shake my head. ‘He looks a bit spaced out to me,’ she goes on, taking the photo. ‘A bit like Foggy Marsden in my class when he’s high on coke.’

‘Please tell me you’re talking about the brown fizzy stuff.’

She rolls her eyes.

‘You mean cocaine?’ My heart, already thudding at the sight of the curious photographs, picks up speed.

‘It’s OK, Mother. I would never touch the stuff. My body is a temple.’ She puts the photo down.

I pick up another photograph. This man looks like a throwback from the Sixties. He’s nice looking enough, but too pale with dark shadows under eyes framed with Harry Potter style glasses. He’s in his late twenties, I would think, with dishevelled hair to his shoulders. ‘Peter Millar,’ I read from the back of the photo.

The next picture is of a man with dark brown hair. He’s good-looking, and kitted out in an expensive suit. I move the photo closer to my face, before flicking the photo over. ‘Rory Thompson.’

The final picture isn’t as clear as the others. It’s taken from a distance, possibly without the man’s knowledge. He’s wearing a yellow baseball cap pulled low over what looks like brown hair, and a white hooded sweatshirt over black jeans. There’s no name on the back.

‘Why has someone sent you these?’ Becky asks. ‘Are you two-timing Aaron?’ She tries for a laugh – she knows that would never happen. She’s trying to make light of it. It isn’t working.

I pick up the cardboard box once more, and search inside. Squashed at the bottom is a sealed envelope. I pull it free and rip it open. Inside is a piece of paper. I recognise Willow’s handwriting instantly.

My eyes widen as Becky and I read her words.

Dear Rose,

I’m sending you these photos because one of these men killed my mother eighteen years ago. Her name was Ava Millar. I’ve been asking questions, and now someone is hanging about the cottage. They want me to leave, but I’m not giving up.

I’ll explain everything when you arrive. But Rose – if anything happens to me, please keep digging until you find the truth.

Love, Willow X

My hands shake, and my heart bounces in my chest, as I try to push the letter back in the envelope. I’m in shock that Willow would send me a letter with such potency. That she would worry me that something could happen to her – tell me to take the baton if it did.

‘Christ! What’s going on, Mum?’ Becky says. She’s nibbling her nails, and her eyes look browner and wider than ever.

‘I have no idea,’ I say, the words of the letter jumping around my head, ‘but the sooner I get to Cornwall the better.’

‘This is so freaky.’ Becky pulls her phone from her pocket. ‘I need to tell Tamsyn.’

‘No! Don’t tell anyone.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘OK, Mother.’ A pause. ‘But I just can’t believe we’re going to Cornwall to catch a killer.’

‘You’re not going at all,’ I say. ‘It’s no place for you. You can stay with Grandpa and Eleanor.’

‘But Mum!’

I raise my hand like I’m the traffic police. ‘And I don’t want to hear any more about it.’

Becky thunders up the stairs and slams her bedroom door. With a deep sigh, I plonk down on the sofa and grab my laptop. Trying to block out her teenage tantrum, I open it up.

I key in ‘murder’ and ‘Cornwall’ into the search engine. There are almost 100,000 hits. As I scroll down the websites: unsolved murders, mysterious murders, frenzied killings, sadistic killings, my stomach turns over – and I pray nobody ever looks at my search history.

I spot an article about a rape and attempted murder of a young woman near Crantock in 2001, but Willow said her mother was murdered.

With determination, I do the same search and include Ava Millar.

Oh God, it’s there in front of me within moments. Ava Millar. Murdered in 2001.

With shaking hands, I press the link. It takes me to a newspaper article:

The Cornwall Journal

December 22 nd2001

The body of nineteen-year-old Ava Millar was discovered early this morning by sixty-year-old Stephen Patterson while he was walking his dog along Beach Road, Bostagel.

Stephen told the Cornwall Journal that the attack on Ava was horrific, and finding her would live with him forever. It has now been confirmed that she was stabbed eight times.

Near the body a bride’s dress, thought to belong to Ava’s sister, Gail Thompson, was found folded neatly with what appeared to be a suicide note.