The Summer She Vanished

Copyright © 2023 Jessica Irena Smith The right of Jessica Irena Smith to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2023 by Headline Publishing Group This Ebook edition published in 2023 by Headline Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library Cover Credit © Ildiko Neer / Trevillion Images Vibrant Image Studio and Valdis Skudre, both Shutterstock Cover Design by Amy Cox Author photograph © Jessica Irena Smith ISBN: 978 1 0354 0519 0 HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP An Hachette UK Company Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ www.headline.co.uk www.hachette.co.uk Contents Title Page Copyright Page About Jessica Irena Smith About the Book Dedication Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Epilogue Acknowledgements About the Author Jessica Irena Smith is a glass artist from County Durham and has a BA in Glass & Ceramics and an MA in Glass, both from the University of Sunderland, where she was based at the National Glass Centre. Jessica’s writing is inspired by many things, but she loves podcasts, especially true crime, which she listens to while cutting glass and loading kilns. In 2016, Jessica won a Northern Writers’ Award; in 2017, she was awarded a TLC ‘Free Read’ by New Writing North; and in 2020, she was longlisted for Mslexia’s Novel Competition. The Summer She Vanished is her debut novel. About the Book A MURDERED WOMAN. Summer, 1972. Sister Francesca Pepitone was found strangled in a parking lot on the outskirts of Boweridge. A MISSING GIRL. A week later, seventeen-year-old Minna Larson disappeared. No one has seen or heard from her since. A SMALL TOWN. The cases were never linked, and neither was solved. For some, it was a scar that never healed. Others simply forgot. A DARK PAST. Now, over forty years later, Minna's niece Maggie learns that days before vanishing, Minna was telling people she knew who had murdered Sister Fran, and that she had the evidence to prove it. Except no one believed her because there was one thing everyone could agree on . . . Minna Lies To all those who’ve had the courage to speak out And those yet to do so Someone once described Boweridge as a waterlogged sponge, so soaked with secrets that at some point they start seeping out. The same, I’ve since discovered, can be said of families. Mine especially. 1 It was Uncle JJ who picked me up from the airport. Not my mom. Not even Bob. We passed the two-hour drive talking about everything and nothing, stopping once at a roadside service station for petrol – gas, Uncle JJ reminded me. The conversation was stilted, the awkwardness of two people who used to be close. By the time we reached Boweridge, it was evening, but JJ insisted on detouring through the centre of town, for old times’ sake. The last time I’d been home, just over two years ago, the first since I’d left for good, there’d been no time for sightseeing. ‘You’re kidding!’ I exclaimed as we drove by Wally’s Wafflehouse, thought of after-school visits with Lo – one milkshake, two straws – weekend breakfasts with JJ and Greg. ‘Wally’s is still going?’ ‘You betcha,’ JJ replied with a smile. We passed Neeley’s Picture House, the tiny one-screen cinema – now the Boweridge Community Theatre – where Mr Neeley once patrolled the aisles, shining his flashlight on awkward first-date teens, making sure they weren’t up to no good. We stopped at traffic lights on Main – ‘Used to be just a lowly old stop sign,’ JJ commented. ‘Remember?’ – where the only grocery store in town once stood. Now a Starbucks, one of two Boweridge had to offer these days, the payphone outside, from which Lo and I would prank-call school friends, was also long gone. As we drove, the knot in my stomach, a clenched fist that had formed before I’d even set foot on the plane, began to ease. Things had changed over the years in Boweridge, that was for sure, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much remained the same, surprised that it felt weirdly comforting. There were good memories, I realised. It wasn’t so much the town itself that plagued me, more the associations I had with it. Maybe I could do this after all. The sun was low as we drew up outside the house, but the air still quivered with heat. I was about to get out the car when my uncle stopped me, placing a hand on my wrist. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ he said. ‘Stay with her, I mean. Greg and I would be only too glad to have you.’ ‘Thanks, Uncle J,’ I told him, ‘really. But Mom would never forgive me. It’s been a while.’ He nodded. ‘Well, if it all gets too much, Mags . . .’ He was the only one who called me Mags, had done for as long as I could remember. ‘I mean it.’ ‘I know,’ I said, and I did. ‘We’ll