by Paula Daly
There was a squad car in the driveway – a Freelander – as well as two Volvos with private number plates which Joanne assumed belonged to the child’s parents. She was here far too early, of course. The child hadn’t been missing more than a couple of hours, and it wasn’t protocol to have a detective involved at this stage. Kids tended to turn up. But the mother had been described as ‘a stroppy sort’, had demanded a detective, and Joanne wasn’t exactly doing a lot else, so here she was.
Joanne thought the description was probably a little unfair. The mother would be going insane with worry and wouldn’t be at her best. Who would be?
She pressed the doorbell and heard it chime. A jaunty tune rang out. Joanne really wished people would think longer about these things before they installed them. Back when she was a PC and she was tasked with the responsibility of informing the next of kin of a dead relative, she had encountered a number of these silly-sounding doorbells. The ghastly inappropriateness of what she had to follow them with led Joanne to knock instead.
The door opened, and there stood a uniformed officer who Joanne liked well enough. ‘Hello, Dave,’ she said quietly, and he invited her to come in.
‘Family’s in the lounge,’ he said.
She hadn’t got through the door, hadn’t even had the chance to introduce herself, when the woman before her said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ The violence of her reaction was startling.
‘Detective Sergeant Joanne Aspinall.’
The woman was thin, elegant and well groomed. She had the demeanour of a person organizing a smart function rather than that of a desperate mother, and Joanne studied her closely.
‘Apologies, apologies,’ the woman said quickly. ‘I was expecting a man. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m Karen Bloom, Brontë’s mother. This is my husband, Noel.’
Joanne gave the stock smile she used for these occasions, murmuring, ‘No harm done,’ before turning around to the person behind her, who was perched on the edge of the sofa. He stood up and extended his hand, saying, ‘Good of you to come, detective,’ and his gaze locked on to hers.
Joanne froze.
She was face to face with Seamus. Seamus, whom she’d gone to bed with just six nights previously.
Just to check Joanne wasn’t going completely insane, she shot a fast look downwards to examine his hands.
And, yes, the vitiligo was there, evident between his fingers.
Joanne lifted her head and watched as Noel Bloom swallowed hard. There was panic in his eyes as he waited for her reaction. He was wondering what she was going to do next.
Christ! she thought.
There was an extended moment of silence, a moment of supreme awkwardness that shouldn’t really have occurred under the circumstances, but she was floored by the situation in which she found herself.
‘Good to meet you, Mr Bloom,’ she said eventually, and watched as the fear in his eyes began to dissipate a little.
‘It’s Dr Bloom, actually,’ said his wife from across the room. ‘Not that it matters. But it is Dr Bloom,’ and Joanne nodded.
Well, he’s married, thought Joanne, so at least she had her answer as to why he hadn’t called. So there was that. She had been teetering on the edge of that bleak territory that came with radio silence, when she examined anything and everything that could possibly be wrong with her.
But he was married. Good. No self-flagellation required tonight.
Except she’d had sex with the father of a missing child.
Not good. Not good at all, Joanne.
Noel gestured to a crumpled-looking teen at the far end of the sofa. ‘This is my daughter Verity,’ he said. ‘She was with Brontë when she disappeared.’
The poor kid looked like she’d been the victim of a violent attack. She was scratched to hell, and what should have been a pretty face was hidden behind a mask of terror.
‘What Noel means to say,’ interjected Karen, ‘is that Verity was not with Brontë when she disappeared. She had abandoned her. And that’s why we have no clue as to what really happened.’
Okay, thought Joanne. So there was a dynamic at play here that she didn’t yet understand. She would need to tread carefully.
‘You’ve checked the surrounding streets? With friends and family?’ she asked.
‘No one’s seen her,’ Karen said. ‘It’s as if she’s vanished into thin air.’
‘Where was she last seen?’
‘The recreation ground. She was by the cricket pitch with a group of girls from school.’
Joanne turned on the spot and addressed Dave, the uniform in the doorway. ‘We interviewed these girls yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Let’s get some names and talk to them. See if we can figure out where she’s got to.’
Not exactly normal procedure, but Joanne asked for a few minutes alone.
Karen Bloom eyed her rather suspiciously, but since Karen had never been part of a missing-child investigation before she could hardly argue it was against police protocol, and showed her into the study. Joanne said she needed somewhere quiet to make a few calls, but in reality she needed to get away from Noel Bloom. Somewhere to gather herself and clear her mind. A place to ready herself to tackle the task ahead.
When he popped his head around the door and asked if she needed anything, Joanne declined. Then he mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ silently, and Joanne wondered just what exactly he was sorry about.
Sorry he had slipped her one and not called? Sorry he was married? Sorry his kid had gone? Sorry he was now a suspect?
Whatever it was, he did look sorry.
Dave had filled her in on the family dynamic – the fact that Karen Bloom was not Verity’s mother – and that went some way towards explaining Karen’s behaviour. Though, in Joanne’s experience, it was unusual for a mother not to blame herself to some extent, even if she wasn’t at all responsible. Joanne supposed it went with the territory. She’d heard women say that they felt entirely guilty about whatever had happened to their child. What could I have done to prevent this? What should I have done?
Odd, then, that Karen seemed to be placing the blame of her child’s disappearance squarely on the shoulders of her stepdaughter.
Joanne surveyed the study: large rosewood desk, leather chair. The house was a new build – maybe ten years old – but the decor and furnishings made for a slice of Victoriana. There were a number of photographs on the desk, not put there by Noel Bloom, Joanne assumed, because did men really go to the trouble of sourcing photographs? Buying silver frames? If they did, she’d never met one.
There was a picture of Karen and Noel’s wedding – somewhere hot. The Caribbean, most likely. Karen stood with her body angled towards Noel, her head thrown back, laughing. Noel stood square to the camera, smiling but with a slightly puzzled expression, as if he’d been told a joke he didn’t quite understand.
There was also a picture of Noel, Karen and Brontë at Disney World. Brontë looked to be around five, Minnie Mouse ears on her head, and Joanne wondered if Verity had been invited on that holiday. Perhaps she was the one holding the camera.
Lastly, there was a picture of Verity alone. A generic school photograph taken recently. The pretty girl was there all right, smiling warmly for the camera, but something in her eyes told you the smile would be dropped the second she was allowed to.
Joanne wouldn’t like to be in Verity’s shoes right now.
—
‘So, we have a group of officers conducting door-to-door inquiries around the recreation ground. And if Brontë hasn’t been found by this evening we’ll have a bulletin go out on the late slot of the regional news saying we’re concerned for her safety.’
Joanne was in the Blooms’ kitchen. Noel had been out searching for his daughter with his stepson, Ewan, to no avail, and he was looking increasingly haggard with every minute that passed. Karen was pacing. She had been pacing for over an hour now, and Joanne knew better than to try to talk her out of it.
Karen sto
pped and turned towards Joanne.
‘That’s it?’ she said.
And Joanne said she wasn’t sure she understood Karen Bloom’s question.
‘That’s all you’ve managed to arrange in the time you’ve been here?’ she said.
Noel put his arm out towards his wife and touched her shoulder. ‘Karen—’ he began, but she shrugged him off.
‘This is no ordinary child, detective,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure you understand just how vulnerable Brontë is. She’s not like other children. She’s not been brought up to be like other children. She is remarkable in school and a gifted musician, but she does not know how to fend for herself. She absolutely would not go anywhere of her own accord. Someone has taken her. Someone has taken her, and you seem content to sit here, doing nothing at all.’
Joanne took a deep breath.
‘Mrs Bloom,’ she said, ‘right now there is nothing to suggest that an abduction has taken place. Nothing at all.’
Karen stared at Joanne. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘The best thing that we can do is to keep searching for Brontë, and if you can continue calling everyone you know – anyone who has had any contact with her recently, any contact at all – then that is our best—’
‘I’m sorry,’ Karen said, ‘but I really don’t think you’re getting this. I know my daughter. I know my daughter better than anyone. She would not go to someone’s house. She doesn’t do play dates. She doesn’t do sleepovers. She doesn’t have time for any of that. She’s a musician.’
‘What does she play?’ Joanne asked.
‘The harp. The piano. Not that it’s relevant. Why are you asking me these questions?’ shouted Karen. ‘Why aren’t you closing roads? Searching houses? What are you doing wasting time asking me about this stuff? Do you even know what you’re doing?’
‘Mrs Bloom, I assure you I—’
‘Noel, get me the phone.’
‘Karen,’ he said, ‘don’t be—’
‘Get me the phone! I’m calling the police. I want someone else. I want someone who actually knows what they’re doing. I’m sorry, Noel, but now is not the time for politeness. This is a joke. This woman is a fucking joke.’
12
WHEN SHE WAS little, Verity had been secretly excited by the idea of divorce. She had attended the prep, and everybody’s parents there were married. Verity wasn’t aware at the time that some of her classmates’ fathers were on to their second, sometimes even their third, family; she just thought they were really, really old. Like grandad old. So when her mother first told her about the proposed split, about her father moving out to live with another woman, for a day or so Verity was rather thrilled – though she knew she should be sad. She’d seen films that showed exactly how she should behave: upset, tearful, asking the inevitable ‘Is it because of me?’ question – which Verity later became quite sure no child had ever uttered in the entire history of divorce.
Her mother and father had sat her down, her dad crying, her mother serious, trying to keep her anger under wraps. And they explained what was going to happen. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t love you,’ her father had said, and Verity remembered thinking, That never even crossed my mind. ‘It’s just that, sometimes, grown-ups run into problems and find it hard to live together.’
Verity was going along with the running-into-problems story when her mother stopped her father mid-sentence. ‘Noel. Enough of the crap. Tell her the truth.’ And her father gave a long sigh, as if the truth was something he couldn’t quite manage.
Her mother sat forward in her chair. ‘What your daddy is trying to say, honey, is that he’s met someone else and he likes her more than me.’
‘Actually, Jennifer,’ her dad cut in, ‘that’s not quite right, I don’t like her more than—’
‘He likes someone else,’ her mother went on, ‘a woman called Karen. Who I expect you’ll meet soon enough. And this woman is going to have a baby. Your daddy’s baby. So I’ve asked him to leave and go and live with her.’
Verity knew one thing: only married people had babies. So how was her daddy having one with someone else? Someone he wasn’t married to?
This paradox continued to confuse Verity. Right up until she learned about sex from a rather gauche girl in school named Clover whose father worked away on the rigs. Clover’s mother was very forthcoming about sex. And Clover took great delight in educating her classmates accordingly, adding colourful details here and there. And even after all of her school education, Verity still couldn’t say for sure whether the details she’d learned from Clover were true or not.
If the bed is wet, the sperm can swim across the sheets.
If you have sex while you’re on your period, then your baby will be born left-handed.
What Verity now understood, though, was that her dad had been having sex with Karen while he was still married to her mother. And as she became older, this did nothing to improve her relationship with Karen. Of course, all things being equal, she should have been just as pissed off with her father, if not more so. Perhaps she was emulating her mother, who, for years, seemed to have reserved a special kind of hatred for Karen but had managed to drop her anger towards Noel fairly early on. Verity still didn’t fully understand her own feelings about all of this, and as she sat at the kitchen table, her face in her hands, opposite the detective who Karen had just declared unfit for the job, Verity decided she would tell her therapist, Jeremy Gleeson, about it at their next session…If Brontë came home, that is.
If Brontë didn’t come home, then—
‘Here’s what I need you to do, Verity,’ the detective said. ‘I need you to start from the moment you left the house. Then tell me everything that happened, up until you realized Brontë was missing.’
‘She’s already done that,’ said Karen.
‘Not with me, she hasn’t, Mrs Bloom. Verity, go on, what time did you set out?’
‘Two thirtyish.’
‘And how was Brontë?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ asked Karen.
‘Mrs Bloom, please. If you can’t let Verity answer for herself, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the room.’
‘This is my house, detective. It’s my child who’s missing. I’m sorry but I’m not going anywhere.’
The detective stared levelly at Karen before turning her attention back to Verity. ‘Please go on.’
‘Brontë was a little upset,’ Verity said. ‘She was supposed to be having a piano lesson with some guy, but he cancelled. And Karen was annoyed. So Brontë got a bit tearful about the whole thing.’
‘This was why you offered to take her to the rec?’
‘I wanted to get her out for a while.’
Verity stole a glance at Karen, worried she was going to blow up for making Karen appear partly responsible. Verity watched as Karen opened her mouth to speak, before closing it again.
‘What did you talk about?’ the detective asked.
‘Not a lot. I was teaching her about road safety. Brontë doesn’t go out much on her own, and so she’s pretty crap at crossing the road.’
‘Was she still upset by the time you got to the rec?’
‘No,’ Verity said. ‘She was fine by then. She was happy.’
‘Why are you focusing so much on my daughter’s state of mind?’ Karen demanded. ‘What are you suggesting?’ She turned to Verity’s father. ‘For Christ’s sake, Noel, can’t you do something? Or are you going to stand there, as per usual, and—’
‘Mrs Bloom,’ the detective said, perhaps a little wearily now, ‘I don’t know your daughter. And I need to know as much about her as I can. That’s it. I don’t have any other agenda except finding Brontë. Let me do that, and I’m sure you’ll soon have your daughter back.’ She didn’t wait for Karen to respond, instead turning to Verity.
Verity was impressed. The detective had the patience of a saint, as far as she could see. Karen made a habit of getting people’s backs up. In fact, Karen pos
itively enjoyed getting people’s backs up – often to the point that they couldn’t bear it and had to leave. This woman seemed unaffected, and without Verity really meaning to, because it was very inappropriate, given the circumstances of their conversation, she found herself warming to the detective across the table.
The detective smiled at Verity, giving her a conspiratorial I’m on your side here look.
‘Has Brontë ever mentioned running away to you?’ she asked.
Karen released a bark of nasty laughter. ‘Good God,’ she said to herself.
Verity said no, Brontë hadn’t mentioned running away.
‘Ever said she was unhappy at school?’ the detective asked.
‘She got pretty tired sometimes. She didn’t always want to go. But she wasn’t unhappy—’
‘Brontë does very well at school,’ Karen said. ‘She has no problems with the work and has always been remarkably popular.’
‘What about friends?’ the detective asked, again ignoring Karen. ‘Are there any in particular? Any that she’s close to?’
‘Eleanor O’Connor.’
‘Was she at the rec?’
Verity shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. No. I didn’t see her there.’
‘Okay,’ and the detective paused, glancing at Karen before asking this, ‘if Brontë was to run away – and I’m not suggesting for one moment that she has – where do you suppose she might go?’
But Verity was at a complete loss.
13
Monday, 28 September
Noel was watching his wife sleep. The lights had been left on in the hallway outside their bedroom and he watched as her chest rose, gave a slight judder, then fell again. Her face was tense and twitching. Noel didn’t want to imagine what sorts of dreams she was having.
Karen had finally, at around 4 a.m., succumbed to a sleep she neither wanted, nor thought she needed, a sleep she’d been fighting off valiantly up until then. Noel had managed half an hour’s slumber at around two, and that would be enough to keep him going throughout the day without feeling like he was one of the walking dead.
