by Sanjida Kay
I need to get back to Ben. I lean against the wall and the lichen and algae stain my top. I’m wet through. Why have I come here? What can I hope to prove? The police have searched his house and studio extensively. There is, they’ve told me repeatedly, no sign of Evie, save that one scrap of princess dress I found skewered on a gorse bush. I remember the stoat and how Haris said he buried the body until the flesh had disintegrated from the bones.
I look around again and that’s when I see it. It’s another native bush, one that Haris might approve of. Unlike the lilac, shedding seeds like scales, this one is in full bloom, covered in glorious pink, fleshy flowers. It’s a spindle tree: Euonymus europeaus. Each berry is a potent capsule of evonoside, the poison that stopped Ben’s heart. I feel as if my own heart will implode. This is the proof I was looking for. How could Haris do this? To Ben, to me. To Evie. I want to drop to my knees in the heather and howl with rage.
When I get back to the car, Ben’s face is red, his top lip curled. He’s sobbing, aware that I’ve left him alone. I wonder if he remembers the hospital – the hours drifting in and out of consciousness – waking up in the night when neither of us were with him. I snatch open the door and unbuckle him from his seat; I hug him and rock him until he’s quiet and I’m covered in cheese and tears.
I throw the branch in front of Ruby.
‘This is what Ben was poisoned with,’ I say.
She looks uncertainly from the stick dripping water onto the table, now dusted with pollen from the golden-orange stamens, back to me. After I’d got home, I phoned to ask her to come here.
‘I found it growing outside Haris’s house. He tried to kill Ben and then he took Evie.’
‘Because you didn’t fall in love with him after he rescued you and Ben?’ She echoes Collier’s words, her voice flat. She’s trying hard not to look sceptical. Ruby isn’t one to hide her feelings or sugar-coat her expressions. I have to tell her. It’s the only thing that will convince her and Collier.
‘We almost had an affair. We met nearly every day. We kissed. That was it. That day on the moor I told him it couldn’t go any further and he was about to attack me. Then he let me walk back from his house with Ben in the rain. The person I called to come and “rescue” us was Jack Mitchell. Jack picked us up and took us home.’
‘But he didn’t hurt you?’
‘No. I was frightened. I thought he might. You can see how intense he is. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to focus on finding Evie. Don’t you see, Haris must have taken her. He wanted revenge.’
‘And you didn’t want Ollie to find out?’ She sighs. ‘Just because he’s got a poisonous bush in his backyard, it doesn’t mean he tried to harm Ben.’
‘He had the motive.’
‘I’ll tell Collier.’
She hooks her bag over her shoulder and picks up the spindle. The description I read on the Internet is right: the wood is creamy where I’ve split it from the tree, hard and fine-grained. It would make perfect charcoal.
‘Tell Collier what?’
The door bangs and Ollie comes in. He’s drenched. His jaw is clenched tight. He throws his briefcase on the sofa and Bella, who’s napping there, yelps. It’s the middle of the afternoon – he must have left work early. He kicks off his shoes and yanks off his tie as he rants at Ruby.
‘You’re not keeping us in the loop, Ruby. Why the fuck do I have to find out from the local news that Haris had a bloody shrine to my wife? With a picture of Evie and my son. You’ve got the culprit. Why the hell haven’t you found my daughter?’
Ruby can’t help herself. She glances at me and then quickly looks back at Ollie, but it’s too late. He pivots towards me.
‘You knew? You knew and you didn’t tell me?’
‘I did try – last night, before you—’
‘Jesus. You didn’t try very fucking hard.’
‘Finding that scrap of Evie’s dress was more important.’
‘More important than that psycho’s scrapbook of pictures of our daughter?’
‘There was only one photo of her. They were all of me. He was obsessed with me.’
Ruby is standing between us, clutching the branch of spindle flowers. In her long, dark trench coat and with her curly hair, she looks like a faun that’s lost its way.
‘You knew,’ he says.
His blue eyes are hard and accusing. He is looking at me as if he has never loved me. My breath catches in my throat.
‘I need to get back to the station,’ Ruby says.
Still staring at me, he says, ‘You’re the fucking family liaison officer. Fucking liaise.’
Ruby stares squarely at me and raises her pointed chin.
‘Are you going to tell him or shall I? He needs to know, Zoe.’
How dare she? She knows nothing about relationships. She lives with her bloody parents who have probably given up on the idea of arranging a marriage for her because she’s too sodding old. Has she ever even dated?
‘Tell me what?’
Ollie’s speaking quietly but his voice is so cold I’m terrified. Ben starts to cry. For a moment we all stand there then I start to move.
‘He probably need his nappy changed.’
Ollie looks tired again. He wipes the rain from his face with his sleeve.
‘I’ll do it,’ Ruby says, and I remember her nephew is a toddler. She’ll have had practice.
I turn back to Ollie.
‘I kissed him,’ I say.
That’s all it takes, just those three little words. Ollie sinks into the sofa and puts his arms around Bella.
He says, ‘You did this. You brought him into our lives.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’
We’re silent until Ruby comes down and hands Ben to me. He’s hot and smells of Sudocrem. For one moment he’s still, his arms heavy around my neck; we’re all still. Then Ben slides to the floor, as Ruby picks up her piece of spindle tree and Ollie leaps to his feet and kicks the TV screen. He collapses on the sofa, swearing. There’s a shard of glass embedded in his foot. Ben starts crying, and I grab him, to get him away from the fragments, and it’s only when the second drop hits my hand that I look down and see it’s blood. A piece of the screen has cut open his cheek, just below his eye. I start screaming. Suddenly there’s a lot of blood.
‘This is all your fucking fault,’ Ollie yells at me, attempting to pull the glass out of his toe and slicing open his hand.
Ruby calls an ambulance. By the time it arrives, she’s locked Bella in the garden, cleared up the broken pieces of TV, wrapped a bandage round Ollie’s hand and put a butterfly plaster across the cut on Ben’s face. My hands are wet with his blood. I wash them in the sink as Ben shrieks and Ruby tells Ollie not to be a complete pillock and try and take the glass out of his foot himself again.
In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, she looks from Ollie to me and says, ‘Listen to me. Collier and Clegg don’t think that Haris took your daughter. If he’s not her father, he will be released tomorrow morning. They don’t have enough evidence to hold him. I suggest you two put this behind you, whatever happened between Zoe and Haris. You can deal with it in the future. Right now, you have to focus on finding your daughter. I’m going to suggest to the boss that he does a press release and you do another televised statement to the public. And this time, Ollie, you need to look like you bloody care.’
She shouts through to the driver and he stops, dropping her off near the police station.
Ben cried almost the entire time we were in A & E. The doctor put surgical tape across the cut; thank God he didn’t need stitches. He’s in a lot of pain. I’m furious with Ollie. Ben could have lost his eye. His distress makes it even worse; we’re both on edge, but we’re barely speaking to each other. Without Ruby, we have no buffer. I know Ollie feels guilty, not because he says anything or even apologizes for acting like a total idiot, but because he insists on holding Ben and trying to comfort him. Ben wants me to carry him. He’s bec
ome much more clingy since his trip to hospital last Friday. I take him from Ollie as often as I can, partly because I want to keep Ben close, but also to prove that he loves me best and to make Ollie feel worse. Which makes me a complete bitch. And the entire time I feel as if I’ve been eviscerated. Evie has been missing for three days. The man we both think took her is in police custody, but in a few hours, he’ll be a free man.
In the taxi on the way home, Ollie falls asleep, holding onto Ben’s foot with his uninjured hand. Ben is in my lap and so Ollie’s hand rests on my thigh. In other circumstances I’d think this was sweet. Now it makes me nauseous.
When we get home, Andy is standing waiting on the doorstep. He looks cold, as if he’s been there for a while. He pats Ollie on the shoulder and gives me a kiss on the cheek, tickles Ben under the chin.
‘What happened to you?’ he asks Ben, and then looks at me with concern.
Neither of us says anything.
Ollie unlocks the door and says, ‘I’ll take him.’ Ben has finally quietened and lets me hand him over. ‘I’ll put him down,’ Ollie adds, not making eye contact with Andy. He limps upstairs.
‘Everything all right?’ asks Andy, and then looks stricken. ‘I mean, apart from, you know, oh God, I mean, is Ben okay?’
‘It’s all right, Andy. Ben cut himself.’
Andy glances at the shell of the TV with its jagged edges where the screen was, and then back at me.
‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘Yes.’
I sit on one of the stools at the breakfast bar. I haven’t bothered to take off my coat or switch on any lights. Andy doesn’t put them on either. He pours us both a glass of wine. He must have brought it because Ollie and I have drunk everything in the house, even the sticky, eight-year-old Limoncello bought on our last trip to Italy. I can’t see the bottle in the dark, but after the first sip, I can tell it’s good stuff. Chablis, maybe. Andy probably doesn’t want to say anything about it: the days of bringing round bottles of wine and cooing over the label and the contents are behind us. I’d have drunk my own paint thinner if Andy had poured it.
He sits next to me and touches my elbow. ‘How are you doing?’
I turn away and look out at the garden. A strip of moonlight slants across it, a blue so alien it shouldn’t exist.
He coughs and takes a sip of wine. ‘Have you heard about Jack?’
‘The police arrested him this morning. He said he’d been climbing in the Lake District. He’s still saying that Ollie took Evie. I don’t know any more than that,’ I say.
Andy has been speaking quietly, but now he lowers his voice even further. ‘He called me. You know, his one phone call? He wanted Gill to represent him. They can keep him for thirty-six hours without charging him.’
‘Do you think he had anything to do with it?’ I can’t stop the tremor in my voice.
Andy shakes his head. ‘He sounded terrified. He was crying. Swore blind he didn’t know what had happened. That he’d never hurt Evie. Says he’s loved her since she was little. He genuinely didn’t seem to have a clue – he didn’t listen to the news or read a paper or even see another person apart from his mate over the last two days. And because he was travelling in the early hours of the morning, he didn’t stop at any services. That’s what he said, anyway. For what it’s worth, I believe him. Fucking irresponsible to drive all night and then plan to teach a class of thirty seven-year-olds.’
My heart is pounding. ‘But if he’s telling the truth, then who has Evie? I have to speak to him.’
‘Gill’s not taking the case, by the way.’
I nod. ‘Tell her thanks.’
‘Don’t be daft. Course she wouldn’t have represented him. I thought you should know. Can I do anything to help? Anything. Just name it.’
He sounds desperate. I shake my head. He slides off his stool and hugs me. I can feel his tears, wet against my hair.
‘Is everything okay with Ollie?’
I shake my head.
‘I saw the paper this morning—’
‘It’s not true,’ I say. ‘Ollie lied to the police about where he was. At first. But he’d never hurt Evie.’
‘’Course he wouldn’t. You’re both under a lot of stress. Do you and Ben want to sleep at ours?’
‘Thanks. We’ll be all right.’
‘I’ll call you in the morning,’ he says and grips my hand tightly.
I sit in the dark and drink wine and feel lonelier than I’ve ever felt. Losing Evie is like cutting out my vital organs, my heart, my soul. At some point, I crawl upstairs and into bed, without undressing.
Ollie rolls towards me.
‘Did you have sex with him?’ he asks.
I close my eyes and grind my teeth and try not to scream. Someone has taken our daughter and that’s what he’s lying here thinking about. Worse, not someone – Jack is still saying that Ollie took her. I swallow down bile.
‘No.’
‘Did you want to?’
‘Yes!’ The word explodes out of me. ‘But I decided not to. I chose you. I chose our family.’
He reaches out for me then and, even though I’ve still got my top on, I feel as if a fleet of spiders are creeping beneath the surface of my skin. I slide onto my side, away from him.
TUESDAY: FOUR DAYS AFTER
When I wake up, my body feels like lead, my mouth thick and gritty. My head aches when I move. It could be the wine or it could be the start of the migraine I thought I’d avoided on Saturday. Ollie isn’t in bed and when I look in Ben’s room, neither is he. The duvet has been pulled back and there’s an indentation on the mattress in the shape of his body, as if he’d been snatched as he slept. My heart constricts.
I run down the stairs and Bella leaps up at me, thinking I’m playing. Ben is in his high chair.
‘Mummy!’ he shouts and waves a breadstick at me.
Ollie is cooking. There’s the smell of freshly brewed coffee. He’s squeezed oranges and defrosted blueberries. They’ve exploded in an unctuous purple goo in the bowl.
‘I’m making pancakes,’ he says. ‘We need to eat, keep our strength up.’
I’m about to protest, to say that the last thing I feel like doing is eating, but then my stomach rumbles. I’ve eaten almost nothing since Friday. I sit at the table next to Ben, and Ollie sets maple syrup and a plate in front of me. I eat pancake after pancake, hot and sweet, crispy on the outside. It reminds me of our Sunday mornings before we had children. Ollie would always cook pancakes – in exactly the same way – even though I’d tease him and demand thick, soft, Scotch pancakes for a change. Or maybe a croissant. We’d read the papers; sometimes we’d go back to bed afterwards, or we’d meet up with friends and have a pub lunch or visit an art gallery. Those leisurely Sundays, of chilled beer, rosé in the park, lattes and carrot cake in a cafe, newsprint on our fingers, seem as if they happened to another woman, a different couple.
When I finally stop eating, Ollie sits down to have his pancakes. It’s only then that I realize Ben is still in his high chair. This is not like him – normally he hates being strapped in for a millisecond longer than necessary. I lift him out and he sits quietly on my knee. I hug him tightly and, while I’m enjoying cuddling him, a small part of me wishes he was tearing round the living room shouting his head off. We should go back to see Dr Kapur, I think, kissing the crown of Ben’s head.
‘They’ve given me compassionate leave. I’m not going in.’
He piles blueberries on his plate. He always used to insist on crème fraiche, but we haven’t as much as a yogurt in the fridge. Ben’s eaten nothing but Weetabix and cheese sandwiches for the last couple of days.
‘I’ve made a start on these,’ Ollie tells me, gesturing to the haphazard pile of cards that have accumulated over the past two days.
The thought of looking through people’s platitudes, condolences via Hallmark, makes me feel sick. I push them away. Used envelopes in muted shades of pink slide to the floor.
&nb
sp; ‘I want to talk to Jack,’ I say. ‘They wouldn’t let me yesterday but maybe they will today.’
Ollie stops, his fork midway to his mouth.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Someone needs to look after Ben.’
Ollie has only eaten one mouthful. He stretches out his hand towards me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I haven’t been here for you and Ben. And Evie.’
I take his hand out of force of habit. His skin feels lizard-like against my palm.
‘Let’s talk about it later.’
‘I mean it, Zoe. I can see I pushed you away.’
I don’t respond. I don’t have any spare space in my mind or my heart to deal with Ollie. I don’t know how I feel about him any more, but I do know that now isn’t the time to make any decisions. And I’m trying not to say something I’ll regret later.
He says, ‘Why the hell is Jack still saying I took Evie?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll find out. If they won’t let me speak to him, I can talk to Collier again.’
I have a shower as hot as I can bear and dress in clean clothes. There are still a couple of paparazzi camped on our street but no one approaches me. I think Collier has slapped some kind of injunction or restraining order on them. I can imagine him growling at them. I’d be intimidated if he wasn’t on our side.
