by Louise Voss
As he passed the open living room door he saw his dad Jim sitting in his favourite chair, frowning at his iPhone, doubtless either playing Scrabble or reading the BBC website app. It seemed to be all that Jim did each day, that, and the Sudoku on the back page of the Guardian. Jim had retired from the civil service two years earlier, ostensibly to help Patrick’s mother Mairead with baby Bonnie, although Patrick never saw him lift a finger. It made him feel even more guilty about the burden he had placed on Mairead’s shoulders – despite the fact she robustly denied that the care of her only granddaughter was in any way a burden.
Bonnie screeched back. ‘YES I WANT TO BE THE ONLY ONE IN PYJAMAS NANNY!’
‘What are you doing home so early, Pat?’ Jim barely glanced up from his phone.
‘Flying visit,’ Patrick grunted in reply, dispelling the mental image of Isabel’s tiny broken body. In his mind, her face had morphed into Bonnie’s, the way it had looked on that terrible day he’d come home to silence and to Gill’s unravelling.
He went upstairs, desperate to see his daughter. There was a small stand-off taking place in the tiny study that had been hastily converted into Bonnie’s room. Bonnie stood with her arms folded and eyes narrowed, glaring at her grandmother. ‘No!’ she said, and stamped her feet at the little summer dress that Mairead was holding out to her. She was indeed still wearing her Peppa Pig pyjamas.
‘Hello, Bon-Bon,’ Patrick said, crouching down to her level and tapping her on the shoulder.
‘DADDY!’ she shouted ecstatically in his ear, twining her arms around his neck. Her dark curls tickled his face, soft as cobwebs. ‘You came home!’
He laughed and picked her up, the solid warm weight of her almost bringing tears to his eyes. ‘Yes I have – I will always come home to you! This time it’s just a quick visit to say hello, and then I need to have a shower and go out again. But I’ll be back later, I promise. Let’s get you dressed so Nanny can take you to playgroup, shall we?’
He took the sundress and a tiny pair of cotton pants out of his mother’s hand, as she gave him a grateful smile and a kiss on the cheek. He tried not to notice how tired she looked as she went back downstairs, more like seventy-eight than the sixty-eight she’d turned last month.
‘Right, you. Here’s what we’ll do. You put your big-girl pants on, and then you can put your Peppa PJ shorts back on – but only if you also wear the dress. Fair enough?’
Bonnie wriggled to be put down, then scrutinized him suspiciously. ‘Is that a deal, Daddy?’
‘I reckon that’s a very good deal. What do you and Peppa Pig think?’
Bonnie sighed with her whole body, spreading her little palms wide and letting them flop against her sides. She consulted her knitted Peppa toy. ‘We say yeh,’ she said reluctantly and allowed Patrick to kneel down and dress her. Then she brightened. ‘Daddy take me playgroup?’ Patrick smiled at the way she pronounced it; pwaygwoop.
‘I can’t, Bon-Bon, I’m sorry, not today. Daddy’s got to go back to work.’
He winced, anticipating the bank of TV cameras, the shouted questions, the barely suppressed hysteria – and then, inevitably, the way that the public would recognize him as ‘that cop off the news’ and hold him personally responsible for any lack of breakthrough or developments in the case … And then, the painful conversations he’d doubtless have to have with a panic-stricken Sean and Helen Philips.
‘Why?’ She squished his cheeks between her hands, forcing him to look in her eyes. She smelled so sweet, a mixture of soft baby skin and apple juice.
‘Because it’s my job, darling. I help people. And today I have to help the family of a little girl a bit like you.’ Only not dead, thank God.
‘I doan like your job.’
He smiled at her. ‘Sometimes I don’t much like it either, but I have to do it. Now, let’s go and see if Nanny will play tea parties with you for ten minutes while I have a shower. Then, I tell you what, I’ll give you and Nanny a lift to playgroup in my car, how about that?’
‘Yeah!’ she shouted, and Patrick sagged with relief that she seemed to have accepted the compromise. He carried her downstairs into the living room, not failing to miss the very slight exasperated eye roll from his dad at the imminent interruption to his peace.
‘Play with Gramps for a moment, he really wants to play tea parties,’ Patrick said sweetly, depositing Bonnie in Jim’s lap where she immediately made a grab for his iPhone, which Patrick knew always annoyed Jim. Jim deftly extricated the phone and wrapped his arms around Bonnie in a big bear hug to distract her. Patrick left them like that, hoping that Jim wouldn’t immediately go and find Mairead and dump Bonnie back on her so he could get back to his online Scrabble. It was a familiar, unacknowledged, gripe. As Patrick stripped off and climbed under the pathetic dribbly shower – that was another thing he missed, the power shower he’d installed himself in his and Gill’s house – he tried to quash the gripe. Jim and Mairead had both agreed to take him and Bonnie in, and Jim had always been lazy. It would be naïve to assume that he would suddenly become a child-minding housework-blitzing dynamo once he retired. It was so good of them to help out when the only alternative would have been extreme stress for Pat himself, and a string of au-pairs and nannies.
Feeling marginally better after a good wash and brush-up – no time for a shave as well – Patrick dressed in a suit and clean shirt, selecting a tie from a collection of almost identical ones all jumbled together in a shoebox under his bed. He loathed having to wear a tie, and consequently made sure that if he did have to, it was unobtrusive and skinny to the point of anorexia.
Along with the box of ties and all the other dust-coated junk beneath the bed were several fat books that he’d bought in the weeks following Gill’s breakdown, thinking they might help him understand, see what he’d missed, what he could have done better. PostNatal Depression: A Guide for Partners. Women Who Harm: The Psychology of Female Violence. Then there was one called The Snapping Point, a huge brick of a book by Dr Samuel Koppler. This was the one he’d found most helpful, that gave him some understanding how Gill must have felt in those black days. Ultimately he had shoved the books beneath the bed. They made him feel too guilty, convinced that he should have seen what was going on at home. But he had been so busy, tired all the time. Having a baby was such relentless hard work that his senses and instincts were dulled to the point that he hadn’t been thinking straight. That was his excuse, anyway. It didn’t make him feel any better.
He was sweating again by the time he got back downstairs, where Jim was back in his armchair and Bonnie in the kitchen ‘helping’ Mairead make cheese sandwiches.
‘I have to get back. I told Bon I’d drop you both off at playgroup on the way, but we’d have to leave now,’ he said to his mother, swiping at Bonnie’s buttery hands with a damp cloth. A greasy butter stain on his suit was the last thing he needed right before the press conference.
‘Thanks love, right, I’ll take the sarnies with us then,’ said Mairead, getting out a roll of clingfilm from a kitchen cupboard. She had never learned to drive, and Jim hadn’t got around to changing the flat tyre on their ancient Peugeot 107, so she had to walk everywhere with Bonnie in a pushchair, unless Patrick could give them a lift. Patrick looked at his watch. ‘Don’t want to rush you, Mum, but I have to leave RIGHT now,’ he said. ‘Got a press conference at two.’
Mairead’s head jerked up. ‘What for?’
‘You’ll hear it on the news later – but we found Isabel Hartley.’
His mother’s hand flew to her mouth. It was clear from Patrick’s grim tone that it hadn’t ended well. ‘Oh that poor, poor mite. And her poor parents!’
‘She was found on the traveller camp in Twickenham. Although we don’t know if she was—’ he mouthed the word killed ‘—there, or just dumped there afterwards. Keep it to yourself till after the news tonight, won’t you.’
That particular nugget of information would cause immediate chaos at Bonnie’s playgroup, if M
airead let it slip, he thought. But he knew his mother was discreet enough not to leak it. Everyone would know soon enough.
‘Go and find your shoes, Bonnie, there’s a good girl. You can have your sandwich in the car as a special treat.’
Bonnie ran out into the hall, and Mairead turned to face her son. ‘Oh Pat. That’s just awful.’
He nodded. ‘I know. And this is just the start of it. There are still two kids missing out there.’
Chapter 9
Helen – Day 2
Helen knew that many people would find it odd, suspicious even, that she had come to do a workout today, but she’d had to get out of their temporary refuge, their neighbours the Jamesons, next door.
At the gym, in this air-conditioned artificially lit space, pounding hard on the treadmill, the pain in her lungs and the thud of her heart muted the desperate voice in her head, the voice that cried out Frankie’s name in a perpetual anguished loop.
The terror of someone harming the perfect flesh of her only child was unendurable. What would she do, if that was the case? What if the next tiny body found dumped like rubbish, like Isabel Hartley’s had been, was Frankie’s?
She missed Frankie so much that she thought her head would explode. And now the terrible news about Isabel made everything twenty – no, a hundred times – worse.
The woman with the frizzy greyish hair had told them. Sandra? Sarah? Helen just thought of her as the FLO, the Family Liaison Officer, a faceless but well-meaning police woman who apparently now had to hang around them, getting in the way and making sure – what? Making sure they weren’t keeping Frankie captive in the garden shed? Making sure they weren’t sneaking out under cover of darkness to bury her stiff body?
‘Just to make sure you’re OK,’ the woman had said when she first moved into the Jamesons’ place with them. As if they could be OK, with Frankie missing, and their own house a taped-off crime scene.
So now Sean and Helen spent their nights clinging miserably to opposite sides of the Jamesons’ strange, slippery spare bed. Sally and Pete Jameson had diplomatically gone to stay with other friends. Alice was in the second spare room, and the FLO squeezed into a single bed between a home office shelf and desk unit and an old exercise bike, in the room that, on the other side of the party wall, was Frankie’s bedroom. It was strange, thought Helen, being in a house the mirror image of their own, but without any of its comfort and familiar possessions.
And worst of all, without Frankie.
She’d had so many calls and messages from friends, which she should have found comforting, but she didn’t want to hear from anyone except the police, telling her they’d found Frankie. Earlier that morning she’d taken a call from Liz Wilkins, a former colleague who Helen always got on well with, and who she was sure Sean had a bit of a thing for. Liz wanted to double-check her address because everyone at work had clubbed together to buy a bunch of flowers. Helen thought that was weird, because Liz knew their address very well – she’d been round for a dinner party at which she and Sean had flirted so outrageously that Helen had made him sleep on the sofa that night. As Liz told her how everyone was thinking about her ‘and poor Sean’, Helen had felt her anger heating up and had hung up on her.
Helen increased her pace, pushing against the wall of pain, staring at her increasing heart rate on the screen. Earlier, after hearing the news about Izzy, she had locked herself in the bathroom and sobbed for what felt like hours. When she came out the FLO was hovering.
‘Let me make you a cup of tea,’ she’d said briskly. ‘It’s been another shock, I know.’
‘I want to watch our press conference,’ Helen said. ‘It must be on the BBC news website or something.’ She hadn’t been able to face watching it earlier, when it went out live, hearing her own words read out in a flat respectful monotone by DI Lennon.
‘I’m not sure that’s a great idea,’ said the FLO. ‘It will only upset you more.’
Helen stared at her. ‘I couldn’t be any more upset than I am right now,’ she said, knowing even as she spoke the words that they weren’t true. If DI Lennon came round to tell them that it was Frankie who’d been found on the travellers’ site instead of Izzy Hartley, then yes – she would be a lot more upset.
‘I’ll watch it later,’ she conceded abruptly.
They went back down to the kitchen where Sean and Alice sat at the table, Sean staring blindly at the sports pages of The Guardian, a can of beer beside him, even though it was only lunchtime. Alice’s fingers pecked listlessly at her mobile. She looked wan and unhappy, but somehow that realization only made Helen feel even angrier with her.
‘Alice,’ she began, ignoring the alarmed warning look from Sean, whose head had shot up at the tone of her voice.
‘What,’ said Alice, a statement not a question. She might as well have added … ever.
‘Nothing,’ Helen replied flatly. She had an awful feeling that if she started on Alice, she’d never stop. But even though she hadn’t said anything further, Alice, affronted, still pushed back her chair, its legs making a loud grating sound on the stone floor.
Sean jumped up too, and in the panicked way he had whenever Alice kicked off, ran across to her and wrapped her in the sort of huge bear hug that Helen wished he’d bestow on her, his own wife, more often.
Alice, however, wriggled out of his grasp. She was crying, fat tears rolling down her cheeks, her pale face reddening with outrage as she faced Helen.
‘I know what you were going to say,’ howled Alice, working herself up into the full tantrum, fists clenched at her sides like a six year old. ‘You really don’t trust me at all, do you? In fact, I bet you blame me for Frankie being kidnapped, don’t you? Of course you fucking do! I was babysitting, it was my fault, that’s what you think, isn’t it? Why don’t you just have the guts to come out and say it, you horrible—’
‘Alice!’ said Sean and the FLO simultaneously. The FLO abandoned her tea-making mission and sprang into action, rushing over to try and calm her down. She had no idea what a futile gesture that was, thought Helen. Once Alice was in full-on meltdown, there was nothing anyone could do.
‘I just wanted you to swear on Frankie’s life that Larry didn’t come over that night,’ Helen said, taking the bull by the horns. At that moment she didn’t care if Alice never spoke to her again, or how cross Sean was with her for ‘upsetting’ Alice.
Alice made a frustrated sound, half scream, half angry expostulation, pulled the FLO’s hand off her, grabbed her phone off the table and stormed out, slamming the Russells’ front door. The FLO rushed after her.
Helen’s heart sank, hearing the commotion that this caused amongst the four or five paparazzi on the pavement outside the front gate. She could hear the cameras clicking from the kitchen, and the sound of male voices: ‘Alice, what’s the matter?’ ‘Alice, how are your folks feeling about the news about Izzy?’
She turned to Sean, craving the security of his embrace, but his face looked like thunder.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said flatly, when she came to him.
‘Oh come on, Sean! There’s something she’s not telling us, I know there is!’
He looked at her. ‘You know there is? What the fuck does that mean? Because what it sounds like to me is that you’re desperate to make Alice the scapegoat, so you’ve got someone to blame …’
Helen gaped at him. ‘Sean! That’s just not true, and I think it’s grossly unfair of you to be so unsupportive. I just can’t sit around here doing nothing while Frankie’s still missing, I can’t!’ Her voice rose. ‘Let’s go outside and make a statement of our own to those photographers. Come on. It’s got to help, surely.’
‘No,’ Sean said, putting his hand on her arm to restrain her. ‘No, Helen, it’s not the right way to do it. Maybe later, a formal press conference with that cop, Lennon, you know, the one who’s just done Isabel’s …’ He trailed off.
‘I haven’t seen the one about Isabel. I’ll watch it tonight
on the nine o’clock news.’
‘Don’t,’ said Sean, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Don’t watch it, Hel. And please don’t go outside now. If you want to appeal on TV, let’s organize it properly. But I don’t want to go on TV so you’d have to do it by yourself.’
He sounded reticent, almost embarrassed. Helen frowned at him. ‘What? Of course I’m not doing it on my own. It would look so weird if you weren’t there! Why on earth wouldn’t you want to do it, if it might help us find Frankie?’
Sean just shrugged and turned away. ‘I need to find Alice, make sure she’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m going upstairs to ring her.’
He had left the kitchen and, finding herself alone, Helen had felt the urge to flee. She grabbed her car key and headed out. At the gym, she had bought a whole new kit and towel from the little shop. The gym was in a hotel, Grant’s, by Richmond Park, and she often came here when Frankie was at nursery so she could work out before relaxing for a while in the hotel lounge with a coffee. With no family or work pressures, these were the only moments she got to herself.
She was beginning to slow down her pace when she heard someone say her name. She looked up – it was Marion, a friend she’d met here at the gym a few months ago. Sometimes, when Helen wanted solitude, the presence of a friend at the gym was a nuisance, but most of the time it was nice to have someone to chat to about stuff that wasn’t related to children or domestic duties.
Marion was another mixed race woman, like Helen, with a white mum and a dad who, Marion hinted, was a well-known musician, though she’d never revealed who he was. She didn’t have any kids of her own and Helen was envious of her skinny body and free-and-easy life. Your life can be easy like Marion’s now, a cruel voice whispered inside her skull, and she shook her head violently. She would never ever complain about the nursery run or the endless chores that came with having a small child ever again.
