by Louise Voss
Jemima pulled up some plastic chairs and sat down on one, gesturing for Patrick and Carmella to do the same.
‘You’re the manager here, is that right?’ Patrick asked.
‘Uh-huh.’ The woman’s legs bounced with nervous energy. She made Patrick feel like grabbing her knees and forcing her to stay still. ‘I can’t believe it. Those poor babies. Little Isabel. You know, I thought I recognized her. I said to my husband, I know that pretty little face. But we get so many children here.’
‘Mrs Walters, you do understand this conversation is confidential? We need your discretion. It could be vital.’
Her eyes met his, a little flash of excitement to go along with her distress. She was important. Trusted.
‘You have my word,’ she said.
‘Good. Can you tell me a little about this place first?’
She explained that the Eleven O’Clock Club was a centre run by the council, her employer, to provide a place for parents to take babies and pre-school children every weekday morning. ‘It’s hugely popular. Sometimes I think we’re the very heart of Nappy Valley.’
‘And on Saturdays you run the Dads’ Club?’
‘Mmm. Although that’s not its official title, you know. That’s just what everyone calls it. Mums and grans and granddads are welcome too. Anyone. But we get a lot of fathers on Saturday morning, giving their wives a break from the little ones.’
‘I’ll have to check it out,’ Patrick smiled. ‘I’ve got a daughter who’s just about to turn two.’
‘Oh, please do.’
‘Do you keep records of everyone who attends on Saturdays?’ Carmella asked.
Jemima stood up, went behind the counter and fished out a book from a drawer. ‘This is the signing-in book. To be honest with you, we don’t enforce it, but everyone who comes in has to sign in and out, and give their name, the names and ages of their kids, their postcode and phone number. Plus there’s a voluntary two-pound fee that goes towards snacks and drinks.’
‘Can we borrow this?’ Patrick asked.
‘I … don’t know.’
‘We’ll look after it.’
‘Why do you need it? Why are you here?’ Her knees were jiggling faster than ever now.
Patrick leaned forward, slightly concerned he might get hit by a jerking knee. ‘Jemima, we believe that all three of the children who were abducted were regular visitors here. We’re simply following all lines of inquiry. It’s nothing for you to fret about.’
‘OK …’
‘We also need a list of all your staff, including cleaners, any temp staff, anyone who has worked here at all over the last six months.’
‘That will be difficult for me to get on a Saturday.’
‘You know that Liam and Frankie are still out there somewhere, Mrs Walters?’ said Carmella. ‘Someone has them. We can’t afford to waste any time.’
Flustered, Jemima said, ‘Of course, yes. OK, I can get that for you but it will take a couple of hours.’
‘That’s fine,’ Patrick said. He gave her his card and scribbled his email address on the back using a felt-tip that was lying on a nearby art table.
‘It can’t be anyone who works here,’ Jemima said, to herself as much as the police. ‘It just can’t be.’
As they walked out of the building into the bright sunshine, Patrick’s phone rang.
It was Suzanne.
‘Any news from the Dads’ Club?’ she asked.
He immediately felt irritated again. ‘Are you checking up on me? You know I’ll report back as soon as—’
‘No, Patrick, I’m not checking up on you. DS Staunton just brought me some interesting news.’
‘Right?’ He watched a little girl clamber up the slide in the playground and slip down on her belly, giggling with delight. Her dad stood nearby, ignoring her, thumbing his iPhone.
‘We’ve had a call. A witness who says they saw something in the Sainsbury’s car park. I want you to go and talk to them right away.’
Chapter 15
Helen – Day 3
As soon as Helen could escape back up to her and Sean’s bedroom, she checked to see if Janet Friars had replied. Nothing – just a message from Liz Wilkins, her former colleague, asking how she and ‘poor Sean’ were coping, which Helen deleted angrily. Her own message to the woman remained unopened. She deleted Janet’s message as instructed then sat and waited, staring at the computer screen, hoping that the little tick would appear saying at what time her last one had been read. Nothing. Janet Friars obviously wasn’t online.
Who was she? How could she know where Frankie and Liam were, and not have told the police – unless she was either a nutter, or the kidnapper herself?
Helen wondered idly if she’d be in trouble with the police, for not telling them about the message. She didn’t care. They were bound to think it was a hoax, and it would break her heart if they didn’t look into it. The FLO’s words ‘nutters on Facebook’ kept ringing around her head, but she knew that she would personally respond to every single message she received from anyone saying they knew anything about Frankie’s whereabouts.
Helen half-listened to Eileen’s voice, floating up through the floorboards, somehow managing to sound both lilting and grating, going on and on, first to Lennon – God knows what the DI had found to ask her about when she hadn’t seen her granddaughter for over eighteen months of Frankie’s short life, and knew nothing about her routine or likes and dislikes – and then, after Lennon left, to Sean. Helen could tell, by the hectoring tone that had entered Eileen’s voice. She gritted her teeth. Poor Sean. The one thing that united her small family more than anything else was their mutual antipathy towards her motherin-law, the racist cow. Her own late mum, Winnie, had refused to ever speak to Eileen again after their first meeting when Eileen had informed Winnie that ‘the blacks’ were taking all the good jobs.
This antipathy was reconfirmed when Sean came stomping up the stairs. Helen softly called out to him, and he came into the bedroom and sat heavily down on the unmade bed next to her. His face was white and exhausted.
‘As if things aren’t already disastrous enough,’ he said, rubbing his face vigorously with the palm of his hand as though washing it. ‘She has to turn up. She’s a vulture! I bet she loves this – did you see what she was wearing? That’s her best suit, the one she only wears to weddings and parties. She’s only showed up because she thinks she’ll get to be on TV. I’m surprised she wasn’t wearing that fucking awful hat that goes with it.’
Helen hadn’t seen her motherin-law frequently enough to know what her best suit was, but she had been vaguely aware of the monstrous purple nylon floral two-piece that Eileen was wearing.
‘She’ll never forgive us for not inviting her to the wedding, will she?’
Sean sat on the end of the desk and put his feet up on the side of Helen’s swivel chair. ‘That was five years ago. She needs to get over it. Your folks forgave us, didn’t they? So why can’t she?’
‘They weren’t happy, but yeah, I think they were grateful we spared them the cost of two flights from Cape Town. I wish Mum could’ve been there, though. If I’d known she wouldn’t even be around to meet Frankie …’
Helen glanced across at the framed photo on the desk of her and Sean on their wedding day, barefoot on a beach in the Seychelles, a warm sea-breeze whipping her hair across her tanned face, Sean smiling down at a ten-year-old Alice who stood between them, clutching a posy of pink roses. It had been a perfect wedding, just the three of them plus a couple of witnesses plucked from by the pool at their hotel, the sun setting behind them as they said their vows to the grinning Indian minister. Helen remembered the feel of the cool damp sand between her toes as she promised to love Sean forever.
Sean put his hand on top of hers, and she was shocked to see tears flood into his eyes. He never cried.
She snatched her hand away and jumped up, shocked. ‘You don’t think they’ll find her alive, do you?’
He bit h
is knuckle like a little boy would, and she stared at him, this man she adored but who was a closed book to her, as his shoulders heaved. ‘Oh darling, come here,’ she said, tenderly taking him into her arms even though she wanted to punch him for doubting that they would get Frankie back again … ‘It’s OK, they will find her,’ she soothed, as much for her own benefit as his. ‘They will, they have to …’
They stood like that for five minutes or more, arms wrapped around each other, Sean’s breath hot on her neck and his tears wetting her skin. ‘Don’t push me away, Sean,’ she begged softly into his ear. ‘We can get through this together. I need you. Mum’s dead, and I can’t talk to Dad. You’re all I’ve got.’
‘I need you too,’ he muttered back. Then he extricated himself from her embrace and scrubbed at his face. ‘Right, better get dressed. What are we going to do with the old dear? I can’t send her back to Braintree on the next train ‒ she’d probably try and sell a story to the tabloids saying we’ve buried Frankie in the back garden—’
‘Sean! How can you even make a joke out of it?’ Helen’s lip trembled, although she knew he had only made the flippant comment because he was mortified about her seeing him cry. Men, she thought. Why are they so pathetic?
He tutted, but had the grace to apologise. ‘You know what I mean. We’ll let her stay for a couple of days but no more. Are you OK with that?’
Helen sighed. ‘I suppose so. It’s more than she bloody deserves, though. Why couldn’t she be a proper granny to Frankie when she was here?’
‘She is my mother,’ Sean retorted weakly. ‘I’m going for a shower.’ He stripped off his clothes, and Helen gazed at his body, as familiar as her own, a T-shirt tan and the skin underneath fish-bellied pale and hairy, his flaccid penis small and vulnerable. She felt a rush of affection and lust, craving the oblivion of sex, the comfort of arousal. She was just contemplating following him into the shower when he turned at the bathroom door.
‘Have you told your dad, by the way? About Frankie?’
As if there was something else more important.
Helen sighed. ‘No. Not yet. Don’t want to worry him.’
‘You should, you know.’
‘I know. But there’s nothing he could do. And God forbid he suddenly show up on our doorstep too. One troublesome in-law’s enough, surely.’
The thought of her dad was enough to successfully quell any burgeoning lust she had vaguely entertained. Sean had gone into the shower, and she left him to it. As soon as she heard the water running, she dashed back to Facebook and refreshed the screen. A new message from Janet Friars! She clicked on it.
‘It’s difficult at the moment as I have no money and they’re watching me, can’t go to police. I will meet you on Thursday at 2.’
Helen’s heart sank. So that was most likely it – Janet Friars was already mentioning money. She was bound to be some callous chancer trying to extort cash from her. Thursday was two days away and she couldn’t wait that long. She wrote a message back:
You know The Sun have offered a £100k reward? Why don’t you tell the police what you know, then you might get that? Wouldn’t that be a better way to go about it?
Then she deleted it, holding her finger on the back arrow key and watching the letters be swallowed up by the thin black cursor. It made her feel sick, to think that she was potentially bartering for her daughter’s life. She typed a new sentence.
How do I know you are genuine? If you really do have information, why haven’t you told the police?
Duh, she thought, and deleted it again. If the person was genuine, then they really would be in fear of the repercussions of talking to her. She wrote one final sentence: Give me some proof before we go any further, or I’m telling the police, and sent it.
What has my life come to? she thought. This time last week she was taking Frankie to feed the ducks and wondering when her next editing job would come along so she could get back to work, to escape the long, slow company of toddlers. Now she knew she would gladly never work again, just to have Frankie back. Even if Sean’s salary evaporated into nothing and they were on the poverty line, she wouldn’t want to let Frankie out of her sight, ever again. She would forget about her career. She would watch Dora the Explorer on a continuous loop, play hundreds of games of I Spy and read board books all day until her eyeballs bled, the ones that she always thought of as ‘bored’ books and which previously made her want to die of boredom. Anything, she begged the God in which she had long ago stopped believing. I’ll do anything to get Frankie back again.
She gritted her teeth and forced herself to get dressed instead of waiting in front of the computer screen. When she came – reluctantly – back downstairs, Eileen was sitting at the kitchen table knitting something revolting-looking. Frothy hanks of pastel wool cascaded off the edge of the table and her hands moved so fast that they were a blur. She knitted as though she was accusing someone of something terrible, Helen thought.
Eileen gave her a look that said ‘and what time do you call this to get dressed, when your motherin-law’s here, and your baby is missing?’ Helen decided to at least attempt a charm offensive.
‘Eileen, thank you so much for coming. I’m sorry I didn’t say hello properly before, it’s all been a bit … overwhelming, as I’m sure you can imagine.’ She leaned over and gave Eileen a brief hug. ‘It’s really kind of you.’
‘Thank you, Helen, love, of course I had to come. I couldn’t sit at home doing nothing with that little lamb God knows where, and now the news of poor little Izzy Hartley …’ She dissolved into loud snotty sobs, and Helen tore off some kitchen roll and handed it to her. She had aged since they last saw her, Helen thought, studying her motherin-law’s broken veined cheeks and sunken eyes. Too much smoking had left fissures all around her mouth, and a general dissatisfaction at the way her life had gone had etched crevices in her forehead and carved deep frown lines between her eyebrows. She was sixty-five but looked more like late seventies.
‘I know. It’s unspeakable,’ Helen said. ‘But we just have to keep hoping and praying the police will find her.’ She was amazed that she managed to keep her voice steady and her eyes dry, but she found that Eileen’s hysteria helped keep her detached.
‘So, how have you been? It’s been ages.’
Eileen stopped crying and glared at her. ‘That’s because you haven’t invited me to anything.’
Helen sighed. ‘Eileen. You have an open invitation to see us whenever you want, you know that. I wasn’t having a go, just making conversation. But we do have this family liaison officer staying with us at the moment, so it’s a bit of a houseful what with the police coming and going, and Alice’s friends in and out …’
‘Are you saying I can’t stay?’ Eileen pursed her lips, deepening all her wrinkles further.
‘No, not at all, as long as you don’t mind sleeping on the zed bed in the office. I’m just saying sorry that the spare room’s not free …’ Helen chickened out of imposing the three-day maximum time limit. Let Sean do that, she thought. ‘Anyway, you must be hungry, let me get some pasta on. Sean’s just having a shower. He’ll be down in a while.’
When the pasta was done, and Sean had reappeared with spiky wet hair, the three of them sat down. Frankie’s empty booster seat was still attached to the fourth chair at the table, like a reproach. There was a tomato sauce stain on the strap of it that Helen didn’t want to clean off. She and Sean picked at a few tubes of pasta each. It was the first meal that she had cooked in three days, the FLO having made several others that none of them had touched. Helen found herself hoping the FLO would come back soon, so at least then Eileen would have a captive audience that wasn’t herself and Sean.
Eileen ate with gusto, wittering on about people ‘back home’ that Helen knew Sean had no interest in hearing about. Helen switched off completely. All she could think about was whether or not Janet Friars had replied again, and as soon as she could reasonably leave the table, she got up abruptly. ‘Leave
the bowls. I’ll clear up later,’ she said. ‘Just going to call the station to see if there are any updates.’
Once back in the study with the door firmly closed, she approached the computer as though it might detonate at any moment.
There was a new message, and she shivered as she read it: I can’t tell the police, he’ll kill me and the little ones too. But he didn’t take Izzy. Just Liam and Frankie. Frankie’s wearing fairy PJs. That enough proof for you? See you Thursday.
Helen moaned. Frankie had indeed been wearing her Tinkerbell pyjamas, but she was sure that this had been mentioned in the press conference – hadn’t it? Then she couldn’t remember if it had, or if she’d imagined it. Her hand hovered over the telephone, and she knew in a flash that she was now well and truly out of her depth. She was an idiot to think she could handle this herself. She would call the police. She dialled the number of Sutton police station and, once she got through the automated options to a real person, asked for DI Lennon.
‘He’s out, I’m afraid. Who shall I say is calling?’
She hesitated. ‘It’s Helen Philips. I need to talk to someone senior on the team investigating my daughter’s abduction. It’s urgent.’
After a maddeningly long pause, long enough for Helen to realize that Sean was going to be really pissed off with her for corresponding with Janet Friars without telling him, she heard a bored-sounding voice:
‘DI Winkler. Can I help you?’
She explained the situation and read out the Facebook message thread bar the specific instructions about meeting, almost whispering to prevent Sean and Eileen eavesdropping.
‘I see,’ said Winkler. ‘Have you told DI Lennon about this development?’
