Just What Kind of Mother Are You?

by Paula Daly

  He kissed me again, whispering, ‘You’re way off.’

  And this is the part I’m most ashamed of. This is the part, when I think about it, I hate the most. I hate who I was in this moment.

  Because I let him.

  I let him kiss me. I let him push my dress up and pull my knickers down over my stockings, around my ankles. And I could lie and say it was because his wife made me feel worthless and crap, and I hated her for it. That would be true, but not the only reason. Really it was because I’d looked at Joe, pissed and daft in the corner, and I’d looked at Adam and Guy, eloquent and charming, and I couldn’t believe Adam could want me. Want me and be willing to risk being found out. He was clever and funny and handsome, and, Jesus, he had money. He was all the things I was never, ever down for. The things I could never, ever have.

  Before I knew it he was inside me and moving and I was gasping. The whole thing was raunchy and thrilling and desperate. And then, as I opened my eyes in sweet anguish, there was a face peering around the door, watching me. Us.

  Then it was gone.

  9

  IT’S ALMOST ELEVEN A.M. I’ve called the animal shelter and told them I won’t be in until … I don’t actually give them anything firm. My office door will be kept shut, and there’ll be no animal adoptions today.

  I have to sign off on all the adoptions. I do the home visits first to check we’re not sending our cats and dogs to a hellhole. And I have a personal rule that if you’ve brought more than one dog back to us, you can’t have another. I don’t care if your personal circumstances have changed, I don’t care if you’ve got more time now, that you really regret giving up the last pet. Two strikes, and you have to go elsewhere.

  Joe puts a cup of tea on the bedside cabinet and gives the top of my head a quick kiss. I sit up and lift the rim of the cup to my lips, but my hands are shaking too much to take a sip.

  He’s just had a phone call to say there’s a police officer coming to see us shortly, to talk about what we know. I’d protested. Said to Joe that we didn’t know anything, and wouldn’t we be more use out looking for Lucinda?

  But Joe had stroked my face, saying, ‘They need to talk to us. Don’t worry, it won’t be that bad.’ As ever, he knew the true meaning behind my words. He knew what I was really saying: Don’t interview me and blame me. Don’t blame me again.

  ‘Come on,’ says Joe. ‘You best get downstairs. They’re not going to want to talk to you while you’re in bed.’

  We go down to the kitchen, and the doorbell rings.

  Joe answers it quickly, and I hear a woman’s voice.

  ‘Mr Kallisto? Hello, I’m Detective Constable Aspinall.’

  Joe murmurs something and, seconds later, she’s in my kitchen. The three dogs are immediately around her legs, sniffing and fussing. I go to apologize but, before I get the chance to shoo them away, she says, ‘It’s fine. I don’t mind dogs.’

  Joe tells her the kettle’s boiled and asks if she would like a brew. She accepts. Strong tea, one and a half sugars.

  ‘How are you bearing up?’ she asks, because she can see by my face I’m a mess. I’m crying even when I don’t know I am. ‘I’m told that Mr and Mrs Riverty assumed that their daughter was here for the night. Is that correct?’

  I nod sadly, sitting down, gesturing for her to do the same. The scrubbed pine table is still littered with this morning’s debris. Grains of sugar, rings from the bottom of cups and glasses. I put my elbow into something sticky then move it again.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ I tell her and she doesn’t say anything in return. Not: It could happen to anyone. Or: Try not to be too hard on yourself. None of the things I would surely say to someone in my situation.

  She’s a chunky, squat-looking woman in her parka and flat shoes. It’s only when she takes off her coat that I see it’s her bust making her appear much bigger than she actually is. Her dark hair is held back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. A few strands have escaped around her face. I’d put her at about my age, thirty-sevenish. There’s no wedding ring.

  Joe hands her the tea. ‘Do I stay?’ he asks. ‘Or do you want to speak to us separately?’

  Neither of us has had any dealings with the police before, and he’s flapping. ‘Stay,’ she says kindly. She takes out a notepad, flips through the pages.

  ‘Kate’s not doing too well,’ I tell her.

  ‘To be expected.’

  ‘They had to get the doctor. That’s why we left. That’s why we decided it was best if—’ I stop myself. I’m flapping now. Telling her stuff she doesn’t need to know. Trying to explain why we’re not round there doing something to help.

  I change tack and ask her if it was she who interviewed the family earlier. ‘Did you see Kate?’ I say.

  DC Aspinall starts writing in her notepad while she speaks. ‘I saw Mr and Mrs Riverty this morning.’ She says this without looking up. ‘Then I went on to Windermere Academy to talk to the teachers and find out what time Lucinda was in school until. We’re piecing together her movements just before she disappeared.’

  ‘My daughter’s at school there,’ I blurt out. ‘Did you talk to her? She’s called Sally, she said that the police were going to—’

  ‘My colleague’s interviewing the students.’

  I feel as if I’m doing this all wrong. I want to come across as sensible and capable. Not like a silly woman focused on all the wrong things.

  She looks up. ‘Okay, let’s get started.’

  I’m expecting her to run through the events of yesterday, expecting her to want exact times, arrangements, phone calls made, texts sent. I’m expecting her to want the full minutiae, so when she says, ‘What kind of mother would you say Kate is?’, for a second, I’m floored.

  ‘Sorry?’ I stammer. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Kate?’ she repeats. ‘What kind of mother would you say she is?’

  And, without hesitation, I say, ‘The best. She is the best kind of mother.’

  I think back to the health problems she’s had with Fergus, her seven-year-old. ‘Her son’s been sickly for as long as I’ve known them,’ I tell her. ‘He had some kind of an eye problem no one could seem to resolve. And where I would be frantic, not coping and worrying about everything, Kate would make their trips to London to see the specialists an adventure. She’d make them something for Fergus to look forward to.’

  I can remember Kate letting Fergus dress up as a superhero or a knight or a warrior. She’d create maps and games and quests for them to complete together on the train. I never once heard her complain about the disruption it caused them; never once did she act like it was a bind.

  I look at DC Aspinall. ‘Kate is the kind of mother you want to be, the kind you wish you had.’

  ‘What about Mr Riverty?’ she asks. ‘Would you say that he’s also a devoted parent?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She holds my gaze before flipping to another page in her notebook.

  I chance a quick glance at Joe, and he raises his eyebrows. He’s thinking the same thing as me, that she might be suspecting Guy of something. Which is ridiculous.

  I don’t know Guy that well – apart from that one time we went over there for dinner, we’re not the kind of couple who socialize ‘as a couple’. You know the types – where the men get together and talk about whatever it is men talk about, and the women stand in the kitchen complaining about how little their husbands do around the house. Joe and I tend to have separate friends. I see Kate socially and at school, but Joe and Guy would never go out for a pint together. Now that I think about it, I wonder why that is. I feel a stab of irritation, although I’m not sure exactly why.

  ‘How well do you know Mr Riverty?’ DC Aspinall asks.

  ‘How well do you know anybody?’ I reply, and I see immediately that philosophizing is not the way to go with her. She says nothing and waits for me to answer the question appropriately.

  ‘Not that well,’ I say, ‘but well enough to get
the measure of him, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘We’re just trying to get a picture of them as a family at this stage.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s involved, do you?’ I say, and immediately Joe admonishes me.

  ‘Lisa!’ he says sternly.

  ‘What? It’s what they do, isn’t it? The police? First they check out the family.’

  DC Aspinall looks to Joe and then to me. She speaks slowly and carefully.

  ‘An enormous number of children go missing each year,’ she says. ‘Most are runaways, so we need to establish as fast as we can if the child has any reason to disappear of their own accord. That’s why we examine the relationships within the family – it’s important to know the dynamics before we start.’

  ‘So you’re asking me if I think Guy could be responsible for Lucinda running away?’

  She tips her head to one side slightly, as if to say, Could that be possible?

  ‘Not a chance,’ I answer.

  ‘How can you be so sure, if, like you say, you don’t know him very well?’

  ‘Because I know Kate and …’ I pause, not sure whether to say what I want to say. ‘I don’t know how to word this, so I’m just going to spit it out … Let’s decide that Guy is some kind of weirdo who makes his kids uncomfortable – Kate would be on to it like a shot. She watches those kids constantly, she tends to everything, she knows the name of every child in Fergus’s class, she knows all the families of Lucinda’s friends – where they live, what they do. She makes it her business to know. She misses nothing. Those children are her life. They come before everything.’

  ‘Okay,’ DC Aspinall says, and she takes a gulp of tea. She nods at Joe. ‘Good brew.’

  He smiles. ‘She’s got me well trained.’

  ‘Let’s go back to yesterday then,’ she says. ‘It was normal for the girls to have a sleepover on a school night?’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘They’re great friends, they—’ Then I stop. ‘Actually, it’s not normal.’ Confused, I turn to Joe. ‘Has that ever happened before, Joe? Lucinda staying here on a school night?’

  ‘No idea,’ he says, shrugging. ‘She’s here a lot, so I can’t say I’ve ever paid it that much attention.’

  I stare at DC Aspinall blankly. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who arranged it?’ she asks. ‘Can you remember?’

  ‘Yes. Sally. She said she and Lucinda needed to work on an assignment together. I think it was a group thing. Kate would know. Anyway, Sally asked if Lucinda could come here for the night so they could work on it together, and then stay over. I can’t say I thought much about it, because, like Joe says, she’s here a lot.’

  ‘What about getting to school the next morning?’ she asks. ‘Would Mrs Riverty just assume you would take the girls?’

  ‘What? Oh, no. Both girls get the minibus. It picks up all the children in Troutbeck and takes them to school each day.’

  ‘What firm is that?’

  ‘South Lakes Taxis,’ I say, and she jots it down.

  ‘Can I ask something?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘When did Lucinda disappear? Did she make it into school yesterday? Or has she been missing for a full twenty-four hours?’

  ‘We’re almost certain she went missing at the end of the school day. The register was taken at the start of the final lesson and she was marked down as present. But we’re re-checking that with the students themselves. Would you say it would be usual for Mrs Riverty to contact her daughter during a sleepover?’

  ‘I would have thought so, knowing Kate.’

  Had Kate tried to call Lucinda and not received a reply? It happened often enough with Sally. The first few times we went ballistic, but then, like I’m sure most parents of teenagers do, with time, we let it go.

  I choose my battles with Sally carefully and I gave up on this one a while back, probably around the time I gave up on nagging about the state of her bedroom.

  ‘Kate sent a text to Lucinda, but it went unanswered,’ DC Aspinall says. ‘And I wondered if, as a parent, that would make you worried enough to call? To try to make contact with the parents?’

  I thought about this. Could she really be putting some blame on Kate for not following up on a text?

  ‘There have been times when Sally has stayed over with Lucinda and she’s not replied to my texts. Girls get giddy, they get carried away in whatever it is they’re doing. You know what it’s like.’

  Seemingly, DC Aspinall doesn’t know, because she makes no gesture of agreement.

  ‘But, to be honest,’ I say, ‘because I know she’s with Kate, I’ve never really worried about her if she’s at Lucinda’s. Perhaps if Sally stays at someone else’s house, perhaps if she’s with a friend I know less well, maybe that would make me call the parents and check on her.’

  This seems to satisfy, because DC Aspinall stops with this line of questioning and she goes on to ask me about what sort of girl Lucinda is. Could she be hiding anything from her parents? When I sense we’re done I ask the thing I’ve wanted to know since she walked in.

  ‘What do you think’s happened to her?’

  ‘Impossible to say,’ she replies.

  ‘But if you had to say. If you had to call it one way or another, would you say you thought Lucinda—’

  ‘At this stage we’re exploring every avenue.’

  I nod. A large part of me has been hoping to hear DC Aspinall say she thought Lucinda was a runaway. Then my guilt wouldn’t be quite so all-encompassing. But of course Lucinda hasn’t left of her own accord. Why on earth would she?

  ‘One last thing,’ DC Aspinall says, matter-of-fact, as she goes to stand. ‘We’ll be needing an account of your whereabouts, both of you … from around three o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘So, Charles,’ – the estate agent regards him, blinks – ‘are you wanting to view properties like this one? Properties right on the lake? Or are you open to anything?’

  ‘I’d prefer something with lake access if possible. Actually, I’d really like a boathouse – but I suppose if the right property came along then I’d be happy to go for anything—’

  ‘I understand,’ she says, nodding. ‘Though I’m sure you’re going to love this one – it is exceptional.’

  He hangs back as she unlocks the front door and deals with the alarm. No one home then, he notes. Once she’s inside the hallway, she turns, beaming at him, waiting for him to ooh and aah. Waiting for him to gush about the oak panelling and the original features. As if she herself had some hand in building the thing.

  ‘Impressive,’ he says, to appease her, but he doesn’t really think so. Whoever owns this place doesn’t have any real taste. The stair carpet is cheap, and the stained glass fitted inside the porch is tacky.

  ‘Let me show you the kitchen,’ she says. ‘It’s amazing.’

  Her stilettos move fast across the parquet floor. He watches her walk and sees that the hem of her skirt is hanging low. A thread of black cotton has come loose and is snaking down her calf.

  ‘It’s a wonderful room, flooded with light,’ she says. ‘A perfect family room, wouldn’t you say?’

  He doesn’t even bother commenting on that. Feels like he’s in one of those aggravating relocation programmes where the women declare the kitchen to be the ‘heart of the home’. The kind of women who want a ‘usable space where we can all be together’, and their teenage kids look on as if they couldn’t imagine anything worse.

  The agent moves towards the wall of windows beyond the dining area and asks, ‘Where are you living at the moment?’

  ‘Grasmere,’ he answers.

  ‘Oh? It’s just I’m not familiar with your name, so I assumed you weren’t from the area.’

  She’s clumsy in her quest to figure out if he can really afford this place. She’s smiling at him, waiting for him to divulge more information. He doesn’t.

  He examines her: all that loose flesh squeezed into something that’s sup
posed to pass for professional attire. Look into this woman’s face and you’ll see her life. He pictures her running out of the house in the morning, stuffing a Mr Kipling’s French Fancy into her mouth, pretending she’s not wearing yesterday’s knickers, climbing into her car, which is littered with crisps and bits of crap.

  They move back to the kitchen and she runs her hand across the rose granite worktop.

  ‘What line of business are you in?’ she asks casually. Before he answers he notices the wedding band on her left hand is cutting into the flesh.

  ‘Commercial property, hotels,’ he says.

  ‘Oh,’ she answers brightly. ‘Which ones?’

  ‘I’d rather not say at this stage, because I’m thinking of selling, and I don’t want it to be common knowledge. Often guests don’t like the idea of staying somewhere that’s for sale.’

  ‘I assure you I would never discuss a client’s affairs outside of—’

  He smiles. ‘I’m not really a client though yet, am I?’ he says mildly.

  ‘Prospective client, then.’

  Suddenly she’s looking at him from beneath her lashes in a flirty, girlish way. ‘Is there another hotel you’re looking to invest in?’

  ‘I’m trying to get away from the hotel business, actually. Too tying. I can’t find decent managers, and then there’s the problem of the great British public … No, I’m thinking of trying my hand at an online business. Importing goods that are already selling well within the US.’

  She nods seriously and, not for the first time today, he marvels at how willing people are to believe whatever you tell them. They really want to believe, even if their insides are screaming doubt. He’s enjoying himself now and relaxes his guard a fraction.

  ‘Do you have a property to sell?’ she asks.

  He snatches his head around. ‘W–what?’ he stammers.

  ‘A house? Are you renting right now, or do you have something to sell before moving?’

  Why didn’t he prepare an answer to this? Why not look up some addresses before coming here?