The Babysitter

by Sheryl Browne

  ‘Is she your baby?’ Poppy asked, dutifully allowing herself to be lowered to the ground while Mark passed Jade his furry charge.

  ‘Yes.’ Jade nodded, reaching to take the cat gently from Mark’s arms, and then leaning in to plant a soft kiss on his cheek. ‘She’s my whole world. Thank you, Mark.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Mark said, looking ever-so-slightly embarrassed as he bent to swoop Poppy up into his arms. And then he almost choked when Poppy locked her arms around his neck and announced, ‘Daddy’s good at making babies, too. He made one with Mummy, didn’t you, Daddy? He could make you a proper one if you asked him nicely, couldn’t you, Daddy?’

  ‘Um, I, er… Ahem.’ Mark clearly didn’t know where to look as Melissa and Jade swapped amused glances.

  ‘I think Daddy’s a bit too busy, Poppy,’ said Melissa, deciding now might be a good time to rescue him.

  ‘Busy causing chaos,’ the chief fire officer added, a despairing look on his face as he approached. ‘Don’t do a solo again, hey, mate? You, above all people, should know it’s not on. No one near the property until it’s been cleared by the fire safety officer. I ought to report it. You’ll land me in hot water up to my neck if you end up suffering from smoke inhalation.’

  ‘Yes, sorry.’ Mark looked contrite. ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘She wasn’t inside. She was in the tree. She got scared and ran before I could catch hold of her,’ Jade interrupted, clearly seeing that Mark might need rescuing here too. ‘When will it be? The fire safety officer’s visit, I mean,’ she added, neatly changing the subject.

  The fire officer turned to her, and did a double take, literally. Melissa wasn’t surprised. Wearing a nightie under the jacket one of the firemen had supplied her, albeit a modest winceyette affair, and with her long blonde hair tousled and just-got-out-of-bed gorgeous, Jade was undeniably attractive. ‘I’m not quite sure,’ he said, clearly taken with her. ‘Do you want to come over to the engine while I make a call?’

  Melissa watched them go, Jade cuddling her cat, looking fragile and vulnerable, despite her well-developed curves, the fire officer unable to resist looking sideways at her. ‘Do you think he’s trying to impress her?’ she asked Mark.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Mark concurred. ‘I doubt he’ll get very far though.’

  ‘Oh? Because she’s beautiful, you mean?’ She idly wondered if the girl had had Botox. Her lips and eyebrows were perfect. But then, she supposed, at her age they probably would be.

  ‘Yes.’ Mark nodded, keeping his gaze fixed forwards. ‘And young,’ he added, his mouth curving into a mischievous smile as Melissa glared at him.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Mark said, winking at Poppy. ‘I think I might be in the doghouse, after all.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Poppy sighed expansively, giving him a despairing roll of her eyes. ‘Hercules doesn’t have a house. He sleeps on my bed.’

  ‘I think he might need to move over to make room for me.’ Mark laughed, reading the now very peeved expression on Mel’s face. ‘I meant that he’s twice her age,’ he clarified, obviously realising he was on thin ice. ‘And, yes, Jade is pretty, as you’ve just pointed out, but not half as gorgeous as you, Mrs Cain, is she, Poppet?’

  ‘No’s the right answer,’ he whispered, as Poppy looked doubtful, making Melissa laugh. She couldn’t help it. The two of them together were mischief in the making. ‘Especially wearing my shirt,’ Mark added, rescuing himself this time. ‘Though I prefer it without the leggings under.’

  ‘Hmm?’ Melissa wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet.

  ‘You don’t wear leggings,’ Poppy piped up, her huge eyes saucered in astonishment as she squirmed in Mark’s arms to stare at him, which caused them both to burst out laughing.

  ‘Only on Sundays.’ Mark assured her, hoisting Poppy onto one arm to reach in his pocket for his beeping mobile.

  ‘You’ve met her then?’ Melissa asked, easing the shawl to one side to check on Evie, who was still sleeping soundly.

  ‘What?’ Mark looked up distractedly from his phone.

  Work texting him, Melissa guessed. ‘Jade.’ She nodded towards where Jade was gathering quite a uniformed fan club. ‘I noticed you knew her name, so I assumed you’d met.’

  ‘Out jogging. She runs around the same time I do,’ Mark confirmed, his mind clearly more on the text he’d received than their new neighbour.

  ‘She is very young, isn’t she? To own her own home, I mean?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Mark said, his brow furrowed in concentration as he thumbed in a reply. ‘Her parents passed away recently, apparently. Left her a tidy sum.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Melissa immediately felt for her. Losing her own mum before she’d hit thirty was bad enough, but to lose both parents at Jade’s young age would be terrible.

  ‘You have to admire her pluckiness, buying a property, especially one in need of renovation.’ Mark glanced at Melissa and then back to Poppy, who’d clearly figured out that Daddy’s mobile beeping early in the morning meant he would soon be leaving, and who was now fastening herself more firmly around his neck.

  ‘Especially now,’ Melissa said, looking across to what had been reduced to an uninhabitable property and then towards Jade, who was walking back towards them, looking like a lost soul.

  Noticing the fresh tears brimming in the girl’s eyes as she reached them, Melissa’s heart went out to her. ‘I take it it’s going to take a while?’ she said sympathetically.

  Nodding, Jade dropped her gaze and nuzzled her cat. ‘It looks like it was probably an electrical fault, but they can’t be sure until they’ve done all the checks.’

  ‘So, what will you do?’ Mel asked, trying to make eye contact with Mark, whose phone was now ringing.

  ‘Start the renovation over, I suppose.’ Jade sighed, and then, clearly seeing that Mark needed to take his call and Melissa was struggling to manoeuvre Evie into the crook of her arm, moved to coax Poppy down with promises of chocolate.

  Again, Melissa was grateful, if not overjoyed at the chocolate temptation. ‘She’s allergic to dairy,’ she said, smiling nevertheless. ‘But she can have a vegan chocolate bar, since she’s being such a good girl, hey, Poppy?’

  Amazingly, Poppy allowed Jade to unlatch her from her father, who was incapable of being strict with her.

  ‘Allergic?’ Jade looked utterly stricken as she lowered Poppy gently to the ground and took hold of her hand, as Mark stepped away to take his call. ‘God, how stupid of me,’ she said, closing her eyes.

  ‘Don’t look so mortified.’ Melissa laughed. ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘No, but we covered food allergies on my course so it should have occurred to me to ask,’ Jade said dejectedly. ‘I did a childcare course in college,’ she supplied, as Melissa eyed her curiously.

  ‘Well, it will next time.’ Melissa smiled encouragingly. ‘I actually meant where will you stay?’ The girl was standing in the road with barely a stitch to her name.

  Jade shrugged disconsolately. ‘I have a friend I could ring,’ she said, looking uncertain.

  Again, Melissa felt her heart twist for her. ‘No family you can call?’ she asked carefully.

  At that, Jade quickly shook her head, and then looked down at Poppy with a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll sort something out, don’t worry,’ she said, giving her hand a squeeze.

  Poppy, though, didn’t look convinced. ‘You can’t go out in your nightie,’ she said, her huge brown eyes aghast. ‘It’s not allowed.’

  ‘Come home with us,’ Melissa offered. It was the least she could do.

  ‘Yay!’ Jumping on the spot, Poppy immediately gave that idea her seal of approval.

  ‘I’m sure I can find you something to wear. We’re about the same size,’ Melissa went on, as Jade hesitated, ‘if you don’t mind jeans or leggings, that is. I spend most of my life up to my eyes in clay when I’m not changing nappies or doing the school run, so it’s jeans or evening wear, I’m afraid.’

 
; ‘She can’t wear a sparkly dress in the day, Mummy,’ Poppy pointed out exasperatedly.

  ‘Who can’t?’ Mark asked, a familiar faraway look in his eyes as he turned back from his call.

  ‘Jade,’ Poppy informed him. ‘She’s coming home with us. Mummy’s going to share some of her clothes with her.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Mark smiled. ‘Sorry, got to go,’ he said, bending to plant a kiss on Poppy’s nose and another gently to Evie’s forehead.

  ‘Um, haven’t we forgotten something?’ Melissa asked him, as he turned towards his car.

  ‘Damn.’ Squeezing his eyes closed, Mark turned back to kiss Melissa, now looking definitely distracted, she noted. The call must have been important. She’d seen that look many times before.

  ‘I actually meant your car keys,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, right.’ Realising he was minus said car keys, and work jacket, and his ID, having dashed out when he’d spotted the fire, Mark headed swiftly past her back to their own cottage.

  Rolling her eyes good-naturedly as he disappeared through the front door, Melissa beckoned Jade and – with Poppy skipping happily alongside her – they strolled more leisurely in the same direction.

  Thirty seconds later Mark bowled past them again. ‘Bye,’ he said, spinning on his heel to smile apologetically. ‘Sorry, it’s—’

  ‘Urgent. I gathered. Go.’ Melissa waved him onwards.

  ‘Bye, Daddy!’ Poppy called after him. ‘Love you bigger than the sky.’

  ‘Bye, Poppet,’ Mark called. ‘Love you bigger than the sky and all the stars.’ Blowing her a kiss, he shrugged embarrassedly at Jade and then climbed quickly in the driver’s side.

  ‘He’s nice, your daddy, isn’t he?’ said Jade, as Mark started the engine and pulled away.

  ‘Yes.’ Poppy nodded adamantly. ‘Mummy says he’s too nice for his own good sometimes, but I don’t really understand what she means.’

  ‘That people might easily take advantage of him,’ Jade explained, with a knowing smile.

  Two

  MARK

  Scratching his unshaven chin, Mark swung into the main office to find DCI Edwards pointedly checking his watch. ‘Problems on the home front, I take it?’ he asked him acerbically, his expression one of despair as he looked him over.

  Mark followed the man’s gaze down to realise the front of his shirt hadn’t fared too well after his encounter with the cat and his none-too-elegant scramble over the garden gate to rescue it. As if it mattered what he looked like, with a child on the missing list.

  ‘House fire. Neighbour’s,’ he explained, heading straight to his own office and his filing cabinet for the clean shirt he kept there in case of emergencies – of which there were many lately, with a new baby in the house.

  DS Lisa Moyes was two steps behind him.

  ‘Can you bring me up to speed, Lisa?’ he asked her, tossing his jacket on his chair and reaching for his shirt buttons.

  ‘It seems the girl was taken from home – assuming she was taken.’

  ‘Which is where?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Farley Village, close to the Herefordshire border.’

  Just twenty miles or so away from his own house, Mark realised. God, it could have been one of his kids.

  ‘Parents were celebrating last night, apparently,’ Lisa went on. ‘Wife’s birthday party. It all went a bit pear-shaped when hubby decided to give her a big surprise and shag one of the young female guests.’

  Mark arched an eyebrow. ‘Thoughtful bloke.’

  ‘Very. And doing it in their bed was a nice touch, I thought.’ Lisa smiled flatly.

  Mark nodded, tugged off his shirt and reached for the clean one. ‘So, when did they notice she’d gone?’

  ‘This morning.’ Lisa sighed. ‘Mum went up to check on her and found the bed empty. They checked the house and garden and then called us.’

  Which basically gave them a timeframe that was wide open. Mark tugged in a terse breath. ‘I take it they argued after the birthday surprise?’

  ‘Volubly, according to the residents of the neighbouring property. At it half the night. Husband makes himself scarce at some point. Wife falls asleep on the sofa with a bottle for company. Fairly standard stuff.’

  In which case, it was possible the girl had slipped out, seeking to extract herself from what might have been one of many arguments, assuming the husband made a habit of screwing around. Mark’s inclination as a kid had been to do the same. Knowing the shouting was a prequel to his father’s violence, he’d been petrified. But wherever he went, whatever space he squeezed into, the bastard would always find him. He’d been terrified of the dark, imagining zombies or vampires lurking in shadows, but he’d felt a hell of a lot safer walking the streets at night than he had at home.

  ‘We’ve searched all the likely places – house and garden again, gardens of properties within walking distance of the house, fields beyond it,’ Lisa continued. ‘And we’ve also managed to contact the wife’s sister, who says that she poked her head around the child’s door before she left. She confirms Daisy was still in bed.’

  Daisy. His thoughts immediately went to Poppy, imagining her missing and terrified in the company of some sick individual, and Mark felt something twist inside him.

  ‘We’ve currently got uniforms going door to door throughout the village. And we’re pulling up all local sex offenders,’ Lisa said, holding the door open for Mark as he hurried with the last of his shirt buttons. ‘There’s something else,’ she added, as they walked towards the incident room. ‘Might be relevant, might not, but I’m thinking it makes the husband definitely worth checking out.’

  Mark read her expression and guessed he wasn’t going to like it. ‘Shoot.’

  ‘The young female he was caught in flagrante with, she was very young. Just three days past underage, to be precise.’

  Mark felt his jaw clench. ‘Tosser. Find out whether he’s on the sex offenders’ register and make sure we have his PC and phone. If he refuses to hand them over, pull him in.’

  ‘On it,’ Lisa assured him. ‘Talking of tossers…’

  Mark followed her unimpressed gaze to see DS Cummings strolling towards them, a sleazy smirk all over his face.

  ‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’ His gaze drifted from Lisa to Mark, who was hastily tucking in his shirt.

  ‘Piss off, Cummings.’ Mark eyed the man disdainfully and moved past him, only to meet the now decidedly despairing glance of his DCI.

  ‘Problem?’ Edwards asked him.

  Mark got the message. Even now, years after he’d communicated his feelings to Cummings regarding his sexual harassment of female colleagues, Edwards never missed an opportunity to remind Mark of his ‘tendency towards hot-headedness’.

  ‘Not with me,’ Mark assured him.

  ‘Good,’ Edwards said. ‘DS Cummings will be working with you on this one. Given the gravity of the case, let’s leave the personal feelings aside in favour of finding the girl, shall we?’

  ‘Sir.’ Mark nodded, determined to do just that. Every second spent here was time wasted, as far as he was concerned. This would automatically be escalated as a high-risk case. The fact was, though, if the child had slipped out for whatever reason, with March temperatures averaging seven degrees, death from exposure was probable if she wasn’t found soon. Time, therefore, wasn’t a luxury they had.

  Three

  JADE

  Her day at school having been cut short when a water pipe burst, Poppy was chatting excitedly to Jade about her teacher, who’d apparently fainted in morning assembly, as Melissa led the way into the kitchen to dump the shopping bags on the island worktop.

  ‘We heard the headmistress say it was because she was having a baby,’ Poppy said, attempting to scramble up onto a stool. ‘But we didn’t see one.’

  Jade swapped amused glances with Melissa. ‘That’s probably because baby wasn’t quite ready to make an appearance yet, Poppy,’ she said, lifting her up.

  Poppy
nodded thoughtfully as Jade planted her safely on the stool. ‘Like Hercules’s puppies, you mean?’

  ‘Hercules had puppies?’

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy informed her with a matter-of-fact shrug, as she peered into one of the carriers. ‘He’s a girl dog, but Daddy got mixed up.’

  ‘Ah.’ Jade widened her eyes, which had Melissa laughing.

  ‘He brought the wrong puppy home,’ she supplied, and then mouthed ‘rescue dog’ in Jade’s direction.

  Jade nodded, getting the drift. Presumably, they’d decided to get a rescue, but Mark had had to change their choice at the last minute. Perhaps the dog they’d originally chosen had died, or shown unexpected aggression. He really was a lovely man. Poppy didn’t know how lucky she was, growing up with a father who loved her like a father should.

  ‘Poppy had already chosen the name, hadn’t you, sweetie?’ Melissa said, rescuing the eggs from Poppy before they ended up scrambled.

  ‘Yes.’ Poppy extracted a pack of cookies from the bag – dairy free, as Melissa had pointed out in the supermarket. ‘I chose the name Hercules, because he had huge paws and Daddy said he was going to grow up to be big and strong,’ Poppy supplied. ‘Hercules’s puppies weren’t very strong though, were they, Mummy?’

  ‘No, sweetie.’ Smiling sadly, Melissa reached to brush Poppy’s too-long fringe from her face.

  ‘They were teeny-weeny.’ Poppy demonstrated thus with her thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Oh dear. Poor little things. I don’t think they could have been ready to make an appearance either.’ Jade reached to give Poppy a cuddle, as Melissa pointed back to the front door, beyond which little Evie was still fast asleep in the car.

  ‘They couldn’t breathe properly,’ Poppy said, with a shuddery sigh, causing Melissa to hesitate at the kitchen door.

  Jade smiled and nodded her on. ‘I bet that made you sad, Poppy,’ she said, as Melissa, duly reassured, went to retrieve the child she’d momentarily forgotten about.