‘But can we rethink you working early on your own?’
‘If it will make you happier, I can try to juggle a bit in the future.’ I look him in the face. ‘So did you speak to Luke?’
Last night in bed, Tony was the one to say it first. Would you think I was mad if I said we should offer to adopt the baby? I cried and hugged him tight, so relieved that he was thinking exactly the same thing as me. We agreed we are too old and it is probably completely insane, but there is no way we could let someone else bring up Luke’s child if Emily’s family can’t cope.
‘He says he’ll mention it to Emily later. She’s only ten weeks, so it’s a bit early for decisions.’ Tony puts his hand up to my cheek. ‘I think he was relieved, but it’s hard to tell. He’s still in shock.’
Tony goes on to say Luke would like to stop working at the shop down the line. He’s finding it too much with all the worrying. I completely understand, though I know it won’t be easy to find a replacement. The early starts put people off. But Luke must come first, so we will have to work something out.
‘OK. So let’s see what the police have to say, shall we? Talk again about Luke and the shop after that.’ I take his hand, still rested on my cheek, and kiss it.
To be honest, I am surprised that we are to see the London DI. Apparently he is down for an update with the Ballards in Cornwall, so will be calling in here on the way back.
Matthew has updated me. His police-contact friend handed over the earlier postcard. Nothing from forensics. No prints. But they want to see this new one, too. I have put it in a transparent freezer bag. Matthew says they will provide proper evidence bags and special gloves for me to use if any more postcards turn up. Better chance of getting prints, apparently. He has asked me not to mention him by name. To imply that I handed the postcards over to the police myself.
Tony has now stepped away and is looking under the sink, I assume for fly spray; there’s a bluebottle buzzing at the kitchen window. Eventually he gives up on the cupboard and instead opens the window to shush the fly out with a piece of kitchen towel, before turning back to me and tilting his head.
‘You look really tired, Ella. You doing all right, love?’
‘I’m fine. Just relieved you know about the postcards now.’
CHAPTER 16
THE FATHER
Henry is sitting at a favourite spot on the stone wall, which has an overview of the higher, troublesome fields. There is just a little mist still hovering around the river below, but the sheep are safely across the other lane and Sammy is happy. Henry smooths the dog’s ears.
It is moments like this, watching the early sun burning off the mist, that he feels the most calm. He is thinking that he would like to put in some more fencing lower down in the largest of these fields, to keep the sheep from the muddy slope down to the river. But fencing is expensive. And Barbara is not up for spending on the farm.
New kitchens and new power showers for the holiday cottages? Bring it on. Paying some web designer to upgrade their search engine optimization, whatever that means? That apparently makes sense financially. But fencing? Feed? Tractor repairs?
Henry looks down at the dog, whose tongue is lolling as he pants from the joy of checking the boundaries of this field. And the one next door.
To Henry, this is what makes real sense still. A dog who happily races around the perimeter of every field he visits, returning to his master with a triumphant wag of the tail and meeting of the eyes to confirm that all boundaries have been checked.
Henry glances at his watch. An hour to go. He ought to get back. Have a shower. Have another row with Barbara. Try one final time to calm things down before he faces the music proper.
Come on then, boy.
He deliberately takes the long way round. Cannot face Primrose Lane today. Back at the house he is still in the boot room, hanging up his wax jacket, when Barbara appears.
‘Where have you been? We need to talk some more, Henry. Before the police get here. I’m worried how much trouble I’ll be in. We need to think of Jenny.’
‘I’ll come through.’
In the kitchen, she sits at the large scrubbed-pine table, drumming her fingers. He stares at the kettle alongside the Aga, wondering about a cup of tea, but thinks better of it. Looks back at his wife.
‘I could be in serious trouble, Henry. I knew I should never have let you persuade me to lie to the police.’ She is pulling at the sleeve of her jumper, stretching it and then turning back the cuff.
‘It will be all right, Barbara. We’re setting it all straight. They will understand.’
‘Will they? Will they really?’
Henry closes his eyes. He is sorry that he has upset his wife. He is sorry that she is going through this on top of everything else. That he is a bad husband. But he is also very tired of having to say sorry a million times over, because it doesn’t help or change anything.
‘I’m sorry, Barbara.’
‘Well, with respect, it’s a bit late for that now. It’s perjury, isn’t it, to lie to the police?’
‘I think that’s just in court, love.’
Henry looks down at the floor. At his thick, grey woollen socks.
You disgust me. Anna’s voice again. In his head. In his car. In the passenger seat, refusing to look him in the face.
And in this moment he realises that there isn’t anything Barbara can say or the police can say to possibly make him feel worse than he already does.
‘I still don’t understand why we had to lie, anyway. I mean – do you have any idea, Henry, how it was for me that night, eh? Here on my own. Our daughter missing. Me here . . . all on my own.’
Henry closes his eyes and says nothing.
‘And by the way, I want you to move out.’
‘Oh, come on, Barbara. How is that going to help? Think of Jenny. And how am I going to keep the farm going if I move out?’
‘There is no farm, Henry. There hasn’t been a farm for years.’
He opens his eyes and meets hers.
‘And you wonder why this isn’t working out, Barbara? You marry a farmer and then you decide that you don’t want to be married to a farmer.’
‘That isn’t fair.’
‘Isn’t it?’
They sit for several minutes, saying nothing at all.
‘Right. So we see them together – the police, Barbara. And I explain why I asked you to lie the night Anna went missing. It will be fine. We’ll iron it out. I’m sorry I have upset you, but if you really want me to move out, then with respect I think what I do after today stops being any of your business. For now, I am going to have a shower before they arrive.’
Upstairs, under the stream of water which he turns up too hot deliberately, Henry feels the relief of it for the first time. The letting go, finally. For years he has allowed himself the delusion that he can keep going like this.
But now?
Henry turns his face up into the stream of water and has to adjust the temperature as the jet burns the tender skin. And for a short time he does what he hasn’t done since his mother died. In the stream of the hot water that turns his flesh just a little bit too red, Henry Ballard cries.
He cries for Anna, who will never be found. And who knows the worst of him.
You disgust me, Dad . . .
Afterwards, Henry shaves for the second time that day, selects a blue checked shirt, a clean pair of jeans and a navy sweatshirt. He does all of this on automatic pilot. He is long past the stage of trying to work out some script in his head. It will be what it will be.
When they arrive, there are three of them. A local DS called Melanie Sanders they have met a few times before and who seems quite nice; Cathy, their family liaison officer; and the tall, slim DI from London whom Henry has never liked.
From the off, the mood is markedly different from previous encounters. Cathy accepts the offer of coffee, which Barbara brings to the table on a tray, but the DI declines.
‘I understand you
want to speak to us, Mr Ballard?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I feel very bad about this but I need to explain something about the night Anna went missing. I have something I want to clear up.’
The DI glances at the two women police officers and back at the Ballards.
‘Interesting – we must be telepathic, you and me, Mr Ballard. Because I came all the way down here to talk to you about precisely the same thing.’ He does not even try to disguise the sarcasm in his tone or the little twist of the knife.
‘You see, we had some very interesting calls after the anniversary appeal on television. Calls which we have found a little bit confusing.’
Henry looks at Barbara, whose expression is frozen.
‘So why don’t you go first, Mr Ballard.’
‘OK. So this is embarrassing. But I lied about the night Anna went missing, and I asked Barbara to back me up because I was so embarrassed. And I didn’t want it to distract from your investigation.’
Henry can feel his wife’s stare burning into him.
‘This is completely my fault. Not my wife’s. I had a few too many to drink. I wasn’t at home.’
‘Not at home?’
‘No.’
‘And you telling us this now, changing your story, wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you realise that we have new information?’
‘No. Of course not. How would I even know that?’
‘OK, Mr Ballard. So this new version of where you were the night your daughter went missing. Will it go any way to explaining how your car was seen near the railway station that evening?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Because, Mr Ballard, I am here today to ask you how it is that your car was seen on the evening of Anna’s disappearance near Hexton railway station. Not here at the farm, as you and your wife both told us previously. But near a railway station with a fast train to London. So my question is this. Did you go to London the night your daughter disappeared, Mr Ballard? Is that what you really want to tell us?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I didn’t. I was here the following morning. When we were liaising with the police. You know I was. That wouldn’t be possible. It’s too far. How could I possibly—’
‘Do you know what, Mr Ballard? On reflection, I think it might be better if we continue this a little more formally. At the local police station. DS Melanie Sanders will give us access to one of her nice interview suites, I’m sure.’
Henry can feel a terrible panic rising within him. A sort of change of temperature which sweeps right through his body. His mind is in such turmoil that for a moment he cannot tell whether he feels too hot or too cold. Just somehow all wrong in the clothes he is wearing. The fabric too close to his skin. Clinging, as if he is still wet from the shower.
In the midst of this panic he looks at his wife, but there is no support or comfort there. Only terrible and wild confusion in her eyes.
‘Shall we go then, Mr Ballard?’
Henry thinks that perhaps he should ask whether he has a choice. Whether this is an arrest—or a request. Whether he should get Barbara to phone their lawyer? Dig his heels in and actually refuse to go? But then he quickly regroups, thinking that he needs to be very, very careful. Saying the wrong thing or being uncooperative now could go very badly for him. Could be entirely misunderstood.
And so Henry Ballard stands, and as they walk outside he tries to calm himself, and decides, for now at least, to say nothing more at all.
CHAPTER 17
THE WITNESS
I have been lying in bed thinking about karma. Silly, I know, but that postcard has really gotten under my skin.
I keep having these mixed-up dreams. Anna on the train. The noise of Sarah and her bloke in that wretched toilet cubicle. And then the shock over Luke and his girlfriend.
I’m not one for popcorn psychiatry normally, but you can’t miss the irony, can you. And it just feels – I don’t know – as if everything in my life is trying to teach me some terrible lesson and my brain just can’t cope.
Some nights it gets so bad I get this tight feeling in my chest. Then I have to get up and make a cup of tea and then, of course, Tony gets up too – worried sick – which is the last thing I want. Spreading the guilt. What I try to do is go over it in my mind when I am on my own, playing rewind to think over and over and over about exactly how responsible I am for whatever happened to that poor girl. Wishing so much that I could go back and play it differently.
And then? The problem is, hand on heart, I still cannot go back there in my mind’s eye and be anything other than appalled at the thought of that girl and that man having sex in that toilet so soon after they met.
I wish that I could bounce this off people properly. Ask them openly what they would have done. Whether they would be shocked or upset to be confronted by what I heard. The problem is that the police have only ever released information that the ‘witness’ overheard the girls being chatted up by the guys just out of prison, and that the ‘witness’ was shocked at how quickly they became close. How quickly they made unwise plans together. Dangerous plans.
I’ve been judged for that and that alone. For not stepping in because two country girls were being so clearly targeted by two guys with records. That’s what all the social media and tabloid press has been about. What would you have done? Would you have minded your own? Two sixteen-year-old girls. Two guys just out of prison.
The police have never released the detail of the sex in the toilet, and asked me to keep it quiet for reasons of evidence, so I have only ever been able to tell Tony. He says I was right to be shocked – and that people would keep their noses out of it if they knew all the facts.
We’ve talked it over again since this business with Luke and his girlfriend, and Tony says it’s very different – a young girl having sex with a virtual stranger in a public toilet, and Luke and Emily making a mistake in a caring relationship. I know he’s right, but I still feel a bit hypocritical now for judging Sarah so very harshly.
He’s gone into work early today, my Tony. He’s in retail himself, but a very different sector – selling cereals to supermarkets. He’s acting regional manager and is up for the job permanently if his sales figures hit their target. I’m terribly proud of him, though it’s a lot of pressure and I wish he didn’t have to do so much travelling.
For now, with him away so much, I have promised to juggle my working hours so that I am not alone at the shop out of hours too much. At least not until we hear from the police and feel a bit steadier.
So this feels odd for me. A second cup of coffee in bed. It’s 8 a.m., which for a florist amounts to a lie-in. I am having a really good think.
About karma.
Also, whether I am a prude. I mean, I certainly hold my hands up to being a bit out of touch. Naive to imagine that my seventeen-year-old son wouldn’t be having sex yet. More and more I keep testing myself, worrying that I am a hypocrite over what happened on the train. Was my judgement about gender? Because my first thought was that Sarah clearly wasn’t as ‘nice’ a girl as I had imagined, which is why I stepped away from the whole situation. Yet if it had been Luke? No. On reflection, maybe not so hypocritical, because I would still be totally appalled and shocked if a son of mine, or any young man, had done that with someone they had just met.
Maybe the truth is that I just like some boundaries. Because don’t get me wrong, this is not about sex, per se; Tony and I get along very well in that department ourselves, thank you very much. I just think it’s private. Sex. Not something casual; something to be talked about with strangers at dinner parties. And certainly not something to share with a complete stranger in a train toilet.
As for karma . . .
But now my mobile is ringing – the display confirms it’s Matthew Hill. I check my watch. Ten past eight.
‘Hello, Matthew. I was going to ring you, actually. To let you know that the London DI has postponed; he’s coming round later now. Has had to stay on in Cor
nwall for a bit. Some development with the inquiry, he said, which I am hoping means progress.’
‘Well, I hate to disillusion you, but I’m afraid you can hold that thought. I’ve just spoken to my contact down in Cornwall and apparently the investigation is suddenly all over the place. Going right up a blind alley, from what I hear. But never mind that. Big news. I just got the call. My wife’s gone into labour. I’m on my way to collect her right now. Feels a bit surreal, actually, but I just wanted to check in to let you know I may be out of the loop for a few days.’
‘A few days?’ I laugh. ‘You may just have underestimated this, Matthew. But what lovely news. Please do let me know how it goes. Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl yet?’
‘No. Goodness. We don’t mind . . .’
‘OK. Good luck. Drive carefully and try to calm down.’
‘I’ll be in touch.’
And then I put the phone down and find that I am stilled. Matthew Hill clearly does not have a clue what is coming, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Because once you become a parent, you learn that love can involve more fear than you had ever imagined, and you never quite look on the world in the same way again. Which is precisely why I cannot cope with my part in Anna’s disappearance.
CHAPTER 18
THE FRIEND
‘So is it OK if I bring them through, love? Just for five or ten minutes? Might cheer you up. Nurse says she can make an exception so long as we keep it short.’
Sarah looks at her mother and knows that this is not really a question. Her mother has a very specific expression when she is shaping a recommendation as a question. She leans forward slightly, doesn’t blink and then raises her eyebrows, signalling that only the correct answer will actually be heard. Namely – yes. As a young child, Sarah would rail against this tactic, but she learned long ago that resistance is futile. And she has no energy for more lectures.
‘OK. But I’m feeling tired, so not for long.’
It’s day six, and Sarah has been reassured that her liver function is improving. The consultant is looking a good deal less concerned when he pops by the bed, and nurses now say that everything is going in the right direction. The psych team are finally off her back and there is even talk of her going home soon.
I Am Watching You Page 9
