Too Close to Home

by Susan Lewis

  “But what if…what if she’s…?” She couldn’t say it. Oh dear God, dear God, Paige! Paige! Paige!

  “The CID officers should be with you shortly,” Euan continued. “You need to tell them everything you know about Paige’s friends, her movements, anything you can think of, even if it doesn’t seem relevant. They’ll talk you through it, and they’ll want to search the house for any journals or letters that might give them a clue as to where she might be.”

  This wasn’t real. It was a nightmare, and she was going to wake up any minute. Paige would be walking in the door, or coming down the stairs, or standing right here in the kitchen making toast.

  “A detective’s already talking to Charlotte,” Euan went on, “and we should know more once the police experts have their hands on the computer. It’s on its way to Bridgend now, and hopefully it won’t take long for them to come back with some answers.”

  Jenna spun round as someone opened the back door. Please God, let it be Paige.

  It was her mother, looking glazed with shock as she was followed in by two strangers who Jenna realized must be the CID officers. “Your colleagues are here,” Jenna said to Euan.

  “OK. Charlotte wants to come and see you as soon as they’ve finished with her.”

  “Yes, please tell her to do that.” Ringing off, she tried to explain to her mother what was happening, but found herself starting to break down. She wanted to run, scream, tear down everything that stood between her and Paige, if only she knew what that was. In the end she managed to say, “Paige has been visiting suicide websites.”

  Kay looked as though she’d been struck. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again. She turned to the officer closer to her, a short, plump woman with wispy dark hair and several moles on her cheeks. “Has my granddaughter…?”

  “We don’t know anything yet,” the officer told her in a tone that was neither friendly nor hostile. To Jenna she said, “I take it you’re Mrs. Moore, Paige’s mother?”

  Jenna nodded as she tried to pull herself together. Suicide websites. Why would she visit them unless the thought was in her mind? Jenna could feel herself backing away as though physically recoiling, her hands coming up to stave off the terrible threat of the words.

  “I’m DS Lesley Mariner,” the female detective was informing her. “This is DC Rob Fuller. Is there a Mr. Moore?”

  Jenna took a breath and dashed back her hair. “He’s in the States, on business,” she replied.

  “Is there any chance your daughter might have gone to join him?”

  Jenna blinked in shock. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her. “I don’t think so,” she said. “They haven’t been getting along. He’s there with his…with another woman and her children.”

  “I see.” The officer looked around. “Is there somewhere we could sit down?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Mum, would you…”

  “I’ll make some tea,” Kay told her. “Bena’s going to pick up the children. I’ll ask her to take them to her place for now.”

  Jenna was barely listening. She was shaking so hard it hurt. All she could think about was her baby, her precious, beautiful firstborn who was out there somewhere. Please God, let her still be out there. It can’t be too late. I’ll never survive if it is.

  “We need to talk about what happened prior to Paige leaving,” Lesley Mariner began once they were in the sitting room with the connecting doors closed. “I believe that was around nine this morning.”

  “That’s right. I don’t know the exact time, because I wasn’t here. I was taking my other children to school.”

  “What ages are your other children?”

  “Josh is eight, and the twins are five. Is this relevant? How’s it going to help find Paige?”

  “We’re trying to establish whether one of her siblings might know where she is. Maybe she talked to one of them.”

  “She’s hardly been talking to any of us lately. She’s been in her own world…I thought it was about her dad leaving…I mean, I knew she was having problems at school; I just never realized they were so serious.”

  “So she spoke to you about the bullying?”

  Bullying! How could someone be bullying her daughter without her knowing? “She said some girls were picking on her and being mean. I should have paid more attention, but she never made a big deal of it. It’s my fault, though. If I’d listened properly…I know her so well, I’d have realized…If it weren’t for everything else that was happening, I would have known…”

  “Everything else?”

  “My husband leaving. It’s shaken us all.” She gasped for breath. “I—I haven’t handled it well.”

  “When did your husband leave, exactly?”

  “About six weeks ago.”

  “And they were close, he and Paige?”

  “Yes, very. He’s her stepdad, actually, but she’s taken it hard.”

  DS Mariner glanced at her colleague, apparently his cue to take over.

  Sitting forward, Rob Fuller fixed her with his pale gray eyes, his freckly hands gnarled together like tree roots. “Are you aware of anything inappropriate ever taking place between your husband and daughter?” he asked evenly.

  Jenna stared at him speechlessly. Surely to God he didn’t mean…“No!” she cried angrily. “How can you even suggest it? My husband would never—” She broke off, remembering that she’d never thought he’d leave. But not this. No. Never this.

  “I realize you haven’t seen any of the social media postings as yet,” Fuller continued, “but it’s being suggested, actually more than suggested in some, that your husband left home because you discovered he was having sexual relations with your daughter.”

  Jenna felt as though she was losing her mind. She stared at the detectives wide-eyed with horror, unable to believe what they were saying, that they would even be thinking this way when Paige was missing. “I swear to you,” she said brokenly, “that isn’t true. He left home to be with another woman. Her name is Martha Gwynne. I can give you his phone number….Nothing like that happened between him and Paige. If it had, I would know.”

  Lesley Mariner was watching her closely.

  “You have to believe me,” Jenna insisted. “My husband is a lot of things, but he’d never, never do anything like that. You need to find out who’s been saying these things and ask them what grounds they have for such terrible accusations.”

  “It is being looked into,” Fuller assured her, “but please try to understand that we’d be failing in our duty if we didn’t take the allegations seriously.”

  “She was being bullied,” Jenna almost shouted. “Isn’t that the sort of thing bullies say?”

  “It has certainly been known. It’s also, on occasion, turned out to be true.”

  “Well, not on this occasion. I know my daughter—she’d never allow anything like that to happen to her. She has a strong mind, she isn’t afraid to speak up for herself, and she’s never, ever shown any fear of her father.”

  “Have you informed your husband yet that she’s missing?”

  Jenna blinked. Then, realizing what they were driving at, she said, “The only reason I haven’t is because Euan only just told me, right before you walked in the door, that Paige has…that she’s been visiting suicide…” Her voice failed as the horror of it swamped her again.

  Mariner started to respond, but Jenna cut her off.

  “Listen, I realize you have to do your job, but how is this helping to find my daughter? She’s not with her father. If you like, I’ll call him right now to establish that. Or I can get her passport to show you. She wouldn’t have been able to leave the country without it.”

  “It would be helpful to know if it’s still here,” Mariner conceded. “And to speak to her father.”

  Running upstairs to her bedroom, Jenna took out the passports, her hands shaking so badly she could hardly hold them. Paige’s had to be there. Please God, it has to be.

  It was, and she almost unraveled
with relief as she ran back down to the sitting room and shoved it at Mariner. By then her mother had brought in the tea, and Jenna could only pray that Kay hadn’t heard what had been going on so far.

  “I’ll call Jack,” she said, picking up the landline.

  Aware of their scrutiny as they sipped their tea, Jenna scrolled to his number and pressed to connect. On the second ring she went through to voicemail and had to stop herself screaming in frustration. “You have to call me back right away,” she told him. “There’s a problem with Paige. We don’t know where she is. The police are here and they want to speak to you.”

  After ringing off she wrote down his number and handed it to Mariner. “In case you want to call him yourself.”

  Taking it, Mariner said, “Tell us about your own relations with Paige since her stepfather left. What have they been like?”

  Jenna glanced at her mother as she replied, “The same as always. I mean, not the same. It’s hard to put into words. We’ve all been very upset. I don’t know if you’ve ever been through anything like this, but it changes everyone.”

  “What happened before she left this morning?”

  “We had…The stress of everything got to me, and I shouted at her. I said things…” She started to shake again. “I didn’t mean what I said, she should have known that…”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her to get out of my sight.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Isn’t it enough? If she was going through her own hell, and we know now that she was, it was the last thing she needed to hear from me. Oh God, I had no idea….I can see now that she kept trying to tell me, but I…I wasn’t listening….This is all my fault.”

  Passing her a cup of tea, Kay said stiffly to Mariner, “My granddaughter is missing. Can we please get down to the business of finding her?”

  Mariner eyed her with interest. “For the record, are you Mr. or Mrs. Moore’s mother?” she asked.

  “Mrs.,” Kay replied. “Is someone monitoring Paige’s phone? I believe you can trace her that way, provided it’s switched on.”

  “It’s being done,” Mariner assured her. “At the moment it doesn’t seem to be active, but as soon as that changes I’ll be informed.”

  Jenna couldn’t bear it. Paige’s phone was always active. She never turned it off, for anyone or anything, unless it was out of battery.

  Starting for the stairs again, she said, “We need to know if she took her charger.”

  Finding it plugged in next to Paige’s bed, she gave a sob of relief. This was the reason the phone wasn’t active, because it had run out of battery. It wouldn’t be anything more sinister than that; she simply wouldn’t allow it to be.

  She was about to turn away when her eye was caught by a large plastic bag next to the nightstand. Opening it, she was momentarily puzzled, taking out long black feathers, a wad of silver foil, a pot of colorful crystals, and a stick wrapped in black ribbon. Then, realizing what it was, she sank down on the bed, so horrified at herself, so riddled with guilt, that she wanted to howl and sob and tear out her own hair. It was the start of a Venetian mask, the mask she’d promised to help with but forgotten all about.

  How was she ever going to forgive herself?

  Grabbing the bag to her, she held it as tightly as she longed to hold Paige. “We’ll make it,” she whispered desperately. “I swear we’ll finish this together.”

  Please God, let that come true. It just has to.

  Knowing she had to pull herself together, she put everything carefully back in the bag and headed down the stairs just as the landline started to ring. Expecting it to be Jack, she quickly snatched it up.

  “Jenna? Is that you?” a voice enquired.

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “Your agent,” Philip Springford informed her. “You sound hassled. Is this a bad time?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is. Can I call you back?”

  “Of course. I’m leaving the office in half an hour, but you can get me on the mobile.”

  Wondering if there could possibly be a worse time for her publisher to be putting on the pressure, she rang off, but jumped as the phone rang again.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Jack demanded. “Where’s Paige? What’s happened to her?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Jenna told him, trying to sound calm. “She left this morning, and the police wondered if she’d come to join you.”

  “What? Why would they think that? And why are they involved?”

  Taking a breath, she said, “Apparently Paige has been the victim of bullying at school—so badly, it would seem, that she’s started looking at suicide websites.”

  Jenna felt the word hit her like a blow again, and knew it would be the same for him.

  “Please tell me you’re not serious,” he managed at last.

  “You know I wouldn’t joke about something like this.”

  She heard him swallow. “Don’t you have any idea where she might be?”

  “None. The police are talking to Charlotte and trying to track down a friend she’s made on the Internet called Julie Morris. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “No. Is she the person who’s been doing the bullying?”

  “I don’t know yet; I’m still waiting to find out more. It only came to light this afternoon when Euan went to the school.”

  “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this is happening. How could you not have known she was being bullied?”

  Jenna was about to rage back when she stopped herself. The last thing they needed was to reduce this to a ludicrous showdown between them. “The police want to talk to you,” she informed him, “but before I pass you over, I want to know if you’re coming back.”

  “Of course I’m coming back. I’ll be on the next damned plane if you haven’t found her by the time it leaves.”

  “And if we have found her? You’ll stay there?”

  “Just put the police on.”

  Handing the phone over, Jenna walked into the kitchen, not wanting to hear the conversation, not wanting to do anything at all apart from find her daughter. “Where is she, Waffle?” she asked tearfully as she stooped to stroke the dog. “We have to find out where she is before it’s too late, or we just won’t be able to carry on.”

  —

  The police questioning went on and on, as did the search of the house. Their computers were confiscated. Though Jenna knew that parents were almost always the first suspects when something happened to a child, the fact that they might actually think that she or another member of the family was this Julie Morris beggared belief. However, she didn’t argue; there was no point, as it hardly mattered what they did with the computers or anything else, just as long as they found Paige.

  It was just after six when Euan turned up with Charlotte and her mother, Lucy. By then the detectives had left with an assurance that the search for Paige would continue through the night and they’d be in touch the instant there was any news.

  “I’m your Family Liaison Officer,” Euan informed Jenna as she hugged Charlotte tightly. “I’ll be with you until they’ve found her.”

  “I’m so sorry about this,” Lucy cried, clearly distraught. “If I’d known…I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me,” she said angrily to Charlotte.

  “Paige didn’t want me to,” Charlotte retorted stroppily. Then she turned to Jenna. “She was worried about you,” she told Jenna. “She didn’t want to load any more on you, but I said she should.”

  Directing Charlotte to the kitchen sofa while Euan and Lucy sat on the bar stools, Jenna encouraged Charlotte to tell her everything she knew. “Please don’t hold anything back,” she urged. “No matter how bad it is, I need to know.”

  “That Kelly Durham has been a bully all her life,” Lucy jumped in forcefully. “I can’t tell you how many kids she’s picked on over the years, and she always bloody gets away with it. And do you know why? Because her grandfather ma
kes donations to the schools. It’s like he buys her a free ride to do whatever the hell she wants and there’s never any price to pay. She’s a nasty piece of work, always has been, always will be—just like her mother.”

  Jenna’s eyes moved to Charlotte as Charlotte said, “It’s not like she never gets into trouble or anything, but she puts on this act when she’s questioned by the teachers, crying and pretending not to know what they’re talking about. She makes out like other people have hacked into her computer, or that she was just having a joke and it got taken the wrong way. Then when she comes out she gets all threatening again, only worse.”

  Torn between anger and frustration, Jenna forced herself to remain calm as she said, “Tell me what happened with Paige.”

  As Charlotte went through it all, constantly breaking down, Jenna couldn’t stop herself crying either.

  “I just can’t bear to think of it,” she said when Charlotte had finished. “How can people be so cruel? Why on earth did this dreadful girl pick on her? What’s Paige ever done to her?”

  “She’s clever and pretty and everyone likes her,” Charlotte replied.

  “But not enough to stand up for her and make them stop?”

  “I tried, all the time, I promise, but she’d never let me tell anyone, apart from once when we went to Miss Kendrick. Paige didn’t want to, but when they started saying stuff about her dad I said I’d go myself if she didn’t.”

  Grateful to Charlotte for that, Jenna said, “And what did Miss Kendrick do?”

  “She called Kelly in, but like she always does, Kelly denied it, then twisted things round to try and make it look like she was as much a victim as Paige.”

  “Didn’t Miss Kendrick investigate?” Lucy wanted to know.

  “Not really, but to be fair, I don’t think she realized how bad it actually was. Paige didn’t tell her because she was really worried about how much worse it might get if she reported it, and she was right to be worried, because it did.”

  “That was when they pushed her head down the toilet?” Jenna asked.

  Charlotte nodded miserably. “It was disgusting. They ought to be arrested for doing stuff like that.”