‘You sound like Mum,’ I replied, and then we both laughed until I realised one of us was crying. This is my life now, I thought. Get used to your emotional landscape shifting like time-lapse erosion, Sam. Everything is fluid, you have no constant. Except soup, I reminded myself. You constantly have fucking soup.
I was upstairs when I heard the phone start ringing. I’d been folding laundry and staring blankly at the wall, my mind purring gently, cocooned by Valium. What was it they called it? Mother’s Little Helper? I blinked slowly.
‘You want me to get that?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘Let the machine get it.’
I heard the machine pick it up, but then heard Rupert lift the receiver, talking urgently. Next thing I knew he was calling to me up the stairs. ‘Pot, it’s a detective. Says he wants to talk to you. He’s got some news.’
I can’t describe the feeling I got then. A coldness, an apprehension. Dread, like a tidal wave building and building and me beneath it, small and insignificant, waiting to get washed away. I walked slowly downstairs and took the phone from Rupert. He was looking at me with concern and barely disguised horror. This is it, I thought.
‘Tony,’ I said.
‘Sam. We’re bringing someone in.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know who Peter Liverly is?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so.’
‘He’s the – I suppose you’d call him the caretaker up at the church, St Mary’s. He looks after the grounds mostly, and helps out at the youth club up there.’
Something jogged my memory then. The night I’d gone to my women’s group and caught Edie and her boyfriend on the sofa. The group had been cancelled and the church hall locked. That man, the one with the twisted rope of scar tissue on his neck and the keyring of the cartoon bird in bright pink. He’d had dead rabbits in a bag, swinging it like a pendulum.
Told ’em to stop coming here, all of ’em, but it don’t make a difference.
‘I think I’ve met him once. Odd sort,’ I said.
‘We’ve had a tip about him. Anonymous. I thought we’d check it out. When we arrived there this morning we found some photos.’
A chill spread through my chest, my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Rupert put his hand on my arm.
‘What kind of photos?’
Somewhere far away, as distant as another planet, I heard Rupert mutter Oh my God under his breath. I turned away from him.
‘Pictures of your daughter and her friends. Some of them are candid, taken in the youth centre. We’re not too concerned about those. But the others we found are obviously taken without their permission. It looks like he’s been hiding himself and watching them for a little while now.’
‘What do you mean, “hiding”? Why was he doing that?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. There’s nothing sexual about the photos, they’re terrible quality – the man can’t take a picture to save his life – but the fact he has them at all is concerning to us, especially considering Edie’s disappearance. We just want to see what he knows.’
‘Is he under arrest?’
‘No, but you’ll be first to know if anything turns up. We’re searching the rest of the church hall now.’
‘Thanks, Tony. Have you spoken with her boyfriend? William?’
‘That’s not how he described himself.’
A memory then, like a camera flash. William on top of Edie, one hand sliding into her underwear, the look on his face when I walked in, his eyes wide and dark.
‘I see. You don’t find that suspicious? That he’s trying to distance himself?’
‘No. They’re teenagers, Sam. Fickle. He’s not suggesting he had nothing to do with her, it just wasn’t a serious relationship.’
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Tony—’
‘Listen. We’ve spoken with William and when we get a chance we’ll speak to his father as well, okay?’
I heard the click of a lighter as he lit a cigarette. I could imagine him behind his desk, the surface littered with paperwork and wires and framed pictures of his kids. There would be one of those little plastic signs they sell in joke shops: Just file it in my bin. There would be coffee cups and chewing gum wrappers and an overflowing ashtray. And somewhere in there, among all that, would be a file with my daughter’s name on the top. Don’t count on it, I thought, sarcastically.
‘What do you mean, his father? Why? Who is he?’
‘Edward Thorn. His car was seen by the church the night Edie ran off, but that’s not unusual – he had some dealings at the church and in the park nearby. He was a custodian for some of the land there. They named the duck pond after him.’
Edward Thorn. I’d heard of him, of course. He was what someone would describe as ‘very active in the community’. Tony coughed into the handset before saying, ‘Sit tight, okay, Sam? Look after yourself.’
Sit tight. Huh. He might as well have told me to stop breathing. I stood with my head lowered to my chest after I’d hung up the phone, silent even as Rupert asked me over and over what was going on, had they found her?
‘I need to get out of here,’ I said. ‘I need to do something.’
Rupert looked exasperated. He wanted to stop me, but there was a hesitation there, an expression I’d seen on his face since childhood. ‘Why did you let Samantha do that?’ our mother would cry, after I’d ridden my trike off the shed roof, after I’d poured all her Rémy Martin brandy down the drain, after I’d scraped my elbows trying to fit all the way up inside the chimney. ‘Why did you let her do it?’ Exasperated. Rupert would look at her dumbly and reply, ‘I just wanted to see what would happen.’
I left the house and turned left towards Malling Fields, crossing the large park at an angle towards the bridge. I used to bring Edie to play here when she was little, pushing her on the swings as she’d sat stone-faced and unmoved.
One day she’d asked me why I kept on bringing her back to the park when she hated it, and I’d turned to her and said sweetly, ‘Because if we don’t get out the house your mother will lose her fucking mind, darling.’
Over the bridge, past the lido; shimmering in the summer like polished turquoise but now, deep into the autumn, the untreated water had turned malachite green beneath the heavy grey sky. On the corner of St Mary de Castro there was a single police car parked, but no officers anywhere to be seen. I pulled my hood up, hoping not to draw attention to myself. I didn’t want them to know what I was doing. I walked quickly past, angling right and down Hillman Terrace towards the school.
It was nearly three. They’d be coming out soon. There were other parents at the gates, but only a handful. Our kids were grown up now, didn’t need us the way they used to.
As the bell rang I stood across the road and craned my neck towards the entrance. I was still feeling the effects of the Valium I’d taken at lunchtime, but there was a rawness to it; my thin resolve had been stripped away. My hands in my pockets, I itched for a cigarette.
Then I saw them. Just two Rattlesnakes arm in arm. Moya and Charlie, moving through the crowd like eels, glossy and sinuous in their tight dark clothes. Moya was a lot shorter than Charlie, with wild curly hair and glossy doe eyes. Charlie was tall and angular and noble-looking, like royalty. She was cover-girl pretty, with a wave of thick black hair over her shoulder. I watched them go through the school gates, heads close together, talking as if in a secret language. Something made them both laugh, Moya with her head thrown back, Charlie as if she was imparting a great secret, looking askance at her friend, one hand over her mouth to hide her secretive smile. I followed them for a while until the crowd thinned out and we were nearing the railway bridge, a tunnel of metal girders criss-crossing overhead, flaking grey paint and rust and graffiti.