The Missing (11 page)

Dad folds his arms. ‘Oh, so you’ve finally decided that someone’s taken him, have you?’

‘It’s our view that it’s a definite possibility, yes.’ Mop mop mop. ‘Oh Christ …’ he whispers, then looks around the table with piteous eyes. ‘We’ve got to listen to the psychologist’s opinion. She knows how they operate. Paedophiles, I mean. She says we need to make them aware that Charlie is a real person, part of a family. Most of them would see a child like Charlie as a commodity, according to her, so we have to get through to them that he’s more than that.’

Mum makes a tiny sound under her breath. Her eyes are closed and she is swaying in her seat. I edge around the table to stand next to her, leaning into her. She feels slight – fragile almost, as if I might break her. I butt up against her like a little goat, but she doesn’t respond.

‘What do you want us to do?’ Dad asks.

‘We want you to speak about Charlie on camera. We want to put him in a family context,
maybe
by looking at family photographs that include him. We want to release some new images of him to the media, and also get a film crew in here to get some footage of you as a family. All three of you.’

I jump, a thrill of excitement running through me at the thought of being on TV. A big smile that I can’t stop spreads across my face. I hope the girls in my class will see me.

‘I don’t want her to be involved.’

I don’t realise what Mum means straightaway. Then everyone around the table looks at me.

‘I know you want to protect your daughter from the publicity, but this is really, really important, Mrs Barnes,’ the policeman says, his face serious.

Mum’s mouth is a thin line. ‘I don’t think it’s right for her to be on TV.’

She doesn’t want me to be on TV because she knows how much I want it. She doesn’t want anything good to happen to me because I don’t deserve it. My knees are shaking so badly I can hardly stand up. ‘But Mum—’ I start to say.

Dad interrupts. ‘Laura, we have to do this.’

She doesn’t answer him, just shakes her head, looking down into her lap where her hands are knotted together, working all the time. Her face is shuttered, blank.

Dad tries again. ‘We have to do this. For Charlie.’

That’s what he’s been saying all the time. Eat something, for Charlie. Talk to the police, for Charlie. Get some rest, for Charlie. It’s the one thing she can’t refuse.

The TV crew set up their equipment in the garden. They tell us where to sit and what to do. I sit between my parents, the ruffles of my favourite dress foaming up between us. We are pretending to look through a photograph album – pictures of Charlie as a baby, then as a toddler with a red tricycle that I recognise. I played with it too. It’s still in the garden shed, though the paint is chipped and worn now.

I’m waiting for the first picture of me, with Charlie leaning over the edge of the cot to look at me. I know exactly what page it’s on. I’ve looked at it many times, trying to recognise my own features in the little round red-faced bundle wrapped up in a blanket, one fat hand poking out. Mum turns the pages slowly, too slowly, stopping to sigh every now and then. When I look up, her face is twisted with grief.

From behind the camera comes, ‘Now, Sarah, put your hand on your mother’s arm.’

I obey, patting her arm gently. Her skin is cold to the touch, even though we are sitting in the full heat of the afternoon sun. She pulls her arm away as if I’ve burned her. For the first time, I understand that I will never be able to
comfort
her. I will never be able to make her happy. I will never be enough.

The tears come then, without warning. I sit and sob my heart out, crying as if I’ll never stop. On the evening news, it looks as if I’m crying for Charlie. Only I know that I’m crying for me.

IT WAS AFTER
one o’clock when Andrew Blake came to the school office, where Elaine had put me to work in the absence of any actual teaching duties. My colleagues were lurking in the staffroom, catching up on paperwork. That had been my plan too. I’d been unlucky to run into Elaine, and unluckier still that I hadn’t been able to think of an excuse to get out of helping, but I didn’t really mind. Opening post and answering the telephone all morning hadn’t been exactly taxing. In fact, the only downside was the presence of Janet, the school secretary. A skeletal woman in her early fifties, Janet had been teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown the entire time I had been working at Edgeworth School. She was useless at her job in normal circumstances; the current situation had made it completely impossible for her to do anything but talk about her medical problems, past and present, and cry. From the moment I walked into the office and saw her inflamed eyelids and reddened nose I had known that there was no point in actually listening to her. I managed to tune her out quite successfully, retreating into my own world while mechanically going through a pile of junk mail and phone messages. Sorting things out was therapeutic. Janet’s monologue flowed on in the background, as unstoppable as a river. If you didn’t listen to the words, it was almost soothing.

When the door opened and Blake poked his head into the room, it took me a second to come back to reality. Janet was saying, ‘So I knew straightaway, of course, that it was a prolapse, because it had happened before … Can I help you?’

He beamed at her, charm at full wattage. ‘Not at the moment, love. It’s Miss Finch I’ve come to see.’

I stood up and smoothed the creases out of my dress with my hands, playing for time. Why did he want to speak to me? It had to be something to do with Rachel. I went towards the door, my mind a whirl of half-remembered things I had intended to say to Vickers earlier.

‘Are you going to be long?’ came from behind me. Janet’s voice was sharp-edged with irritation. ‘Because one of us should really be here over lunchtime, you know. Given how busy it is.’

I stopped, confused, and looked from her to Blake and back again.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Blake said gently, but without the least hint that negotiation was possible. ‘We won’t be very long.’

Janet sniffed. ‘Fine. I’ll take my lunch later. I haven’t really got much appetite these days, anyway.’

With my back to her, I pulled a face at Blake, who half-laughed, half-coughed his way down the corridor, out of Janet’s field of vision. As soon as the door was safely shut behind me, he said, ‘What was
that
?’

‘What, Janet? She’s special, isn’t she?’

‘You can say that again. She’s about as cheerful as those
women
who used to knit at the foot of the guillotine. How did you get trapped in there?’

‘No students to teach and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s better than doing nothing, but thanks for rescuing me anyway.’ I hesitated for a second. ‘What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?’

Blake looked immensely serious and I waited, cringing a little, to hear what he wanted. ‘I was wondering if you were hungry. Because if you
were
heartless enough to want to eat something at a time like this, I would be very happy to offer you one of these sandwiches –,’ and he held up a paper bag ‘– at the location of your choice. It’s a nice day. Is there anywhere we can go that’s out of doors?’

I blinked, surprised, before feeling a sudden lift in my mood. It
was
a nice day. There was no reason to martyr myself by spending lunchtime in the stuffy school office, or worse, the staffroom, where I would have to listen to Stephen Smith’s dentures clack as he ate. It made no sense, especially when there was a much more appealing option available. Would I regret turning Blake down? In a word, yes.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, mirroring Blake’s serious demeanour. ‘What kind of sandwiches did you get?’

‘One ham and salad, one cheese and tomato.’

I considered. ‘Can I have the cheese one?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘In that case, follow me.’ I led the way to the door that opened into the car park. ‘Somewhere quiet outdoors, is that the brief?’

Blake put on a turn of speed to get to the door first
and
held it open for me. ‘Somewhere away from that lot, ideally.’ He nodded towards the milling reporters by the school gate.

‘No problem.’ I set off along the side of the school building, past the hockey pitch, to the small, high-walled school garden. It was where the girls were encouraged to try out their green fingers, with varying degrees of success. The vegetable patch was a sorry sight, full of blasted lettuces that had lost the competition with flourishing weeds, but the walls were mantled with honeysuckle that scented the air, and two large apple trees scattered fractured shade across the grass. The garden had the virtue of not being overlooked, which meant that in normal conditions it was the number one choice for those girls who indulged in illicit smoking at lunchtime. Currently, though, it was deserted.

‘Perfect,’ Blake said from over my shoulder, looking in through the gate. He was standing close behind me, and I was intensely aware of him. It took me a second to remember what I had been doing. I unlatched the gate and stepped down onto the grass, and he followed.

‘You can’t beat a private school, can you?’

‘I suppose not.’ I looked at him dubiously; he was wearing a fairly sharp suit. ‘Do you want to sit on a bench or lie on the grass?’

He crouched and pressed his hands onto the lawn for a moment. ‘Bone dry. Grass it is.’

He took off his jacket and tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves before lying down on his back. I watched, amused, as he pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘Tired?’

‘Just a bit,’ Blake said, and his voice was blurry with sleep.

He had chosen to lie in the sun, but there was a patch of shade nearby. I curled up in it and began to explore the contents of the bag he had brought. As the silence stretched out I began to feel self-conscious.

‘So how are things going?’ I said eventually.

He jerked back to wakefulness and blinked, looking at me as if I was a complete stranger. ‘Sorry – did I drop off?’

I bit into my sandwich instead of answering. Blake sat up, leaning on one elbow, and rooted in the bag. ‘I don’t know if I’m hungry or tired these days. We’ve been flat out since Monday.’

‘And are you making progress?’

Through a mouthful of bread, he said, ‘Sort of. You raking up the friend was a help. How did that happen?’

I shrugged. ‘I just bumped into Rachel. She was dying to tell someone about it, and she knows me, so …’

He nodded. ‘They probably trust you because you’re young. You’re more like them than most of the other teachers around here.’

‘You’d be surprised. I might look young to you, but I don’t think they see me as one of them. I’m very definitely a grown-up as far as they’re concerned.’ I sighed. ‘This whole thing with Jenny – I just didn’t see it. Not at all.’

‘Don’t blame yourself. No one knew. Even her parents were in the dark. How could you have picked up on it?’

I put my sandwich back down and wrapped my arms around my knees. ‘I should have, though. I keep thinking about it. She used to hang back and talk to me after class
sometimes
, about nothing in particular. Just … chat. I never really thought much of it, but she might have been waiting for a chance to talk about what was going on. And I used to tell her to hurry up so she would get to her next class on time.’ I put my forehead down on my knees, hiding my face from him, afraid to see the judgement in his eyes. But the certainty in his voice when he spoke made me look up.

‘Bollocks. If she’d wanted to talk to you, she would have found a way. Look, I’m not trying to change the way you feel about her, but the girl was plain devious. We ripped her bedroom apart – carted away tons of stuff for forensic examination – but we haven’t found anything useful. The only person she seems to have talked to is this Rachel, and even then she hasn’t told her much. Can you think of anyone else she might have confided in?’

‘No,’ I said regretfully. ‘To be honest, I think Jenny only talked to Rachel about it because she needed someone to cover for her, not because she wanted someone to talk to about her boyfriend.’

‘How did Rachel cover for her?’ Blake asked, interested.

‘She was the only one in the class who lived reasonably close to Jenny – about a ten-minute bike ride. According to Rachel, Jenny was allowed to cycle over to her house so they could do homework together. But of course, she didn’t go to Rachel’s house; she went somewhere else – to see this friend of hers and his brother.’

‘And the parents never suspected a thing?’

‘That’s the beauty of mobile phones. Diane Shepherd would call or text Jenny when she wanted her to come
home
. She never rang the Boyds, so there was no danger of her finding out that Jenny wasn’t there. But Jenny had Rachel primed to cover for her in case Mrs Shepherd ever spoke to her at the school.’

‘That’s clever. She had everyone dancing to her tune, didn’t she?’

‘I suppose.’ The idea was so much at odds with my impression of Jenny that it made me uncomfortable. ‘Maybe it was the boyfriend’s plan, though.’

‘Mmm,’ Blake said neutrally. ‘Maybe.’

He didn’t say anything else and neither did I. A wood pigeon crooned in the trees, filling the silence. He was looking down at the grass, thinking, and I took advantage of that to stare at him. The bright sunshine gleamed in the hairs on his arms and his eyelashes, which fanned down on to his cheeks. I had never seen longer eyelashes on a man, and they were the only remotely feminine thing about him. His shirt was carelessly tucked in and a triangle of skin was visible above his belt, taut and brown, with a trail of dark hair leading my mind to places it shouldn’t go. He was as still as a photograph. The only movement was the second hand of his watch. I hugged my knees and felt something unfamiliar bubbling up inside me, something that after a second, with some surprise, I recognised as happiness.

Blake looked up at me and I felt my stomach flip over. ‘Are you going to finish your sandwich or what?’

The second half of the sandwich was still wrapped in greaseproof paper from the deli. ‘I’m not that hungry, I’m afraid.’