The Missing (6 page)

I took it, thanked him again and got out. I pushed the card into the pocket of my jacket, unaccountably embarrassed, and walked towards the house quickly. The cool night air was like iced water on my cheeks. Behind me the lights of Blake’s car flicked on and my shadow stretched in front of me, then wheeled away to the left as he turned in the generous width of the cul-de-sac. I listened as his engine sang out, fading into the distance as he drove away. Flicking the edge of the card with my thumbnail as I walked, I hurried the last few yards to the house and let myself in. The hallway was quiet and dark, with everything just as I had left it. I stood for a second and listened to the silence. It had been a long, strange and stressful
evening
. It was no wonder that I felt unsettled. But there seemed to be no reason why I should have that jarring feeling, that sense that something was somehow out of place. And why, I wondered, looking around the deserted street before I closed the door, did I still feel like someone was out there, watching me?

I don’t look at the clock on the mantelpiece, but I know it’s late, long past my bedtime. I should be delighted; I have a long-running campaign to be allowed to stay up later, but I am tired. I’m leaning against the back of the sofa and my feet don’t touch the floor. My legs are sticking out in front of me, my calves squashed flat on the edge of the seat. The material that covers the sofa is fluffy and soft, but it prickles against my skin.

I yawn, then look at my hands lying in my lap, curved around one another, brown against the blue cotton of my skirt. If I look up, I will see my mother pacing back and forth, her sandals making tiny dents in the living-room carpet. The shape to my right is my father, leaning back in an armchair as if he is relaxed. There are black lines of dirt under all of my fingernails. A fresh scratch wavers across the back of my left hand and the skin around it has
turned
pink. I don’t remember when it happened. It doesn’t hurt at all.

‘It’s not funny any more, Sarah. This is ridiculous. Forget whatever Charlie told you to say – I want the truth.’

I drag my eyes up from my lap and look at Mum. She has dark marks under her eyes, as if someone had dipped their thumbs in ink and jabbed them into her face.

‘You’re not in trouble,’ my father says softly. ‘Just tell us.’

‘Tell us where Charlie is.’ Mum’s voice is tight. She is tired too. ‘You’d better start talking, young lady. Don’t make it worse for yourself and your brother.’

I don’t say anything. I have already said that I don’t know, that Charlie said he would be back soon and nothing more. This is the first time I have ever told the truth and not been believed. I have been crying on and off all evening, wishing Charlie would come home, wishing they would leave me alone. Now I have settled into silence.

I concentrate on folding the hem of my cotton skirt into pleats like an accordion – wide pleats at first, then narrow pleats, then I smooth them out and start again. The material slides back over my knees. They stick up, the skin stretched thinly over the bone of my kneecaps. Sometimes I like to draw faces on them or pretend that
they
are mountains, but today they are just knees.

‘Come on, Sarah, for God’s sake. Just tell us.’ Mum is crying again, and my father stands up. He wraps his arms around her and whispers in her ear, softly, so that I can’t hear what he’s saying. I don’t care. They are both looking at me, I can tell, the way they have been looking at me all evening, since Mum realised that Charlie was gone. There is a part of me – a very small part – that is almost enjoying it.

On my right knee, there is a blue-white scar the size and shape of an apple pip. I fell and landed on a piece of glass when I was little. Mum and Dad were watching Charlie play football, and they didn’t notice what had happened to me until the blood from my knee had turned my sock bright red. I got in trouble for dirtying my new summer shoes, but it wasn’t my fault. They hadn’t been paying attention.

Not like now.

IF EVER THERE
was a day for calling in sick, that Tuesday was it. I sat in my car and checked my appearance in the rear-view mirror, noting the greenish pallor and heavy shadows under my eyes, the result of seriously disturbed sleep. I had slept badly, waking every hour or so to stare into the dark with wide eyes. The events of the previous evening seemed so unreal when the alarm woke me up that I had actually gone to the cupboard in my room to check the pocket of my jacket, and didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when my fingers touched the little rectangle of card with DS Blake’s contact details on it. And I had watched the morning news as I choked down some cereal, seeing the Shepherds, as yet unidentified by the media, as they went in the pale dawn to see where their daughter’s body had lain. Mrs Shepherd’s hair was all over the place, straggling in strawberry-blonde rats’ tails rather than the sleek bob I remembered. As they reached the edge of the woods, Michael Shepherd looked back over his shoulder, straight into the camera, with red-rimmed, haunted eyes. I put my cereal bowl down, suddenly nauseated.

In the rear-view mirror, my eyes were red too. I definitely looked sick. But staying at home was even less appealing than going to work. Last night Mum had been
asleep
when I had come home, and hadn’t surfaced while I was getting up. But it couldn’t last. If I stayed, I’d have to see her sometime. Speak to her, even.

I started the car and put it into reverse, but then sat, immobile, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles bleached white. I couldn’t go to school, but I had to, and in the end I said aloud, ‘Fuck it. Fuck everything,’ and let the handbrake off, letting the car roll down towards the road. The next second I jammed on the brakes, as a motorbike roared past me with a loud, indignant blast on the horn. I hadn’t even seen him. I hadn’t even looked. My heart pounded and I felt weak as I pulled out on to the main road, checking obsessively that I wasn’t endangering anyone else.
Get a grip … come on, don’t fall apart
…

What made it worse – what made it absolutely bloody intolerable – was that I knew exactly who the motorcyclist was: Danny Keane, who had been Charlie’s best friend. I couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t lived across the road from us. He might as well have lived on the moon. We were well beyond the point where I could start up a friendly conversation with him; I avoided him deliberately, and he knew it, and it was a long time since he’d smiled or nodded in my direction or indicated in any way that he knew of my existence. It wasn’t his fault that I associated him with some of the worst moments of my life, that I wasn’t able to break the connection in my head between Danny Keane and despair. I usually left early and got home late; our paths rarely crossed, but I still knew him, and he would remember me. Knocking
him
off his bike would have been a pretty bad way to start making friends again.

The roads were busy and traffic was slow, much slower than usual. Cars were queuing at all the junctions, backing up the side roads, and I wondered what was going on. Human nature at work, it turned out. All along the main road, skirting the woods, the verges were rutted and scarred where the wheels of the news vans had bitten into the soft earth. Their roof-mounted satellite dishes were beaming the Shepherds’ misfortune all over the world. Each van had its little group of attendants, a cameraman, soundman and reporter. It was the other side of what I had been watching on my television at breakfast. It was also Surrey’s latest tourist attraction. The drivers slowed down to a crawl. It was better than a car crash; there was a chance of seeing genuine celebrities in the shape of one or two of the better-known reporters. There was even the possibility that a panning cameraman might catch a slow-moving motorist on film for a second or two. Fame at last. No wonder the traffic was virtually at a standstill. I drove as close to the car in front as I dared, edging forwards without looking too closely at the temporary news village that had mushroomed on the verge.

At the school gates, I noted an increase in the numbers of parents who were gathering there, talking earnestly to one another, but I ignored them, sweeping past without slowing down. Even a cursory glance in their direction told me that the only topic for discussion was the body, and I didn’t want to hear their speculation about what had happened and who it was and was it true … I could
see
from a mile off that the rumour mills were in overdrive.

And so were the professional gossips. In the staff car park, I pulled into a space by the wall. As I switched off the engine, there was a sudden rat-tat-tat on my window that practically sent me into orbit. I whipped around, ready to snarl at whoever had crept up on me, assuming it would be a colleague. But the face peering in at me through the window didn’t belong to any of the other teachers. I frowned, trying to place the woman who was standing there. She was middle-aged, with a puffy face that was coated in a slick of tan foundation. Her pale pink lipstick made her teeth look yellow, and she wore a drab brown coat that did nothing for her figure or her colouring. Although she was smiling, her eyes were cold. They scanned the interior of the car, including me, missing nothing. With great reluctance, I rolled down the window.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Carol Shapley, chief reporter from the
Elmview Examiner
,’ she said, and leaned into the car, practically touching me. ‘Are you a teacher here?’

I looked pointedly at the sign on the wall that said ‘Teachers’ Car Park’ in letters about a foot high, roughly ten feet from where I was parked. ‘Were you looking for someone in particular?’

‘Not as such,’ she said, and smiled even wider. ‘I’m reporting on this murder that’s happened, one of your students, and I’ve got some information that I’d like you to confirm.’

She spoke quickly, reeling off her little speech with
great
fluency, giving the impression that she knew everything there was to know about it already. My alarm bells were ringing so loudly, I was surprised she couldn’t hear them. I remembered seeing her before at various school performances, fundraisers and local events, barrelling around self-importantly. The
Elmview Examiner
was the most local of local papers; parochial was not the word. And calling herself the chief reporter was a bit rich. As far as I knew, she was the only reporter.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can help,’ I said sweetly, and started to roll up the window again, in spite of the fact that she was leaning on the edge of it. For a second, I could see her struggling with the urge to insist on speaking to me, but she backed off a foot or two. Not far enough.

I gathered my things together and opened the car door to find that she had left me just enough room to get out.

‘I only have a couple of questions.’

I straightened to my full height and discovered she had a couple of inches on me; not for the first time I regretted that I wasn’t tall enough to look down my nose at anyone. But I didn’t need a height advantage when I had the moral high ground.

‘Look, I’ve got to go in and speak to my students. I’m afraid I don’t have time to talk at the moment.’ I summoned up a smile from somewhere. ‘I know you’re just doing your job, but I have a job to do too.’

‘Oh, I do understand. Can I ask you your name?’ She waved an A4 sheet at me. ‘I’ve got a list, you see. It’s always nice to put a face to a name.’

I couldn’t see a way to avoid telling her. ‘Sarah Finch.’

‘Finch …’ She ran her pen down the list and put a tick by my name. ‘Thanks, Sarah. Maybe we can have a chat some other time.’

Or maybe not
.

I started to walk towards the school, but of course she wasn’t finished. ‘I’ve heard from sources in the police that the body was found by one of the teachers from this school. That wasn’t you, was it?’

I stopped and turned, mind racing. Obviously I didn’t want her to know that it had been me, but I wasn’t sure I could get away with an out-and-out lie. ‘God, how awful,’ I said in the end.

‘Yeah, dreadful,’ the journalist said, looking anything but bothered.

I gave Carol another meaningless little smile and half-shrug, then headed for the staffroom, aware of her eyes on me as I crossed the car park. I had to hope that Carol would categorise me as bland, unquotable, totally uninteresting, because if she started to dig, there was every chance that she might put it all together. And not just about Jenny. If she was looking for an angle for a follow-up piece on what was undoubtedly going to be the story of the year, she might think to compare the circumstances of Jenny’s death with other local murders and mysteries. Charlie’s disappearance was an obvious one to drag up out of the archives. Not for the first time, I was glad I had changed my surname and that none of my colleagues knew anything about Charlie. It wouldn’t be so easy for Carol to make the connection. And after
all
, why should she? The only thing the two cases had in common was me.

Even though the staffroom was as crowded as I’d ever seen it, the assembled teachers and staff were almost silent. It seemed every employee of Edgeworth School was there. Everyone was on time today. I looked at the drawn, worried faces that surrounded me and felt unutterably wretched. We were all involved in this now; there was no way to opt out.

Elaine Pennington stood at one end of the room, DCI Vickers beside her. Next to him there was a young woman with a clipboard and immaculate make-up, who had introduced herself as the police press officer. The head teacher had been talking for some time now about Jenny, cooperation with the police and answering parents’ questions. She was making a brave attempt to seem as decisive and in control as normal, but the piece of paper she was using as a prompt sheet vibrated in her hands. One side of her narrow face looked frozen, palsied, with a twitch that tugged at her eyelid intermittently. I hoped she was planning to stay away from the media until she’d clawed back some of her composure. Her voice was uncharacteristically reedy, and as she spoke her eyes slid about the room. I forced myself to pay attention to what she was saying.