The Stranger on the Train (6 page)

Lindsay touched Emma's hand.

“Try not to take this personally,” she said. “Sooner or later, we ask this to almost every family in your situation.”

“Ask them
what
?”

Detective Hill cleared his throat. He said: “I was intending to discuss this with you earlier, before we were interrupted by Mr. Townsend. I had a long talk with your GP this morning. When we were looking through Ritchie's medical records.”

“My GP?” Emma was confused. What did Dr. Stanford have to do with this?

Detective Hill leaned forward. He clasped his huge hands in front of him.

“Ms. Turner,” he said. “I'm sorry, but I have to ask you. Is there any chance at all that you may have done something to your son?”

Emma stared at him.

“I don't understand,” she said. Her cheeks grew hot. “Ritchie's been kidnapped. You know he has. Why are you asking me this?”

“Dr. Stanford has told us a few things,” Detective Hill said. “She was reluctant to do so, but given that you had allowed us to view the records, she felt she had no choice. She thinks you may not be telling us the truth about all of this.” He paused. “In fact, based on a visit you paid to her recently, she's worried that you may have harmed Ritchie.”

Ha-ha-harmed
. The “Ha” sucked in her chest. You may have Harmed Ritchie.

“Emma?” Detective Hill's eyes were very cold. They bulged at her, laser blue. “Do you remember your last visit to Dr. Stanford, eleven days ago?”

“My last—”

A fizz rose in Emma's belly. In a second, she was back there in the surgery. The lurid coughs from the waiting room. The gravel rattle of rain on the window. The stench of socks and antiseptic.

The expression on Dr. Stanford's face. Sitting there, so shocked and upright behind her desk.

Emma hunched forward until her elbows were on her knees. She put her hands to her face.

“Do you remember?” Detective Hill was saying. “Do you remember what you told Dr. Stanford that day?”

In a low voice, Emma said: “Yes. Yes, I remember.”

So at least now she knew. The reason they weren't taking her seriously. From the balcony came a seagull-like cry.
Oh, Ritchie. Ritchie. What have I done?

Lindsay was pulling at her, trying to take her hand. Her face was a blur of smoothness, all professional concern. But her thoughts sprang at Emma as clearly as if she'd spoken them aloud:

And here we were feeling sorry for you! What kind of mother are you?

Emma kept her face covered. She couldn't look at Lindsay. She turned away.

Chapter Six

From the first, Ritchie had Oliver's smile, and every time she saw it Emma's heart skipped a beat. Ritchie was a solemn child; the smile usually had to be coaxed out of him, often appearing around a fist or a toy or a rusk in his mouth, but it was there. Someday, some woman was going to be floored by that smile, and Emma didn't know whether to pity her or envy her.

Because, of course, it was that smile that had stopped her in her tracks one evening, halfway across the Blue Grape in Clapham with three drinks in her hands. The owner of the smile wasn't even looking in her direction at the time, but it knocked the breath out of her for a second.

“Who's that bloke Barry's talking to?” Emma hissed, back at the table, sliding Joanne and Claire's glasses of vodka and cranberry juice over to them.

Joanne twisted on her high stool to see.

“Oh, him,” she said. “Oliver Metcalfe. Works in Barry's company.”

“He's got a girlfriend, if that's why you're asking,” Claire Burns said. Claire had been to uni with Emma and Joanne and was one of those people who always seem to know everything about everyone. “I've seen him with an Asian girl with hair down to her bum.”

“Oh.” Emma was disappointed. The best ones were always taken.

Still, though, she couldn't help checking out Oliver Metcalfe as the evening progressed. What
was
it about him? She hadn't felt this attracted to a bloke in ages. She watched him over Claire's and Joanne's shoulders as he laughed and chatted with his mates. He was tall, half a head higher than most of the people around him, standing under the window with the streetlight in his hair. The hair was dark blond, long enough so that his fringe brushed his eyes. He was part of the work-suited crowd, but where the others had shirts and ties under their jackets, he wore a yellow T-shirt with a picture of Homer Simpson on the front. He had a pair of extremely tatty trainers on his feet. The outfit would look ridiculous on a normal man—Barry, Joanne's boyfriend, for example, whose pink belly strained at the buttons of his shirt—but Oliver got away with it. Emma guessed he was a person who knew absolutely what he was doing with clothes. They just hung right on him.

Two sea breezes later, Emma had made her mind up. She slammed her glass on the table and grinned at Claire and Joanne.

“Well,” she said. “I don't see any Asian girls over there tonight. How about I go and say hello?”

“Cheeky bint,” Joanne called as she left the table. “Hasn't that Brian bloke from your work been begging to take you to dinner for weeks? You never chase men.”

“So maybe it's time I started,” Emma muttered. She checked her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Her new green Topshop dress was holding up well. The neckline was perfect: not too low, not too high. Her hair was freshly washed and shiny. Her mascara was still in place, not yet at the stage where it had begun to slide down her face. Okay, so no one was about to mistake her for Kate Moss's younger sister, but she wasn't an absolute toad either. She looked all right.

Barry looked astonished to find Emma greeting him as enthusiastically as if they were the best of friends. Normally they didn't have that much to say to each other. He grunted at her, and she turned to Oliver.

“Hi,” she smiled. “I'm Emma.”

“Oliver,” he said politely, shaking her hand.

She was slightly thrown to find that up close he was even better looking than she'd thought. In fact, there was no way around it, he was very, very good-looking. He waited, eyebrows courteously raised, clearly wondering what she wanted. Emma's confidence wavered but she stood her ground.

“We know people in common,” she explained. “I live with Joanne, Barry's girlfriend.”

“Oh, really?” Oliver had a lovely voice. Deep, very well-spoken. “How do you know each other?”

“We were on the same course in Bristol. Business studies and marketing. And we went to Sydney for a year together after uni.”

“Sounds interesting,” he said. “Bristol's a good place.”

“Yeah, it is.”

A pause.

“What are you reading?” Emma asked, spotting a book sticking out of the pocket of his jacket. There was a picture of some sort of cockroach on the front.

“Kafka,” Oliver said. “
Metamorphosis
.”

“I've heard of that. What's it about?”

“A man wakes up one morning and finds he's changed into a giant insect.”

“Oh.” Typical male. “Sci-fi.”

Oliver laughed then, as if she'd said something funny.

“I have to go,” he said, putting his glass on the counter. “I've arranged to see someone in town. But it was nice meeting you. I'm sure we'll bump into each other again.”

“Great,” Emma said politely. “I'm sure we will.”

“No vibe,” she said, deflated, to Joanne and Claire a couple of minutes later.

“He only goes out with really attractive girls,” Claire said. “Not that I don't think you're attractive,” she added quickly as Emma looked at her, “but you know what I mean.”

Emma did. Claire had been green with envy in case Emma hit it off with Oliver and ended up going out with him. She'd always been like that, all through uni. Putting people in their place, in case they got ideas above their station. Emma often wondered why they still hung out with her. But that was London for you. It was so huge, and so hard to get to know new people, that even though you'd moved there to do precisely that, you ended up hanging out with all the old ones, just for security.

“Oh, well.” She shrugged, refusing to let Claire's snide remarks get to her. “I gave him a chance, but I have my pride.”

Back at Joanne and Emma's flat, two streets away, there was a message for Emma on the answering machine.

“Hi, Emma. Mum here. I haven't heard from you for a few days, so just checking that you're well and hope to hear from you soon.”

Emma jabbed the “Erase” button.

“That's the third time this week,” she complained. “It's only recently she's started doing this. Phoning me at all hours.”

“Why d'you never ring her back, then?” Joanne called, clattering around in the kitchen.

“Sunday is the day I ring. She knows that. Why's she calling the flat on a Friday night? Does she think I have no life, phoning on a Friday?” Emma's voice rose. How tantrummy and hysterical she sounded. There her mother went again. Turning her straight back into a nine-year-old.

“My mum's a nag too,” Joanne said. “It's being on their own does it.”

Emma fiddled with the switch on the answering machine. She hadn't meant to imply that her mother was a nag. And then she was frustrated. What was there to feel guilty about? She owed her mother nothing. Nothing at all.

“Your mum does care about you, love,” her gran had assured the five-year-old Emma whenever her mother snapped at her. And the eight-year-old when her mum forgot to collect her from school. And the eleven-year-old when Emma was spending most evenings and weekends at her gran's because her mother was too tired to look after her. “She's just worn-out because of her work. It's so there'll be money in the bank for you for university.” But really, her gran didn't see what the big deal was about Emma going to university. Emma didn't either, at the time. But she loved her gran, and the arrangement of spending so much time with her suited them both. Who needed her cold, distant mother?

She marched through to the kitchen to explain it properly to Joanne.

“I would ring her more,” she said, “but once, when I was four years old, I tried to climb on her knee and she pushed me off so hard, I fell and smashed my face on the fireplace. Look.” She pulled her hair to one side and tilted her head, jutting her chin at Joanne. “You can still see the scar. What kind of mother does that to a child?”

“Keep your hair on. I was only saying.” Joanne had seen the scar before. She had lost interest and was reading a fashion magazine, winding her long blond hair around the top of her head.

• • •

Emma saw Oliver a few times after that, usually in a Friday-night group with Barry and the City boys. The Grape was the magnet for most of the twenty-somethings in their area. It had high ceilings, a dark wood floor, plenty of tables. The pub grub was cheap and tasty: steak and ale pie, chicken curry, sausages and mash. No snooker tables, which pleased the women. The blokes liked it because there was a large selection of real ales. Emma didn't try to approach Oliver again, but secretly she was still fascinated by him. The way he rarely spoke to anyone; just stood there sipping his pint of Spitfire, sometimes staring off into space. What was all that about? What did he think about when he half closed his drowsy eyes while those around him shouted over each other to be heard? And yet, despite his aloofness, he always managed to be right in the middle of the coolest group. How did he do that? He didn't seem to make any particular effort to attract people; they just gathered around him. On the nights she spotted him, she felt a little snip of excitement in her belly. She held herself straighter, became more animated, made sure she was always laughing and having a good time. Easy enough to do, because the Grape, with Oliver in it, suddenly seemed like the very center of London. The place everyone wanted to be.

“You know he's an orphan,” Joanne told her one evening. “His parents were killed in a car crash when he was seven.”

“No!” Emma was shocked. “That's horrible.”

“He was sent to live with an aunt somewhere in the country but I don't think they got on too well. She chucked him out when he was about fifteen.”

“Poor Oliver,” Emma sighed. “No wonder he's so reserved.”

“Yeah, ” Joanne said. “Comes across quite deep, doesn't he? Likes it that way.”

“I thought he was a friend of yours?”

“Oliver's all right, you know. Barry says he works at that laid-back image of his. A mate of ours lived with him and he said Oliver spent all his time checking himself in the mirror, turning his head from side to side when he thought no one was looking. He makes sure he reads all the right books, knows all the right-on things to say. I don't know how much depth there actually is to him to be honest.”

“Hmm,” Emma said.

The trouble with Joanne was she didn't like any men now that she'd met Barry. Emma could take or leave Barry. He was a bit middle-aged, considering he was only twenty-six. He'd been born and spent his whole life in Wandsworth, and had a beer belly already, and views on things like immigration and single mothers. But he was doing well in his career, slowly clambering to the top of the IT world. He had bought his own flat. Joanne had always wanted to marry young.

It was raining one evening in September when Emma sloshed down the steps to put her key in the lock of their basement flat. The end of yet another glorious day at the call center, being shouted at by clients who couldn't get through to technical support. The calls were recorded, so she couldn't tell the clients to piss off, or even agree with them that, yes, actually, PlanetLink
was
the worst broadband provider in the UK and the best thing they could do would be to take their custom elsewhere. What made things even more unbearable was that she had no one to bitch to during her breaks. Most of her colleagues were either several years younger than her, only there for a few weeks to fund their gap year, or else many years older, worn down and embittered by life, trying to scrape up the cash to save the house their ex had remortgaged without telling them. The only person in the place remotely her age was Brian Cobbold, Emma's would-be admirer, who'd been working at the call center for six years now, and wearing the same V-necked jumper for most of that.

Six years! Emma felt faint. She'd been there for ten months, and already she could feel mold growing on her. She really needed to get out of there. Fast.

Her humor didn't improve when she got in the door of the flat and found a letter from a renowned hotel chain waiting for her.

“Dear Ms. Turner. Thank you for applying for the position of Assistant Marketing Director at the Globe Rendezvous Group. We regret to inform you that you have not been shortlisted for this post.”

“London is so
competitive
,” Emma moaned to Joanne. “Any of the really good jobs I've applied for, all the other people have got master's and first-class degrees. It's hopeless trying to get anywhere.”

“You're aiming too high,” Joanne advised. “You should just take something. Get on the ladder. You've been at that call thingy for a year now.”

“I don't want to be tied into a job I'm not happy with,” Emma said. “The thing about the call center is, you can leave at short notice if anything turns up.”

She crumpled up the letter, chucked it into the bin and went to the sink to fill the kettle. Even though it wasn't half past six yet, she had to switch on the light. Emma and Joanne's two-bedroom flat was in the basement of a terraced ­four-storey house divided into flats. The flats on the upper floors had high ceilings and big windows with views towards Clapham Common. Emma and Joanne's ceiling was so low they could practically touch it sitting down, and the only view from their iron-barred windows was of people's feet as they passed. This evening was darker than usual, due to the rain. The kitchen window ran with water. Through the bars, looking upwards, Emma saw the gray street, littered with flapping “To Let” signs.

“I might travel again,” she said in a dreamy way.

“Where?” Joanne asked.

“I don't know. China? I've always wanted to go there.”

The phone rang.

“Hello . . . Emma?” It was her mum. “I must have missed your call yesterday evening.”

The Sunday evening phone call! Blimmin' hell! Emma closed her eyes.

“I was out,” she lied. “At . . . er . . . to dinner. I got in too late to ring.”