First One Missing (12 page)

After the uncomfortable silence, his mum chatted a bit about how she’d felt when she’d heard the news about the Glover girl. Tears spilled from her eyes but she didn’t seem to notice them. Then Guy Reid said something, then Simon. Yawn. Yawn. Now they were talking about coping mechanisms. As far as Rory could see there was one really obvious coping mechanism: think about something else. Whenever he found himself dwelling on Megan and what happened to her, and his own part in it, he quickly substituted some other line of thought. Georgia Reynolds, for instance, and why she’d drawn a heart in the back of his maths book and whether that meant she’d finally finished with Connor Bateman and whether in that case she might do with Rory the things she and Connor were rumoured to have done upstairs in Maddie Jameson’s parents’ bed. Or he’d think about Arsenal and whether next season would top the last.

But not this lot. They were talking about ring-fencing their personal space and allowing themselves to grieve, and breathing exercises and standard responses to blundering questions, and now Fiona Botsford, who rarely contributed much to these occasions as far as Rory could tell, suddenly said, ‘Of course we’re adopting the most extreme coping mechanism of them all – emigrating to the other side of the world!’

Well. That shut them all up.

Flo-Jo was the first one to speak. ‘You’re moving to Australia?’

She made it sound like the moon. Rory knew it was a long way, but really, had they never heard of long-distance flights?

‘There’s nothing to keep us here,’ Fiona Botsford was explaining. She was half smiling, but had one of those faces where it looked like smiling hurt. ‘Unlike the rest of you, we haven’t got other children already settled in schools. Leila was all we had. We just want a fresh start.’

That made sense to Rory. If you didn’t
have
to stay here where every few months, every time there was an anniversary or a birthday, the whole thing was dredged up again, if you didn’t
have
to be forever Tragic Girl’s Mum or Brother, then really why would you? But now something else was occurring to him. How was his mother going to deal with this piece of news? She set such store by this little group. For the two years after Megan died she’d been a shadow of a person, but meeting the Reids and then the Botsfords had brought her back to life. How was she going to cope with the break-up of Megan’s Angels? He didn’t have long to wait for an answer.

‘Oh Helen, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that. I wasn’t thinking.’

Fiona Botsford was crouching down by his mother’s chair, holding on to her hand, and Rory wasn’t surprised to see more tears snaking down his mum’s cheeks.

‘No. Please ignore me. It’s just a shock, that’s all.’

His mother had on that face she sometimes pulled over her real face when she was trying to keep her feelings under control.

‘Of course you should go,’ said Guy Reid, whom Rory had always secretly found intimidating with his brooding misery. One of those intense types who rarely looked you in the eye. ‘Sometimes I wish we could just pack up too and go somewhere – anywhere – where no one knows us and we can be a normal family again.’

Rory sneaked another glance at his mum. Her eyes were fixed on Guy Reid’s face and the skin was tight around her mouth.

‘Not that that’s in any way a possibility,’ quickly added Guy’s wife, Emma. She was looking at Jemima as if trying to reassure her daughter they weren’t going to be on the next plane out of there. ‘We’re very much rooted here. As much as anything else, London was Tilly’s home. It’s where I feel a connection to her.’

‘And what about the investigation?’ His mum’s voice was unsteady and higher than normal. ‘What if the police need you?’

‘We’ll keep in regular contact with Fiona and Mark,’ the Botsfords’ FLO piped up. His name was Pete, Rory remembered suddenly. The last time they’d met they’d had a long, involved conversation about England’s chances in the World Cup, now just a few weeks away. ‘And of course we’ll keep them up to date with any developments. The wonders of Skype.’

After that the conversation limped on for a little while, but never recovered its rhythm.

‘More drinks, anyone?’ asked Simon as if this was a fun social event. No one took Simon up on his offer, but he still disappeared into the kitchen to fetch himself a beer. Rory wished he could have one. Might make this whole excruciating afternoon more bearable.

‘Is this a good time for me to say a few words?’ It was Pete again, looking at Rory’s mum with his eyebrows raised expectantly. She nodded slightly, hardly moving her head.

Still Pete held back. ‘I’m not sure if this is really suitable for the younger ones.’

His eyes were on Jemima Reid and her little sister, but Rory felt his face burning. That was all he needed to really round off today perfectly – to be lumped in with the kids.

‘Come on, you lot.’ Flo-Jo had her jolliest face on as she stood up and moved towards the door. ‘Let’s go and raid the kitchen and see what we can find.’

Jemima and Caitlin Reid had already got reluctantly to their feet but Jo was looking pointedly at him. ‘Jump to it, Rory. You can show us where your mum stashes the goodies.’

Like he was five years old or something. He heaved himself upright.

‘Good man,’ muttered Simon as he walked past.

Could life actually get any worse?

12

Leanne’s eyes followed Rory Purvis from the room. Poor kid was at that age where every emotion was displayed on his skin. Even his Adam’s apple was blushing. After he’d left, her eyes remained glued to the door, trying to put off the moment when she would have to look at Pete. It was so weird, after all these months of hardly seeing him, to find herself yet again in close proximity to her ex-husband. She glanced at his left hand, and immediately felt angry with herself for minding about that blank space on his fourth finger where even now if you looked carefully, you could spot a band of skin slightly whiter than the rest.

As penance she forced her thoughts back to Will. Her tensed muscles relaxed thinking about his gentle brown eyes, and the way, while having dinner, he’d pause mid-sentence and reach out one of his slender fingers to stroke her cheek as if she was some lovely thing he couldn’t help touching.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Desmond asked me to have a quiet word with you all.’ Pete looked ill at ease. Leanne didn’t blame him. She was glad not to have been burdened with this particular task. They were in a room of parents who’d lost children. There were so many things that could not, should not, be said.

‘The thing is, there seems to have been a leak from somewhere, which obviously we are taking very seriously, leaving no stone unturned, and if it’s established that it’s come from the police end, rest assured there will be serious consequences.’

Leanne stared at Pete.
Leaving no stone unturned.
When had he started talking like Desmond?

‘Anyway, we were hoping to keep this information under wraps for a little longer, but now it’s out there it’s only fair that you should all be told so that it doesn’t come as a shock. The latest victim – and please remember that at this stage there’s no proof that the cases are connected – but the latest victim, Poppy Glover, was found in slightly different circumstances to the last two, Leila and Tilly.’

Pete took a deep breath that Leanne only noticed because she knew what was coming next and how little he wanted to say it. ‘I’m sorry to say that in this instance the body was partially unclothed and there seems to be some indication of a sexual motive, just as with Megan. I can’t tell you any more than that.’

The silence that greeted Pete’s announcement had that loaded quality where the lack of noise seems to be covering up the din of things unsaid.

Emma Reid was the first to break it, removing the hand that had been clasped to her mouth since Pete first spoke.

‘Oh, that poor girl. Those poor parents. That’s too much. Really too much.’

Tears were filling her black-lashed eyes, but Leanne noticed that Emma’s husband, Guy, sitting just inches to her right, made no attempt to comfort her. Things were not right between those two. Leanne ought to be able to recognize the signs by now.

‘Was she raped?’

A gasp followed Mark Botsford’s question. Leanne stiffened. Sometimes that man was too direct. Not for the first time she wondered if he might be somewhere on the autistic spectrum.

‘I’m afraid I can’t give you details.’ Pete shrugged helplessly and Leanne remembered that he and Mark had become friends, despite them appearing to have so little in common. Sometimes it could be hard in those situations to draw a line, despite what they were taught in training. Pete would miss them, she supposed, when they moved away.

‘But it doesn’t make any sense.’ Now Guy Reid was talking over the top of everyone else. ‘Surely it doesn’t fit with his pattern. After Megan none of them were interfered with, were they?’

He was looking straight at Leanne now, and she realized he was looking for reassurance that they hadn’t been lied to all this time, that Tilly had really been untouched. Obviously they knew the police were working on the theory that the girls had been filmed or photographed, but it wasn’t something they ever talked about directly.

‘We are convinced that’s the case with Tilly and with Leila. We haven’t kept anything from you.’

‘Then why would he suddenly revert to his old pattern? Are you sure it’s definitely him?’

The families all knew about the ‘SORRY’, in the latest case smudged to a biro bruise on Poppy Glover’s skin, but had been sworn to secrecy so effectively that they never mentioned it out loud.

Pete nodded. ‘All signs so far indicate this is the same—’

The cry was so sudden and so reed-thin that at first Leanne didn’t even register what it was and looked towards the window, expecting to hear a car alarm on the road outside. It was only when there was a kerfuffle by the door that she grasped the noise was coming from inside the room, and specifically from Helen Purvis. When Leanne leapt up she could see that the older woman was deathly white. Her hand, resting on her husband’s arm, was shaking.

‘I don’t understand,’ she was saying. ‘I just don’t understand.’

‘It’s brought it all back,’ Simon said to the rest of the room. ‘It’s very distressing.’

Leanne hadn’t much taken to Simon Hewitt over the years, but now she felt sorry for him. How awful it must be to keep having to rake over the worst thing that had ever happened to them, again and again, every time there was a new victim. How impossible to move on with your life when you were trapped in this endless agonizing
Groundhog Day
scenario.

The afternoon limped on after that, but never quite recovered the cosy camaraderie of the first half-hour. Leanne felt uncomfortable, unsure of whether or not they should really be there, but when she suggested to Jo, Pete and Kieren they leave the families to it, Emma and Fiona turned to her with such fervent entreaties to stay that she had found herself sitting back down again. She couldn’t help comparing her relationship with Emma to Pete’s with the Botsfords and again she felt she’d let the Reids down. Not that she necessarily wanted to be their friend, but she’d have liked there to be more of a connection. She’d have liked to know she did them some good. It had just been such poor timing for her. When they’d first met she’d been dealing with the aftermath of the infertility blow and her imploding marriage, and the next time, the following year, she’d still been reeling from the split. Sometimes, she thought, life was all about timing. It was a miracle, really, that any of them ever managed to connect.

When Leanne finally extricated herself from the meeting, Pete insisted on leaving too. Together they made their way down the wide tree-lined road, flanked on both sides by huge, red-brick Victorian houses with neat front gardens. At the nineteenth-century clocktower, which stood on its own on an island amidst the traffic, they stopped, trying to remember which way to go.

‘If I was going to pay millions of pounds to live somewhere, I’d make damn sure it had a tube station,’ Pete grumbled.

‘If you were going to pay millions of pounds to live somewhere, I’d make damn sure I pressed for alimony.’

They half smiled at each other, but the comment was too near the bone and Leanne immediately wished it unsaid. Why, after all this time, did Pete still make her feel so wound up? He was still living with
her
, wasn’t he? Leanne still could rarely bring herself to use the name of the twenty-seven-year-old who’d wrecked her marriage. Kelly, that was it. She’d once asked Pete what she did and instantly forgot. Corporate sponsorship, blah blah blah, the kind of nothing job where you put on heels to go to work and have brain-storming meetings and go to the gym at lunchtime.

‘You know they’re going to think it’s you, don’t you?’ asked Pete as they waited at the bus stop. They’d already agreed that if a taxi came past they’d flag it down, but it didn’t look likely.

‘What’s me?’

‘The leak. Who else has connections to the press?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘What? Your live-in boyfriend is a journo and you don’t suppose they’re going to put two and two together and think he could make a nice little extra in his back pocket?’

‘For one thing, he’s not “living in”, and for another, you’re being a dick.’

But Leanne could feel her face burning. Could that really be what people were thinking? And why did Pete have to use that tone to say ‘boyfriend’, like it was something nasty on the bottom of his shoe?

A taxi came along on the other side of the road and Leanne instinctively waved her arm.

‘Doesn’t make any sense for us to share, with you living south and me east,’ she said, not looking at his face. Not looking at his eyes. Especially his eyes. ‘So I’m going to love you and leave you.’

Climbing into the cab her cheeks were still stinging with heat. As she leaned forward to close the door, Pete put his foot in the way.

‘Are you?’

She screwed up her eyes questioningly. ‘Am I what?’

‘What you just said? Going to love me and leave me?’