by Elena Wilkes
‘A month! Viv—’
‘I’m not arguing with you, Lucy. You don’t even have to book it as leave. Go somewhere nice.’ She leaned back, waving. ‘Get out of London, go and do something mad. Abroad maybe? Something off-the-wall. Try hang gliding in the Dolomites, or macramé in Moldova, I dunno!’ She grinned. ‘Just switch work off in that head of yours, would you?’
‘But the thing is, I can’t just—’
‘Yes you can.’ She searched on her desk for her glasses and then waved them at me as she looked at her computer screen. ‘Now bugger off.’
Her being nice to me made it all even worse. Emma’s eyes were like saucers as she watched me pick up the coat and bag I’d only just put down.
‘Where are you off to now?’ She looked to Viv’s door and then back at me. ‘I wanted to tell you stuff?’
I gave her a pointed look, eyeing Dave Cartwright’s hunched back, knowing his jug-like ears would be swivelling. ‘Later?’ I mouthed and wiggled a phone sign. I tried to smile, but I knew that was pointless with Emma. She nodded, wide-eyed, as I clattered my way down the stairs and into the street.
It was Paul I really needed to talk to. It rang out for a while and then he answered.
‘Hello. Paul Webb?’
‘I need to see you.’ I cut right to the point. ‘There’s things I want to talk to you about.’
He sounded guarded. ‘Okay. When?’
I looked at my watch. ‘You said you had an important meeting this morning?’
‘I’ll be near Camden. You can meet me there if you like. What time?’
‘The sooner the better.’
‘There’s a pub in Primrose Hill. The Princess of Wales.’
‘I think I know it.’
‘I’ll meet you there… Umm… Eleven?’
‘Perfect.’
* * *
I leaned into the heavy door as a warm blast of lunchtime beer washed over me in one great swell.
Paul was perched at the bar. He already had a drink in front of him. He turned to look over his shoulder. ‘So what are you having? Or is it too early? Or maybe too late?’
I was aware of his cryptic tone. ‘Actually, I’ll just have a tonic water, thanks.’
He turned to give the order to the barmaid. She had brown shiny hair and brown shiny eyes. The eyes skimmed across me but kept alighting on him, the pupils stretching and sparkling for his benefit. He counted out the money and she leaned across the bar and said something that I didn’t quite catch. He laughed back at her.
A sudden suspicion sent a quiet tension through me. He handed me my drink, and I knew he saw my discomfort.
‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ I raised my glass to his. ‘You know this place?’
He took the head off his pint and shrugged.
I touched the base of my glass and traced a drop of water. ‘I meant, you seem to know the staff.’ I kept my voice lowered so that the barmaid couldn’t hear.
‘Ah.’ I heard the amusement.
‘Ah what?’ I took a sip of water.
‘Ah meaning, no, she and I have never known each other in any respect.’
I flinched, embarrassed that I’d even mentioned it.
‘So are you going to tell me about what happened this morning?’ His directness caught me by surprise. He arched an eyebrow. ‘I’m assuming that’s why we’re meeting?’ His face tightened a little.
‘This is all something to do with a bloke, an ex…’ He tipped his head. ‘…Or a current boyfriend? Is that what’s been bothering you?’
‘Boyfriend? – Ex? No! Nothing like that!’
He only gave a wry smile into the rim of his glass.
‘I won’t be angry if you tell me the truth. As I said, the truth isn’t a problem, we can deal with that. It’s the lying I can’t deal with.’ His lips wrapped around the word.
‘No, no, no. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick completely.’ I took a breath. ‘I should’ve told you this before. I don’t know why I didn’t, but…’ I licked my lips nervously. ‘As soon as my phone rang this morning, I had this thought it would be Gould. I told you on Friday that he’d got hold of my number somehow – well that wasn’t totally the truth. He hinted he’d got someone to hack my account… I have no idea how.’ My hands waved blindly. ‘Which means that he could have all kinds of information…’
Paul blinked slowly. ‘Christ.’
‘Well anyway. My boss got someone to interview him and he’s saying that I gave him my personal number. He’s implying I was over-familiar with him.’
‘What? And they believe him?’
‘But you know what head office are like: they want a tidy case. It’s far easier to deal with some naïve probation officer giving out her private details to the cons than it is bring in some very expensive IT people to go on some wild forensic goose chase. So basically, Viv has told me to take some time off.’
Paul shook his head slowly in disbelief.
‘But you definitely didn’t recognise his voice?’
He paused. ‘I suppose it could have been.’ He stopped to recollect. ‘Whoever it was stayed silent a lot of the time. I knew they were there and I kept repeating ‘hello?… hello?…’
He looked at me, his face softening. ‘You should have told me, Lucy!’
‘Hence the change of phone number and why I’ve been a bit jittery.’
‘Jeeze, of course. I get all that! But why didn’t you just say? Why couldn’t you tell me?’
‘Because…’ I gathered myself. ‘Because that’s not quite the whole story.’ I swallowed involuntarily. ‘I did something… Something bad, years ago. Viv knows about it which is why she’s trying to look after me…’
‘Go on.’
‘I was stupid.’ I took a breath. ‘I hadn’t been qualified long. It was my first job in a prison. There was a prisoner called Jonathan Peters.’
The name still made my skin crawl.
‘A prison officer came to me and told me that the prisoner’s mother had died, and that his sister had attempted suicide. He was not coping and would I supervise a special visit with his brother?’
Paul’s face didn’t change.
‘Peters was devastated: grief-stricken. I didn’t know what to say to him. I was sitting in a room on my own with him waiting for his brother to turn up. I knew I was supposed to stay there the whole time, but I got distracted by someone at the door. I left him alone in the room with an outside phone line. Sounds such a small thing, doesn’t it?’ I glanced at Paul’s face. ‘I had no idea that Peters was a high-risk sex offender. No one had told me that.’ I closed my eyes at my own stupidity.
Paul put his hand on my knee.
‘I got hauled up by the Governor.’ I kept my eyes lowered. ‘I had to attend a hearing at head office… All that. Then the newspapers got hold of it. They had a field day with me.’ I chewed my lip. ‘Peters had contacted his “known associates”. He told them about a little seven-year-old girl he’d spotted on visits. Of course, he’d also managed to find out the mother’s address, and because the child came to the prison in her school uniform, he knew the school she attended. So when she went missing…’ I stopped, feeling physically sick at the memory. ‘All he’d needed was to use a telephone, and I’d given him his opportunity.’
Paul’s hand squeezed in sympathy. ‘You can’t beat yourself up about that Lucy. He would have found another way eventually. You know as well as I do he could’ve paid to get the use of an illegal mobile phone. He could’ve found another prisoner to—’
‘But he didn’t need to though, did he?’ I looked up and saw how kind his eyes looked. ‘Because he had me: the mug, laying it out for him on a plate.’ I sighed deeply. ‘It was the usual accusations: that I was blundering, incompetent, woolly-headed – Naïve at best, and at worst, that I was somehow complicit and had been groomed by the prisoner. You know the score.’
There was a moment where neither of us spoke. Paul picked up his glass and drank
a little, thoughtfully, and then put it down, squaring it with the edge of the beer mat. ‘Is that it, then? The whole story?’
‘That’s the whole sorry tale.’
‘And there’s nothing else to confess? No other omissions or disclosures?’
I saw the girl in the photograph laughing up at me.
‘Nothing,’ I smiled. ‘I promise.’
He looked at me and I looked straight back.
‘So you’re off today, then?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘Then we shouldn’t waste it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think I can afford an afternoon off too, don’t you?’
* * *
We walked down the street and I took his arm, but he straightened it and my hand slipped into his. I felt the heat of his palm but it wasn’t enough. I wanted the closeness of last night back. Was that only last night? It felt like months ago. We’d come so far in a matter of only hours: all that intimacy and togetherness, an almost quarrel, a confession, and now we were like some partners in crime. We’d opened up: shared our vulnerabilities, broken down barriers, been totally honest and open… Honest… The woman that goes snooping? The fact he had no idea I’d broken his trust made it even worse.
‘Camden Market, then?’ He playfully veered me across the road.
‘Brilliant idea! I haven’t been there for ages!’
Whatever had been undone, I’d undone it, but I wanted to find that connection again. I wanted to press myself into his side and meld my skin into his until neither of us knew who was who. I contented myself with tucking my hand into the crook of his elbow and he squeezed my fingers reassuringly.
‘You cold?’ He glanced at me concerned. ‘Here have this.’ He pulled a red patterned scarf from around his neck and wound it carefully around mine, tucking the ends in to make sure I was snug.
‘There,’ he smiled. For one moment we were back where we should be. I breathed. I would make it better. It was all going to be okay.
* * *
We walked down side streets, through the skeletal frames of unoccupied market stalls. A watery sun hung low in the late morning sky. The air was full of the promise of blustery April afternoons. There was a sweet scent on the breeze: a sharp orange tang from the broken fruit in the gutter. I leant my face briefly against his arm. His coat smelled sharply of fresh air and I savoured the moment. I lifted his hand and kissed it. It was cold from the strengthening wind yet his skin smelled of soft salt and sugar like he’d been out in the sunshine. I licked his scent from my lips. I didn’t want him to have any past at all; I wanted to rub it out in the same way he’d rubbed out mine.
We meandered our way through the market, threading aimlessly along narrow passages where the main group of stalls were jammed in together. The flapping awnings showed a multitude of goods: fruit and veg, boots and shoes, clothes on rails, antiques, and junkshop bric-a-brac. We came across a bookstall set back slightly from the rest with strings of coloured bulbs jostled across the tented entrance. We stood just inside, huddled together out of the gusts, watching the tarpaulin roof bulge and creak against its guy ropes.
The books were neatly wedged into trays, yards of them. Paul picked up a miniature book of sepia prints. The cover was brown thick paper: porous like old skin. He held it in his hand, weighing it, gently turning the fine gilt-edged tissue paper as though he were touching some precious thing.
He looked up at the stallholder. ‘How much do you want for this?’
The man shrugged. ‘Forty quid?’
Paul smiled and shook his head, putting the tiny book back on the stand.
‘They’re all originals, mate. All them pictures are collectable. Nice little set, that.’
He smiled again. ‘I’m sure they are.’ He moved off to another pile, touching the book covers, turning them over, reading the spines. I stood slightly back, my hands deep in my pockets. I watched his fingers as they searched: touching, stroking, selecting. He was totally absorbed, unaware of my gaze. Somewhere, from the depths of his jacket, I heard his phone ring. He stiffened suddenly.
‘You’re not going to get that?’
He shrugged noncommittally. ‘It’ll be someone I don’t want to talk to, I expect.’ Without glancing at the number, he switched it off, and picked up another book but I noticed he wasn’t really looking at it.
‘Hey.’ I reached for his arm.
He smiled. ‘Hello you.’ For a second we caught each other’s eyes and whatever it was, lifted. I pulled him closer to me and rested my cheek on his arm, looking back into the melee of bodies milling around the stall. There were streams of people, all pushing their way past. It was cosy in here: just me and him. I knew it was really early days but this all felt so real. This wasn’t a romance or a fling or just seeing someone; this was the beginning of something really special.
Simon.
My eyes flickered in alarm, seeing and not seeing the figure in the crowds moving past.
A jolt of panic hit me.
Simon. Simon Gould with a little girl.
He skirted past the stall, coming close and glancing in and away again. The collar-length hair, the greeny jacket and dark jeans… he moved past in a blur lasting only seconds, the tiny blonde head bobbing next to him. It was him, definitely. I almost cried out: I opened my mouth, my hands climbing up Paul’s arm, my heart beating out of my chest.
‘Did… Did you see him?’
‘What?’ Paul snapped round.
‘Stay there,’ I ordered as I turned and almost fell over the guy ropes in my rush to get out of there, blundering into the moving crowd, shoving people out of my way as I frantically searched the space where he’d been. My eyes scanned over faces and coats, one after another. I looked back to the stall. A woman was standing there, clearly waiting for someone, watching me curiously. Her eyes caught mine. There was something familiar about her, but I didn’t know what. She looked away self-consciously, turning her head so that her dark hair feathered across the side of her face.
Paul was where I’d left him, looking for me anxiously. ‘What is it?’ His face was pinched with concern.
‘Gould.’ The name stuck on my tongue.
‘Gould?’
But I’d already pulled out my mobile. ‘Ring the police, would you? It was definitely him. He had a child with him… the kid that’s missing… Cassie Edwards. Tell them—’ I was dialling Viv and walking out of the tent, darting glances this way and that as Paul delved for his phone.
‘Come on! Come on!’ I muttered. The woman with dark hair had moved back a little into the awning of the children’s clothes stall opposite. She looked across at me again.
‘Viv!’ I nearly collapsed with relief. ‘It’s Lucy. I’ve just seen Simon Gould. I’m in Camden Market. He’s got a little girl with him. I am almost a hundred percent it’s Cassie Edwards, but we’ve lost him. He disappeared into the crowd—’
‘Lucy? Oh my God! Hang on.’ I could hear her talking to someone in the background.
‘Viv? We’ve already got onto the police, we’ve told them—’ I was aware of Paul finishing the call and nodding to me.
I glanced behind me. The thought that Simon was here sent a slide of horror into my hairline. He was here. I was here. He couldn’t have known that, could he? There was no way.
‘Lucy? Are you there?’ Viv’s voice dragged me back.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I looked back at the woman. She was talking to the stall holder.
Viv sounded distracted. ‘… Um… Can I ring you back, Luce?’ I could hear the urgent chatter of voices in the background. She said something away from the phone and then she was gone.
Paul looked at me, his eyes huge. ‘Well?’
‘She’s going to ring back. What did the police say?’
‘They’ll be here any minute.’ Even as he said it there was the wail of sirens.
‘My God, Paul…’ I felt sick at the thought of Gould watching me, following my ev
ery move. My stomach went sour at the idea of how close he’d been; I hated the fact that he must’ve seen me with Paul… That he knew things about my private life… My phone suddenly jangled.
‘Viv! The police are here. What do you want me to—?’
‘Lucy.’
The edge in her voice made me stop.
‘It can’t have been him.’
Something odd cut into the silence.
‘What?’
‘It can’t have been Simon Gould.’
‘Viv. It was! It was!’ I couldn’t get my words out properly. ‘He was here. I saw him! He had a child with him!’
‘Gould has been with Dave Cartwright all morning. He’s at the community sex offender group. He’s still there now.’
‘He can’t be!’
‘He is. Dave assures me he’s not moved an inch.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Where’s what?’
‘The group. Where is it being held?’
‘Arlington Road Centre, but—’
‘That’s only minutes from here!’ I cut across her. ‘You know what Dave’s like, he—’
‘Lucy stop. You made a mistake, that’s all. Just leave it. Please.’
I could only stand there, breathless. I knew beyond any doubt. I knew it.
‘Excuse me – Miss?’ A police officer appeared, her radio jabbering loudly. I looked round for Paul. He was in the entrance to the tent looking uncomfortable as two officers made their way purposefully towards him. People had stopped to stare and whisper. It was as though I was watching it happen to someone else.
‘Could you just go through again what and who you saw?’ The officer jogged me back to the present. She was smiling encouragingly and I glanced over again at Paul who was gesticulating and pointing into the distance. I saw that a little crowd had gathered now, their whispers more inquisitive: what had we done? and then, again, I suddenly saw the woman moving quickly through the people on the fringes. Our eyes locked, her face suddenly withdrew, and she turned.