by Kate Simants
‘That he got her to do the burglary?’
She gives Wren a look between pity and disgust. ‘No. That he killed her afterwards. They had him on video, for fuck’s sake, leaving with her. What other explanation is there?’
Wren knows every frame of the tape by heart. Paige and Ashworth leaving the building, her fleeing as if running for her life. Exiting the frame stage left, and disappearing into thin air.
Lily bounces herself off the wall and crosses to the door that leads back into the library. Before she goes, Wren thinks of something else.
‘Listen, one last thing. You said you think there was another guy?’
‘I’ve told you I don’t know—’
‘Who he was, I know. But what made you think there was someone?’
‘She had money. Nice things, shoes, bits of jewellery. Had this kind of, I don’t know, swagger, I guess?’ She puts her hand on the doorframe and sighs. ‘Last conversation I ever had with her was me basically asking if she was on the game. She went ballistic. Said just because she had a few nice things, didn’t mean she was a whore. I hadn’t called her a whore but, you know. I didn’t even think it might have been Luke’s brother at the time, or I would’ve told someone. Because that’s not right, is it – he only got to her because his brother was in the same house. It’s fucking sick. We were kids. Anyway,’ she says, shaking her head, annoyed she’s got sidetracked, ‘she wouldn’t talk to me after that. Not even to say hi. Last I saw of her, she was getting into a taxi outside school, like a really nice-looking one, you know? She saw me looking, and she gave me the finger.’
She lets out a long, sad breath. ‘Two weeks later she was gone.’
9
Before
He’s spent such a long time choosing the card that the woman behind the desk is starting to give him evils. It’s for his mum, her birthday. Thirty-seven tomorrow, and he’s left it too late to post now. He’s choosing between one with these peas with googly eyes saying Hap-pea Birthday! or the one with the 18 Today! badge on because she’s always saying she wishes she was. But he turns the badge over and sees the safety pin and that’s the decision made.
He pays and then he gets going. Out the shop, right to the back of the mall, to the toilets. The real reason he came. Because there’s fuck-all privacy at Beech View, and the boys’ shitter at school might as well have no doors at all, the number of times he’s seen them scaled or kicked in. With what he’s got in his bag, he’s not taking any risks.
He goes straight to the cubicle at the end, folding the front of his jacket across his face because the whole place stinks. There are globs of paper on the floor and the striplights are flickering, but none of that matters. In here, the walls are solid and go up to the ceiling, and there’s two kinds of lock on the doors.
The cubicle door swings shut behind him, and he does the locks: the normal one and the fuck-off slide bolt at the top. He flips the seat down, sits. Opens his bag.
After Paige had gone back to bed, he’d found a way to delete the print job, but it had already got through twenty-six pages. And he’s going to read it. It’s her private stuff, he knows that, but when it all pays off, she’ll understand. And she’ll thank him.
He pulls the wedge of paper out of his bag, and smooths it out across his lap. He starts to read.
10
Now
They get to Beech View for 9.10 a.m., as requested. The Polzeaths didn’t want Ashworth there when the children were on site.
Alice Polzeath answers the door so abruptly that Wren suspects she’d been standing behind it, waiting. She is blonde, late forties. Neat as a pin in shirt, pristine jeans and pink suede ballet pumps. A cross hangs delicately from a fine gold chain that rises and pools on the bones and recesses of her clavicle. Nervousness jumps in her every movement.
‘You’ll have to sign in,’ she tells them after a cursory handshake each. She gives Wren a tablet with a form on the screen.
Wren uses her finger to scribble something that looks roughly like a signature, then holds it out for Ashworth to do the same. She glances over at the driveway, spotting the immaculate white Land Rover Discovery tucked up the side of the building.
‘That one yours?’ Wren asks benignly, for the sake of something small to say. ‘Nice ride.’
A glint of pride thaws the deliberate severity on her face. ‘I’ve had a new one of those every year for a decade. Lovely cars.’ She puts her hand out for the tablet.
‘Pretty high tech,’ Wren says, handing it back. The security is a totally different story than it had been when Paige and Luke were residents. Different genre.
‘We had to make a lot of changes, after what happened. Ensuring the children’s safety was obviously the first thing we had to deal with,’ she says. It’s clear she’s doing her best to be friendly, but it’s hard to picture her getting her hands dirty working with actual children. Probably she doesn’t. Her company, Acumen Social Care, is responsible for over fifty children across seven sites. James Yardley had consulted for the company, being something of an expert in children’s mental health, but as far as Wren has been able to make out, Alice’s own responsibilities rarely involve direct contact with the children.
She locks the screen away in a cabinet beside the door, and leads them into a large, newly painted sitting room. Perching awkwardly on the arm of a sofa, she says, ‘Security was something we could solve quickly just by paying to solve it. Other things took more of a long view.’
‘Like what?’ Wren asks.
‘Like their expectations. Of themselves I mean. Most of the children we get only really know adults who’ve, for whatever reason, not made the best of their lives. We try to drum into them that just because everyone around them was drinking or on drugs or in prison, that doesn’t have to be their future too. A lot of the kids looked up to Paige.’ A hand comes up to flutter around her throat. ‘Saw her as an example of how someone can do well, despite it all. And then that happened and,’ she shrugs, ‘they sort of lost faith, I think.’
She leaves it hanging in the air for a moment, then gets to her feet again. ‘I’ll get us some drinks.’
Wren leaves Ashworth where he is, following her into the stainless-steel kitchen.
‘Are we expecting anyone else, Mrs Polzeath?’ she asks her. ‘Your husband?’
‘He’s out there,’ she says, indicating the kitchen window. ‘But it’s ex-husband, actually.’
‘Oh,’ says Wren, unsure of the etiquette. ‘I’m sorry. I assumed that—’
‘You assumed wrong, I’m afraid,’ she says, accompanying it with a tight smile that does little to disguise the sadness. ‘This is the first time I’ve seen him in months, if you don’t count handovers for his weekends with my son.’
Wren takes a step back to look out of the window in the kitchen door. Oliver Polzeath, balding and slightly plump, is sitting on a once-white plastic chair, palms up in his lap, perfectly still with his eyes closed. He wears suit trousers and a smart shirt but neither look right, like he is unused to wearing them. His shoes, she notices, sit paired neatly next to him, his bare feet flat on the scrubby lawn.
‘What’s he doing?’ Wren asks.
‘Meditating, I should imagine. Men,’ she says conspiratorially, with a sardonic eyeroll that could curdle an entire dairy. ‘He used to drink – now it’s Buddhism.’
As if he can hear them, her ex-husband opens his eyes and looks straight at Wren. He gives her the slightest of nods, then stands and stretches. Wren turns her attention back to her host, who is filling the kettle.
‘So, is anyone else coming?’
‘No. I wasn’t able to locate any of the staff members from that time either.’
Wren frowns. ‘None of them?’ She’d seen the copies of Beech View’s staffing records from Paige’s case file: she’d had half a dozen key carers, let alone the casual and agency workers.
‘I’m afraid not. We had a very high turnover of staff, after the crime.’ She closes one stainl
ess steel door and opens another.
Wren glances about and locates a two-kilo barrel of instant coffee next to a catering-sized cutlery tray on the worktop. She slides it over. ‘No forwarding addresses?’
The kettle reaches its crescendo and clicks off. ‘No.’ Alice Polzeath spoons brown granules into cups with the uncertain dosage of a committed cafetiere user. The back door opens, and in walks Oliver.
Without looking up, his ex-wife says, ‘Oliver, this is Wren Reynolds from the Probation Service. And,’ she adds acidly, ‘Robert Ashworth is in the sitting room.’ She takes the mugs and the tray and busies past them.
Wren holds out her hand to him. He tenses his jaw a few times before he confers a cursory shake. ‘I’m not entirely sure what you need me here for,’ he says. It comes with a hint of either annoyance or apology, Wren can’t tell which, and then he bends to tie the laces on the shoes he’s put back on.
‘What’s that, like a grounding thing?’ she asks him, trying to break the ice. ‘The bare feet.’
‘Something like that.’ He straightens, moves his hands into his pockets as if he can’t quite work out what to do with them. There is none of the beatific calm about him that she had expected from someone who’d just finished meditating. He brushes at an invisible mark on his shirt. ‘I don’t have any involvement in the children’s homes these days. Strictly Alice’s domain now.’
‘I see. What did you move on to, then?’
‘Other projects.’
Friendly, she thinks. ‘Social care?’
‘No.’
Wren nods. ‘I see. I don’t mean to pry, Mr Polzeath, but was your move away from social care a result of what happened with Paige, would you say? We’re here to talk about the lasting effects of what—’
‘I hardly even remember her, if I’m honest,’ he says, cutting her off. ‘Let’s go through.’
Wren follows him, frowning. From his background, she’d guessed he’d be business-like, but this is… different. Hostile. It comes off him like a broadcast.
Back in the living room, Ashworth is sitting exactly as she’d left him, unmoving, eyes on the carpet. Alice is standing as far away from him as it is possible to get while remaining within the same four walls, grasping her mug and staring intently out of the window.
Wren sits, and invites the others to do the same. ‘We’re ready then, Rob,’ she tells him, and hands him his script.
Ashworth straightens and begins to read. He speaks mechanically, while the Polzeaths listen. Blowing steam from the surface of her drink, Wren looks around the room. There are the pencilled beginnings of an unfinished mural, a torn and taped poster of a tattooed footballer. The built-in bookshelves either side of the chimney breast are devoid of books, instead housing jumbles of DVD and game cases, a couple of dusty board games and margarine tubs of lidless pens.
Three grand a week per child, these places cost. More than three times what it would cost to send them to Eton.
But it isn’t even about the money. Fact is, it isn’t a home. But that’s what it had been to Paige.
They are coming to the end of the script. Throughout, Oliver Polzeath stands in a motionless at-ease, hands clasped behind him, eyes front. Once, Wren sees him stealing a glance at his former wife, followed by an infinitesimal shake of his head, as if dismissing something that is hard to dismiss.
‘We went different ways,’ Ashworth says finally. ‘I didn’t see her again.’
The room exhales. ‘Is that it, then?’ Oliver says to no one in particular.
Wren stays where she is. ‘You don’t have any questions?’
He shakes his head. ‘It was years ago. My memory of it all is rather sketchy, like I said. This man’s served his time, right?’ He shoots a questioning look at Wren. ‘I do have places I need to be, I’m afraid.’
‘We can’t force you to stay,’ Wren tells him. A shell as hard as that, she knows, forms for a reason. Either there is something painful underneath it, and he can’t bear anything getting in, or there is something dangerous that he can’t risk letting out.
‘Alice, Robert,’ he says, nodding. Then to Wren, ‘I presume that’s my role finished, then? I won’t need to hear from you again?’
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t.’ Then, with the smallest of smiles as if to ameliorate the offence, ‘Goodbye then. Good luck.’
Only after he leaves does Wren realise that he hadn’t looked at Ashworth once.
The front door closes, and Mrs Polzeath sets her still-full mug down on the coffee table.
She takes a deep breath. ‘Can I be honest?’
Wren leans forward. ‘Absolutely. Anything you like.’
‘Well. I wanted to say how it affected me. Personally, I mean. Paige meant a lot to us here at Beech View. She was our Care Ambassador, you know; we chose her because she was a good girl. Studied hard, stuck to the rules, wanted to make something of herself. And then these boys,’ she says, gesturing helplessly at Ashworth, ‘they mucked all of that up for her.’
‘These boys?’
‘Him. His brother. It was such a waste, you know? Her getting involved with them.’
‘You can leave Luke out of it,’ Ashworth says, stiffening.
‘I’m sorry?’ Mrs Polzeath says with a syllable of confused laughter.
‘Luke’s done nothing wrong,’ he says, fixing her with a glare.
She folds her arms, and that’s the end of her patience. To Wren she says, ‘He was infatuated with her. Did you know that? Followed her around.’
‘Rob did?’ Wren asks.
‘Luke. The whole time she was here.’
‘This isn’t about him,’ Ashworth practically snarls.
Alice casts him a long look, then sighs, defeated. ‘You wanted to see Paige’s things?’
They follow her up the staircase onto a strip-lit corridor. All the doors leading off are closed except for one. She pushes it wide open and stands aside.
‘This was hers. She was happy here. As it happens, it’s vacant right now, though we’re getting a new boy in a few days.’
Stepping inside, Wren catches her reflection in a full-length mirror that’s been screwed to the wall. Her face is blank, professional. The room is small, hardly bigger than the single bed and the desk it contains. Through the window is a view of the recently trimmed back yard. On the desk is a cardboard box, the flaps open.
‘They left everything for us to deal with, the police,’ Alice says. ‘As if we didn’t have enough to sort out. I’d rather hoped someone would come and take it away, but there you have it.’
Ashworth stands just behind the threshold. ‘In you come, Rob,’ Wren says, waving him over. He moves like a condemned man.
‘Fuck’s sake. Why are we doing this?’ he whispers.
Wren doesn’t answer, just unpacks the box, laying the things out for him with Alice Polzeath standing by the window, watching. There are girls-range scents, a hairbrush, a metallic handbag, a few exercise books. Wren flicks through one marked Drama – Y10.
‘She played Juliet,’ Alice tells her, nodding at the book.
‘My husband pulled a few strings to get her cast – he knew the head rather well. Always went the extra mile for her.’
‘For Paige?’ Wren asks, wondering how this thoughtfulness could possibly make sense from a man who claimed not to remember her. ‘Any particular reason?’
‘Not just her,’ she says, bristling slightly. ‘We did whatever we could for all of them. Prided ourselves on it.’
Wren closes the book and hands it to Ashworth. The handwriting on the front is bubble-shaped, with a little heart above the i in Paige’s name.
‘I was told she had been given quite a few gifts, before she went missing,’ Wren says.
Alice frowns. ‘Not that I know of.’
‘Really? Is there nowhere else she might have kept her things?’
‘This is all we have.’
Tucked into the bottom of the box is a sil
ver-grey dress made of chiffon or silk, delicate and graceful. Way too sophisticated. Wren gets it out and shakes it, dislodging something solid wrapped inside.
‘Ah yes,’ Alice says quietly. ‘She left those hidden like that at the bottom of the wardrobe, apparently. They’re from her mother.’
It is as if something has taken hold of Wren’s heart and squeezed. It’s a bundle of letters, the addresses on them handwritten in a long, looping hand. Paige Garrett, c/o Children’s Social Services, followed by the address of the social services office that had been responsible for her. Before she can wrap them back up, Alice takes them from her.
‘Some of the parents do actually visit, but as far as I know, Paige never had any communication from her mum apart from these. And they were already very old by the time she came to us,’ she says, flipping through them and pointing out the postmarks. They’re all dated from the same six-month period, more than a decade previously. On the back is the name Leanne Garrett, and an address in a sink estate in north Bristol.
Rob puts out his hand and, after glancing at Wren, Alice gingerly hands them to him. But he doesn’t want to read them. He straightens them into a neat stack and wraps them back up in the dress.
‘She said she was going to find her one day,’ he says. ‘I was going to help.’
It is the most intimate thing he’s said about her, and he seems to immediately regret it, glancing up as he goes to return them to the box. The fabric slips against itself and the letters fall to the floor. Wren gathers them up.
‘And did you have any real intention of doing that?’ Alice asks, with a high note of accusation. ‘Or was it just part of the grooming?’
A hard knot of muscle bulges at Ashworth’s temple.
Article 6. The offender must actively engage in the programme, and be willing to discuss the crime to the full satisfaction of the affected party.
‘Rob,’ Wren starts, the letters still in her hand.
‘I didn’t groom her.’
Alice gives an incredulous scoff. ‘Really? It seemed to me that you saw a good, wholesome child who was doing well with us, and you used her.’