by Kate Simants
‘I’m going to have to report it,’ he hisses.
‘Of course. Let me know who and when, and I’ll pop over too. I should let them know, really, how you left yourself logged in to a random computer so that the payroll data of everyone on the entire intranet was wide open.’
There is a pause.
‘Just delete whatever you accessed, all right? Everything you got on,’ another pause, the sound of a mouse clicking, ‘Oliver Polzeath and… Melanie Pickford-Hayes. What did you want with this stuff, anyway?’
‘Take it easy, Gary. It’s nothing I couldn’t have got myself,’ she lies. There are forms, e-signatures, triple bastard airlocks. They both know that, but they also both know that he is weeks into a new position himself, still firmly in the three-month trial phase. Admitting what’s happened would likely cost him his job. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘better go, driving. Health and safety. Toodlepip.’
Fixing the phone into the holder so she can see the map, Wren hits the new link road to the airport. Melanie Pickford-Hayes hasn’t been employed by the social care division for years, but once Wren had her name as Luke Ashworth’s key worker at Beech View, creeping around on Google for ten minutes had given her a fairly confident hit for her current whereabouts. A livery yard just outside Chew Magna.
Another beep from the phone.
I’m going to need those records, Gary’s message reads. I’m beginning to think you’re hiding something.
17
Now
There had been kids at school who had been into horses, Wren remembers. She follows the satnav out of the village, then pulls off the narrow lane, the stables on her left silhouetted against a savage pink sky. Always girls, and usually the quieter ones. She’s never given it much thought, but as she slows into the entrance of Melanie Pickford-Hayes’s livery yard, she guesses the common denominator is the feeling of responsibility. You had a horse in a shed, you had to look after it, or it would die. Wasn’t a million miles from keeping a house full of motherless children, when you looked at it that way. Or a million miles from power.
There is a sign on the gate prohibiting entry but it is unlocked, and Wren pushes it open. Two blocks of wooden stables face each other, the muddy space between them leading to a series of fields. Horses scrape and sniff behind their doors as Wren passes, scanning the place for any sign of human life, but the place appears deserted. The smell of fresh manure hits her in a warm drift at the same moment that her heel sticks. She totters, struggling to dislodge it, then loses her balance and goes down, hitting the wet muck with both knees.
‘Help you?’
A woman materialises, striding towards her, a faint curling smile on her face at the sight of this inept stranger. She is dressed primarily in well-worn jodhpurs and mud. Wren, prevented from getting up unaided by a combination of her weight and the consistency of the ground beneath her, forces herself to smile through the humiliation and lifts a hand in greeting.
‘Are you Melanie?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘I’m a—I’m just—’ Wren starts, struggling to right herself. ‘Bit of help?’
The woman gives a brief laugh, leaving Wren with the sense she is someone who does so rarely, and heaves her up.
Discounting the ruined tights, it turns out Wren has got lucky. She takes up the woman’s offer of some blue roll to clean off the worst in the tack room. Wren follows her into what is little more than a corrugated iron shed, riding paraphernalia hanging along three of the walls and a little makeshift countertop running along the back.
Wren accepts the wad of tissue paper and starts rubbing at the muck on her skirt. ‘I’m trying to find out where Luke Ashworth might have got to. You were his key worker, right? Knew Paige Garrett?’
‘Luke,’ the woman echoes. She folds her arms across her stomach, instantly suspicious. ‘Who are you, exactly?’
‘Wren Reynolds. Probation Service. I’m working with Robert Ashworth?’
Melanie darkens. ‘So they let him out.’ She turns her back, angrily flicking the switch on an electric kettle.
‘On licence. He’s part of the Community Atonement Programme, you might have heard about it?’
She snorts. ‘Oh, right. That. Where they make them tell everyone how sorry they are. That working, is it?’
It isn’t a question that requires an answer, but Wren shrugs mildly and says, ‘It’s in its early stages at the moment.’
‘And how come he gets chosen? Because you lot think he’s safe, yeah?’
‘Not safe, exactly—’ Wren starts, but Melanie turns to her then, face like a gathering storm.
‘No, he’s not. You’re damned right.’ She flings open the fridge door for the milk, slams it shut, then turns back to Wren. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘I’m trying to piece together what happened,’ Wren tells her. She glances around and finds a bin for the blue paper, now sodden brown mulch in her hand. ‘There seem to be some… inconsistencies, in what happened to Paige.’
‘But that’s not what he went away for.’
‘No.’
‘So why are you here asking questions about her then? It’s done and dusted. He went to prison, now he’s out. She disappeared. Whole thing’s over.’
Wren regards Melanie. Her face is ruddy, the hair pulled back severely from her forehead, each one of her forty-something summers etched deep on her face. She can only be a few years older than Wren but she wears those years like a heavy coat she can’t shake off. No ring, and – if she’s the owner of the camp-bed in the corner, replete with a duvet and pyjamas folded on top – likely no family waiting for her at home either. Around her eyes, the start of that crimson wateriness reserved for lifelong drinkers. Wren glances up at the shelves and yes – there’s the bottle of no-brand vodka, tucked behind a tub of equine supplements.
There but for the grace of God.
Wren nods slowly. ‘You cared about those kids.’
Melanie drops a single teabag into a single mug. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘OK. I’ll pass that on to Robert Ashworth. He’ll be so pleased – hates it when people hold him to account. Anyway…’ Wren lets it trail away, and makes as if to go.
The kettle clicks off, and Melanie sighs heavily. ‘All right,’ she says, before unhooking a second mug. ‘Five minutes.’
They take the tea outside. There is a bench that looks out across the Mendips, behind which sinks a bloody sun.
Melanie lights a cigarette and blows a thin spear of smoke towards the hills. Talking as if to the horizon, she says, ‘What do you know about social care then, Wren Reynolds?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, I’m looking at you,’ she says, looking anywhere but, ‘and I’m seeing a professional, well-turned-out adult woman who I’m guessing was previously a well-turned-out little girl. Brought up in a nice clean home, with a mum or dad who got you to school on time, did your homework with you.’
An image streaks across Wren’s mind. Herself aged nine or ten, lifting a corner of the towel that hung across her bedroom window, watching the cats in the lamplit street. The flat freezing, the power off. No one home. Darkness.
But she looks the other woman in the eye. ‘You got me.’ She doesn’t even have to worry about the memory showing on her face. Years of practice she’s invested in that veneer.
Melanie nods. ‘And that’s great for you, it’s what every child should have.’ She fills her lungs with smoke again, exhales. ‘It’s what Paige should have had. She was a sweet, sweet girl. I told the papers that – I called them, tried to get their help. They just weren’t interested.’
The papers hardly covered Paige’s disappearance at all, and the story had been quickly trumped by other tragedies. A twelve-year-old suffering concussion when falling out of a canoe at a theme park, as Wren remembers it.
‘Because she was just a kid in care,’ Melanie says. ‘Normal kid goes missing, you’ve got desperate parents ringing the
police every day, ringing the media, quitting their jobs to find them.’
‘Couldn’t someone at the home have done that? You?’ It slips out before Wren can stop it.
Melanie rounds on her, instantly defensive. ‘I had ten other kids. Ten! And that’s not just normal happy children who you can play Scrabble with on a Sunday evening—’
‘I know, Melanie—’
‘—these are damaged, frightened, angry young people. Half of them abused by the people they thought they could trust. All of them shunted around their whole lives. And when I wasn’t at Beech View I was stacking shelves half the night. But what, you think I didn’t care?’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘You reckon I just thought, oh, whatever, she’s probably fine, move on? I loved those kids. Luke and Paige and all the others. I was the only one who gave a shit. You want to point a finger, try starting with the families. Try Paige’s fucking mum, who decided drugs were more important than taking care of a defenceless three-year-old.’
Wren opens her mouth, then closes it again, and looks away.
There is a moment of quiet. Melanie sighs, stoops to pick a dandelion by the leg of the bench, then goes over to the fence ahead where a horse has wandered over. And Wren does what Suzy always tells her to do at times like this. Breathe in, root yourself. The present moment is all there is.
Except that’s the problem with mindfulness, isn’t it? All you really are is an amalgamation of the choices you’ve made or that have been made for you. That’s all anyone really is, even the life in Suzy’s belly, hurtling towards existence.
There is only the past. It can’t be changed. And the injustice of that grips her hard, every moment of every day, like a curse.
‘I miss them,’ Melanie says simply. And when she turns around, the sky ablaze behind her, tears twinkle in her eyes.
‘Those poor kids. Horrible bastards, half the time. But I’d do anything to have them back in my life.’
Wren says, ‘Was Paige that unhappy?’
Melanie lets the horse lift the flower from her palm with its great lips, and strokes its nose with her free hand. ‘I thought you wanted to talk about Luke.’
‘I do, but—’
‘No difference to me. Paige was up and down. Issues around food. There was some…’ she pauses, choosing her words, ‘health stuff.’
‘Like what?’ Wren asks, frowning. She hadn’t read anything pointing to that.
Melanie clears her throat. ‘I don’t know. Confidential, I should think. You’ve got a file on her, haven’t you?’
Wren changes the subject. ‘But apart from that she was OK?’
Shrugging, Melanie says, ‘Ran away a couple of times. Which didn’t help matters when she disappeared. Police less likely to take it seriously.’
‘When did she run away?’ This is news to Wren, too. Is she missing a file somewhere? Because she’s sure she would have noticed that.
‘You’d have to ask Oliver Polzeath. He found her, talked her round.’
‘Did he? They get on then?’ From her hurried trawl of restricted data courtesy of Gary Kitchener, Wren has a number for Oliver that she hasn’t yet tried. She’s read everything he said about Paige during the investigation but does she need to try him again?
Melanie spreads her hands, non-committal, but there is bitterness on her face. ‘She was very pretty, Paige. Charming.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Men liked her.’
‘Are you saying she and Oliver—’
‘I’m saying men liked her. All of them, pretty much, same as boys. Who fucking knows? I thought I knew her but I didn’t. The girl I knew wouldn’t have done what she did.’
Wren remembers what Lily had said. ‘Do you know about any boys she might have been seeing? Any men?’
‘Robert bloody Ashworth you mean?’ The horse swings its head and Melanie whispers to it, laying her hand against its neck. ‘He definitely liked her but I don’t think it was mutual. Maybe that’s why he killed her. Got sick of the rejection. And before you ask,’ she says, holding up a hand, ‘no, I don’t know any more than you do about what he did with her. Though God knows I wish I did.’
‘There wasn’t anyone else? Someone who bought her presents?’
There is a pause. ‘No.’
Wren narrows her eyes. ‘You’re sure about that? Just that someone from her school thought—’
‘I said no.’ She leaves the horse abruptly, starts digging in her pocket for her cigarettes. After pulling one out and lighting it, she adds, ‘We would have known.’
But they hadn’t known she was involved with Ashworth, had they? Involved enough to go and burgle her school counsellor’s house?
Wren waits, but nothing else comes.
‘What do you think happened to her, Melanie?’
‘I don’t know.’
The pain of that not-knowing shines out of her like a beacon. Softly, Wren says, ‘You took it very badly. When she disappeared.’
After a few moments, Melanie returns to the bench. She studies the glowing end of the cigarette. ‘I was there eleven years. Few stints at their other places, but Beech View mostly. Do you know how many kids came through when I was there?’
It’s a ten-bed unit, and much of the time kids are fostered first, with group homes being the last resort. So they are likely to stay a while once admitted. Wren does a rough sum in her head. ‘Eighty?’ she guesses.
Melanie shakes her head. ‘By the time I left, we had files on a hundred and seventy-six. Some of them born and bred Bristolian, some of them from two hundred miles away.’
‘It’s a lot of kids.’ Where is she going with this?
‘Know how many of them had police records?’ Melanie taps the ash.
‘Most of them?’
‘All of them – all but two. Paige Garrett, and Luke Ash-worth. They were like this,’ Melanie says, crossing her index and middle fingers together. ‘Paige had a bright future. She could have been anything. Not many of them you could say that about. So when she disappeared, it felt…’ she pauses, as if groping for something big enough to convey what it meant to her. ‘It took a piece out of me. I’d believed we could help.’
‘Is that why you left?’
‘Nope.’ She closes one eye and aims the cigarette like a dart at the fencepost. It misses by an inch and glances instead against a spike of barbed wire. Tiny sparks scatter into the grass. ‘I left because Oliver Polzeath fired me, two days after Paige disappeared.’
Wren looks at her. ‘On what grounds?’
That laugh again, acidic and angry. ‘There weren’t any grounds. I’d been a loyal member of staff for years, even though I was only on zero hours like everyone else. He’d always been oblivious of what that was like, as if we could just take or leave the work. Not like it’s any surprise – have you seen their house? The flats they rent out in Clifton? The cars?’ Her face clenches as if something has tightened inside her. ‘Whole thing was just a business. Simple as. Every chance they got, they’d claw more money out of the council for it. Even if it meant using the kids. Some people, they’ll manipulate literally anyone. Everyone, even the best-hearted children you’ll ever meet.’
‘How do you mean?’
A bank of cloud, black and close, is crowding out the sunset now. ‘The Care Ambassador thing came with extra money to cover expenses. Pennies really, to them, but it went straight into their pockets. Constant corner-cutting, cheap staff not doing things properly because they weren’t properly trained. All that fuss they made a few years back about redressing the balance between looked-after and normal kids, to get them funding for music lessons and dance and outward-bound stuff.’ She scoffs, kicks at a stone. ‘Think the kids saw any of that?’
‘Did you tell all of this to the police, at the time?’
‘I was never interviewed.’
‘Why not?’
‘I wasn’t around. Ireland. Family reasons.’
‘I thought you
said you were busy working. Stacking shelves.’
‘I said I wasn’t around,’ Melanie repeats, getting to her feet. ‘Look, she’s gone, all right? She’s not coming back. The police couldn’t find her, the Polzeaths couldn’t find her, she’s gone. So what’s the point?’
‘No one does that out of choice though, do they. Disappear. I just want to make sure she’s safe.’
Melanie cocks her head, scrutinising Wren. ‘But why?’
Wren maintains the eye contact. ‘Because she could have been anything,’ she says eventually. ‘Like you said.’ Then she lifts her bag to her knees and rummages inside. ‘Also, I do need to find Luke,’ she adds matter-of-factly. ‘Any ideas?’
‘No. Lost touch.’ Melanie picks up the mugs and starts back off to the tack room. This is the thing about straight answers. You don’t give them, you don’t get them.
Following her, Wren brings out a pen and a scrap of paper. She leans on the plywood door and writes her name and number, and a short note. Please do call if you remember something else. She hands it to Melanie. ‘If you think of anything, any places he had connections, could you ring me?’
Melanie goes to put it in her back pocket, and then stops. She studies what Wren has written, then casts her a narrow-eyed glance before folding the paper with utmost care, and slipping it into her jodhpurs. They say goodbye, the shadow of suspicion staying put on the older woman’s face. Wren can still see it there as she drives away, half an eye on Melanie as she recedes, hands on hips, in her rear-view mirror.
The office is silent and still by the time Wren gets there. She makes herself a coffee, knowing it’s a bad idea considering the awful night’s sleep she had the night before and the early start she’s got tomorrow. She fires off a vague, apologetic text to Suzy and turns her phone off before she gets a reply.
There’s a cupboard at the back of the CAP office where they’ve got all the files of all the current caseload. So Wren clears everything from her desk, and she gets started. One by one she brings everything out. The entire archive on Robert Ashworth, which includes all the secondary stuff about Paige.