by Kate Simants
And if he can’t have her—
There’s a swing of headlights across his bedroom wall. In two seconds flat he’s beside the window, careful not to stand in front of the glass. He leans over to the desk, snaps the light off. Watches.
In the street, the car is still but idling. It’s big, maybe the car from the other day but he can’t really tell. It’s dark and polished.
The headlights go off. But nothing happens.
He reaches towards the drawers, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the car. Second drawer down, right at the front so he always knows where they are: the binoculars he got from his grandad when he died.
Slowly, in case his movement draws attention, he loops the strap round his neck and lifts them to his eyes.
The angle down onto the street is awkward, and the base of the streetlight is in the way so he can’t see the driver. Paige is in the front passenger seat. She’s got her feet on the dashboard. Trainers, bare legs. She’s leaning forward like she’s folded in half, and he can see her hair is wet, knotted up in a tangled bun.
She’s nodding. Saying something, bringing the heels of both hands to wipe under her eyes. Then she’s leaning towards the driver, whose arm is around her, their hand on her neck. Luke squints, moves to the other side of the window, keeping low. He still can’t identify the other person.
Whoever it is, he doesn’t want them there, next to her. Fingers on her bare skin, touching her perfect body that is not theirs to touch.
He waits five, ten, fifteen minutes. And eventually, the headlights go back on. Paige turns, reaches behind her for her bag. She gets out, closes the door without slamming it. The passenger window goes down, she leans in, and out of nowhere he thinks—
Slag.
Luke lowers the binoculars and wipes his eyes.
And when he looks back, Paige is on the pavement and the car is moving, making a slow three-pointer in the street. And then, now the angle’s changed, he can see who the driver is. He knows from the shirt, and fleshy neck, and the close-cropped hair that’s thinner now than it was when Luke first met him last year. He doesn’t even need the binoculars.
It’s Oliver Polzeath.
23
Now
Apart from the contractor trying to resuscitate the venerable photocopier that they’d only been given the week before, Wren is the only one in the office. She slings her bag over the back of the chair and shakes the mouse to revive her screen.
There are two emails from Gary Kitchener, the first short – I’m going to need those certificates sooner rather than later. When can I expect them? – the second even shorter: Please confirm you’re getting my emails. She bashes out a reply – Are photocopies OK? – then gets down to what she’s gone there to do.
Twenty minutes later, she’s sending four articles and a couple of paid-content Companies House documents to the printer. And while she’s waiting, she sends a two-word text to James Yardley.
Call me.
Wren emerges from the building into a sideways flurry of rain. Keys ready, she bolts from the door to the car, but she isn’t fast enough. She shuts the weather out as soon as she is inside, and as her breath returns she inspects the damage. Her white shirt is almost translucent with water, the thick straps of her bra clearly visible beneath it.
James had returned her message immediately, saying he could meet her in an hour. But now she only has ten minutes, and she is soaked through. Maybe if she turns the heaters on full blast? She makes a brief effort to tidy her hair, then turns the key.
Nothing happens. She tries it again – not a peep. Had she left the radio on? The headlights? She checks everything, knowing as she does so that even with the whole array draining the battery, the hour or so she’s spent in the office couldn’t have flattened it completely. She brings up a map on her phone to the place she’d agreed with James. It’s a half-hour walk.
Isn’t going to happen. She feels in her bag for her phone and calls him.
‘No problem,’ James says after she explains. ‘I’ll come and get you.’
‘No,’ Wren says, ‘I’m going to have to deal with the car—’
‘Rubbish, not in this rain. We’ll wait for it to stop, then I’ll bring you back to have a look. Call me old-fashioned but I’m not going to leave a woman stranded.’
Wren relents, thanks him, and hangs up, then repositions the mirror and tries again with her hair.
Just before he arrives, it occurs to her that the car might need taking to a garage. Which would mean the places in the car that are usually safe for storing confidential things might be breached. Holding an A4 document wallet over her head, she gets out and opens the boot. She shoves the detritus to the back and lifts the rigid felt cover, then the spare wheel, and retrieves the plastic bag in which the letters from Paige’s room are wrapped. Back in the dry, she empties her handbag and places the bundle right at the base, then repacks everything on top of it.
James appears in a matter of minutes, in a car worth about thirty of hers. He looks thoroughly amused about her predicament.
‘Yes, hilarious,’ she says drily as she climbs in, conscious of the combination of damp skirt and pristine leather upholstery. ‘Hope you’re not precious about your seats.’
‘Couldn’t give a monkey’s,’ he tells her. With a swift glance around the spotless interior of the car Wren decides this is not true, but she can live with that.
‘I passed that café you mentioned,’ he says as he releases the handbrake and rolls the steering wheel with a casual palm. ‘Totally rammed.’
So, with the rain clattering all around, they go somewhere else. A café bar he knows. Newly opened, with a covered patio garden that means he can smoke, he tells her. Wren makes a beeline for the ladies as they go in, and when she comes back, James is sitting just outside the French windows beneath a gas heater. In front of him is a silver wine cooler and two glasses.
‘What happened to the coffee?’ Wren says, making a display of checking her watch.
James laughs. ‘After-work drinks.’
‘Isn’t that usually an evening thing?’
‘It’s nearly half-five,’ he offers.
‘Just a small one then,’ Wren relents. The wrought-iron chair screeches unhappily on the flagstones as she pulls it out.
He cracks the seal on the screwtop. ‘Sauvignon OK?’ he asks, already pouring. He starts to chat about his day, makes her laugh with a story about a disastrous batch of jam he’d tried to make. Wren warms up, to the conversation, to him. The wine is good.
After a while she shrugs off her jacket, feeling it buzz as she hangs it on the back of the chair. A text from Suzy.
Can’t remember a thing you said when you left. You working late tonight?
Wren glances at the half-empty bottle.
Afraid so. Sorry love. She hovers over the x button, adds two kisses and then two more, and hits send.
James fingers the stem of his glass. ‘Problems at work?’
Wren frowns. ‘What?’
He nods towards the pocket.
‘Oh,’ Wren says, making a vague gesture, dismissing it. ‘No, nothing.’
James indicates her glass for a top-up. ‘Well, I’m starving,’ he says, finishing the pour with a professional twist, and waving an apron-clad waiter over.
While he orders a couple of things from the list of tapas on a chalkboard by the window, she roots in her bag for the printouts.
The waiter leaves. ‘Right then,’ James says, pulling the sheets towards him, ‘business.’
‘It’s about the Polzeaths,’ she tells him. ‘Shortly before Paige’s time.’
He pauses to retrieve a pair of reading glasses from his top pocket. ‘Don’t laugh,’ he warns her as he puts them on, glancing over the rims.
‘We all get old,’ she says.
It is from a North Somerset local newspaper. The story, which appeared first in April 2011 and was followed up just once three weeks later, details the death of a fourteen-yea
r-old girl.
‘Makayla Slater,’ James reads. ‘Am I supposed to recognise the name?’
‘No. But she was in care too. Burnham-on-Sea.’
He takes a mouthful of wine and regards her over the half-moons. ‘I only ever worked in Bristol. I don’t—’
‘I’m not saying you knew her. Read to the end.’
She sits back, folding her arms. According to the story, Makayla Slater had been found dead in her bedroom at an address in Burnham. Reading between the lines, Makayla had enjoyed a close relationship with the police in the months before her death, but previous to that, there had been high hopes for her. After unearthing the initial article, Wren dug around for anything else the internet could yield on Makayla’s history. There was enough there to piece together a picture of an athletic girl, active in her school drama club, with a fondness for Justin Bieber. There was a brother, Jake – and he’d gone right to the top of Wren’s list of people to find. But what is missing in the piece is the obligatory soundbite from the heartbroken parents.
James removes his glasses. ‘You’re going to have to help me out. I mean, now I see it, I do vaguely remember this being mentioned. It’s a very sad story, but what’s the connection?’
‘I only came across it because of a comment someone had left right at the bottom,’ Wren says. ‘She was in care.’
James drinks. ‘OK.’
‘The home is run by the Polzeaths.’
‘OK.’
‘OK? A girl dies in their care, and a year or so later another girl disappears without trace? How is that OK?’
James looks mortified. ‘No, look, that’s not what I meant,’ he says, lifting his hands in defence. ‘I just – right. Look.’ He pushes the papers away. ‘I don’t know how much you know about looked-after children, but it’s not actually that unusual, suicide.’
‘We don’t know it’s a suicide.’
He turns the article to face her. ‘Narrative verdict. Doesn’t look like foul play was suspected, if that’s what you mean.’
Wren takes the printouts. ‘But what about this, here.’ The Companies House documents she’d paid for showed how, not long after Makayla Slater died, Oliver Polzeath’s business was wound up. Fast forward another two days, and a new company was founded by Alice Polzeath, without Oliver’s name on the documents. Acumen Social Care. That company took over control of the Burnham home and, a few months later, bought Beech View. Some other documents in the stack list James as a consultant, and she knows he’d been heavily involved in creating a framework for improving outcomes for looked-after children. Local government even used Acumen at one point as a very favourable case study. So they must have been doing some things right but not everything, not by a long shot. She turns the Acumen sheets back to him, tapping the relevant section. ‘They’re hiding something. Making it look like he’s not involved when everything else says he was. It’s suspicious as hell.’
James refills Wren’s glass with the last of the wine. ‘So what, you think they killed Makayla Slater?’
‘I’m not saying—’
‘Because I thought it was Robert Ashworth you’re after? Or are we saying it’s a conspiracy?’ He’s being kind but the implication – that she’s not quite making sense – is unmissable.
‘That is absolutely not what I—’
‘But actually,’ he says, interrupting her again but with such gentleness that she’s blindsided by what comes next, ‘that’s not the question here, is it?’
She carefully sets the glass down. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she says steadily.
‘Why do you care, Wren? I mean, I know you say it’s about justice,’ he says, waving away the protest that she was about to make, ‘but, without meaning to blow my own horn, I’m a psychotherapist. I can see there’s more to it than that.’
She finds something resembling an exasperated laugh. ‘There isn’t. I told you before. I’m just doing what I’m paid to do.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘You made it your job,’ he says, nodding slowly. ‘You wanted this case.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I think you did.’
Maybe it’s the wine, and maybe it’s the gas burner overhead, but suddenly the heat is too much. She excuses herself, gets up unsteadily, and goes to the ladies. She splashes water on her face, then eyes her reflection in the mirror, pink and a little wild.
Don’t fuck it up, she tells herself.
When she gets back, James has tidied up the papers. He lays his hands on the table and says, ‘What else have you got? Other leads?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Really? What’s next then?’
Wren shrugs. ‘There’s a box of Ashworth’s stuff he’s keen to get his hands on but the likelihood that there’s anything—’
‘What kind of box?’
‘Belongings he wanted stored while he was inside. He had Leah look after it.’
‘Hmm. Interesting.’
‘Why? What do you think’s in there?’
James taps his lips. ‘Who knows. But if it’s important to him, that’ll mean it’s got something in it from his life before prison, no? Which might give you some pointers.’
It is a vindication: maybe she isn’t on a wild goose chase. ‘She promised she’d ring once she’d picked it up from her grandad’s house but I can’t exactly rummage through his stuff…’
‘No. Certainly not.’
They exchange a look. It doesn’t need any more than that. And then the food arrives, and with it, a second bottle. Noticing Wren’s glance at the clock, James gives an apologetic shrug. ‘Have to make the most of going out when I can manage it,’ he says. ‘It’s a rare event these days.’
He lifts the wine from the cooler and sloshes out two generous glassfuls.
‘So, Wren Reynolds. Tell me about yourself.’
She sips her wine. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘I don’t know – who are you? What do you do for fun? Who’s the husband,’ he adds, nodding at the ring Suzy gave her for their two-year anniversary.
‘More like wife,’ she says, though in truth they’ve never formalised it. ‘We’re having a baby,’ she says flatly, and out of nowhere.
He swallows a mouthful of wine urgently and coughs, puts his hand up to suppress a laugh. ‘Once more with feeling?’
‘We’re having a baby!’
He smiles, but it isn’t funny. ‘I’m sensing some ambivalence.’
‘I can’t wait,’ she says. Why is she talking about this?
‘Well, then.’ He raises his glass to hers. ‘Congratulations!’
The baby is due in two weeks. And all she feels is a crouching, muffled terror.
He leans back. ‘I’ve got a daughter,’ he tells her. ‘Twenty-two, now. And when she was born, I was just devastated. Couldn’t see how my life was going to be any good, ever again.’ He is looking at her as he speaks, enquiring, offering her a way in, a way of talking about it. But he’d have to try harder than that. And she’d have to be drunker.
‘Honestly,’ she says. ‘I can’t wait.’
And just like that, the evening has peaked. They talk for a little longer, James orders shots, but the sense of it plateauing and falling off is undeniable. Then somehow they are in a taxi, and James is laughing because she can’t spell the name of her road for the driver.
‘What’s Robert Ashworth’s place like?’ James asks as they pull away. He moves his seatbelt aside so he can turn to face her. ‘I mean, is it a shithole?’
‘Do you want it to be?’ she asks, reaching up to grip the handle above the door. The movement of the car coupled with the wine is making her feel downright nauseous.
James gives that some thought. ‘I want to say no. Otherwise all that expensive therapy hasn’t worked, has it?’ That self-deprecating smile.
She is drunk, drunker than she’s been in months, and even as it comes out of her mouth she knows it isn’t a good idea.
‘You want to see?’
Fifteen minutes later they are outside Ashworth’s building. They get out, tell the driver to wait.
Wren gazes up to the balcony, struggling through the bleariness to locate Ashworth’s flat. ‘It’s up there, third floor. The one with the catflap,’ she adds, pointing it out.
James stands so close she can smell him.
‘I wonder what he’s doing. What does he do all day when he’s not with you?’
She shrugs. She suddenly feels very tired. She wants to go home, to have a shower and get into bed next to Suzy.
‘Not found work yet?’
She hasn’t heard back about the hospital laundry job yet and she knows that’s likely to mean it’s bad news. She shakes her head which only increases the dizziness. ‘Man of leisure,’ she says, then without thinking she adds, ‘Doesn’t seem right, does it? The whole thing is just—’
‘Unfair. Unjust,’ he says, then darkens. ‘When Paige is just forgotten somewhere—’
‘Dead somewhere,’ she says suddenly. The vitriol that comes with it startles even her. ‘I think she’s dead, actually.’
He narrows his eyes. ‘You think he did it.’
Wren sags. A huge emptiness is opening up inside her and she just wants to get out of there. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just…’ She turns back to the cab. ‘Need to sleep. Let’s go.’
‘Wren.’
‘Come on.’
‘Wren,’ he says again. This time, he puts his hand on her arm, and when she meets his eye there is a concern there that almost floors her.
And then there it is. No warning, no trigger. It is as if the fury and heartbreak she’s compressed inside of her this whole time suddenly reaches breaking point. The tears don’t start as a soft welling-up but as a rush, and the whole thing disrobes itself to her at once: the injustice of it. The permanence of her own past, and Paige’s past. The details of them colliding, merging into one, or facing off like mirror images of the same damned thing.
She turns back to the cab, takes a step but misjudges the kerb and ends up on her knees. Her handbag slips from her shoulder and lands, upended, over the pavement.
‘Shit,’ she says, half choked.
James lifts her under her shoulders so she is upright again, and gets down to collect the things she’s dropped. ‘Here,’ he says, handing her the tissues.