by Kate Simants
‘Yeah, well,’ Leah says, watching but not helping as Wren shoves the boxes side by side. ‘Good job I had you on my back about them,’ she says, nodding at the boxes as Wren shuts the boot.
‘Yeah? Why’s that?’
Leah opens her driver’s door. ‘Just got a text from my grandad. He’s got the police there – just got burgled.’
‘What? When?’
‘Early hours this morning. Amazing he didn’t wake up. Whole place turned upside down, even the garage where Rob’s stuff had been. I only missed it by a couple of hours.’ Leah sits behind the wheel and goes to pull the door shut.
But Wren gets in the way. ‘What was taken?’
Leah frowns at her. ‘Just some tools, I think.’
‘Just that? No electrical stuff, jewellery, anything valuable?’
‘I don’t… I mean, he didn’t say so—’
‘But was there anything valuable in the house?’
‘Well, yeah, of course there was a few things, but it was just the tools—’
‘What kind of tools? Were they expensive?’
Leah sighs petulantly. ‘Normal DIY stuff. Look, can I go?’
Wren stands back, leaving Leah to pull the door closed and starting the engine.
As the little car pulls away, Wren bangs on the window. ‘Wait.’
For a moment it looks as if Leah is going to just drive off anyway. But she stops, winds the window down. ‘Jesus, what?’
‘Does Rob know where your grandad lives?’
‘What? Yeah, I think so.’
‘Did he know he was coming back early?’
‘No, of course not. Why would he?’ Her face drops as the implication dawns on her. ‘No, come on. Why would he do that?’
Because he guessed Wren was going to beat him to it? As far as she knows, he thinks the old man is still on holiday, that he might not get hold of his gear for another week – but communication between these two has hardly been transparent. Wren stands back to let Leah go, her mind already fast-forwarding to getting the crime number. DIY tools taken, nothing else? She dismisses the chances of a coincidence on that basis: the tools could be a smokescreen. Before she’s even back in the car she has Suzy’s number up on her phone.
But then she pauses.
If she really and truly thinks Rob was involved, it isn’t Suzy she should be calling, however neat the shortcut to the information would be. This is a potential recall to prison. Protocol is, in the first instance, to pass the concern to her immediate superior. But what would Callum Roche do? If anything is found linking Ashworth to the scene, the very first thing that will happen will be the police applying for recall, and immediately after that, Wren will be requested to turn over her notes. She’ll be interviewed. She remembers with horror what she shared with James last night. If it gets out that she went on the piss with a victim – well, she’ll lose her job faster than blinking.
Decision made, she puts her phone away, and reopens the boot. Maybe Ashworth is involved, maybe he isn’t. But she’s not going to dig her own grave.
She stops on the way, methodically unpacking and repacking both boxes to examine the contents, replaces everything exactly as it was. She half expects to find the missing bracelet, but the possessions that are apparently closest to Robert Ashworth’s heart are disappointingly mundane. A games console, a couple of old photos. She cracks open the three games cases, hoping for secret notes, cash, drugs, anything, but all they contain are the games. There are clothes, an early-generation tablet computer, a phone, and some bike gear.
At Ashworth’s block, she slides the boxes into the lift, one on top of the other. They’re not too heavy but they’re bulky, so she’s going to have to take them one by one to his door. On the first trip between the stairwell and his front door she notices, with a slump of the heart, that the kitchen blind across his window is rolled all the way down. It isn’t ideal, but by the time she returns to the stairwell for box two, she has a plan. All she needs now is luck.
Three knocks, and the door opens, almost as if he had been waiting for her.
‘Delivery,’ she says, indicating the two boxes beside her. ‘Your stuff.’
His face lights up – the closest to real emotion she’s seen from him since he went for Alice Polzeath’s neck – and he makes a grab for them. As he bends for the first one and takes it inside, she executes the manoeuvre exactly as she planned it. The beaded cable that operates the rollerblind is inches from the door. She reaches in and gives it a yank in the time it takes him to get the box over the threshold.
The blind lifts. She has an inch, maybe two, of unrestricted view into the flat. It will have to do.
Once he’s got the second box into the kitchen, he goes to shut the front door.
‘You’re very welcome,’ Wren tells him.
‘Thanks,’ he says. And the door closes.
She moves away from the door, passing the window. Checks the walkway is clear, and then stops, bending to fiddle with a shoelace. And through the window, she watches for as long as she safely can, taking it all in.
Ashworth tears open the flaps of the first, then the second box, dumping the clothes, the games, even the photos on the floor. He drops into a crouch when he finds – what is it, the tablet?
He turns and she ducks, then slowly rises, careful to keep out of sight.
The phone. He is clutching the phone with his eyes clamped shut, a look of beatific relief on his face.
26
Now
They’re driving to the hospital for a scan, in the Kangoo. Suzy is still in her yoga gear from her morning session. Paul, the cousin with the garage, left a message to say he had news about Wren’s car, but between meeting Leah, dropping in on Rob and getting back in time for the antenatal appointment, she hasn’t had the time to go over yet. Just thinking about her abandoned car, and the way she’d ended up tits-deep in wine, causes a shudder of guilt.
Yardley had texted first thing that morning – Still working on Luke, you getting anywhere? But she hasn’t replied. Although she does have something. She has a lead on Makayla Slater’s brother, Jake.
She shakes herself and lets her hand drop from the gear-stick and onto Suzy’s leg.
‘Oh, cool,’ Suzy says, glancing at the hand but not responding to it. ‘You are a solid human being still, then.’
Wren sighs. ‘What does that mean?’ She leaves the hand where it is but it feels like an intrusion now.
Suzy looks out of the passenger window. ‘I’ve hardly seen you. At all. Did you even come home last night?’
As she turns, Wren sees with equal quantities of shame and sadness that her eyes are red and swollen. She’s been crying.
‘I’m sorry—’ Wren starts, but Suzy sighs and moves her leg away.
‘I don’t want you to be sorry,’ she says. ‘I want you to want to do this with me.’
‘Do what, the scan?’
‘Everything! The baby, the family thing, being a couple. That sort of shit, you know?’
‘Sweetheart, I do. Of course I want it. Wasn’t it me who talked you round when you were lukewarm for all that time?’ Although the memory of that now feels as if it must have been tampered with somewhere along the way. Who had they even been, a year ago?
Who are they now?
Suzy rubs her eyes angrily, fixes her glare on the wind-screen. ‘There’s this PCSO. Gemma something. Up the duff, thirty-two weeks. Showed me this series of photos her husband’s been taking.’ There is an unnatural brightness in her voice. ‘Standing sideways in a doorframe, you know? To show how she’s getting bigger every week.’
‘Ugh, how cute,’ Wren groans, glad of the reminder of their common ground.
‘Really? Because I thought it was quite nice,’ Suzy says.
Wren adjusts her grip on the wheel and says nothing.
‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’ Suzy says blankly to the dashboard.
‘There’s nothing wrong.’ Wren feels for her hand but i
t isn’t there.
The Kangoo struggles up St Michael’s Hill to the hospital, the engine sighing in relief as the road levels out before the turning to the car park. She finds a bay and pulls in.
They sit in silence for a few moments before Suzy turns to face her. ‘Wren. Please. You’re not… It’s like you’re not even here.’
‘It’s just work,’ she says. ‘Just a lot on.’
‘But why? The whole point of the job change was that it would be less stress. Your words.’
‘I’m fine.’
Suzy, the woman she’s chosen to split her life with, studies her face. Concentration in her irresistible eyes, and then a look of horrified realisation.
‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘There’s someone else.’
‘There is not!’
Suzy waits, then eventually she shrugs, defeated. ‘Do you know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that you aren’t ready for what’s about to happen to us. You either don’t want the baby, or you don’t want me, or you don’t want either of us. Whichever it is…’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m not doing this.’
‘Love, come on.’ Wren puts out a hand.
‘Don’t.’ Suzy shifts her bulk left to undo her seatbelt. Our child, Wren thinks as the seatbelt slides back across the tight, low swell of Suzy’s bump.
Except – except it isn’t theirs, not really. It isn’t Wren’s child. Not because of the genetics, or the conception. None of that really makes a difference. In the early days of it, the days of studying the plastic sticks for the two blue lines, she’d found with relief that Suzy’s pregnancy had indeed felt like it belonged to them both, truly and fully. Because they were genuinely close, and tight, and solid.
No, the problem is something else. She hasn’t acknowledged it because how does a person do that, two weeks before the due date? But it is there, as sure as an ulcer in the gut.
Suzy can’t get the seatbelt catch to release, but bats Wren’s hand away when she tries to help.
‘Just – just leave it.’
Wren sighs. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’
Suzy snaps round to face her. Sudden, violent hurt on her face, as if Wren has punched her, and Wren sees right away that she shouldn’t have asked: that the asking has made everything a lot worse.
‘Yes, right, of course,’ Wren says quickly.
But the damage is done. ‘No, you know what?’ Suzy says, her voice peaking as she fumbles with the door handle. ‘Forget it. I’ll call when I’m finished. If it’s not too much fucking bother to pick me up.’
Wren watches her go. She crosses the road, every movement of every limb dragged with exhaustion as she steps onto the pavement.
Wren is supposed to be thrilled about this child. If not thrilled, at least nervously excited. Dread is a very poor substitute for any of those things. And that is exactly what it is, coiling knowingly inside her whenever she sees the bump, whenever she takes delivery of another consignment of muslins or sippy cups or nipple cream. Dread that she can’t do it. That she isn’t competent, isn’t reliable – is just simply not good enough. Because where is her template for doing this? She has no example to follow – she’s only ever seen how not to do it. Where Suzy is excited, settling into a new nurturing groove of her life, ready for the shift, all Wren can feel is terror. It’s made her almost – she can hardly bear admitting it – it’s made her wish it wasn’t happening at all.
There is still time to go after her. But Wren stays where she is, watching as Suzy is absorbed by the automatic doors. And she drives away.
The city farm has been an institution for years. Tucked up an unlikely side street between the brothels and discount shops of Bedminster and the railway sidings just south-west of Temple Meads, it serves two distinct sectors of the community. On the surface it is a place for middle-class lefty parents to kill a few hours with their Boden-encased toddlers, but its real mission is something nobler. Every year, dozens of desperate Bristolians find within its greenhouses and out-buildings an escape from addiction, depression, crime and desperation. Rehab units across the area send their struggling clients to the farm’s projects to learn skills and break the cycles of self-destruction.
Which is why, when her search for information on Jake Slater came up with a mention of a nearby drugs project, the farm was her first guess. A combination of this intuition, a phone call and an alarming lack of front-of-house confidentiality had given her a positive match. All she has to do now is hope he doesn’t do a Leah and refuse to talk to her on the grounds of perceived allegiance with law enforcement.
In the cool of the reception, she gives her name and asks to speak to Jake about a family matter.
‘He know you, does he?’ the young man behind the desk asks.
‘It’s a family thing,’ Wren says, dodging it. ‘I’ll be in the café. Only need ten minutes.’
She crosses the courtyard, passing a mother casually breastfeeding a baby in a patch of sunlight. This place, with the comic troupe of Indian Runner ducks streaking over to where a welly-wearing volunteer fills their pool with a hose, is exactly the kind of place Suzy will want to bring the baby. And you, she tells herself. She waits for the fizz of excitement to accompany that thought, the warm glow. But it doesn’t come.
Wren takes a small table by the window in the café, and waits. After a few minutes a young man comes in. He is stringy, clean-shaven but slightly shaggy-haired, and his jeans are shiny with want of washing. He puts a well-used mug on the counter and the woman fills it for him, gratis. As he speaks to her she glances over and nods in Wren’s direction.
He comes across, holding the mug with both hands. There is an uncomfortable energy about him, from his quick footsteps to the dart in his eyes as he scans the room. Though she doesn’t doubt he is in recovery, recent addiction is betrayed by the grey of his skin.
‘You asked for me?’ he says, putting the mug on the table but staying standing. His fingertips play anxiously on the back of the spare chair.
‘Thanks for coming over,’ Wren says, rising. ‘Do you fancy something to eat? Cake?’
But he is shaking his head before she’s finished the sentence. ‘Look, I don’t know who you are,’ he says, his voice thin, almost pleading, ‘but I’m straight now. I’ve done everything I had to do, I really have, OK?’
‘I only want to talk,’ Wren says.
‘They all say that!’ He wraps his arms around himself, telling Wren the whole story of who he is in a single gesture. ‘Who are you then? Social? Police?’
Behind his head there is a clock. If the trip back to the hospital is fifteen minutes, that leaves her with about the same again before she has to leave. So the choice is either tell him the truth and spend the next ten minutes unravelling his prejudices, however understandable they are, or bullshit him.
‘I’m writing a book,’ she says. ‘It’s about kids in care, how they get forgotten.’
His eyes narrow, but his fingers stop tapping. ‘Right.’
‘Your sister wasn’t properly looked after. That’s not OK. I want to do something about it.’
He turns that over, measuring it against the complex circuit board of suspicion that Wren can sense in his every movement.
‘She’s dead,’ he says after a pause. But he doesn’t move.
Wren inclines her head. ‘And I’m so, so sorry about that, Jake.’
‘She wanted kids.’ His eyes are still on her but have defocused, like she’s turned to glass. Wren gestures again to the chair, but he makes a face, glances around. ‘Can we do this outside? Just, you know. Small spaces. Being inside.’ He shoots her a look of apology. ‘Can’t do it for long.’
She follows him through the door, past the busy courtyard and the pond, out to the perimeter. Once they are out of earshot, Wren starts with the easy stuff: asking how Makayla found herself in care in the first place, when things started to go wrong. Given his reticence of thirty seconds previously, Jake needs surprisin
gly little prompting once he gets going.
They’d ended up in care via the most common route. Although the ratios were variable, the ingredients were common in most cases Wren knew of: drugs and/or alcohol, poverty, abuse and/or neglect. The Slaters had been no different – mum in and out of rehab, dad in and out of prison until he overdid the sampling on a consignment he was running and ended up dead.
‘We got split up,’ Jake tells her. ‘I was in another unit, ten other kids. Soon as I could I got out of there and just stayed on people’s sofas for a bit until I got a place in a squat,’ he says. This part of the story is his legend, something he’s evidently recounted before, because it is interspersed with smiles and shrugs like, that’s how it is, what can you do? Wren nods, makes a few notes.
She waits for a pause. Lets the pause expand until she can be sure he knows what’s coming. Then says, ‘Tell me about when she died.’
Jake Slater goes still. ‘She didn’t leave a note. Nothing.’ His pockmarked, reddish forehead softens from a frown into something emptier, like the years between that day and this have contracted into seconds. ‘I didn’t – when they called me, I didn’t believe them. It was like I skipped the bit where I thought, oh shit, my sister’s…’ he lifts a hand like it weighs ten stone, trying to wave the word into existence, then goes on without it. ‘And I went straight to thinking, we’re going to laugh so much at this later, we’re going to dine out on this mess-up.’
But it hadn’t been a mess-up.
He missed the funeral, he says. Didn’t mean to get high, thought he could tough it out without pharmaceutical back-up but somehow—
‘I can’t remember it. One of her teachers took me outside, and by the time I came down the whole thing was over.’ He shrugs, the pain of it tight and permanent on his young face. ‘Told myself it was better that way, at the time. But I wish I’d been there, you know? Been there for her. Can’t be helped though,’ he concludes, looking up from the patch of gravel he’s been kicking. ‘That’s drugs for you though, not much that’s good about them.’ He gives her the least convincing grin she’s ever seen. ‘Except making you skinny. I was pushing nineteen stone until I discovered amphetamines.’