by Kate Simants
‘Whole team,’ he says. ‘You need to clear up on Ashworth by the end of the week. Think you can manage that?’
Wren lets her head drop back. ‘Seriously? After I came here asking for more time, you’re telling me I have to do it in less?’
‘Or shall I find someone else who can?’ Callum picks a piece of lint from the cotton stretched across his gut. ‘Let me not have to remind you that you’re on a three-month trial here.’
She gives him a look. ‘You’re not going to swap me out now, and we both know it.’
‘Try me,’ he says, but she’s not convinced. ‘I understand he still hasn’t got work? That hospital job didn’t work out?’
‘They didn’t want him. I am trying, Callum! But I can’t possibly get all the visits done and set him up for work and write it all up in that time.’ She’s supposed to have another week. ‘What happened?’
‘Search me. Came straight from the Home Office. Twenty-five per cent funding drop as of next month, so Upstairs says we have to pre-empt it.’
‘But the project was all costed out! The funding was rock-solid, that’s what you said.’
Roche spreads his hands. ‘Welcome to the era of McProbation. Same as the NHS. They make it impossible, set us up to fail, and when we do, they privatise the lot and pick over the carcass. So you’re OK to start with… who is it again?’
‘O’Shea. Wife-beater.’
‘Right, right. Beginning of next week, then.’
‘Come on, Callum.’
He holds up his hands. ‘Not my call. That person I was just talking to? Two down from the bloody Justice Secretary. You want more time to cuddle your offender and tell him how much the world’s missed him since he got locked up, you take it up with her.’
She mentally runs over what there is left to do. Maybe she can get the four remaining knocks done, and set up a job for him if she’s extremely lucky. But there’s more to it than that: the extracurriculars. What about finding Luke? What about Rob and that phone?
What about Paige?
‘There isn’t time.’
He gets up. ‘You’ll have to make time.’
On the way back to her desk, still fuming, she texts James.
I need that contact for Luke, she tells him, and we need to talk about the Polzeaths. Not even bothering with the hi or bye this time. She drops the phone into her bag, and draws up a list.
If she can get hold of Makayla Slater’s social worker, sweettalk them into sharing the notes, maybe there would be something in there, and then—
Then, what? She shoves the keyboard angrily away. If there was anything in Makayla’s notes identifying Polzeath, or anyone else, as a potential sexual abuser, it would have been acted on. She has three days. If she can’t get Rob to talk, and she can’t get Melanie Pickford-Hayes or Leah to talk, she needs Luke. He’s the only one who was there at Beech View with Paige who might volunteer something useful.
Five o’clock. She powers down the screen and heads outside. Suzy needed the Kangoo so Wren’s taking the opportunity to get a decent walk in, clear her head on the way to pick up her car, which she’s hoping will be ready by now.
She waits until she’s cleared the noisy motorway bridge, then gets her phone out to call the garage to check. But the thought leaves her head as soon as she sees James’s text.
Still working on Luke, it says. But got something else. Be at yours in twenty.
She dials his number, heart hammering. Voicemail. Shit.
‘James,’ she tells the machine as she turns one-eighty towards the taxi rank and breaks into a run, ‘please, please do not go to my house.’
By the time she gets home, James’s car is parked outside, and James isn’t in it. She pays her driver, sprints up the path, goes inside.
‘Wren?’ Suzy’s voice, pitchy but polite, rings through the house as if it were empty, and tells Wren everything she needs to know.
The two of them, Suzy in the slackest of her maternity slacks and James in a crumpled linen jacket and jeans, are sitting at the kitchen table. Suzy beams at her as she comes in, her eyes unnaturally wide to match the big, plastered-on grin that confirms Wren’s fear.
‘Here you are!’ James says warmly.
‘James has just been telling me about that bar you went to,’ Suzy tells her. ‘And I feel so silly, because I’d got it totally mixed up. I thought you were working late.’ She makes a silly-me face, rolling her eyes at her mistake, and the smile doesn’t move, not even when she gets unsteadily to her feet. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. There’s wine in the fridge, if you feel like another party.’
Wren waits until she hears the living-room door close, and the sudden burst of noise from the TV.
And then she rounds on James. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
James recoils. ‘What? I just – I thought you’d want to—’
‘Well, I don’t!’ Wren hisses. ‘How do you even know where I live?’
‘I brought you home,’ he says, visibly hurt at the insinuation. ‘In the taxi?’
Wren sinks into a chair. ‘Right,’ she says, the fight going out of her with the scrap of a memory – her spilled bag, his kindness at her messy display of emotion. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she adds. ‘I just – things are kind of tense.’
‘Sure, sure. I get it.’ He reaches for the leather satchel slung on the back of the chair. ‘Shall we do this another time?’
‘You’re here now,’ Wren says. ‘Just – I need a minute.’ She makes her way to the living room like a woman headed for the gallows.
Suzy doesn’t even turn her head when Wren sits down beside her.
‘I should have told you—’
‘Yeah,’ Suzy says dully, cutting her off.
‘But I knew you’d—’
‘I’d what? Prefer you didn’t lie to me?’ Suzy sighs heavily and turns off the TV. ‘Did you engineer this, Wren? Did you make it so that you got the case about a girl in a children’s home?’
Wren opens her mouth to reply, but Suzy holds up her hand. ‘I googled it, just now. Paige Garrett, right? And then I realised I remembered it from before. Because you got so upset about it, when she disappeared.’
Wren looks at her feet. She doesn’t know what to say to make this better.
‘We hadn’t been together that long, had we?’ Suzy says. Her voice softens slightly, but Wren’s heart just accelerates because if she knows one thing about how Suzy works, it’s that a gentle voice doesn’t mean she’s off the hook. ‘I begged you to explain it to me, why it got to you so much.’
‘And I told you,’ Wren says weakly. ‘It’s because of… when I was a kid.’
‘But what does that mean, Wren? Look at us, we’re about to start a family, and stuff like this happens and all I can see is this vast history to you that you won’t even share with me. It’s like…’ she pauses, and looks away. ‘It makes me feel like I don’t even know you.’
Wren winces. ‘I’m sorry.’
Suzy glares back at her. It was the wrong thing to say. ‘Sorry’s not enough. You lied to me. You could have talked to me about it, Wren. Back then, or last night. Any fucking time would have been fine. I would have understood.’
Wren can’t even meet her eye. At first, Wren hadn’t even wanted Suzy to know where she’d grown up. She’d been evasive, careful even to never mention schools or anything about families. But Suzy had been through her flippant fob-offs and vague half-truths until one day, she’d broken down in tears and told her that she couldn’t be with someone who completely refused to share her history. And so eventually and under duress, Wren had given her the bare bones. That she’d been in the care system, that she didn’t have any contact with her family. It wasn’t much, it certainly wasn’t complete, but it was enough to stop her from leaving.
Wren sees now that it was a window. She could have opened up. Not just that she’d been in care herself, not just that she could have been Paige: but all of it. The whole story.
But n
ot now. It’s way too late.
Levelly, Suzy says her piece, addressing it to the space just above Wren’s heart. ‘Listen, my love. I want this to work. I want our child to have a better childhood than you had. Even all the stuff that you’ve never told me and—’ she raises up a hand to silence her, ‘I know there’s a lot of stuff you haven’t told me. And that’s your choice. But a family needs stability and honesty and—’
She is interrupted by a soft knock at the door.
‘I can come back another time,’ James says through the door.
‘No, no,’ Wren calls through, ‘I’ll be there in a sec.’
Suzy holds her gaze. She shakes her head, slowly, as if against the drag of all that disappointment.
‘No,’ Wren says quickly, recognising her error, watching it gather speed and career away, ‘James, I mean, let’s do this another time.’
But it’s too late. Suzy looks around the room, nods to herself, and leaves Wren there alone with the realisation that this is worse than a mistake. It’s more like the back end of her last chance.
James is waiting in the kitchen, chin propped on his hands, eyes closed. He straightens as soon as she enters the room.
‘Micro-meditation. Keeps the focus,’ he says by way of explanation, clearing his throat.
‘Right,’ Wren says, not giving one ounce of a fuck.
‘Everything OK?’
Wren nods. It isn’t. Upstairs, Suzy is storming around, and even though Wren knows she should go up there, she just can’t. The only thing that could make a difference would be telling her she’ll drop the case.
‘What was in the box, then, that Leah was holding for him?’ he asks.
She doesn’t answer. Because actually, there is something else she could do, to limit the damage.
‘I think we’re going to have to part ways, James.’
James laughs, then realises she means it. A weary, reluctant frown descends. Then he pulls his satchel over and brings out a battered manila file. It is maybe three inches thick, and looks as if it contains mostly loose leaves of paper.
‘This,’ James says, pushing the file towards her, ‘is everything I could find—’
He pauses, his eyes moving to a space behind her head. Wren turns, following his gaze. There at the door, tears on her face and a suitcase in her hand, is Suzy.
‘—on Luke Ashworth,’ James finishes. Then, ‘You OK?’ as if he’s known Suzy for years.
Suzy doesn’t even look at him. She lets her eyes linger on Wren’s face, as if committing her to memory. And then she turns, and she walks out of the door.
‘Suze, please,’ Wren says, getting up.
‘Fuck you, Wren,’ comes the reply. And then the door slams, and the only thing holding back the silence is Radclyffe, whining plaintively in the hall.
Wren sits back down at the table, slumping onto it with her forehead into her hands. ‘Shit.’
James clears his throat. ‘Do you think you better…?’
‘No,’ Wren says. Because there is nothing she can say to Suzy, nothing she can promise that wouldn’t be a lie. She sighs hard, then turns her focus to the file. But she finds James’s hand is still on it.
There is a condition.
‘We’re still doing this together, all right?’
She feels her sails sag. ‘I’m in probation, James. I’m not running a vigilante gang.’
‘I know that. But we both want to find out what happened, and we both know that doing it by the book doesn’t get results.’
A timer sounds, and she goes to the oven. There is a lasagne in there. She opens the door to a blast of heat, turns it off, and turns to face him.
‘I’ve already broken the law,’ she says.
‘Yeah. You have,’ he says flatly, making no attempt to assuage her feelings. Not that she can blame him. He is a victim of crime – a victim who has been as positive as he could possibly be about rehabilitation, about forgiving his attacker. He’d gone out of his way, a long way out, and Ash-worth had thrown it back in his face. And now she is doing the same.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I need to just do the rest of this above board.’
He stands up, riffling in his pockets for cigarettes.
‘It’s your call,’ he says. ‘I’m not making any demands of you. I just – I don’t know. When I met you, I could see straight away you were in it for the right reasons. I thought maybe there was a chance we could actually do something here. But anyway. Have a look in there,’ he says, indicating the file with an unlit Marlboro, ‘and we’ll talk.’
He goes into the back garden to smoke, and Wren begins to read.
It is a complete history. Everything from Luke’s school reports to his referral forms to social services, pupil premium applications from the school, social work assessments, contact agreements with his mother. She turns the pages gingerly. Where has all of this come from? There has to be, what, ten, a dozen sources – and she knows from personal experience the hoops a person needs to jump through to get access to it.
The door cracks back open and James returns. He sits at the table, trailing a rich smell of tobacco behind him.
‘Helpful?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, yes, probably. Where did you get all this?’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Do you want to know?’
She flaps the folder shut. ‘No. I’m not taking this.’
James laughs. ‘You’re actually serious?’ A flicker of indignation on his forehead, gone before it takes anchor.
‘Not if it’s not legit.’
He gives her an indulgent smile, as if they both know this is just lip service.
‘I’m not joking. This is… seriously confidential stuff.’
‘Yeah. And there might be something in there that’ll lead you to him. Or have you changed your mind now? Decided Paige is just, what,’ he says, turning the corners of his mouth down, ‘just one more kid in care, and who gives a toss?’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘No?’ He sits back, the file like an unexploded bomb between them. ‘Do you know what she said to me once, Paige? That she never used the word care. Didn’t know what it meant, couldn’t make it work. Because all her life, people had used it to refer to what she got in the homes. Everywhere else, it was supposed to mean love. And the two things weren’t the same.’
‘Look, I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, the muscles in his jaw tight. He draws the file back towards himself. ‘I get it. You don’t want to get your hands dirty. You’ve got a job to do, family to support, all that.’
‘It’s not that. I appreciate what you’ve done. You’re a good guy—’
‘For all the good it does me.’
She ignores that. ‘But I can’t share this. I need to do this on my own.’
‘I can help you, Wren. We can work this out together. For Paige.’
She glances at the folder. Stuffed with things she can use, material she can’t get anywhere else. But it is criminal, accessing this information without proper consent. It isn’t a grey area: it’s straight up against the law.
She slides it back.
But he doesn’t pick it up. He opens it, starts flipping slowly through the pages.
‘No one knows what it’s like, being in care. Living with however many other unwanted kids they can fit in a building. No one giving a toss about you, except that you stay out of prison and off drugs until you’re not their problem any more.’ He rubs his hands over his face, shakes himself. ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t—’
A thought comes to her, something that, until now, she would never have even considered as a possibility. It wouldn’t make sense, not with his money and obvious breeding and connections. But she has to ask. ‘James, were you were in care, too?’
He won’t meet her eye.
‘Oh my God. You were. I’m – I’m so sorry.’
Eventually he relents. ‘Worst year of my life. Worse than anything Robert bloody Ashworth could
throw at me.’
She would never have guessed. There are markers, tics that veterans of the system collect, buzzing like little psychological tattoos under the skin that only others who’ve been through it can recognise. He has none of the markers. A nasty little thought surfaces unbidden – Well, it was only a year. Lucky him! – but she is instantly ashamed of herself. Because a year is a year, and no child’s tragedy starts and ends with their time in care. It is the final act, the nadir of a childhood that they will likely spend decades, if not their whole lives recovering from.
‘How did it happen?’
He shakes his head. ‘My parents died and I…’ he trails off, and she thinks she sees it. Something left of a little kid in his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. She waits, giving him space to tell her more of it, but he clears his throat and she knows he’s shared enough.
He stands up, tucking the folder under his arm with some finality. ‘Just do me a favour and don’t tell anyone I had this, OK? I had to pull a lot of strings.’
She follows him to the hall and opens the door, grabbing Radclyffe by the collar as he bumps past, trying to chase after his favoured mum. ‘I’ll keep you updated,’ she says. ‘I just, I have to be professional, you know?’
He dismisses it with a wave of his hand. ‘Sure. That’s fine.’ He takes a few steps, then pauses and turns, pulling his satchel round to the front of his body. ‘I almost forgot,’ he says, lifting the flap. He holds out an orange supermarket bag.
‘Found it when I got out of the cab the other night.’ He shakes it, impatient. ‘Take it, it’s yours. Must have fallen out of your bag.’
He meets her eye, transmitting something that she doesn’t quite want to receive. Something she will have to store and process later on.
‘We did have a bit of a skinful, didn’t we?’ he says.
She goes to take it but he holds the package for half a second, just long enough to mismatch the release and the resistance so that Wren finds herself pulling too hard.
‘You’re not the only one with an agenda, Wren. That man ruined my life. He ruined Lucilla’s life. I don’t even know who she is any more. So if you think he killed Paige, I want to be the one to prove it. I want my face to be the one he sees in the witness box before he’s sent down for life. That’s justice. That’s what I’m after: for me and for Paige and for all the people your project is really supposed to be about. We’re close – you know we are. I can’t just walk away from that. Not again.’