by Kate Simants
Wren eyes him. ‘How did you guess that?’
He gives her a serious smile and glances behind him. Following, Wren peers more closely at the van. On one of the back seats, his face obscured by his hand, is a young man.
Luke Ashworth, complete with an angry crescent-shaped gash on his head where Suzy had given him a run for his money.
Wren draws back. ‘What the hell is he doing here?’
‘Wait,’ Polzeath says, putting his arm out, ‘please. Just give me a moment.’
‘No. No.’ The undiluted terror of her abduction hits her at full force. ‘I thought he was going to kill me. I thought I was going to die!’
‘Wren,’ Oliver says, hands up. ‘You said you wanted to help. You said that to Luke. I came here because there’s something you can do.’
She rounds on him. ‘Have you still got the phone?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Why?’ She shoves him hard, both hands into his chest. ‘Why is it not with the police?’
‘Because – stop, stop! Listen to me! Luke wanted that phone to be found by the police, OK? That’s what he’s been here trying to do. He’s been stringing Yardley along for years, making him believe he’s on his side; he’s put himself on the line, many times. When you told Yardley it was at Leah Amberley’s grandfather’s, Luke tried to get hold of it before you did, but it got moved.’
‘He broke into that garage?’
‘All he wanted was to bring Yardley to justice.’ He speaks in a calm, measured voice. ‘But when those clothes were planted, everything changed. Luke called me in a massive panic. It got – out of control.’
Wren stares at him. ‘So you knew, all along?’
‘I helped him before, when he needed it most. And we can do it again, Wren, we can still put this right.’
‘You’ve got the phone, though, you’ve got the evidence! Why not use it?’
‘Because unless the police find it in his possession, it’s useless.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because of lawyers! This is years-old evidence. And Yard-ley’s not stupid – he may not even have registered the SIM he used to exchange those messages with her. He definitely wasn’t using his usual number. It might have no link to him.’
‘Bullshit. Why did he want it so badly then?’
‘Because he knows what Rob was planning before, and doesn’t want to take the risk that he’d do it again. Rob wasn’t exactly desperate to get that phone to the police, was he? Wren, listen. Calm down. I need to ask you something.’
‘You need to ask me?’ She laughs bitterly. ‘My baby son nearly died because of him. Fuck you.’
‘It’s not for me,’ he says, dropping his voice to an urgent whisper.
‘Then who? Huh? Him?’ she says, waving a wild arm at Luke.
‘No. For Paige.’
‘What? How—’
‘She’s alive, Wren.’
There were a few minutes after that which, when she tried to recall them later, took on the sense of being under water. Everything around her slowed, went loose somehow. He helped her to a bench, where she sat for a few minutes while he got a bottle of water from his van. He offered her a cigarette, which she took and lit and smoked halfway down before she remembered that no, she didn’t smoke, she hadn’t smoked for years.
He was saying that Paige was alive.
Her daughter, Paige.
She finds herself sitting beside him in the back of his van now, listening to what he has to say. And slowly, her sense of who she is returns.
‘Are you all right?’ he is asking. ‘Can I get you anything?’
She casts around for words. ‘Is she – is she all right?’
He nods at his shoes, then looks up, giving her a smile. ‘She is.’
‘Where is she?’
He doesn’t answer immediately. ‘I can’t tell you that just yet,’ he says. ‘She’s got a lot to lose, Wren. It’s why we had to keep it so secret. I had to get rid of Mel to try and limit what she could find out. Paige never even told her best friend about it. If she comes back, if anyone finds her, she could still find herself prosecuted for what happened.’
‘But she was a kid. She’d been groomed. She’d been – it was statutory rape.’
‘I know. And she understands that, too. But she would have had a custodial sentence for what she’d done. Young offenders unit, sure, but it would have meant being locked up. She couldn’t do it. And what she has now, she can’t risk losing. Even if it means letting James Yardley get away with what he did.’
Saying the name sends a bite of tension across him. He loathes James, she can feel it like an aura. Maybe she can trust this man, Wren thinks.
‘But letting him just carry on like nothing happened, letting it go – that’s not enough for me. And it’s not enough for Luke.’
Wren sits with her hands in her lap, running over it. ‘What happened to Makayla Slater?’
He lets out a long breath. ‘She’d been pregnant. We covered it up because it made us look bad.’
‘Because it was James?’
He looks her in the eye. ‘Honestly, I don’t know. He spent a lot of time with her. She refused to name anyone, but I had my suspicions. I begged Alice to cut ties with him.’
‘So what happened?’
‘My wife decided that the best course was to bully her into a termination.’
‘But you were supposed to be her carer, weren’t you? You could have done something.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No. The abortion, it sent her…’ he casts around for the words, the shame and sadness of it written on his face. ‘I didn’t realise until after the event that Makayla was so desperate. Alice told me she was dealing with it, but actually she’d just put all her efforts into covering it all up, as usual.’
‘How do you mean, as usual?’
‘She did it all the time. Kids ran away, drugs were found, sex, booze – Alice was constantly redacting our records or making sure things weren’t recorded in the first place, for the sake of our reputation.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘Makayla kind of receded. I liked her. She was so, I don’t know, sparky. But it just ruined her, and then… well. You know what happened. And when I discovered what she’d done, I removed myself from the business – resigned as a director, stopped work altogether for a while.’
‘And Yardley?’
He shrugs. ‘He got more involved in Beech View and the whole thing started up again. I tried to catch him in the act but,’ he shrugs, ‘he was careful, I suppose. Paige refused to admit what was happening, however carefully I approached it with her.’
Wren thinks about that. ‘You suspected what was happening. You saw how it had ended before. But you just let it go.’
He uncaps a bottle of water. ‘We have a son,’ he says after a moment. ‘I wanted custody. Her lawyers were going to make the argument that I was reckless and insolvent.’ He shrugs resignedly. ‘Alice took it all over on paper and I did another year, helped her get the contract so she’d be kinder when it came to the custody arrangements.’
Wren listens. ‘So you were a pussy,’ she says.
He sniffs out a single syllable of a laugh, takes a mouthful of water, nods sadly. ‘I hope that what I have done since then goes some way to redeeming who I was before. But yes: in short, I was indeed a pussy.’ He nods. ‘And after all of that, after James fucking Yardley worked his magic and Acumen ended up with God knows how much money to open new homes, she took my boy anyway. I get every other weekend.’
‘So everyone turned a blind eye to him grooming my daughter,’ Wren says quietly, ‘because your wife needed him to swing the contracts her way?’
‘That’s exactly what happened.’
They sit there for a moment, acknowledging it.
He takes a deep breath. ‘You said to Luke earlier that Yard-ley’s wife hates him.’
‘That’s what she said.’
Then she thinks about it again. ‘Not a huge fan of yours, mind.’
‘I remember. And so we get to why I’m here.’
From the inside pocket of his coat, he produces a bag. Holding it cautiously, he opens it up. Inside is the phone. But as Wren peers in, she sees that it isn’t just the phone. There is something else in there, as well.
‘I wondered if you might want to go and ask a little favour from her.’
49
Now
Saturday morning. The house is full of flowers, so many that they’ve had to use pint glasses and measuring jugs and everything else they can lay their hands on. It is cold but glorious, the spring sky an unbroken expanse of vivid cobalt blue. Leo, a week old, is asleep in his Moses basket; Suzy has gone out for croissants and the paper, and Wren is writing a stack of thank-yous to Suzy’s army of aunts and uncles and cousins and family friends. The card to Callum Roche has been started many times, but it turns out that there’s no standard wording for a note that simultaneously thanks someone for both a delightful Scandi-chic baby-gro and fighting tooth and nail for you to keep your job despite demonstrable gross misconduct. He says she’s in with a good chance, but time will tell. For the moment, Wren’s little family will manage. And if they have to adapt, that’s exactly what they’ll do.
In the back garden, Marty is planting willow saplings in a circle. When they grow, he’s going to show Wren how to weave them into a living bower, a den for Leo and the friends he’ll make. His editor was furious when he left, Marty said, but he’ll get over it. Wren’s discovered a newfound respect for the man: once Leo was born, he’d decided that no number of promised bylines could justify the kind of betrayal the publication wanted from him. He’d explained this to his editor, and had been escorted from the newsroom for his trouble, but that was fine with him. He was talking now about maybe combining his skills, writing freelance pieces for gardening magazines. He’s not sure yet but Wren, watching him entirely absorbed by his task outside, suspects he’ll make a go of it, whatever it ends up being.
After she refills Radclyffe’s bowl and takes it back through to his spot under the stairs, through the open front windows Wren can hear Suzy coming down the street, laughing with someone. She goes to the door.
‘Look who I found,’ Suzy says as it opens, handing Wren a carrier bag. Andy, her friend from CID, steps inside, a paper under his arm. ‘I made him come for coffee. He has an interesting story to tell us,’ she adds, the tiniest sparkle of mischief in her glance.
Wren makes the coffee, and they go outside into the bright morning. While Andy vapes, Suzy treats him to what is fast becoming her set piece about Wren missing the birth, minus a few details.
‘And I’m like, “Fucking petrol? They’re slicing me in half in five minutes’ time and you’re getting petrol?” And then – you tell him, Wren.’
‘They’d run out of petrol at the petrol station,’ she says simply. ‘I had to get a taxi.’
‘Oh, for – really?’
Suzy takes Wren’s arm and squeezes it. ‘Really. Took twenty minutes to arrive, by which time she’s frantic, trying to flag people down—’
‘And no one at the garage would give you a lift?’ Andy says, aghast.
Wren shrugs, grimaces. ‘People, eh?’
Suzy hands Andy a mug of coffee, then sits back and folds her arms. ‘Go on then, tell her what you just told me.’ She probably thinks she is disguising her glee, but Wren can read her like a book.
‘We had a bit of a development with your Robert Ash-worth,’ he starts.
And he tells the story of how, two days previously, they’d got a call from a lady by the name of Lucilla Yardley. She’d been doing a spot of gardening, weeding out a section beside the vegetable patch that she had been asked by her husband not to touch – there was a lot of broken glass there, the husband had said. But she hadn’t found any broken glass. What she’d found, when she dug a little deeper, was a water-tight box.
‘And inside the box there was a mobile phone.’
Wren keeps her expression absolutely neutral. ‘Right.’
Andy leans forward. ‘And on that mobile phone, there was a string of text messages, of very explicit content, and hundreds of pornographic images, sent between James Yardley and,’ he pauses for effect, ‘Paige Garrett.’
Suzy looks over at her. And Wren tries to say something, to express some kind of surprise, but the words just burst and go to nothing in her throat.
So Suzy speaks for her. ‘The bastard,’ she says.
‘Exactly what I said,’ Andy agrees. ‘But that’s not all. Under the phone, in another bag, was hair. Human hair. We tested it against what we got from her hairbrush when Paige disappeared, and from the bundle recovered from Ashworth’s flat. It’s hers.’
With a discreet toe, Suzy nudges her foot under the table. Listen to this, her eyes say. Wren turns back to Andy.
‘And then, right at the bottom of the box, there’s a zip-lock bag. And in that bag there’s a twenty-grand bracelet. Solid platinum, diamonds, emerald the size of a Creme Egg.’ He leans back, folds his arms. ‘Working theory is that the phone is what Paige and Ashworth went to find in the first place.
They never did steal anything – Yardley just hid it to put us off the scent. So then we fingerprint it – no sign of Ashworth’s on it anywhere, but what we do get is some prints we took for elimination when Paige went missing.’ He pauses for effect, really hitting his stride. ‘Alice Polzeath, the woman who owned the children’s home. And your boy Ashworth took the rap for the bracelet even though he’d never even seen the bloody thing, because Paige Garrett didn’t want it coming out about the phone.’
Wren opens her mouth, closes it again.
‘Something like that, anyway,’ Suzy says.
With coffee finished and the catching up done, Andy gets up and stretches his back out. He puts his head in on Leo, who is just beginning to stir, and then says goodbye in the hall.
As he steps outside, though, he turns back, suddenly grinning.
‘I know what!’ he says. ‘I’ll get hold of the CCTV of the petrol station for you. Birthday present for Leo, seeing what his other mum was doing while he was being born. Something to show the grandkids, eh?’
Suzy and Wren smile, and exchange the briefest of glances. Then Suzy wrinkles her nose. ‘Nah,’ she says. ‘I think she’s suffered enough.’
Epilogue
The flight is only an hour and a quarter from Bristol, but to Wren it feels like days. She gets her phone out again, looks at the picture she took of Leo and Suzy, waving her off. He’s grown so much in just a couple of months, with creases of fat round his wrists and ankles that she can’t wait to tease him about when he’s bigger.
When he’s bigger. When he’s a man. She can let herself say things like that now, because whatever happens next, she knows she’s going to be in his life. She’s his mother, and she’s not perfect, and both of those things are all right. God knows she doesn’t have to be perfect to do it better than last time.
The steward comes around and she sits up straighter, gets a lemonade. Ireland from 25,000 feet is a thing of unparalleled beauty, she thinks. And she leans her head back against the seat.
After a while the announcement comes on. They’re descending into Knock airport.
It’s nearly time.
Wren’s the last one off the plane. She gathers her things, and she takes her time.
Luke is there in the airport, waiting for her. He doesn’t wave – he’s not a waver – but he lifts his chin in recognition and when she goes over, he smiles.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Here we go, then.’
The drive to the house is directly south, and longer than she thought. While they travel, they talk about everything it took to get them out here in the first place. Oliver had needed to pull a lot of strings for Paige.
‘She knew it was the only way,’ Luke says, ‘but Jesus, it was hard to start with.’
Between them, Oliver had to
ld her, they’d made the decision that Luke would stay behind for a while to avoid suspicion. His mum was released from hospital a month after it all happened, and they’d gone up to Yorkshire for a while before making the move out to Ireland to be with Paige.
‘She missed Leah more than anything,’ Luke says. ‘It was – well. It was bad, especially before we managed to get over.’
But now, with everything that’s happened, things have changed. Leah’s going to come over in a few weeks’ time, he tells her. Leah was pretty angry when he first got back in touch, but she’s coming round. Especially after Luke explained exactly how Paige had executed that fall in the warehouse: how without that day when she and Leah practised it to wind Luke up, it might never have worked.
And Rob – well, everyone’s going to need a bit longer with Rob. But they’ll give it a try.
‘Takes time though, doesn’t it?’ he says. ‘Trusting people.’
Wren smiles. ‘It does. Yeah.’
They talk about how the investigation into the housebreaking has trailed off, how Suzy’s description of the young man who entered their home turned out to not be all that clear.
‘I know I’ve said sorry before,’ Luke says, ‘but—’
Wren holds up a hand. ‘We’re past it, Luke. It’s finished.’
Their place is out on its own, he tells her, but not too far from Ennis. They’ve lived there since they left the UK, bought it with some money his mum was left by her uncle, straight after she came out of hospital.
‘It wasn’t loads, mind,’ he says, bracing himself against the wheel because the road has become a track, and it’s bumpy. ‘We had to find somewhere that was going for pretty much nothing. But it’s OK. We’re all right. We’ve made some friends.’ Then, shyly, he adds, ‘I’ve kind of got a girlfriend, too. Maybe you’ll meet her.’
‘I’d like that,’ Wren says.
Maybe it’s something to do with the time of day, the quality of the light, but it’s like the saturation of colours has gone wild. Everything is so green, vivid against the thick slate-grey sky. A house comes into view, just over a low wide hill, bright walls under a long, black roof. As they get closer, she can see the house is a single level, with an outhouse off to one side.