I Thought I Knew You

by Penny Hancock

  Fatima tells me she used to work in the crime investigation department for the Met. She’s here to help me. She’s strong and capable. She’s going to help find my son, I think wildly. Everything will be all right now Fatima’s here.

  ‘We need to put out a national appeal,’ she says at last. ‘We’ll need a photo. I hope you’re OK with this. You can choose the one you want us to use. It could be his profile photo, anything, as long as it’s recent.’

  I’m swiping through photos on my phone when there’s another knock on the door. DC Maria Shimwell is back, with DI Carlos Venesuela. They stand side by side on the step. Venesuela says he wants to talk to Pete.

  ‘What for?’ I ask stupidly.

  ‘Standard procedure,’ Venesuela says. ‘We just need to ask a few questions. We’ll do it down at the station.’

  ‘I was on my way to work,’ Pete says, coming down the stairs to see who’s there. ‘I’ve got back-to-back appointments this afternoon.’

  ‘Shouldn’t take too long,’ Venesuela says. ‘Though you might have to cancel everything before about three.’

  ‘I managed to deactivate the account,’ Pete says over his shoulder as he leaves.

  Fatima and I stand in the sitting room when they’ve gone, watching the police car pull off round the green. I never usually witness how caved out the village is in the daytime. How human beings have been replaced by large plastic five-foot wheelie bins. The village, as Jules told me before I moved here, is empty of life during the day. Everyone’s somewhere else. Not quite everyone. Maybe I imagine it, but as I gaze out at the green, I think I see a face at the window in one of the houses opposite. When the police car has gone, the face disappears and the curtain drops again. It’s a small village. Nothing else to do. What did I expect?

  ‘The photo?’ Fatima asks gently.

  ‘Here.’ I hand her my phone.

  ‘Ping it over to this number?’

  I do as she says. ‘Why have they taken Pete?’ I ask, searching her warm brown eyes. ‘He doesn’t know any more than I do.’

  ‘They’re not leaving a stone unturned.’

  Pete’s reaction when I first told him of Saffie’s allegation comes back to me. The way he’d sat up in shock and said, ‘She what? That’s a very serious allegation.’ His first instinct was to take his own daughters away. But that doesn’t mean he played a part in Saul’s disappearance. Pete wasn’t here when Saul left on Monday morning. He’d gone to work for an early appointment with a client. I shudder. I have to trust Pete. Who else do I have?

  ‘They’re talking to everyone who has a relationship with Saul in case they’ve seen or heard anything they might have forgotten the morning he left,’ Fatima says, reading my mind. She settles down on the sofa and looks at her phone as it pings and the photo of Saul arrives.

  ‘He’s a good-looking boy,’ she says. ‘A heartbreaker in the making.’

  I appreciate this. Her attempt to be kind about a boy she’s been told might be a rapist. Her attempt to show she isn’t judging. That he’s innocent until proven guilty. Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother. Is that what she’s thinking?

  ‘I’ll get it over to the station. And I’ll arrange for you to go to the TV studios to make an appeal if nothing’s changed by tomorrow.’

  ‘A TV appeal?’

  ‘It does help,’ Fatima says kindly. ‘Witnesses often come forward after seeing relatives on the TV.’

  ‘You do realize it’s got out there. That he was accused of rape? No one’s going to sympathize with me.’

  ‘He’s innocent,’ she asserts, ‘until proven guilty. Remember that. Keep it in mind as you go on air. That’s what you’re going to communicate subliminally. As long as you believe it.’

  ‘Of course I believe it. I know it.’

  *

  I ask Fatima, later, if she still has a long day ahead of her. She laughs and says yes, today is a long shift but tomorrow she’ll be able to pick up her kids from school. ‘Which is a treat,’ she says. ‘I don’t often get to do that. Only once a week. And their faces when they see it’s their mum! Makes it all worthwhile.’

  ‘Who picks them up when you’re working?’ I need small talk, the comfort of it.

  ‘Their grandma. She gets them four days a week. If I’m lucky, I get home in time to read them a story before they go to sleep. But not often.’

  ‘Don’t you want to go home now?’ I ask. ‘I’ll be OK without you if you want to get back.’

  ‘I’m on duty,’ she says. ‘Couldn’t go home if I wanted to. But I’m fine here with you. Keeping you company. Don’t you worry.’

  I feel sorry to think Fatima’s children have to make do without her four days a week. We all need our mothers. Right now, I could do with my own. But mine has been incarcerated in a care home for the last five years in Glasgow and no longer recognizes me. It’s ages since she’s been anything like a mother to me. The only way I’ve been able to deal with the loss of who she was, before the dementia eroded her character, is not to see her too often. It’s cowardly, perhaps. But since my sister Suzie and I fell out, after Archie died, my visits to Glasgow have tailed off. Suzie and I haven’t spoken since she hinted, at Archie’s funeral, that there was someone present who knew Archie better than she should. Her words come back to me now, chiming with what Jules told me yesterday. What did Suzie and Jules know about Archie that I didn’t?

  All of a sudden, I yearn to be enfolded in my mother’s warm embrace, not to have to think about any of this. When did I last feel I could lean completely on anyone? Let someone take the strain? Longer ago than I can remember. Which is why I’ve always needed Jules. ‘Our friends are our families,’ Jules had said once, ‘now we all live so far from our blood relatives. You, Holly, are my sister. My soul sister.’

  The fact is, however, my mother was never the maternal type to start with. Always deeply involved in some social work case or other that took her attention away from me and Suzie when we were children. My notion of a mother’s warm embrace is a fantasy. My father was the demonstrative one, the one who spent his leisure time at home helping us make things in the garden. A treehouse, dens, go-karts. Or reading to us at bedtime. He was always warm and affectionate. But he died ten years ago. I am an orphan, I think, indulging in self-pity. An orphan and a widow. Please let me not also have lost my child. There is no word for a mother who has lost a child, I realize. Because it’s too painful a concept to encapsulate in a word.

  A memory sweeps in, from the days when Saul was little, and he would run across the landing at night in our London house and leap into my bed to lie close to me. I would promise silently to protect him forever from danger. Then, when there was only me, once Archie had gone, the responsibility to keep watch over Saul became all the more pressing.

  ‘Everything’s all right,’ I would whisper to him as he fell back to sleep. ‘I’m here. I will keep you safe, always.’ Which I knew was a lie. I hadn’t been able to stop his father from dying, had I? One day, Saul would grow up and have to face the danger of the world on his own. And I wouldn’t be able to protect him from it. I’ve always worked tirelessly to keep Saul safe, to the point where Pete thinks I have separation anxiety. Checking where he is, making sure he’s home when he says he will be. Asking him if he’s OK. If he’s happy, if he’s made friends. And it hasn’t worked. I have not kept Saul safe. Either from the world or from his own demons.

  ‘There. That will do very nicely.’ Fatima interrupts my thoughts, holding up Saul’s photo on her iPad. ‘Now, I think we should have more tea and you can tell me what kind of a relationship your son and Pete had with one another.’

  *

  Pete looks exhausted when he gets in. Fatima leaves when he arrives, promising she’ll be in touch the minute there’s any news.

  ‘That questioning was gruelling,’ he says. He’s pale, washed out, his face shiny with sweat. ‘Thought they weren’t going to believe me when I said I was at work the morning Saul went of
f. They wanted to check my alibi. They phoned my client, everything.’

  ‘And it was OK? Your alibi was watertight?’

  ‘I can’t believe you’d ask me that, Holly.’

  ‘It’s just . . . everything seems so precarious. I don’t know what to trust, who to depend on.’ I want you to reassure me, I think.

  ‘It’s a small price to pay, really,’ Pete says. ‘To help them eliminate me from their enquiries. It’s the least I can do.’ He turns and looks at me. Something’s written across his face, a mixture of apology and guilt and resignation.

  ‘I’m sorry, Holly, but Deepa’s texted me.’ He sighs. ‘She and Tim are going away for a couple of nights – it’s a work thing they can’t get out of.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her father’s staying at her sister’s and has gone down with the flu, so they’ve let her down. She’s asked me to stay. I’m going to have to go over there, but I’d really like you to come too. I don’t want to leave you on your own. In fact, I think it would do you good to come. Have a change of scene. Spend some time with the girls.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘They’re leaving in the small hours – some science conference in Lisbon – and they’ve got an early flight. So yes, I should go straight away. I can go ahead and you can follow, if you like?’

  He goes over to the cupboard under the stairs where we keep bags, boots, old coats, and rummages about inside. He pulls out the weekend bag he takes when he’s off to Bristol for his course.

  ‘Can’t the girls come here?’ I say to his back. ‘It’s mad you going over there when there are empty beds upstairs. All made up for them.’

  ‘The girls don’t want to come here at the moment.’ He turns round and looks at me helplessly. ‘They’re frightened – understandably – about what’s happened to Saul. That he walked out of the front door and didn’t come back. They . . .’

  ‘They don’t know what Saffie said, do they? They don’t know about the rape thing?’

  He pauses for a beat. ‘We’ve tried our best to keep that from them. But now it’s all over the media, it’s impossible to say.’

  ‘This is getting worse. By the minute. I don’t want you going over there. If Deepa’s sister’s let her down, that’s her problem. She’ll have to cancel her trip.’

  ‘I don’t think Deepa will do that,’ he says.

  ‘It’s not up to her! It’s up to you, and me, and what the girls want and need too.’

  ‘Where are my jeans?’ he asks. ‘I put them in the wash the other day.’

  ‘Forget your bloody jeans, Pete!’ I shout, incensed now. ‘You can’t go. You can’t go off and leave me. I need you. You have to stay here.’

  I follow him across the kitchen to the little utility area by the back door, where he bends down and peers into the tumble dryer, pulling out clothes that have been left in there. He stands up, shakes out some crumpled jeans.

  ‘It’s only for a couple of nights, my love. Until Deepa’s back. I need to be there, to reassure them. You do understand that, don’t you? Please come too?’

  ‘Fucking hell . . .’ Pete jerks his head up in shock. ‘I can’t leave the house. In case Saul comes home. You know that. I can’t believe you’re even contemplating going. Don’t you care? Don’t you want to stay here so you can hear every latest bulletin? And Fatima’s asked me to do a TV appeal. Tomorrow, if we haven’t heard anything. I’d like you to be with me.’

  ‘A TV appeal?’

  ‘She says witnesses often come forward after seeing relatives on the news. I can’t do it on my own.’

  Pete places his hand gently on my shoulder.

  ‘You can,’ he says. ‘You can do it, Holly. For Saul. You’ll be fine. You’re good at that kind of thing.’

  ‘That kind of thing? I’ve never done anything like this before.’

  ‘You teach. You lecture. You’re used to talking in public.’

  ‘You have no idea, do you?’ My words come out in a low growl. I’m trembling with fury.

  ‘Don’t make this difficult for me, please,’ Pete pleads. ‘You can see that I’m torn. Of course I’d prefer to stay here with you, but I have to fulfil my duties as a father.’

  ‘It looks to me like you’re doing this for Deepa. Not for the girls,’ I mutter, immediately regretting it.

  ‘Is that what this is about?’ Pete asks. I wish I hadn’t revealed this sliver of jealousy. It undermines my real argument, which is that I need Pete here, with me. But it’s impossible to retract now. ‘Tell her you’re staying here.’ I adopt as assertive a tone as I can muster. Deepa’s tone, in fact. ‘You’re staying here with me because I’m your wife now. Not Deepa.’

  Deepa and I regard each other with a kind of cool respect. Pete admits their break-up came about in part because she considered him beneath her. After she and Pete split up, she married Tim, a colleague at the fertility clinic where she works as a scientist, and moved into his beautiful, large old house in the leafy area of Cambridge north of the river. The girls continued going, with Saffie, to the local schools, spending half their time with Pete, and more recently weekends with me and Saul too.

  I have a civil, if not entirely relaxed relationship with Deepa. I picture her now; she’s an attractive woman of Indian origin with long dark hair and beautiful large green eyes. Her clothes always look glossy – Indian silks and shiny boots and slick trousers with a sheen on them. She can carry this kind of thing off. Designer wear that clings to her svelte figure. She’s probably one of the chicest women I’ve ever seen and I’ve always been in awe of her intellect, her beauty. And aware of the fact I’m living with the partner she discarded. But I’ve also been grateful to her for lending us her daughters every other weekend. It’s only since all this Saul business that I’ve felt any animosity towards her at all. I can’t help hostility creeping into my voice now she’s taken the girls and snapped her fingers to get Pete back when I need him most.

  ‘Tell her she can sort out a babysitter for herself,’ I add, weakly.

  Pete ignores this.

  ‘If you’re sure you won’t come,’ he says, stuffing clothes into his weekend bag, ‘I’ll be on the end of my phone at all times.’ He won’t make eye contact with me. He’s angry, because I’ve made him feel guilty. And because he feels trapped. Caught between his daughters and his new wife. ‘Ring me the minute you hear anything.’ He walks towards the door. Turns.

  ‘I promised Thea,’ he says, his voice softening. ‘I am doing this for her and for Freya. If you can’t see that, then you don’t really know me at all.’ He gives me a searching look. I could pull him towards me. Kiss him. Tell him that of course he has to put his girls first. Always, but especially at the moment, while they are afraid because Saul is missing. But I don’t. I can’t. It’s pride, and it’s humiliation at having revealed any insecurity about Deepa, and it’s hurt that he can leave me in my hour of need.

  I speak to his back as he walks away.

  ‘I don’t really know you at all, then,’ I say.

  *

  It doesn’t matter that I turn the heating up high, pull the curtains over the dark windows, put the oven on, though I’m not going to cook anything – nothing would induce me to put food in my mouth – the kitchen stays cold in the hours after Pete leaves. Trembling with fury at him, and at my own powerlessness to stop him going to his daughters, I’m still shivering when, later, I press Philippa’s number into my mobile. It’s some form of masochism now things – so I believe – can’t get any worse. Philippa picks up, and asks immediately what the latest is on Saul and the rape claim. She must be feeling contrite after her refusal to help me.

  ‘He’s vanished,’ I tell her. My voice cracks. ‘He’s been missing since he heard he’s been accused. The police have no leads.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ she says. ‘That must be dreadful for you. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ I say, and I don’t even care about the bitterness with which my voice is la
ced. ‘You have no idea. Dreadful doesn’t come close to what I’m going through. Not knowing. Fearing the worst. But that’s not why I’m phoning.’ I feel removed, as if I’m not attached to the real world. As if I can say what I like and it will make no difference. ‘I’m phoning because I need to know why you wouldn’t defend Saul. Because when . . . if – no, when – he comes back, Jules and Rowan aren’t giving up on it. Saffie hasn’t retracted her allegation. What was your thinking?’

  There’s a long silence.

  ‘Philippa,’ I say, ‘did something happen between you and Archie? Jules said something,’ I press on, into the abyss of her silence. ‘I guess she was trying to hurt me. To get back at me for not believing Saffie. Or for criticizing her husband. But I have to be sure.’

  ‘Oh, Holly,’ Philippa says at last. ‘It’s six years since Archie died.’ My pulse quickens. ‘I thought if you never found out, we would never have hurt you. And I assure you neither of us wanted to hurt you. I can say that with my hand on my heart. I’d swear it in court on a Bible. But you were so wrapped up in Saul back then and Archie was lonely and I was there.’

  ‘What are you saying, Philippa?’ I reach for the kitchen table to steady myself.

  ‘It was platonic – you have to believe that.’

  ‘What was platonic?’

  ‘We never slept together. Jules knows that. It was more a meeting of minds. We were working very closely on a difficult case and we admitted we felt things for one another. It wasn’t so much physical as—’

  ‘How did Jules even know this?’ Jules is my friend, I’m thinking. Not Archie’s. Not Philippa’s.

  ‘I used to meet up with her sometimes, around that time, to talk, over coffee.’

  ‘You’re telling me . . .’

  Philippa and Jules used to have coffee together? I’m not sure which hurts more, her clandestine relationship with my husband or the one with my friend.

  ‘Holly,’ she goes on in her measured tone, ‘perhaps it will help if I tell you what Archie’s dying words were.’