by Susan Lewis
His sadness was hard to watch as he shook his head. ‘Not really, but I know she thinks about her a lot. I have to admit, I do too. She was a lovely woman, good and kind right through to her soul.’
Andee was about to continue when Heidi came in with a teary-eyed, runny-nosed Archie perched on her hip. One glance at him was enough to confirm whose son he was, since he’d taken on his father’s features in a way that made him appear strangely old for a baby.
‘He needs a bottle,’ Heidi said, going to the fridge.
Andee smiled at the child and received a solemn stare in response.
‘We were talking about boyfriends just now,’ Gavin told Heidi. ‘I said you’d know more about that than me.’
Heidi sighed heavily as she planted a baby’s bottle into a pan of water to heat. ‘She didn’t confide in me any more,’ she admitted regretfully, ‘but I . . .’ She glanced awkwardly at her husband. ‘I never told you this,’ she said, ‘but I found some birth pills in her bedroom, a few months back.’
Gavin’s eyes closed as if he couldn’t take much more.
‘I tried talking to her about it,’ Heidi said to Andee, ‘but she went off on one about me snooping round her room.’
Having no trouble imagining the scene, Andee said, ‘Do you know if she took them with her?’
Heidi shook her head, and shrugged. ‘They’re not here any more, so I suppose she must have.’
‘Have you ever seen her with anyone in particular?’ Andee asked.
‘Not really. She messes about with boys around the camp, the ones here on holiday, and those who work at the club or the office, but I don’t think there’s anyone special.’
‘So you can’t think of someone she might have gone off with?’
As Gavin’s head came up, Archie started to wail.
‘All right, I’m coming,’ Heidi soothed, going to pick him up.
‘Why would she just run off with someone?’ Gavin demanded, as though the concept made no sense at all. ‘Especially someone we don’t even know.’
Andee watched him, waiting for him to answer his own question.
In the end it was Heidi who said, ‘We haven’t been keeping a close enough eye on her . . . I know it’s my fault. I wasn’t expecting motherhood to be quite the way it is. My job’s suffering, everything seems to be . . . I keep telling myself to spend more time with Sophie, but it just never seems to work out.’
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Gavin told her. ‘She’s more my responsibility than yours. I should have talked to her more, carried on doing things with her the way we used to.’
‘We weren’t prepared for the baby to take over our lives the way he has,’ Heidi added miserably. ‘I suppose that sounds naïve, but other parents seem to manage when a second one comes along. There’s not always such a big age gap though, is there, and Sophie was used to being the apple of her daddy’s eye.’
Having seen several families break down in just this sort of situation, Andee brought them back on track as she said, ‘Please think hard about this: has anyone left the site in the past week, casual workers, visitors, members of staff, who she might have gone off with?’
Heidi shook her head. ‘We have a changeover of guests on Saturdays, but that would have either been the day before we last saw her, or six days later.’
‘And the workers?’
‘No one’s left that I know about, but we can check the staff records.’
Knowing that sort of information would be automatically gathered by the uniforms who were over at the office now, Andee decided she’d probably heard enough for the moment, and began packing away her notebook. ‘I know my colleagues carried out what we call an open-door search while they were here,’ she said, ‘but would you mind if I took a look at Sophie’s room before I leave?’
Heidi’s eyes were on Gavin as she replied, ‘I don’t see any reason why not. I mean, we’ve searched it ourselves looking for something that might tell us where she is, but there’s no note, no anything that even gives us a clue.’
Andee got to her feet. ‘One last question,’ she said, shouldering her bag, ‘have you ever suspected Sophie of taking drugs?’
Gavin’s face darkened, while Heidi shook her head.
‘I’d say booze is more her thing,’ Heidi offered. ‘She’s got totally wasted a few times lately, to a point where she practically passed out when she got home.’
Happy to be spared further detail of that, at least for now, Andee said, ‘OK, if you could show me her room?’
Leaving Heidi to cope with Archie, who’d begun screeching at the top of his lungs, Gavin led the way back down the hall to the last door on the left. As she followed Andee was trying to get a sense of the place that might offer some sort of insight into what this family’s life was really like. Not that she was particularly doubting anything she’d been told, so far there was no reason to, but the Monroes wouldn’t be the first parents to have thrown their daughter out, or worse, only to regret it later.
The first thing Andee noticed on entering Sophie’s bedroom was a beautiful poster, actually a portrait, hanging next to the bed of a six- or seven-year-old Sophie with her parents. All three were wearing white, and Sophie’s mother, a slight woman with flowing honey-coloured hair and gentle eyes, was holding a guitar while Sophie, in a calf-length lacy dress and white ribbons, was perched on her daddy’s knee smiling shyly. The image was so captivating that Andee found herself going towards it.
‘Heidi got someone to do it, from a photo,’ Gavin told her gruffly.
‘It’s lovely,’ Andee murmured, noting the sweet freckles on Sophie’s nose and the way one of her hands was curling into Gavin’s.
‘This is Jilly’s guitar,’ Gavin said, picking it up from beside the bed. ‘Jilly is Sophie’s mother. I keep trying to get Sophie to take up her lessons again, but she won’t. It’s a shame, because she used to show a lot of promise.’
‘And the CDs?’ Andee enquired, noticing a small bookcase full of them.
Swallowing, he said, ‘They’re mostly of me and Jilly, back in the day. Some have got Sophie singing with us, or on her own. We used to have a bit of fun listening to them, but I can’t seem to get her interested any more.’
Andee continued to look around. On the whole, the room was much like any other fourteen-year-old girl’s, with posters of boy bands cluttering up the walls, mostly of Westlife, Andee noted, which seemed curious given her age. Perhaps her mother had been a fan. A couple of shelves were loaded with semi-retired soft toys, while untidy piles of clothing and shoes were scattered about the floor, and a hanging rail acted as a wardrobe. The dressing table was littered with cheap cosmetics, gaudy jewellery, various hair accessories and a bag of bird food.
A glance at the window showed a feeder hanging just outside.
On the single bed fairy lights were trailed round the headrail and furry cushions lined up against the wall, while a limp rag doll with tatty clothes and red felt cheeks was smiling up from the pillows. For some reason it made Andee feel sad. Except it wasn’t just the doll that was affecting her, it was the room itself, she realised, though she couldn’t quite say why. She wondered what secrets were harboured within these walls, what scenes they had witnessed, what loneliness, as this young girl struggled to accept that her mother was never coming back. And there had been a struggle, Andee was in no doubt about that.
Going to the window she pulled back the nets and looked out on to the campsite’s entrance. Since the room was on ground level she could see how easy it would be to climb in and out without anyone hearing, especially if they were in the kitchen at the back of the house.
She turned to Gavin, who was rummaging in a drawer.
‘I can’t find any pictures of her,’ he declared sadly. ‘Nothing here apart from underwear and sweet wrappers and stuff. Oh hang on, what’s this?’ and pulling out a four-strip from a photo booth he regarded it bleakly. ‘That’s her all over,’ he murmured as he gazed down at it.
&n
bsp; Going to look, Andee saw a teenage girl with the same pretty face as in her school photo, languid violet-blue eyes, a full-lipped mouth, but in these shots her silky blonde hair was streaked with purple, as though she’d deliberately tried to spoil it. In place of the sweetest of smiles were various scowls and gestures that Andee guessed were meant to be funny, or perhaps offensive.
‘Can I keep these?’ she asked, as Gavin let the strip go.
Still looking down at them, he said, ‘I don’t see why not. I wouldn’t want you putting them on the telly or anything, though. She wasn’t like that really, or she never used to be.’
‘It’s OK, we won’t do anything without your consent.’ There was no point telling him the media wouldn’t be interested at this stage, not when the case had all the hallmarks of a stroppy teenager trying to frighten her parents into giving her some attention.
So why were her insides knotting with the sense that there was more to this than she was seeing right now?
You should step back from it, a voice inside was urging. Don’t do this to yourself. Let someone else take it on.
Casting a last look around the room, she thanked Gavin, told him she’d be in touch soon and returned to her car. For several moments she sat motionlessly at the wheel staring at Sophie’s window, imagining her pouring seed into the feeder and watching the birds come and go. Or clambering in and out in the moonlight. Or closing the curtains to shield herself from the rest of the world.
In the end she took out her Airwave and went through to Barry. ‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Just leaving the clubhouse. How did it go with the parents?’
‘I’m worried,’ she admitted. ‘Did you know the mother died four years ago?’
‘Yes, they told me. Is it relevant?’
‘It could be. What have you come up with over there?’
‘Nothing conclusive. No staff, casual or otherwise, have left during the past month. The changeover of visitors could prove a nightmare to follow up, but the residency manager is getting the records together.’
‘Did anyone see her that Sunday night?’
‘Several people are claiming to have. Apparently she was at the Entertainment Centre until quite late, which puts her there after the row with her parents. We haven’t found anyone yet who’s heard from her since.’
‘Did anyone see her leave?’
‘Not that we’ve come across, but there are still a lot of people to interview.’
‘Sure. Do you know if she mentioned the row with her parents to anyone?’
‘Not that we’ve come across.’
‘Drugs? Sex?’
‘Bit early in the day,’ he responded, ‘but if you insist.’
Andee rolled her eyes.
‘Nothing significant on the first, mentions of the second, if we’re to take gossip as gospel.’
Since plenty of girls Sophie’s age were sexually active there was no reason why she wouldn’t be, especially in light of the birth pills. It saddened Andee to think that Sophie might have been using promiscuity to reclaim the attention she’d lost from her father, or to blot out the pain and loneliness of losing her mother. ‘If she is sexually active it makes her high risk,’ she declared. ‘She was on the pill, apparently, but no steady boyfriend, unless you’ve come across one.’
‘No one so far.’
‘OK, I have to get back to the station. I’m already late for Gould. If nothing’s changed between now and five I’ll meet you at the friend’s house? You can text me the address.’
‘You mean Estelle Morris? Easier said than done. She’s gone up to Bristol for the night with her mother, back sometime tomorrow.’
‘OK, we’ll talk to her then. Meantime I’m going to try to get this reclassified as high risk,’ and after ending the connection, she continued to stare at the window to Sophie’s room. From this angle the nets were as impenetrable as the walls either side of them, making the truth of how, why, when she’d left, as elusive as the secrets locked inside her young girl’s heart.
Where are you? she whispered silently, feeling the chill echo of the words rising like ghouls from the darkest caves of the past. Where did you go? Who are you with?
Please God let her be somewhere safe, because the alternative wasn’t one Andee was prepared to contemplate, not when she knew what hell it could bring.
Chapter Two
KASIA DOMANSKI WAS loving living in England. Just about everything thrilled her about it: from the people, to the colours, to the luxury of shopping for anything she wanted, to the funny traditions such as driving on the left and cricket. She even enjoyed the climate, though so much rain and gloom had made her sad at first; the summers in her country were much longer and hotter than they were here, with the exception of this one, which was the best she’d known since arriving.
Kasia was a small, slender woman, only five feet two, weighing fifty-one kilos, with wispy blonde hair, sky-blue eyes and a pretty mouth that always seemed about to quirk into a smile. On her next birthday she was going to celebrate becoming thirty and now that she had so many friends in England she was planning to throw a splendid party.
She knew that not all her fellow countrymen had settled in as well as she had, but it hadn’t always been easy for her either. When she’d first arrived, five years ago, she and her children, three-year-old Ania (now eight) and one-year-old Anton (now six) had shared a small flat with her sister in the northern zone of Kesterly’s Temple Fields estate. It was an area fraught with racial tensions and kids who hung around in gangs, either trying to sell other kids drugs or settling scores with their rivals. Speaking English very well, she’d often wished she didn’t understand the names she was called, and it was awful the way some people had spat at her in the street for scrounging off the state or taking jobs from the locals. The truth was she’d never once gone to the government for a handout. She’d come into the country with enough money to get her through the first weeks without having to worry, and during that time her sister, Olenka, who was a nurse at the Greensleeves Care Home close to Kesterly seafront, had helped her to secure a position there that had been vacant for several months.
Those first two years had been so terrible that hardly a day had gone by when Kasia hadn’t longed for her mother, and her home in the valley of islands in the south of Poland. Indeed, she would have returned were it not for the fact that she had more to fear there than she did in England. In her country they didn’t have the kind of refuges that existed in just about every town in the UK to protect women and children from violent men, and Kasia had desperately needed that protection. Her husband, the children’s father, had beaten them so regularly and so badly that in the end, the only way to escape him and his wretched alcoholism had been to leave. With Olenka already in England it had been decided Kasia must join her, so her parents, who were by no means well off, had used up all their savings to send her.
Kasia had paid them back long ago, and she continued to send money; their family home in the mountains now had an indoor toilet instead of a wooden box at the side of the house. Her mother could even pay for help harvesting the raspberries that grew on the slope of their hill, and her father had bought a reconditioned tractor. Despite welcoming these new luxuries, they still insisted Kasia should spend her money on the children. It was hard for them to comprehend that she had enough these days to make sure none of them went without. She was even able to buy small gifts for the old folk in the care home when their name days came round. They seemed to enjoy this Polish tradition that most had never come across before.
Though she and Olenka both still worked at the home, they now lived on the much friendlier Waverley estate, Olenka in a spacious apartment over the newsagent’s on Seldon Rise, and Kasia in a smart terraced house with a bay window and climbing wisteria on Patch Elm Lane that she and Tomasz rented from his employers.
Tomasz. His name alone could cause ripples of happiness to float up from her heart and form in a smile. He was her handsome, talent
ed, generous, gentle bear of a partner who stood over six feet tall, had muscles as hard as the rocks in Kesterly bay and eyes that made her melt every time she looked into them. They’d met three years ago when he’d come to Greensleeves to sort out a plumbing problem, and if it hadn’t been love at first sight then Kasia didn’t know what was.
She’d soon discovered that the whole world loved Tomasz once they got to know him; it was hard not to when he was so full of humour and kindness and always made time for someone in need. Like Kasia he’d been in England for two years by the time they met, and also like her, he still sent money home to his mother.
It wasn’t long after they’d first got together that Tomasz’s fortunes had taken an amazingly happy turn. The Poynters, who owned two of Perryman Cove’s biggest caravan parks and several other businesses besides, had put him in charge of all their maintenance needs. Not only that, they’d guaranteed him at least two performances a week during high season at the Blue Ocean Entertainment Centre. Since Tomasz loved to sing almost as much as he loved to laugh he’d leapt at the opportunity, and these days, having learned just about every English popular song in existence, he often topped the bill during the summer months.
Now, as she hurried in through the gate of their caramel-coloured house with its pots of topiary each side of the porch and colourful stained-glass panel in the front door, she was rummaging in her bag for keys while talking to Tomasz on the phone.
‘So where are you now?’ she was asking, pushing open the door and stooping to pick up the mail. How she adored this place with its rich red wall-to-wall carpets, dishwasher in the kitchen, family photographs on the walls and feeling of safety.
‘I’ve just left Blue Ocean,’ he replied. ‘By the way, the police were there today asking about Sophie Monroe.’
Kasia frowned. ‘Do you mean Heidi and Gavin’s daughter? What about her?’
‘Apparently she’s gone missing.’
Kasia stopped in her tracks. ‘Missing?’ All kinds of terrible images were flashing through her mind.