The Mum Detective

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘Being unfaithful to your dad?’ Holly finished for me. ‘Well, it kind of looks like it, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t think there could be some other explanation?’

  ‘Come on, Esmie.’ She started to speak in her most solemn, junior-therapist-type voice. ‘You’re obviously in denial about this. I mean, it’s understandable that you want to pretend it isn’t happening, but that’s only going to make things worse in the end. The thing is, when is Lizzie going to tell him? Because if she doesn’t tell him soon, then maybe you should!’

  ‘I know, but . . .’ How could I explain how I felt about actually telling Dad – as if telling him would somehow make it real.

  ‘Somebody’s got to tell him. Unless . . .’ She paused. ‘Do you want me to ask my mum if she’ll tell him? After all, she is training to be a professional counsellor. Not that she’d charge him anything, of course.’

  ‘No thanks!’ I replied quickly. Like I said before, Dad thinks therapists and analysts belong in Hollywood movies – preferably funny movies – rather than in real life.

  There was a long pause, which I knew meant that Holly was giving this a lot of thought. ‘You know that detective kit you’ve got?’ she finally asked. ‘Does it have any suggestions for disguises in it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I reckon the best thing to do to make absolutely sure that Lizzie is having an affair before you tell your dad, is to follow her and see where she goes at five o’clock tomorrow. But since Lizzie knows what you look like, you’ll need to use some sort of disguise to avoid her seeing you.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well . . . my mum’s got this long blonde wig she used to wear to fancy-dress parties. You could use that. Or you could make your face all dark with make-up and wear a sari and then you’d look Indian. I bet Soraya would lend you a sari if we asked her.’

  ‘Soraya never wears saris.’ Soraya sits behind us in French and, although her parents come from India, she’s lived in England all her life.

  ‘Not to school, but I bet she’s got one for special occasions. Or the other thing you could do is dress up as a boy!’ Holly was beginning to sound quite excited. ‘That should be easy enough if we tuck your hair up so it doesn’t show. Or you could dress up as a football supporter! You can ask Billy Sanderson if you can borrow his Arsenal gear. He fancies you so he’s bound to say yes.’

  ‘He does not fancy me!’ I protested. ‘And I’m definitely not wearing anything of his!’

  ‘OK, well, how about I bring my mum’s wig to school tomorrow and you can try it on? I can borrow my granny’s spare glasses too, if you like. Mum and I are going round to see her tonight. Mind you, she’s got very thick lenses so I’m not sure if you’ll be able to actually see through them.’ She suddenly giggled. ‘I can see why your dad likes being a detective. It’s fun!’

  I nearly told her sharply that Dad doesn’t dress up in blonde wigs and saris and other people’s glasses to track down his suspects, but I decided I’d better end the phone call there because I still hadn’t called Matty again.

  I left my brother a quick message letting him know that Dad was out. Then, just after I’d put down the phone and settled down to wait for him to phone back, Dad arrived home. I couldn’t believe it. Normally when Dad says he’s going back into work for a couple of hours, he means at least four.

  ‘That didn’t take long,’ I heard Lizzie say to him in the hall. She sounded surprised to see him back so soon as well.

  ‘I really needed to catch up on some paperwork but I just couldn’t concentrate on it. I can’t seem to keep my mind on anything at the moment.’

  ‘Well, what do you expect, John?’ Lizzie spoke in a very soft voice. ‘You’re worried sick about Matthew. It’s understandable.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Lizzie, I haven’t felt this worried since . . .’ His voice cracked and, by the time I joined them in the hall, Lizzie was giving him a hug.

  I stared at them. If Lizzie was having an affair – which I still couldn’t quite believe she was, despite all the evidence against her – then she was the best actress ever. But the thing that upset me most was how tired and stressed Dad looked. I wanted to kill Matthew for doing this to him. If Lizzie was doing what I thought she was doing, then I wanted to kill her even more, but I couldn’t be sure about that yet – not until five o’clock tomorrow.

  And that’s when the phone started ringing.

  While Dad was still hugging Lizzie, I rushed past them and picked up the phone in the living room. ‘Hi!’ I gasped.

  ‘Esmie? It’s Matty.’

  I nearly yelled out his name, but I stopped myself just in time. Dad was in the doorway now, looking at me. ‘It’s Holly, Dad,’ I called out to him loudly.

  ‘I thought you said he was out?’ Matthew grunted in my ear.

  ‘Dad’s just got back, Holly,’ I said into the phone. ‘I can’t talk for very long.’

  Dad turned and went back to join Lizzie, who had remained in the hall. I waited until I heard them go into the kitchen together before hissing, ‘Matthew, where are you?’

  ‘Never mind that. How did you find Jennifer’s aunt?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. She didn’t say if she knew where Jennifer’s mother is or anything, but she gave me her number and she wants Jennifer to call her. But, Matthew, listen . . . Dad’s really worried about you. When are you coming home?’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ In the background, I could hear Matthew relaying what I’d said to Jennifer – minus the part about Dad being really worried.

  Then Jennifer came on the phone herself. She sounded excited. ‘Esmie, did you really speak to my aunt? What did she say?’

  ‘Just what I told Matthew. Jennifer, you’ve got to come home. Dad’s going crazy worrying about you both, and your dad’s really upset too. I think you should—’

  ‘Esmie, can you give me the phone number for my aunt?’ Jennifer interrupted me. ‘Have you got it there?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to find your mum any more.’

  ‘I know, but if my aunt’s actually spoken to you . . . Can you give me her number quickly, Esmie? Matthew’s phone’s about to run out of juice, so we haven’t got much time.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to wait, cos it’s upstairs . . .’ I had put down the phone and got as far as the door when I stopped myself. If I gave them the number now, they might phone Jennifer’s aunt from wherever they were and go and visit her. Then they might find out where Jennifer’s mother was and go and visit her. And then who knew how long it would be before they came back home? Whereas if I didn’t give them the number . . .

  I went back to the telephone and picked it up again. ‘Jennifer?’

  ‘That was quick. Matthew’s just getting me a pen.’

  ‘Jennifer, I need to speak to him.’

  ‘OK. Give me the number and—’

  ‘No, Jennifer. I want to speak to Matty now.’

  There was a bit of a silence at the other end, then the sound of Jennifer muttering something, then my brother came on the phone. ‘What?’ he barked at me.

  The way he said it really annoyed me. ‘I’ll tell you what, Matthew,’ I snapped back. ‘We’re all really worried because we don’t know where you are, right? Dad can’t even do his work, he’s so worried. And I think you should come home. So you can tell Jennifer I’m not giving her this number until you and she come back. And if you don’t come back, then I’m giving it to her dad instead. Or . . . or maybe I’ll just tear it up and then she’ll never find her mum!’ And I slammed down the phone.

  I felt a bit trembly after I’d done it. I felt like I’d overacted or overreacted or something. But the more deep breaths I took and the more I thought about it, the more confident I felt that I’d done the right thing.

  Lizzie stayed over that night and I kept out of her way by pretending I had lots of homework I had to get on with. I didn’t look up when she put her head round the door at eight o’c
lock to ask if I wanted a drink or anything. I just grunted and carried on reading my book. When Dad came up later to tell me it was time to go to bed, he asked me if I was cross with Lizzie or him about something.

  I shook my head. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t at all angry with him but that I was furious with Lizzie, but I knew I had to collect my evidence first, like a proper detective, or Dad just wouldn’t believe me.

  I felt really sorry for Dad because he looked so worn out. And once he found out about Lizzie he was going to feel even worse.

  ‘Don’t worry about Matthew, Dad,’ I said. ‘I’m sure he’s fine. And I reckon he’ll be home really soon.’

  Dad frowned. ‘I hope so, Esmie.’

  ‘Anyway, he’s sixteen. He can look after himself. He’s practically a grown-up.’

  ‘He won’t feel very grown up by the time I’ve finished with him,’ Dad replied. ‘Sixteen! What does he think he’s playing at?’ He said it like my brother was still a little kid as far as he was concerned.

  ‘What are you going to do to him when he gets back, Dad?’ I asked, suddenly feeling a bit worried that I was luring my brother home to certain death.

  ‘I don’t know, Esmie. Right now, all I’m thinking about is how much I want him back – and how much I wish he hadn’t got together with Jennifer Mitchell. Do you know, I’m starting to think Jennifer’s father was right? I reckon that pair are a bad influence on each other.’

  ‘But you won’t try and stop them seeing each other when they come home, will you?’ I asked quickly.

  ‘Somehow I don’t think that would be a very successful strategy, do you? Now, come on. Bed.’

  ‘Dad, I’d like to go and see Lizzie at the shop after school tomorrow. I thought I could get the bus into town straight from school and go and surprise her. Is that OK?’

  Dad nodded. ‘I suppose it’s better than you coming home to an empty house.’

  ‘Good. So don’t tell her or it won’t be a surprise, right?’

  He nodded again, but his thoughts seemed to have moved on to something else. ‘Esmie, does Matty ever complain to you about the amount of babysitting . . . I mean childminding . . . I ask him to do? Looking after you every day after school, I mean?’

  ‘Well . . .’ The truth was that Matty was always complaining about having to look after me. But I didn’t want Dad to think he’d driven Matthew away by making him do too much babysitting-I-mean-childminding, because I knew that wasn’t the case. ‘I don’t see why he should mind,’ I answered truthfully. ‘I mean, he has to stay in after school anyway to do his homework. And it’s not like he has to look after me much at the weekends or any other times, is it?’

  ‘Hmm . . . It’s just, I sometimes feel like I’m always having a go at him for what he does wrong,’ Dad murmured. ‘And that maybe I don’t praise him enough for the things he does right.’

  ‘Matty knows you really love him, Dad,’ I told him.

  Dad didn’t say anything.

  ‘You know when Juliette was here?’ I continued doggedly. ‘She used to tell Matty whenever he was moaning about you . . . not that he moaned about you all the time or anything . . . that you only grounded him and told him off about stuff because you cared about him so much.’ I felt a sudden pang of longing for Juliette, who had always had the answer – or at least an answer – to everything. I could hear her now, saying to my brother in her soothing French accent, ‘Your father gets anxious about you, Matthew. When you are late home he thinks you are murdered, no? So of course he will freak out, as you say . . . You cannot expect him to stay calm while he thinks you are dead in a deetch!’ Being dead in a ditch was an expression Dad used a lot when he was imagining where my overdue brother might be, and Juliette had quickly adopted it as a favourite of hers.

  Dad raised an eyebrow. ‘Mary Poppins, eat your heart out,’ he grunted. Dad used to call Juliette that when she was here. Juliette had been a bit like Mary Poppins in a way, I suppose. She’d been bossy and fun at the same time, and kind of magical in that she seemed to be able to make things happen that nobody else could – like putting an advert in the Lonely Hearts column to find Dad a girlfriend so that he could be less lonely and Matthew and I could have a new mum. Maybe now that she was gone, the magic had gone too – and that was why everything was falling apart.

  ‘You know what, Dad?’ I said, desperate to cheer him up. ‘I’ll never run away from home like Matthew’s done!’

  ‘I’m very pleased to hear it,’ Dad said, giving me a hug.

  ‘Not even if I fall in love with a boy who’s much older than me that I really fancy, who really wants me to run away to Scotland with him to get married and—’

  ‘Esmie,’ Dad interrupted, wincing slightly. ‘Let’s just not go there, OK?’

  The following day, after school, I caught the bus straight into town. Holly had brought two disguises to school with her and told me that one was for me and one was for herself. She reckoned she ought to come with me to help tail Lizzie because she said that proper detectives always worked in pairs.

  Well, there was no way that was going to happen. I told her I wanted to follow Lizzie on my own as I thought that one person wearing a long blonde wig and thick spectacles would look less suspicious than two. Then I noticed that the spectacles she’d brought for herself to wear were actually quite trendy sunglasses, so I quickly took them for myself and gave her back her granny’s ultra-hideous ones.

  I tried on the least-tangled wig in the girls’ toilets. It looked really daft until Holly produced a black woolly hat from her bag and suggested I wore that too. Then the whole thing worked better – though I still looked like what my granny in Bournemouth would call ‘a mighty suspicious character’.

  ‘You’ll have to keep a safe distance behind Lizzie the whole time, so she doesn’t spot you,’ Holly warned me, as if she was the one who’d been studying how to be a detective, not me. ‘And have you planned how you’re going to get on the same bus as her without being seen?’

  ‘That’s easy – I’ll just stand behind somebody tall!’ I said dismissively. In fact, I didn’t reckon it was going to be easy at all, but I wanted to stop Holly acting like this was her undercover operation rather than mine.

  I didn’t put on my disguise straight away, of course. I had to go and visit Lizzie at work first. As I sat on the bus on my way into town, I thought about the very first time I’d been to see Lizzie at the chemist’s last year. Matthew and I had gone there together when we’d been trying to get her to go on a date with Dad. It seemed such a waste now – all the effort we’d put into matchmaking the two of them. Matthew and Juliette and I had all thought Lizzie would be perfect for Dad – but we’d been wrong. If only Juliette was here now, I thought. At least then I wouldn’t feel like I was having to do this all on my own.

  Lizzie looked surprised when I walked into the shop. She was at the back in the little pharmacy bit, but she came out front as soon as she saw me. ‘Hello, Esmie. Is everything all right? Have you heard any more from Matthew?’

  I shook my head, but I must have not looked very convincing or something because she added, ‘Esmie, you would tell us if he phoned you, wouldn’t you? Even if he asked you not to. It’s really important that we know he’s OK.’

  ‘Dad knows that anyway,’ I pointed out. ‘Matty told him he was OK in that message he left.’

  ‘I know but—’ A customer came and handed in a prescription at that point, so Lizzie had to go back into the pharmacy to sort it out.

  By twenty to five I’d been fed lemonade and biscuits twice, and the girl on the till – who looked about Matty’s age – was beginning to look as bored as Matty does when I’ve been chattering away to him for ages. Lizzie was starting to look edgy as she eyed her watch.

  ‘I’ve got to be somewhere else at five o’clock, Esmie,’ she said eventually. ‘How are you getting back home?’

  ‘I’ll catch the bus,’ I said. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Just to an a
ppointment.’

  ‘With who?’ I asked her, all innocent-like.

  ‘Oh . . . it’s just a . . . a sort of doctor’s appointment,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Really?’ I knew that was a complete lie and that made me feel crosser – and braver. ‘So what’s wrong with you then?’ I snapped.

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that, Esmie!’ Lizzie said, frowning.

  I flushed then, because Lizzie had never told me off like that before, sort of like she was my parent. It made me feel even more like she could be my mother. And I realized then that, despite everything, that was still what I really wanted her to be.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Lizzie added more calmly. ‘I’m not ill or anything.’

  I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I felt like I might be going to cry.

  We walked to the bus station together in silence.

  ‘Esmie, is something wrong?’ Lizzie asked me when we were almost there, but I just shook my head and told her I was off to catch the bus home now and I’d see her later.

  After we parted, I watched to see where she went. When I saw her join a queue of people waiting at an empty bus stand across the other side of the station, I quickly slipped off to the toilets to put on my wig, my dark glasses and my woolly hat. I had a mackintosh rolled up in my bag – also courtesy of Holly’s gran – and I slipped that on over my school clothes. By the time I got back, Lizzie’s bus had pulled in and the last people in the queue were boarding it. I couldn’t see Lizzie so I guessed she must have already got on.

  ‘What’s this? Fancy dress?’ the bus driver grunted at me as I handed him my fare.

  I kept my head down and didn’t reply.

  I was lucky. Lizzie was sitting quite near the front of the bus but she wasn’t looking at any of the other passengers. She seemed to be lost in thought as she stared out of the window. I walked right past her and was able to sit a short way behind her, in an aisle seat, which meant I could easily jump up and follow her when she got off.

  The bus took us across town and on to the ring road, past the cemetery where my mother’s grave is. Ten minutes later, as we turned off into a more residential area, Lizzie stood up to get off. Several other people got off at that stop too, which was also lucky because it meant it was easy for me to hide behind them.