She says she likes it because for once in your life, you actually look happy.
Sodding Luke, she thought, what bollocks. There were hundreds of photographs of her looking happy – thousands of her and Lennie together over the years, the love shining off her face so visibly you could almost feel it with your hand, like heat. What struck her now was that her mum had kept the photo, especially given how much she must have despaired over the bar-wench boobs – in fact, Robin remembered her going on about it at the time and, as a result, of course, her being determined to wear the top all the more, a piece of bolshiness she was now repenting at leisure. Weird, though – had her mum actually been happy for her then? To the extent that she’d wanted to remember it?
Puzzling, she finished her wine and put her head round the kitchen door to say goodnight. Lennie was leaning against the counter by the oven, Austin at ninety degrees to her against the counter by the sink, his massive trainers almost the length of one of the 12 x 12 floor tiles.
‘Thanks for bringing Len back again.’
‘No problem. Any time.’
‘Lennie, call Austin a cab when you’re ready, won’t you, it’s too late to walk. We’ve got an account with the firm down the road,’ she told him, ‘they’ve got my card details.’
She went upstairs to brush her teeth and a few minutes later – call her the queen of subtext – she heard their voices move up the corridor. The front door opened, there was a bit more chat and then – she couldn’t help it, she’d abandoned all pretence now and was listening so hard bats would be jealous – a twenty-second silence. He’d kissed her – or she’d kissed him. Ha!
‘See you later,’ she heard him say gently, then equally gentle, but full of smile, Lennie’s, ‘Yeah.’
The door closed and Robin heard his footsteps on the pavement outside her window. She waited, still listening hard, imagining Len looking at herself in the hall mirror, grinning. Had she kissed anyone before or was that the first time? She remembered herself at the same age and shuddered. Her poor mother; she’d led her a merry dance.
Downstairs Lennie went back to the kitchen and put the mugs in the dishwasher. Robin wondered whether she should go and help lock up then thought perhaps Len would like to be alone with her thoughts for a moment; she would, in the situation.
Two minutes later, though, Lennie ran up the stairs and appeared at her bedroom door. Yes, he’d definitely kissed her – she was flushed, her eyes shining. Robin kept her expression as neutral as possible. ‘Austin go off all right?’
‘Yeah.’ She came to sit on the edge of the bed and Robin moved her legs to make room. ‘Mum, I’m sorry for shouting earlier.’
‘Don’t worry about it, you were right.’
‘No, I felt bad afterwards. I know you’ve got a lot going on.’
‘That doesn’t make it okay for you to wake up here alone this morning. I’m really sorry, and you’re right, you should have come with me. Durham’s really pretty, quite Harry Potterish – you’d like it.’
‘I think some of Harry Potter was actually filmed there. Did it help, though? The woman you went to talk to?’
‘I don’t know. Three hours ago, I would have said yes but I’m not sure any more. But we’re making some progress. Keep this to yourself, obviously—’
‘Obviously.’
‘Sorry, paranoia. Anyway, we know now that we’re looking for two people, not one. The Gisborne Girl and Lara Meikle had different killers.’
Lennie frowned. ‘Is that better or worse?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, it means no serial killer – good – but now you’ve got to catch two people, haven’t you?’
Robin started laughing, she couldn’t help it, then Lennie started, and they laughed until they were hysterical, eyes streaming.
‘So ridiculous,’ Robin said, when she was able to. ‘Now we’ve got to catch two people.’
Lennie laughed, wiped her eyes then fell backwards on to the bed. ‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely true.’ She paused. ‘Do you want to sleep in here tonight?’
‘Can I?’
‘Why not? Go and put your PJs on and get in.’
Chapter Thirty-three
‘Sod the Daily Herald,’ Robin said, putting her menu down. ‘I actually am going to have salmon today. What about you? French toast and orange juice?’
‘However did you guess?’
Since they’d moved to Mary Street, The Plough on Harborne High Street had become their favourite place for brunch, but they hadn’t been for a month or so – things had been hectic even before the past week, and Len had been spending a lot of time at the Appiahs’. Robin wondered how Asha felt about her and Austin; it must be strange to know something was going on between your brother and one of your best friends. Something she’d never had to worry about, at least.
She looked across the table and thought for the millionth time how proud she was of her daughter. Her daughter – almost sixteen years later, the phrase still amazed her. It was a source of actual wonderment that she’d had a hand in the production of someone so excellent. Lennie was so sorted. And self-contained. Last night, after they’d turned off the light, she’d wondered if she would tell her about the kiss or at least allude to it – she’d been terrible for that, when she was a teenager, wanting to hug things to herself but unable to refrain from incontinently broadcasting hints as subtle as wrecking balls. Lennie, though evidently excited, hadn’t breathed a word. Robin respected her for that, even if she was also a bit disappointed.
Len had been in the shower before they came out, and her hair and the tangle of friendship bracelets she never took off were still slightly damp. She was definitely wearing mascara and also some grey eyeliner. Her T-shirt had been an eBay find and she’d declared it perfect when she opened the package, the light-blue material super-soft, the transferred image of California palms crackled and peeling. ‘Just the right kind of worn-out, like it’s had this cool previous life of, like, surfing in Malibu?’ Amazing, Robin had thought – had she even heard of Malibu at fifteen?
‘You know,’ she said, ‘thinking of Durham, we should go there and take a look around when it comes time to choose universities.’
‘Okay,’ Lennie nodded. She plucked a pack of sugar from the bowl and began folding it, a habit she’d had since she was five. ‘I think I want to go to uni in London, though.’
‘Really?’
‘I mean, I grew up there, and you went to UCL …’
‘Yes, it was what I’d always wanted, too.’ She suppressed a pang of anxiety about St Saviour’s set-up for university applications. She’d gone to the grammar school, KES, a well-known conduit to the best universities; Savvy’s she wasn’t sure about. She considered taking the opportunity to suggest – again – that Len apply to the grammar for sixth form then thought better of it. They were having a nice morning; why ruin it? Len had become quite militant recently on the subjects of elitism and privilege; she even complained that Robin had sent her to private school in London, though she’d loved it at the time.
‘Any idea what subject you’d do?’
‘Not really. English, maybe, or sociology.’ She paused. ‘Austin’ll be doing his applications in the autumn.’
‘What’s he going to apply for?’
‘Politics and/or economics.’
‘Good for him. In London?’
Lennie shrugged, avoiding eye contact. ‘Maybe.’
Robin nodded. Looking at her, so grown-up, she was reminded of what Malia had said yesterday about fifteen-year-olds and the wherewithal to up sticks overseas. Could Lennie do it? Alone? She was probably practical enough bodily to get overseas somehow but long-term, and financially, Robin couldn’t see it. And though she could pass for eighteen in certain lights, a student taking a gap year, people would question it, even with the eye make-up and the artfully distressed surfer get-up. What had Miriam been wearing when she disappeared? A striped woollen dres
s and leggings, no doubt approved by her in-house woman-censoring moral standards unit. She’d probably looked about twelve.
Two wires connected in Robin’s head – she actually jolted. The Gisborne Girl’s clothes – her whole appearance. Yes, the clothes had been vaguely modern, jeans and a T-shirt, sneakers, but they’d also been completely modest, almost unisex – her jeans hadn’t been figure-hugging skinny; the white T-shirt was standard issue with a high round neck, nothing like her own bodacious number in that wretched photograph. No jewellery, though that could have been stolen. But no make-up, and her ears weren’t pierced. It was 2019 – what eighteen or twenty-year-old didn’t have their ears pierced?
Had the Gisborne Girl been living in the same religious set-up as Miriam?
Her hand itched to text Malia, she actually made a fist in her lap to stop herself reaching for her phone. She’d promised herself she’d give Lennie her undivided attention this morning.
Nevertheless, her brain was flooding with thoughts and ideas – on a scan, it would be flushed with colour, swathes of green and red and blue all madly pulsating. Say the Gisborne Girl had grown up in the same sort of environment – what would that mean? That she’d been raised by Miriam to adulthood? That there was a pod of these people elsewhere? Had they helped Miriam when she got pregnant, spirited her away? But no – surely they would have censured her, wouldn’t they, this fifteen-year-old scarlet woman, lurer of poor innocent men from the path of righteousness? And her parents had been devastated, there seemed little doubt about that; they couldn’t have known.
Their waiter delivered Lennie’s orange juice and her cappuccino. Robin took a sip too soon and burnt her tongue.
‘Steady there, Eddie.’ An inch from her hand on the tabletop, Lennie’s phone lit up. ‘Asha,’ she said, glancing at it, then, ‘Oh my God.’ Her face was a picture of horror.
‘What? What’s happened?’
She looked up, eyes huge. ‘Austin got beaten up last night. On his way home.’ She burst into tears.
They had their food wrapped up and took it with them. ‘It’s okay, Mum,’ Len tried to argue, ‘we don’t have to leave. Your coffee, and—’
‘Lovely, we’re not going to sit here and pretend everything’s fine. Come on.’ She over-tipped to compensate for the drama then led Lennie through the gawping flock of people waiting for a table.
‘It’s my fault,’ Lennie said in the car, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘It’s my fault.’
‘How on earth’s it your fault?’
‘You told me to call him a cab but he said he wanted to walk. You said it was too late. I tried to make him but I didn’t try hard enough and now look.’
‘That’s not your fault, it’s mine,’ Robin said, stomach sinking. ‘I shouldn’t have left it to you. I wanted to give the pair of you a bit of autonomy and I didn’t want to look like I was throwing Austin out, but I should have just called them myself.’
At Mary Street, they sat on the sofa and Len rang Asha. Austin was at home now, she told her, but overnight he and their dad had spent five hours in A&E, where he’d had stitches for a long cut on his cheekbone. He was concussed, his nose was broken, and the first doctor they’d seen had been worried about internal injuries. Thankfully, in the end, it turned out to be deep bruising, though an X-ray showed that his bottom left rib was cracked. He was sleeping now, dosed up on painkillers.
Robin listened to Asha’s tinny voice and longed to grab the phone and demand a detailed description of the assailants and a blow-by-blow account of how it had happened, whether Austin had been able to make out any names, any accents, which direction they’d run in. ‘Ask if they’ve reported it,’ she whispered. ‘It’s assault – it needs to be prosecuted.’
Lennie put her hand over the mouthpiece, slightly impatient. ‘They have, Mum – they did it last night.’
When she hung up, she filled in the details Robin hadn’t heard. Austin had been three roads from home, apparently, when he’d run into three youths who’d muttered something about his T-shirt then laughed. ‘He was wearing his Black Lives Matter shirt,’ Lennie said. ‘Austin told his dad he knew he shouldn’t react but he couldn’t stop himself – he’d been in a good mood, happy, and why should they be allowed to ruin that without any comeback?’
He’d turned and asked them what they’d said and from there, it sounded like, things had escalated quickly, to the point where they’d had Austin on the ground and one of them had booted him in the solar plexus, which was when, thank God, a car came round the corner and they took off. ‘Laughing,’ said Lennie. ‘Ash said they were laughing as they ran away.’ The driver had stopped and helped Austin up, called his parents.
‘Why are people like this, Mum?’ Lennie asked. ‘So … full of hate?
‘I don’t know, lovely,’ she said, cuddling her. ‘Because they feel threatened. Because they need someone to feel better than because they don’t have much going for themselves.’
‘But it’s so bad – it’s like it’s getting worse and worse. Brexit and Trump and everyone just feeling like they can say and do whatever they want and all this stuff – like, a seventeen-year-old can’t even walk home without getting beaten up for being black? And that poor man who was stabbed to actual death.’
‘I know.’ She smoothed her hair. ‘I know.’
She remembered the comments she’d read on For Queen and Country, that seething pool of bile. Go outside your front door, she thought, and – most of the time – the net of common decency and shared humanity more or less held. It was there, though, the bile, bubbling away millimetres beneath it and rising all the time.
Chapter Thirty-four
When the email arrived on Monday morning – half an hour after she’d been told to expect it, half an hour during which she’d hit refresh at least fifteen times – she stood up and paced the patch of carpet in front of her desk. Then she reached for the phone. ‘Have you got a minute?’
Samir looked up from his computer as she shut the door behind her. ‘Hi.’
‘News,’ she said.
‘Good morning to you as well. How was your weekend? Mine was good, thanks.’ He smiled. ‘Go on then.’
‘The Gisborne Girl is the daughter of another girl called Miriam Chapman who disappeared in Northumbria in December 1999 aged fifteen.’
‘You’ve got an ID?’
‘That’s it, though, we haven’t. Not beyond that.’
A quizzical look. ‘Care to elaborate?’
She told him about Maggie and her own mission to see Jude on Saturday. ‘I fast-tracked a cheek swab, and I’ve just had the analysis – close familial link, consistent with Jude being our victim’s aunt, ergo, her sister being the Gisborne Girl’s mother.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Nice work. And nice work Maggie – we owe her a drink.’
‘Big time. I can add it to the twenty thousand drinks I already owe her.’
‘Going to be quite a bar bill. So where are you going from here?’
‘Well …’ She told him the theory she’d raised with her core team on Saturday afternoon. ‘They were pretty sceptical, too,’ she admitted, seeing his expression, ‘and I can see why – as Varan said, there’d have to be something major going on for someone to kill their own child. I started thinking maybe I was just conjuring stuff out of thin air but yesterday I made a different connection.’
‘Which was?’
‘The Gisborne Girl’s clothes, her whole look – it was so plain, we’d actually discussed whether she was in hiding, trying to stay incognito. But now I wonder if she grew up in the same kind of religious environment as Miriam. Yesterday afternoon, I did a bit more research.’
It had taken Len quite a while to calm down enough to eat but then they’d warmed up their food and watched The Devil Wears Prada, Lennie’s choice. It was one of Robin’s father’s favourites, and she’d watched it with him so many times, Len knew most of the dialogue by heart. Those memories were probably as comforting to her as the film
itself, Robin thought: one of the best things about moving back to Birmingham – especially living at Dunnington Road – was that Lennie had really got to know her grandparents. They’d become very close, the three of them, but part of Lennie – the fatherless part – responded especially to Dennis. He was a substitute dad to her now, a dad-once-removed.
After the film, Robin rang him for a progress report. ‘I’m about to go over there,’ he’d said. ‘She told me not to go this morning, said I looked tired and needed a rest.’
‘Can I go with him?’ Lennie said.
He’d heard her. ‘Of course you can, sweetheart. Great. How about you, Robin? I could come and pick you both up?’
‘I was thinking of going later,’ she said. ‘Around four. There’s a few things I need to get done, domestic stuff. The house is falling apart.’
‘Right you are. I’ll be round to pick up my Lennie in about twenty minutes, then.’
When she’d waved them off, she’d quickly emptied the laundry baskets, put a wash on and unloaded the dishwasher – there you go, she thought; a veritable domestic Goddess – then got out her laptop and the list of names Jude had connected to the Chapmans’ church group, seven families in total plus their leader, Brother Philip.
Google found three of the families easily. Two of them were still in Whitley Bay and the third, the Jessops, were in Houghton-le-Spring, south of Newcastle. The next one was more of an effort – their surname was Harris – but based on a triangulation of their children’s names, she was fairly confident she’d located them in Chester. They had an asterisk on the list as the family who’d moved away not long after Miriam disappeared.
The other three families were a dead loss. The Evanses and Browns she hadn’t been optimistic about to start with, especially as the Browns had moved away later. The Purkiss family – Jane, Jude had thought her name was, and Graeme or Graham, son David – she’d had some hope for, but five different searches had turned up nothing conclusive.
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