by Anne Cassidy
‘But your friend?’
‘I don’t know what you mean …’
‘Come, see …’
Zofia pulled her by the hand into the kitchen. The small television on the side was on the twenty-four-hour news channel. Zofia manoeuvred Petra until she was sitting down.
‘I’ll get a towel,’ she said. ‘You watch the news.’
The newscaster was talking about a war in a Middle Eastern country but Petra was watching the rolling news across the bottom of the screen. The words ‘Two twelve-year-old girls missing in North London’ made her sit up. Zofia came back in with a large orange towel. She put it round Petra’s shoulders.
‘You see. Is on the news. Two girls go missing. You and friend. The pictures will come up in a minute.’
Just then the newsreader moved on.
‘The whereabouts of two twelve-year-old friends in Holloway, North London, is giving cause for concern. The girls, Christine Pointer and Petra Armstrong, are friends and had been spending time together over the holidays. They were last seen about five thirty this evening by another girl outside a newsagent’s on Princess Street. The police have sent out an alert and are actively searching for the girls.’
Two photographs filled the screen. They were the school photographs taken some weeks before. Headshots of Petra and Tina.
‘I don’t understand. Where is Tina?’ Petra said.
Zofia was sitting on a chair beside her.
‘Where have you been? I must ring your father.’
‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to see him ever. Never …’
Petra turned and hugged Zofia. She buried her face into Zofia’s neck, and gripped her arms tightly. She held onto Zofia, wishing she could stay like that for ever. Zofia patted her head and tried to pull away.
‘Tell me what has happened. Tell me now. Start from beginning.’
Petra sat back and began to tell Zofia what had happened.
‘You will sleep in my bed. I have a sleeping bag,’ Zofia said.
It was past midnight. Petra had stopped crying a while ago. Zofia had listened to her story with dismay and shock and anger. They had turned the television off and Zofia had said they should go to bed and that they would work out what to do in the morning. The police had not been mentioned. Zofia’s face had settled into a grave look. She was walking round in her slippers and looked tiny. Her bags were packed and stacked round the room, ready for her to go back to Poland. Petra looked at them and felt a sharp pain. Soon she would be gone.
‘I won’t be able to go to sleep,’ Petra said.
Zofia reached into one of the boxes. She pulled out a DVD. It was series five of Friends: the one where Monica and Chandler get together and try to keep it a secret from the others.
‘We’ll watch some,’ she said.
Zofia slipped the disc into the player, picked her sleeping bag up off the floor and laid it on the top of the bed alongside Petra. She kicked her slippers off and sat on top. Petra felt her close, her perfume heavy. She glanced at the screen, at Chandler and Monica, and then back to Zofia whose face sagged with worry.
After a while of watching the programme Petra drifted off to sleep.
Twenty-Seven
When Petra woke it was light; past nine o’clock.
Zofia was not in the room and her sleeping bag had been moved from the bed. Petra sat up quickly and looked around. Even though she’d slept for a long time, her head felt heavy, her eyes still swollen from the crying she’d done. The memory of the previous night came back to her like a door opening onto a cold place. She felt a quickening at her throat and threw the duvet back, looking for her clothes. She remembered the long talk she and Zofia had had the night before. Zofia had been upset at first but became calm as time went on. As they lay on the bed watching Friends, the noise of the front door opening and shutting had sounded and Zofia had said, ‘It’s OK, some people having a late night.’
Even though the people who lived in Zofia’s house changed from week to week, Zofia knew them all. ‘He plays music at two in the morning. She leaves dishes in sink. She never learnt to wash out bath when finished!’ But Zofia seemed friendly enough with them. Would any of them know who Petra was? Would they watch the news and say, ‘I recognise that girl’?
She’d worried about this for a while but then drifted in and out of sleep. Each time she opened her eyes Zofia seemed to be awake. She’d been sitting bolt upright on the bed beside her, staring into the dark. Hours later she’d seen her standing over by the window holding one of the curtains to the side and looking out. Early in the morning when it was still dark and the clock showed 5.59, Zofia was sitting on the side of the bed, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. Each time Petra had wanted to say something, to reach out and comfort her, but she felt the pull of sleep, her eyes like weights, her limbs slumping, her thoughts tumbling into darkness.
Now she pulled on her clothes and was doing up her trainers when Zofia walked in. She was carrying a mug of tea and a plate of toast and jam. She smiled when she saw Petra and placed the hot things on the bedside cabinet.
‘You have a drink and you eat and then later we talk about what to do.’
Zofia was dressed and looked strange. She had on black trousers and a white blouse. She was wearing her usual heels and her hair was pulled up in a sombre back clip. Petra looked at her hand as she gave her the mug of tea. Her nails were plain and short. Had they been like that last night? She couldn’t remember. This was a different Zofia. She looked serious, stern even, as though she might be on the brink of giving Petra a telling off.
‘I have to go and see my friend with van who is taking me to Poland. I have to give him money by today. He lives a few streets away. When I come back we will talk and decide what we can do. You eat, drink. You can have a shower. Just don’t let anyone in the house see you. OK?’
Petra nodded. Zofia stood by the door, looking as though there was something else she wanted to say.
‘I will see you soon,’ she said.
She closed the door quietly behind her.
Petra didn’t like being alone there. She went over to the window that looked out onto the street. She saw Zofia walking along, pulling her coat tightly round her.
She put the television on and turned to the news channel. The mug of tea and plate of toast sat untouched as she watched. The story had changed. The police had gone into number fifty-three Princess Street and found Mr Merchant’s body. Mandy must have told them that they’d gone into the house. The words ‘Breaking news’ were flashing and the details were scrolling past. ‘Sources suggest that the two missing girls, Christine Pointer and Petra Armstrong, had entered the house of George Merchant, a retired accountant. On gaining access to this property police found the body of an elderly man thought to be Mr Merchant. There was no sign of the two girls. A news conference is due shortly, where the parents of the girls will make an appeal to the public.’
Petra sat stiffly, her back straight, her neck rigid. There were other items of news but after a few moments the press conference came on. There was a table covered in microphones. A lot of background noise could be heard and then a police officer sat down in one of the chairs. The camera pulled away to show three people taking seats. Petra saw Alison, Tina’s mum, and beside her was Bobby, Tina’s dad. Then she saw her dad, sitting behind one of the microphones, smoothing his hair down. She looked intently at the screen, ignoring the comments of the police officer who was talking to the press. She focused on him. He was wearing a shirt and tie and a jacket. He looked smart. She wondered if he’d ironed it himself that morning. She could see he was uneasy because his gaze kept shifting around the room and he was fiddling with his tie. Alison and Bobby Pointer were leaning in towards each other.
Alison spoke to the camera.
‘Tina and Petra? We want you both to know we don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. If you ran away or went somewhere that you weren’t allowed to go we won’t be angry with you. We
just want you to come home. We love you and we want to see you.’
Her dad had taken a piece of paper out of his inside jacket pocket. He unfolded it as flashlights went off. Then he read.
‘Petra and Tina, we are worried about you both. Please come home. If you can’t come home please get in touch with us so that we know you are safe. Or if anyone has seen our girls please get in touch with the police –’
Alison broke in.
‘Tina, we won’t be mad at you. You are not in trouble. Just come home please.’
She was crying and Bobby was comforting her. Petra’s dad was looking round at them and Petra couldn’t see his face. Then he turned back to the camera. He had a grim expression and his jaw was twitching with tension. He looked up at one of the cameras and she seemed to catch his eye for a moment.
You killed a man, she thought. I know that you didn’t care and you did it for the money.
Petra turned the television off. She looked at the bedside clock. It was almost ten. She wondered how long Zofia would be. She was going to see the man with the van about the trip to Poland. She was due to go in two days. Could Petra get her to change her mind and stay? Maybe then she could go to the police and tell them what she’d seen. If her dad was arrested then she could stay with Zofia. But even as she thought this she knew it wouldn’t happen. She wouldn’t be allowed to stay with Zofia. She would be picked up by Pam Fellows and taken to some nice foster family miles away. There would be a new school, the attempt to make new friends. And all the while everyone would know that her dad was a murderer.
And where was Tina? Where was Tina?
Could she even tell the police? As much as she was revolted by what her dad did, could she see him sent to prison for many years, even if it was what he deserved? Could she be responsible for that?
She thought of Mr Merchant lying on the floor of his room, dead. It made her squirm and pull her knees up so that she was sitting in a ball. At least Tina hadn’t seen her dad do such a thing. She remembered the two of them rehearsing for The Red Roses: standing side by side in front of a long mirror, like sisters. Blood sisters. Poor Tina had been frightened and run out of the house. Could it be, in those moments, on the street, someone had picked her up in a car? Someone she knew? A stranger? Was she trapped in someone’s house at that very minute? At the same time as the appeals were going on, the house-to-house searches, was Tina stuck in a room wondering what was happening to her?
Petra was crying again.
Where was Zofia? She uncurled herself and walked across to the window. A police car drove past. Seeing it made her stand back sharply, as if she might be seen from there and recognised. But it was just a squad car patrolling the streets. It wasn’t there for her.
When was Zofia coming back?
She sat down on the bed. Zofia had been shocked at what she’d told her but she’d had an expression on her face as if to say, I knew it would happen! As if she alone understood what her dad was capable of. He’d hurt her a couple of weeks before and maybe even before that too. Possibly Zofia would like to see him in prison. Perhaps that’s where she’d gone now, to the police. She might at this very moment be informing them about what had happened and in a moment that very same squad car that she’d just seen would double back and park outside the house and two officers would come for her.
She couldn’t help what Zofia was going to do or not but she couldn’t get picked up by the police. She didn’t know if she could stand and point her finger at her own dad even though she was appalled by him. If the police came then it was important that she should not be there.
She grabbed her jacket and put it on. She opened the door slightly to make sure that no one else in the house was around. She went out onto the landing and then swiftly down the stairs. She opened the front door and walked out into the street. She pulled her coat tight and had her collar up, tucking her hair away to try to look different from the school photo that was on the television. She started walking away from Zofia’s house when she heard someone call.
‘Wait, wait …’
She looked round and saw Zofia coming up the street. She had a carrier bag over one arm. There was no one with her. She seemed to break into a trot and rushed up to Petra. She grabbed both her arms and looked at her with concern. The carrier bag swung to and fro. Petra felt guilty. She was becoming a huge burden on her. She didn’t want that. The one person she didn’t want to hurt was Zofia.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I thought … I thought you might go to the police …’
Zofia shook her head.
‘But you are going back to Poland.’
Zofia nodded.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Petra said hopelessly.
‘Come inside. Let’s talk.’
Petra sat on the bed but Zofia stayed standing. She kept her coat on and it looked as though she was going to make a speech. Petra wished she’d sit down beside her, link her arm or hold her hand.
‘This is what I think you should do,’ Zofia said. ‘You should go to police. Tell them everything. Talk to the social lady. She will find you a good family. You live with them until you are eighteen.’
Petra shook her head furiously.
‘I can’t tell the police about my dad! I just can’t!’
‘After you are eighteen you could come and see me in Poland.’
‘No, no …’
‘This is difficult situation.’
Just then the front door sounded. It closed with a bang which meant someone from one of the other rooms had probably gone out.
‘And we have this problem that someone will see you and know who you are.’
‘I could live with you,’ Petra whispered.
Zofia shook her head. ‘I could go to prison for this. Police are looking for you.’
‘You care about me. I know you do. I care about you.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t. I have to think …’
She finally sat down on the bed beside her. Petra took her hand. It was hot, fiery. She traced the line of her nails and leant her head against Zofia’s shoulder. Zofia reached down to pick up the carrier bag. She pulled out a box of black hair dye. Petra looked at it.
‘We need to make you look different.’
‘OK. I’ll use this.’
‘Not just this. We need to cut …’
Zofia got up and went across to her suitcase. She undid the zip a few centimetres and pulled out a large cosmetics bag. She took out a pair of scissors and walked towards the bed. Petra didn’t care about her hair. She just wanted to stay with Zofia.
Twenty-Eight
On Friday, just after seven, Petra put on the new coat that Zofia had gone out and bought for her that day. She looked at herself in the mirror. She had short black hair and looked very different: a bit younger perhaps and stern. They were getting ready to go out. Zofia had given her instructions. ‘I leave the house first. You follow me one minute later. We walk separately. Marya’s flat only five minutes away.’
Zofia made sure no one was about when she slipped downstairs. She went out of the front door and then Petra counted to sixty and followed her. She could see her further up the street. She walked with her head down and wondered why they were going to Marya’s. Zofia said she had to pick up some things to take to Poland but Petra didn’t think this would be uppermost in Zofia’s mind right now. Since their talk earlier in the day, since the hair makeover, they’d not said anything about the situation. Zofia had gone out shopping then continued packing up her stuff: four suitcases and two holdalls. Petra had watched her with apprehension. Every jumper or pair of socks she packed, every pair of spikey heels she forced down the side of the suitcase, seemed ominous. Soon she would be gone and Petra would be on her own. She wanted to say something to raise the subject again but Zofia was preoccupied, her chin pointed down to the ground, her nails unadorned, her hands busy.