by Penny Jordan
They had almost reached their own cottage when Lucy suddenly asked, ‘Can Heather come and live with us, Mummy instead of with Mrs Roberts?’
Sighing faintly, Claire shook her head. ‘Heather’s daddy would be lonely if she came to live with us,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘Just as I’d be lonely if you went away from me.’
‘But Heather’s daddy is always away, and she doesn’t like Mrs Roberts. She didn’t like her mummy either; she was always cross and smacking her.
Claire was too aware of how Jay Fraser would react if he ever learned that his daughter had been passing on these confidences to encourage Lucy to say any more. His comments to her on the one occasion on which they had met still stung.
She hated the thought that other people besides himself might consider that she was on the lookout for a husband. A man in her life was the last thing she wanted, especially a man with the legal right to share her bed and her body. She felt herself tense, the familiar sense of nausea sweeping through her.
After she had had her tea, Lucy asked if she could go and play in the garden. Claire agreed readily enough; Lucy knew that she was not allowed to go outside its perimeters.
Mrs Vickers had commented to her earlier in the day that soon it would be autumn. She had remarked on the likelihood of autumn gales and the damage they might do to the cottage roofs. Her cottage, like Claire’s badly needed reroofing, but unlike Claire it seemed that she had enough money put on one side to cover this expense. She had mentioned a sum that had frankly appalled Claire, who had not realised that the age of the cottages and their country setting meant that they had to be re-roofed in the same traditional hand-made tiles as had been originally used.
She hadn’t realised how long she had been sitting worrying about the roof until she heard the church clock chiming seven. She went to the back door and called Lucy, frowning slightly as she scanned the garden and realised there was no sign of her daughter.
She was just wondering if Lucy could possibly have slipped round to see Mrs Vickers, when she suddenly appeared.
The guilty look on her face was enough to alert Claire’s maternal instincts. It was her private and most dreaded fear that the same thing that had happened to her might happen to Lucy, and it was because of this nightmare dread that she was so strict about not permitting her to stray outside the garden. Now, however, the guilt in her daughter’s eyes made her hesitate before getting angry with her. Her ‘Where have you been?’ brought a pink flush to Lucy’s face.
‘I went for a walk…’
‘Lucy, you know I’ve told you never to go out of the garden without me. Come on now, it’s bedtime.’ How on earth could one describe to a six-year-old the perils that lurked behind the smiling mask of friendly strangers?
‘Don’t be cross, Mummy.’ An engaging smile, and a small hand tucked in hers, made her sigh and decide that her lecture would have to await a more propitious occasion.
It was only when she was making Lucy’s supper that she noticed that her cake-tin was almost empty. She frowned slightly. She had never forbidden Lucy to help herself to food if she wanted it, but neither had she encouraged her. Lucy was not a greedy child, and rarely asked for food between meals, but she could have sworn that that cake-tin had held far more home-made buns last night than it did now.
* * *
NORMALLY HEATHER WAS waiting for them outside the school gates, but this morning there was no sign of her, and Claire couldn’t help feeling concerned. Was the little girl ill? Heather wasn’t her responsibility, she reminded herself, and neither her father nor Mrs Roberts would thank her for interfering, and yet she knew that if Jay Fraser’s reaction to her had been different she would have called at the house on her way home and checked to see if Heather was all right.
She knew that Heather was perhaps becoming too attached to her, needing a mother substitute, and while she had scrupulously tried to avoid encouraging the little girl to depend on her in any way at all, she knew that she herself was growing very attached to her. Heather wasn’t her child in the way that Lucy was, but there was something vulnerable in Heather that cried out for love and attention.
Several times during the morning she found herself worrying about her, remembering her wan little face. Heather was frightened of Mrs Roberts, and while she didn’t think the housekeeper would go as far as to physically maltreat the child, there were other ways of inflicting pain and fear on children.
She had almost decided that after lunch she would call round at Whitegates and brave Jay Fraser’s wrath if he found out, when she heard her doorbell ring.
The sight of Jay Fraser standing on her doorstep, flanked by the village constable and a young woman in police uniform, was so shockingly unexpected that she was robbed of breath.
It was the policewoman who spoke first.
‘Mrs Richards. I wonder if we could come in for a moment.’
Conscious of the curiosity of her neighbours, Claire hurriedly agreed. Her small sitting-room had never seemed more cramped. The local policeman, although not as tall as Jay Fraser, was still quite large. He was an older man, married with two grown-up sons, and he seemed pleasant. Now however, he looked worryingly grave, and Jay Fraser, who had refused her offer of a seat, looked almost ill. The tan she had noticed on his first visit now seemed a dirty yellow colour. His immaculate white shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, his tie askew, and his hair ruffled.
‘Mrs Richards, I believe your little girl is very friendly with Mr Fraser’s daughter.’
A terrible sense of foreboding overcame her.
‘Yes, yes, she is, she agreed in a husky voice. ‘They’re…they’re best friends.’
All that she constantly dreaded for her own daughter suddenly filled her mind, and it was as though Heather was actually her own child. She sank down into a chair, her body trembling.
‘Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it?’
Sergeant Holmes grimaced slightly. ‘We’re hoping not, Mrs Richards. We do know, however, that she’s disappeared. Mr Fraser’s housekeeper reported it to us late last evening.’
‘Late last evening?’
‘Yes, after the little girl didn’t come home from school.’ The sergeant frowned, and looked across at Jay Fraser. ‘It’s probably none of my business, sir, but that’s quite a lonely walk home for a six-year-old…’
‘Mrs Roberts had strict instructions to take Heather to and from school,’ Jay said tightly.
In that instant Claire felt for him, truly understanding how he must be feeling. No doubt he had given the housekeeper her instructions, never imagining that they would be disobeyed. More out of compassion for him than anything else Claire said huskily,
‘I…I…used to walk home with her. I didn’t like the thought of her walking alone. It wasn’t far out of our way…’
Instantly the sergeant’s frown disappeared, and he said eagerly, ‘And did you walk back with her yesterday, Mrs Richards?’
‘Why, yes. I always walked her to the gate and saw her safely inside. I…’
She heard the sound that Jay Fraser made and felt her own throat muscles lock in a mingling of pity and fear.
‘Then you must have been the last person to see her.’ The sergeant frowned. ‘Mrs Roberts says that she didn’t come home from school last night.’
And the woman had waited how long to report that she was missing? Inadvertently Claire looked across at Jay and saw the same emotions she was feeling reflected in his eyes.
‘Mmm. I was wondering if we could talk to your little girl, Mrs Richards. Children sometimes confide things to their friends that they don’t tell adults. We won’t say anything to frighten her,’ he added, correctly interpreting her expression.
‘She and Heather were very close,’ Claire admitted. She bit her lip and glanced apologetically at Jay. He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring down at the carpet, his face set and hard.
‘I don’t know if it’s important, but I know that Heather was…well, sh
e didn’t get on very well with Mrs Roberts.’
She caught Jay’s roughly expelled breath, and hurried on. ‘Of course it might not mean anything…and I’m not suggesting that Mrs Roberts was in any way unkind to her…but Heather is a very sensitive child.
‘And you think that perhaps she might have said something to upset the little girl? Children of that age get odd notions into their heads,’ the sergeant agreed. ‘I’ll never forget when our boy decided to leave home. All of five he was, and luckily a neighbour found him pedalling down the road on his trike.’
‘If Heather had walked off like that someone would have seen her,’ interrupted Jay roughly. ‘God—she’s only a baby…’His voice was full of anguish. ‘She’s been gone all night…nearly twenty-four hours!’
Claire felt for him, but she suspected that the last thing he would want would be her sympathy. He must be in hell right now, she thought compassionately. What parent wouldn’t be?
‘Have you informed her…her mother, sir?’ Sergeant Holmes asked.
Jay shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t want to know. I would have given her custody of Heather, but she didn’t want her.’ His back straightened, his face suddenly bitterly angry, as he read the expression in the policeman’s eyes. ‘I love my daughter very much, Sergeant,’ he told him curtly, ‘but that doesn’t stop me thinking that a little girl of Heather’s age needs her mother. I can’t be there all the time for her. God, when I think I deliberately looked for an older woman to look after her, thinking that she would be likely to be more responsible! I have to be away a great deal—there’s nothing I can do about it, at least not at the moment…’
‘No one’s blaming you, sir,’ Sergeant Holmes said quietly. ‘All of us here are parents, and we all know what kids are like. Half the time you just don’t know what’s going through their heads.’
‘If she was so frightened of Mrs Roberts, why didn’t she tell me? If anyone’s touched her… hurt her…’
He couldn’t put his fears into words, and Claire felt her body clench on a wave of nausea and pain. That was the way her father would have looked if he’d known…but he’d been dead then and she’d been alone… She sent up a mental prayer that somehow Heather would be safe. If she was, no matter what her father had to say about it Claire intended to give her as much love and attention as she wanted. She felt almost as much to blame as Jay. She had known that Heather was unhappy, but because of her pride and her determination not to give Jay the slightest cause to think she was trying to attract him, she had deliberately backed off. ‘I normally go and collect Lucy from school about now,’ she told the sergeant. ‘Do you want to come with me, or shall I…?’
‘It’s best if you go alone; we don’t want to frighten her. Try and act as naturally as possible with her, Mrs Richards. Children get some weird ideas in their heads. If she does know anything we don’t want to frighten her into keeping it to herself.’
The sergeant’s words made sense, but they were hard to put into practice. Claire could feel her voice turning croaky with anxiety as she casually asked if Heather was at school, already knowing what the answer would be.
Lucy shook her head. As Claire looked down at her she saw that her daughter was avoiding her eyes.
Did Lucy know something about Heather’s disappearance? Striving to seem calm, she said, ‘Oh dear, Heather’s daddy’s waiting for us at home. He thought Heather might be coming home with you.’
No reaction, but Claire felt the small hand tucked into hers clenching betrayingly.
She took Lucy into the kitchen and settled her with a glass of milk and a biscuit before going into her sitting-room.
‘I think she knows something,’ she told Sergeant Holmes worriedly.
‘Will you let me talk to her?’ he asked. ‘I promise I won’t frighten her.’
Knowing what was at stake Claire could hardly refuse. She took the two police officers into the kitchen and made sure that Lucy knew who they were before leaving her with them. She sensed that the sergeant was more likely to learn something if she was not hovering anxiously at his side.
As she opened the sitting-room door she saw that Jay Fraser had slumped down into one of her chairs, his head in his hands. He looked up as she walked in, and she saw the dread and the pain in his eyes.
‘I pray to God that we can find her.’
Instinctively she placed her hand over his, shocked to feel its fierce tremble. ‘I’m sure Lucy knows something…she looked so guilty. Perhaps Heather’s…’ she broke off, his eyes widening as she suddenly remembered Lucy’s disappearance and the missing cakes.
‘What is it?’
‘I think Heather might have run away,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Last night Lucy disobeyed me and left the garden…I found some cakes missing, I…’
Before she could say any more the sitting-room door opened and Sergeant Holmes appeared, holding a tearful Lucy in his arms.
‘I promised Heather I wouldn’t tell Mummy…’ her bottom lip wobbled. ‘She wanted to come and live with us, but you said she couldn’t and Mrs Roberts was very cross because she’d come here for her tea. Heather wanted her daddy, but he wasn’t there…’
Oh, the anguish of that innocent double indictment! Over the tousled brown curls, grey eyes met green, both of them mirroring their guilt and anguish.
‘It seems that Heather spent the night in one of the huts on the old allotments down by the railway,’ Sergeant Holmes informed them. ‘She made Lucy promise not to tell.’
‘Mrs Roberts smacked her,’ Lucy whimpered, ‘she made her cry…’
‘I was wondering, Mrs Richards—if WPC Ames here stays with Lucy, would you…’
Claire didn’t even think of refusing. After hugging and kissing her daughter and reassuring her that no one was cross with her, she was half way out of the door as Jay opened it.
It was less than half a mile to the allotments, but none of them spoke. All of them must surely be thinking of the terrors that could be inflicted on a small girl of six on her own.
As they reached the allotments, the Sergeant suggested softly, ‘I think you’d better be the one to go first, Mr Fraser. If she’s still there, we don’t want to frighten her.’
From the white look on Jay’s face, Claire knew that nothing on earth would have prevented him from going first. Hands clenched, her body tense with dread, she waited as he walked towards the tumbledown hut.
He opened the door and went inside. Claire held her breath, all sensation suspended as she prayed harder than she had ever done in her life before. It was illogical to feel this depth of emotion for someone else’s child, but she knew the horrors that could be inflicted on the innocent—oh, how she knew—and in that aeon of waiting there was an emotional bonding between her personal anguish and the fear she felt for Heather that coalesced in a wave of love so strong and intense that when Jay walked out of the hut, carrying his daughter in his arms, nothing on earth could have stopped her from stumbling across the distance that separated them to take the sobbing child in her arms.
Small arms clung to her, heaving sobs swelling the childish chest. Jay looked white and stunned—lost, almost.
‘She was frightened of me!’ Claire heard him say disbelievingly. ‘She was frightened…’
‘Let’s get her home now,’ Sergeant Holmes suggested, ‘time for questions later.’
As Jay leaned forward to take her from Claire, Heather clung to her, and wept piteously. ‘I want to go to Lucy’s house, Daddy. I don’t want to go home!’
Claire avoided looking at him. She could sense everything that he was feeling. If he had resented and disliked her before it must be nothing to what he was feeling now.
They took Heather back to the small cottage, a look of relief and guilt mingling on Lucy’s face as they walked in.
‘I think we should leave her with Mrs Richards for a few minutes, sir,’ Sergeant Holmes suggested to Jay.
Busy trying to soothe Heather’s tears, Claire was absently aware
of Jay stepping back from them and allowing the sergeant to take him into the kitchen.
It was a long time before Heather calmed down enough to be coherent, and the story she told left Claire shaking with rage and appalled by the enormity of what could have happened.
She took her upstairs and put her in the spare bed in Lucy’s room, knowing from experience that such an outburst would soon result in sleep. She was emotionally and physically drained, poor little mite, and even in sleep she clung to Claire’s hand, not wanting her to leave her.
She went down to the kitchen, where the sergeant was entertaining Lucy by reading her a story.
‘She ran away because she was frightened of Mrs Roberts,’ Claire told them tiredly. ‘It’s partly my fault.’ She looked at Jay Fraser and saw that his face was shuttered and remote. Who knew what he was thinking behind that iron mask? ‘She wanted to have tea with us the other day and I…I refused. I said she must ask Mrs Roberts’ permission. The next day she said she had; I didn’t check—I…’ She couldn’t look at Jay Fraser; surely he must know why she hadn’t felt able to speak to his housekeeper. ‘Apparently she hadn’t asked at all, and after I took her home that evening Mrs Roberts was very angry with her—the poor woman must have been out of her mind with fear when she didn’t turn up from school. Apparently she shut Heather up in her bedroom and told her she was going to tell her daddy what she had done. Mrs Roberts told Heather that her father would be very cross.’ Claire bit her lip, wondering if she ought to suppress the next bit, and then, deciding that she could not, ‘Apparently Mrs Roberts threatened to leave and told Heather that if she did, Heather would have to go into a home because neither her mummy nor her daddy wanted her.’ She heard the sound Jay made and steeled herself against it. ‘That’s why she ran away. She was frightened.’
‘I never knew!’ It was agony listening to the torment in his driven voice. ‘I trusted the woman. I thought she was reliable! I had no idea.’
‘It happens to the best of us, sir,’ said Sergeant Holmes gruffly. ‘Try not to blame yourself. I’ve known Amy Roberts for years. I knew she didn’t like kids, but I’d never have suspected…’