The Playground

by Jane Shemilt

  The children’s motives were different. They weren’t trying to hide; it was the opposite. Poppy was desperate for friends, she wanted to be noticed and it worked—Izzy noticed her. Blake wanted adventure, he found more than he bargained for. Sorrel? I think she craved power, she had so little; it breaks my heart that she dressed as a princess for her adventure when all the time she was walking into a trap. At least she left us a clue.

  13. November

  Melissa

  Melissa’s home isn’t hers anymore; it’s not even her kitchen. It feels different in here without Lina, who made it a gentler place. The police snap on every light and the shadows disappear.

  “Normally we would ask these questions at the station but speed is crucial; anything you can tell us now could be put to immediate use.” Detective Gordon gestures to the kitchen stool. Melissa sits down facing him across the island. Eve is next to her, Grace the other side; they’re standing close as if on guard.

  Detective Gordon sits too but remains taller than Melissa; one of those men whose upper body is disproportionately large compared to the leg length; his double chin bulges over his collar as he looks down at her. “Could your friends wait outside?” he asks, though it doesn’t sound like a question. “Normally speaking—”

  “Don’t fucking normalize this.” Grace leans forward, resting her hands on the island. Detective Gordon blinks up at her. “We don’t care how many times you’ve dealt with a missing child. None of this is normal for us.”

  “I understand that you are close—”

  “That’s right.” The stool scrapes loudly as Grace sits down next to Eve.

  “In which case you can stay in a supportive capacity for now; there may be questions you can help with too. I will request your departure when appropriate; your cooperation at that point will not be optional.” Detective Gordon looks down at his notes, then up again; his eyes find Eve’s. “Let’s start with Sorrel’s tiara. Do you know when she wore it last?”

  Eve’s hand is open on her lap. The tiara has already been passed to forensics, but Melissa can see that its little paste stones have pressed blood-lined indentations into her palm. Eve shakes her head. “I’ve been trying to think if she was wearing it when she came to my room after lunch, but all I can remember is holding her, the warmth of her . . .”

  “She was wearing it midafternoon.” Melissa’s hand finds Eve’s. “We went for a walk; she was wearing it then.”

  “Where was your husband at that time?” He turns his scrutiny to Melissa.

  “He was in his office.”

  “Can you describe his behavior later that day?”

  “He was angry.”

  “Why?”

  “He’d been drinking.” It feels dangerous to admit this in their house; she glances around swiftly as if terrified Paul were lounging against the wall of the kitchen, listening to her every word.

  “So he took it out on you.” He inspects her face; he doesn’t need a reply. “You put your belongings and your cat in the car earlier today when you drove from this house,” he continues.

  Melissa feels Grace’s hand slide into hers; now all three of them are linked together.

  “That’s right.” Melissa lifts her chin, meeting his eyes. “I was leaving him.”

  “All marriages have their problems; despite this, they often continue for years, as yours had done. What were you escaping from today of all days, the second day of Sorrel Kershaw’s disappearance? What exactly made you snap?”

  He is implying she knows something about Sorrel, that she might have been running from something terrible; if there is something terrible to find, it has yet to be discovered.

  “It had nothing to do with Sorrel,” she replies, but the bulging eyes continue to stare; he looks unconvinced. The silence in the kitchen swells until she can’t bear it anymore. “All right, I discovered he’s been raping our live-in maid.” The words sound worse in the kitchen than they did in her head, starker, more grim. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said that. Eve’s hands have started to tremble; she might be thinking that if Paul raped Lina and was behind Sorrel’s disappearance, he could have raped her little girl too.

  “Your maid told you this?” Detective Gordon raps out.

  “She didn’t need to, she is pregnant.”

  “That doesn’t mean he raped her.”

  “It probably does.” Melissa lowers her voice. “He has done exactly the same to me for years, I’ve been raped more times than I can count. Last night was worse than usual.”

  Grace’s hand squeezes hers tightly. Detective Gordon assesses her with a narrowed gaze; she unzips the neck of her tracksuit top a few inches and his glance travels over the red stain on her neck and chest. The expression in his eyes grows opaque, judgments are being made behind them, impossible to guess at; her words wouldn’t stand up in a court of law but she sees she is believed.

  “How old is your maid?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Name?”

  “Lina.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s safe. We need to find Sorrel—”

  “That’s why we need to speak to Lina; if she’s been in contact, intimate contact, with your husband, it’s possible she might have vital information that could lead us to Sorrel.”

  They’ll send a car to Salisbury, it will screech to a halt outside that ordinary-seeming house. Lina will be taken from her room, maybe sent back to Syria. Melissa stares back saying nothing, as the seconds beat past. No one moves until Grace does; she leans forward so her face is close to Detective Gordon’s.

  “The person you need is Paul, surely. He raped Melly and Lina. Sorrel’s tiara was in his car; why bother Lina when you should be questioning Paul?”

  Detective Gordon doesn’t flinch but there is a flicker in his eyes as if he recognizes power.

  “Mr. Chorley-Smith is being questioned at the station as we speak,” he replies.

  Phone calls must have been made immediately after the tiara was found; the police would have approached Paul in the dining room at the golf club and led him away. The room must have buzzed with gossip behind his departing back.

  Detective Gordon signals to the young policewoman who has been standing inside the door; she moves forward. “Please, could you wait outside now?” she asks Grace politely.

  Grace’s warm hand rests briefly on Melissa’s shoulder; Melissa watches as Grace takes Eve’s arm and then her friends leave the room, followed by the young policewoman.

  Melissa is left alone with Detective Gordon, who walks around the island and sits down near her, whether to intimidate or calm her is impossible to judge. He gestures to the gleaming kitchen. “All new?”

  “Paul keeps it updated.” She nods, confused by the change in his line of questioning. “He brings his clients here, it’s a showroom of sorts.” Though he hasn’t brought anyone here recently; in fact she can’t remember the last time he did.

  “And everything he doesn’t want gets thrown away, I suppose?”

  Garbage to be discarded for newer models, as she so often was, is that what he means?

  “It’s all stored,” she says evenly. “To be sold on.”

  “He was an architect. Am I correct?”

  “Paul is an architect, yes.” He has at least twenty years to go before he retires. What game is Detective Gordon playing now?

  He shakes his head. “Not anymore, not for a while.”

  “He’s a senior partner, you can check with the practice: Chorley-Smith, Atkinson, and Humphreys.”

  “We did.” He crosses his arms. “Two interns logged a complaint of harassment against him about seven months ago: inappropriate comments, text messages, that kind of thing. When we investigated that, we were told he had since been sacked for financial misconduct. He’s been out of work for half a year.”

  “That’s impossible. He goes to work; he has a steady income—”

  “From your daughter’s trust fund, of which, unusually, I gather he
is the sole trustee.” He removes his glasses, rubbing the small red patches on either side of his nose, and replaces them. “We found this out when we looked further into your husband’s situation following his previous questioning; he claimed, you see, that he left the Kershaws’ house early on the morning of their son’s drowning to go to work. Although no blame attaches to him for that tragedy, we already knew he’d been sacked so it was clear he wasn’t telling us the whole truth. Investigation into his financial affairs revealed the true situation.”

  “If I’m the only trustee, I can instantly invest on her behalf when the market looks good.” Paul had smiled his most winning smile. “You won’t have the bother of signing, which could hold things up. I know about these things, Melly. You haven’t a clue.”

  No wonder he’s been angry for months, drinking too much and taking it out on her. He’d been terrified of discovery. It’s unsurprising he disliked being questioned by the police; he must have been scared they’d find out. He’d have thought himself safe, at least until the money ran out. Izzy’s money, given by her parents. Rage begins to build.

  “Tell me about his violence towards you.”

  This swift change is clever; he wants to use her anger. She knows this, even as her reservations are swept away, even as her face heats with fury.

  “He’s always been rough in bed, at least that’s what he called it. I was only fifteen. I thought what he did was normal.”

  That’s not quite true, she’d thought she deserved it. She’s thought that for years, but not anymore. It’s different now. She glances around the kitchen as if to remind herself she doesn’t live here; she doesn’t live with Paul. She’s broken away, broken free.

  “We married when I was twenty-one. The violence increased; it’s been worse in the last year, much worse in the last few months.” He’d seemed so stressed—little wonder, money must have been running out fast.

  “You never thought of leaving him before now?”

  “Often, but I put up with everything because of Izzy, our daughter. Everything. I was scared I’d lose her if it came to a custody battle. He had the money to ensure victory, or so I thought.”

  “What is his relationship like with Izzy?”

  “He worships her, he always has.” She is aware that her voice has softened, which must be confusing, but she can’t help that. Paul’s love for Izzy is his one redeeming feature. “He has terrible faults, but he loves her dearly.”

  “Can you think of any reason at all why he might have taken Sorrel Kershaw?”

  “None at all, I honestly can’t see him ever harming a child.”

  “I suppose that depends on your definition of a child. You were technically a child when he first had sex with you, your maid’s technically a child.”

  Beneath his eye there is a little muscle that jumps; she can see it jumping as though he is hiding tension, as though while he is looking at her calmly he is also waiting for her to tell him something else. Then he leans back and his voice changes, becoming matter-of-fact once more.

  “There is something we are missing; some little detail I haven’t thought to ask. Let’s start all over again.”

  Grace

  There are no pictures on the wall, no ornaments or rugs, not even a book; Melissa’s bedroom is bleak, as if it belongs to someone who is frightened to show who she is. Grace stares at the single photograph on the dressing table, trying to reconcile the young bride smiling hesitantly from the silver frame with the damaged woman in the kitchen below.

  Eve is sitting on the hard little satin sofa by the window, catching her breath after the stairs; a month of lying in bed has weakened her. Grace sits down beside her while they watch three policemen in the courtyard below inspect the smashed windows and dented panels of Melissa’s car. They walk to the garage, moving slowly, their leashed dogs beside them. The men are chatting a little, their shoulders hunched as if in disappointment. They’ve already looked around the house and garden, there’s not much left to search.

  What if Sorrel is never found? What if she is, but in a shallow grave beside a woodland road? Time will give the answer, but time is running out. Grace has the sinking feeling she is keeping vigil with Eve, that this shared moment might be the first part of a mourning process. In Zimbabwe relatives crouch by the graveside where the spirit of the dead one hovers. They take earth from the grave in small bottles to encourage the spirit to return home with them. These rituals have comfort in them, a community coming together. Eve has no community, just her and Melly. Sorrel’s spirit would only need a small bottle, Ash’s a smaller one still. She moves closer to Eve and puts an arm around her.

  The men are coming out of the garage, they confer. The tallest of them shrugs his shoulders, looking around. It’s easy to see the whole plot from here; it seems there is nowhere else to search. The only color is the vivid green of ivy growing over a trellis at the back that separates this property from the next. The garden itself is made of a series of terraced walls topped by narrow platforms of raked gravel that mount to fencing at the back. Beyond the wire there are leafy branches, brambles, and bushes, seething growth that presses at the fence. Grace can just make out the same KEEP OFF notice in faded red she’s glimpsed at the back of Eve’s wood. The old railway comes past here too, a secret leafy way where nature flourishes unchecked. Perhaps Melissa listened to the cry of owls and foxes as she lay in bed at night, perhaps she imagined escape.

  “Eve, I think it’s time to go home. Shall we—”

  “Wait.”

  The muscles in Eve’s shoulders have tensed. Her gaze is now focused on the courtyard below. Detective Gordon has emerged from the house and is conferring with a little group of policemen, while pointing to the ivy-covered trellis. The men hurry toward it; a second later Grace sees them lift the entire trellis and move it aside. She could laugh if her heart wasn’t pounding; the only green plant in the garden turns out to be artificial, she might have guessed. Now that it’s been moved, the door to an old shed is revealed, the kind of dilapidated place you’d want to cover up, if only for appearances’ sake. The shed door is opened and from here they can see a dark interior full of white machines. They watch as a dishwasher is trundled out, a washing machine, a stove. All look new or newish. Detective Gordon squeezes inside the shed, out of sight, two dogs are let off leash and follow, barking loudly. The remaining officers in the courtyard move forward as one.

  Eve stands up, her hand to her throat. She runs from the room and Grace follows, hurrying down the stairs so quickly that afterward she doesn’t remember that part at all. She will remember trying to push into the shed after Eve, though by the time she arrives, Eve has already disappeared into the shadowy interior. Two policemen move to stand shoulder to shoulder, barring Grace’s entry. She tries to see past them because it’s obvious that something bad, something very bad, has happened inside toward the back of the shed, where it’s too dark to see properly. A hand grips hers tightly, Melissa’s. They stand at the doorway together while the dogs bark in a deafening frenzy.

  Eve

  Detective Gordon has placed his hands at the edge of the lid of a large freezer chest, the kind you are not supposed to have anymore because of the risk to children, though this one is unplugged and, if you look closely, very slightly open, just enough space to slide a knife through. He is braced as if about to uncover horror. He doesn’t notice Eve standing just behind him.

  The men are waiting as well, also silent. Perhaps they think she has his permission to be there because no one has suggested she leave. Even the dogs have quieted. Detective Gordon is wearing gloves, transparent rubber ones like a surgeon’s. A bad sign. All the signs are bad. He grips the edge of the lid and heaves, but the effort is unnecessary. The freezer lid opens smoothly and easily. The smell is atrocious. He reels back, bumping into her, though he doesn’t turn around so he still doesn’t realize she is just behind him.

  “Fucking hell,” he says loudly. His words hit her like shrapnel, the kind they u
se in a terrorist bomb, fragments designed to enter your body and then expand. Her mouth fills with warm fluid like blood but it has the sour taste of bile. She doesn’t want to look in the chest after all, so she shuts her eyes and moves closer, then she forces them open quickly.

  At first it’s too dark to make out more than a curled shape at the bottom of the chest, thin legs twisted awkwardly together. She forces her glance to travel up the small, inert body. The face is the kind of stark white that happens after a major hemorrhage, though there is no blood to be seen apart from cuts on her legs and arms and dark crusting on her fingers and, yes, an enormous bruise on her forehead that looks like a painting of a flower, a deep mauve-and-red one with unfurling petals. She looks lovely. A lovely dead child, like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, babes in the wood after all. Is there no end to the fairy tales that fit?

  Detective Gordon turns his head, asking quietly for something. She doesn’t catch his words but his glance falls on her and he looks aghast. She doesn’t care. In that moment of his surprise she straddles the edge and is over, inside the freezer, half lying and half kneeling in the shit and the vomit and the broken glass, crying, at least she must be, someone is making that low groaning noise. She takes her daughter’s body in her arms. She pushes her face against Sorrel’s and wraps her arms around her. She was expecting her to be cold, icy cold, but she’s still warm and her skin still smells of her. Detective Gordon reaches over the edge of the freezer.

  “Fuck off,” Eve whispers. “Leave us alone.”

  Detective Gordon doesn’t take any notice. He slides his hand past Eve’s face to place his fingers against Sorrel’s neck.

  “She’s alive,” he says.