No One I Knew by A McDine (best e book reader for android .TXT) 📕

I wasn’t expecting to see you today. And Nate. What a lovely surprise.’

I dumped my bag on the floor by her desk. ‘I wanted to join Bill for his meeting.’

‘Meeting?’

‘He told me not half an hour ago that he was meeting a supplier at three-thirty. I couldn’t see his car. Is he running late?’

Sheila turned to her screen and began tapping at her keyboard. ‘Let me check his diary.’ She nodded to herself, then glanced at me. ‘There is a meeting, but it’s at the supplier’s depot.’

I drummed my fingers on her desk, frustrated at the wasted journey. ‘Which suppliers?’

She turned back to the screen. ‘Blackberry Organics.’

‘Do you have their address?’

‘I don’t, Cleo. I’m sorry. You know what Bill’s like. He keeps everything in here.’ She tapped the side of her head.

‘When he makes an appearance, can you ask him to phone me?’

‘Of course.’ She bit her lip. ‘I expect you’re getting fed up with people asking, but is there any news about Immy?’

‘No,’ I said in a heavy voice. ‘There’s no news.’

Chapter Twenty-One

‘Change of plan,’ I said to Nate, picking up my bag. ‘We’re going home.’

‘But I’m thirsty,’ he whined.

‘I have some of those Fruit Shoots you like in the car,’ Sheila said. Seeing my raised eyebrows, she added, ‘I popped down to Asda in my lunch-hour. I hope that’s OK?’

‘Of course. You are allowed a lunch-hour, Sheila. I just didn’t think Fruit Shoots were your thing.’

‘Mother’s taken a fancy to them,’ she said. ‘They’re easy for her to sip now her Parkinson’s makes holding a cup so difficult.’

For a moment I forgot about my own problems and looked at my secretary properly. Shadows ringed her eyes, and her make-up looked as if she’d applied it in the dark. Normally her favoured white blouse and dogtooth checked polyester trousers were starched to within an inch of their lives, but today her blouse looked rumpled, as if she’d plucked it out of the wash that morning. What must it be like, having to juggle caring for a frail parent with a full-time job? Yet not once had Sheila complained when I’d left her holding the fort after Immy went missing.

‘Sheila, is everything OK?’

She pushed her chair back and ferreted around in her bag for her car keys. ‘Don’t you be worrying about me. I’m fine.’ She smiled at Nate. ‘Shall we find those Fruit Shoots, little man?’

Before I followed them out, I peeked at Sheila’s computer screen to see if Bill had included the name of the person from Blackberry Organics he was meeting. My eyes narrowed as I checked and rechecked his schedule for the day. Apart from a nine o’clock meeting with our head chef Nigel, it was empty.

The four o’clock pips were sounding as I turned into our street.

‘Mum, there’s a police car outside the house,’ Nate said.

Adrenalin surged through me, and my grip on the steering wheel tightened.

‘D’you think they’ve found Immy?’ he asked.

I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments. ‘I hope so.’

Stuart must have seen the car pull up because the front door swung open as we approached. I could tell by his face that the news wasn’t good.

‘What’s happened?’ I demanded, as Nate ran past us, dragging his bag behind him as he raced up the stairs, thump, thump, thump.

‘Sam Bennett’s been here for the last half an hour. She has an update on the search, but she wanted to wait until you were home so she could tell us together.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Where the hell have you been? I told her you’d be home by half three.’

‘I had to pop into the office,’ I said, my hackles rising. How dare he question me when he was having an affair? ‘You could have called me,’ I added.

‘I did. Several times. It went straight to voicemail.’ His face darkened. ‘Fuck’s sake, Cleo. You can’t go off grid at a time like this. How the hell was I supposed to know where you and Nate were?’

I looked at my phone. It was dead. But I was meticulous about not letting the battery drop below thirty-five percent, a random figure I’d chosen so I never risked being without my primary form of communication. My chest tightened. Christ, I really was losing it.

I followed Stuart into the front room in silence. Sam Bennett placed a mug on the coffee table beside her and stood.

‘Cleo,’ she said, waving her hand at the sofa. ‘Why don’t you and Stuart sit yourselves down.’

We did as we were told. I wondered if she noticed the gap between us.

‘As you know, Immy’s disappearance was declared a critical incident yesterday morning. I’ve come from a gold group meeting at the nick and I wanted to brief you on where we are.’

Sam opened her pocket notebook, thumbing through it until she found what she was looking for. ‘We’re continuing to search the river with the help of a police underwater search unit, police dogs, Kent Search and Rescue, Kent Fire and Rescue and, as of this morning, the local coastguard. In terms of boots on the ground there are upwards of forty officers and volunteers looking for Immy.’

‘So why haven’t they found her yet?’ I said.

Sam sucked her cheeks in. ‘You live here. You know how big the search area is.’

I didn’t say anything, because I knew she was right. The river was flanked by several fishing lakes, the largest of which was over thirty acres. We loved having the lakes on our doorstep and enjoyed nothing more than a weekend walk along the riverbank with the children watching the moorhens and spotting kingfishers. But since Sunday they had assumed a sinister air, hiding infinite possibilities for harm and concealment.

‘The search of the river continues, but we also have to consider the possibility that Immy somehow let herself out of the side gate into King Street,’ Sam said. ‘It’s a short walk past the church and the allotments to the lakes.’

‘But the angling club keeps the gates locked,’