Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (primary phonics .TXT) 📕

I bet they’ll be grateful for a nice coffee. They’re probably used to machine coffees, strip-lit waiting rooms, scaly communal kettles. Or the houses of criminals, I suppose, where no one thinks to offer them a drink. When I try to imagine what those places might look like, my mind draws a bit of a blank. Council flats with brick balconies, lines of wheelie bins, walls with anti-climb paint. Signs that say ‘No Ball Games’. Places I only ever see from the outside.

‘You said that Rachel had been living with you?’

I sense their gaze on my face. I have a strange, anchorless feeling, as if I am not in my kitchen at all, but adrift on a vast sea, being carried further and further from the shore.

‘Yes, she had been staying here,’ I say eventually. My hand is trembling on the jug. The metal of it makes a slight vibration against the coffee machine. ‘Just for a couple of weeks,’ I add. I place the jug down, wipe my hands on my maternity jeans. They feel clammy.

‘And how did you know her?’

I take a breath.

‘We met recently,’ I say. ‘At an antenatal class.’

‘An antenatal class?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ DS Mitre’s expression suggests this was not within the range of answers he had expected.

I place the coffees down. DS Mitre thanks me. The female officer doesn’t.

‘So, how can I help?’ I ask, easing myself into a chair slowly, trying to look casual. ‘Is Rachel OK? When you say missing – she’s not in any trouble or anything, is she?’ I try to make my voice sound normal.

‘We’re just keen to establish where she is,’ DS Mitre says. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Thorpe, did you say you met Miss Wells at an antenatal class?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Why was Miss Wells at an antenatal class?’

I stare at her. ‘Because she was pregnant,’ I say, looking from one detective to the other. They glance at each other, then DS Mitre speaks.

‘Are you sure about that, Mrs Thorpe?’

‘Of course I’m sure. We did an NCT course together.’

The detectives look at each other, write down notes. They seem to be writing quite a lot. They ask more questions, then – how many weeks she was, which hospital she was giving birth at. I try to remember any details she might have told me. Can’t they just access her medical records or something?

‘When did you last see Rachel, Mrs Thorpe?’

‘It was the night of our bonfire party.’ I pause. ‘The 5th. Of November, obviously.’

‘I see.’

DS Mitre drops his gaze to his notebook, and starts writing, his long pale fingers curled around a black biro.

DC Robbin takes over now. She is speaking just a little bit more loudly than she needs to. Her tone makes me sit up straighter.

‘Before she left – did Rachel say where she was going?’

I shake my head. ‘No – she left without saying anything. I mean, she had told us she was moving out, around the middle of November. That she had found a place.’ The detectives write this down. ‘But no, we didn’t know she was leaving that night. We woke up the next morning and she’d gone.’

‘Any idea where this new place was?’

‘She didn’t really say,’ I murmur. ‘Sorry.’

‘You don’t know why she might have left so suddenly?’ DS Robbin’s head is cocked to one side, her thin eyebrows arched like punctuation. Her eyes are fixed on mine. The room feels airless, my tongue dry and thick, as if it is stuck to the top of my mouth.

‘No, not really.’

‘So there hadn’t been an argument at this party, nothing like that?’

My pulse is climbing. My face feels red hot. Before I’ve even really thought about it, I find I am shaking my head and saying: ‘No.’

‘So you weren’t concerned? At her leaving like that, without telling you why, or where she was going?’

‘No, I was concerned, of course I was,’ I say, feeling the heat in my cheeks again. ‘I texted her. I wanted to make sure she was OK. And she replied, pretty much straight away.’ I reach for my phone. ‘She said she was going to her mother’s. Here, let me find the message.’

I pull my phone out, find the message she sent me the day after the party, show it to DS Mitre. I think for a moment that he will be pleased, will thank me for my time, tell me he’ll give her mum a ring now and he’s sorry to have wasted my time. Instead, the atmosphere changes. The officers both examine the phone. They exchange glances again.

‘Is that not where she is, then?’ I ask. ‘At her mum’s?’

DC Robbin closes her notebook, leans forward slightly.

‘Mrs Thorpe, what did she mean when she said she was sorry about last night?’

I blink.

‘I … I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Well, I suppose we’d fallen out a bit. Not badly.’

She looks at me intently. ‘I thought you said you hadn’t had an argument.’

I’m tapping my leg under the table, the bench underneath me shaking slightly. ‘We hadn’t,’ I stutter. ‘Not an argument. That’s not what I meant.’ I force myself to stop, place my feet flat on the floor. I wish Daniel were here. He said he was just going out for a run. He’s been ages.

‘I mean, look … it had been a bit awkward, the three of us. We’d been a bit – a bit snappy with each other, perhaps. I did tell her that night that I thought … perhaps the time had come for her to leave.’

‘You wouldn’t class that as an argument?’

DS Mitre looks at DC Robbin. His radio crackles, and he glances down. None of this seems real, I think. None of it belongs in our kitchen, on our quiet Sunday evening, with the sounds of the washing machine, a car outside, the next-door neighbour’s girl doing her clunky piano practice.

DS Mitre leans towards me.

‘Mrs Thorpe, would it be all right if we took that phone away with us today?’

I stare at him. ‘My phone? Why?’

‘It might help