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

get yourself more involved? Admit that you lied, when they spoke to you the first time?’ He shakes his head. ‘Think how it’ll look, Katie.’

I feel a rising panic in my chest. ‘No, hang on,’ I say. ‘I didn’t lie, Charlie, it wasn’t like that. I just … I just didn’t tell them that one thing. They even said, if I remembered anything else, that I could –’

Charlie snorts. ‘Yeah, right.’ He shakes his head, smiling sadly. ‘They want you to think that. That it won’t matter if you change your story, that you can tell them anything. Trust me, it doesn’t work like that. The worst thing you can be is inconsistent. They’ll make something of it, if they want to.’

‘Oh, Charlie, you’re being paranoid. The police aren’t going to go after me!’

He shrugs. ‘If you say so.’ He snaps off a piece of poppadum and dips it in a sauce. ‘I’m just saying, they twist things. Think what they were like with me.’

I sigh. I know how much he hates talking about what happened last year. He was an idiot to take coke into the club, of course. But he isn’t some kind of dealer. The irony was he had taken it in for Rory and his mates.

Though he would never admit it, Charlie still looks up to Rory, just like he did when they were little. He still tries to please him, does what he asks. When he was caught by an undercover cop, it didn’t take me long to work out why Charlie refused to say who the ‘friend’ he’d bought the coke for was. And because he wouldn’t name names – and maybe, a bit, because of his dad, and his money, and his smart mouth, which doesn’t do him any favours – the police threw the book at him. Did him for possession with intent to supply. Wanted to make an example.

Fortunately, the lawyer Rory paid for did a good job, and the judge was more sympathetic than the cops. She accepted his plea that it was just for him and his friends. Still, he was lucky to get a suspended sentence. To be able to keep working.

The waiter reappears with the main courses. He sets down a wooden board with naan, then the curries. He says the bowls are hot, that we should be careful. The table is crowded, the wine glasses clinking against the metal bowls. The smell of ginger and garlic is almost too much. For a moment I think I’m going to be sick.

‘Look,’ Charlie says eventually, putting his hand over mine, ‘for a start, I’m sure Rachel is fine.’

I look at him, feel my throat tightening again. I want to believe it is true. ‘Do you think?’

‘Of course.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘She’ll have just gone back to her boyfriend or something. Or her mum. Or a friend. Christ, I don’t know, Katie – it could be any number of random things. As far as I can tell, there’s no reason to think that anything bad has happened to her.’

I pull my hand away, twist my napkin. ‘The police wouldn’t be involved if they didn’t think something bad had happened to her.’

‘OK, but even if something has happened – I don’t know. This … this cellar thing? It might not even matter.’ He pulls his hand back, dips his naan into one of the chutneys, staining it red. ‘I just think if you change your story now, they might think it’s weird. And it might distract them from something that really is important.’ He takes a bite. ‘Don’t you think?’

I look at him. I think back to that night, when I saw him and Rachel together, how his hand brushed against her side.

‘Charlie, what were you talking to Rachel about? When I saw you that night?’

His face darkens. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come on. You were together, by the bookcase. Just the two of you, for ages. You were standing really close to her. Why did you have so much to talk about when you’d only just met her?’

He looks away, out into the blur of rain.

‘What, Charlie?’

‘Nothing!’

‘What do you mean, nothing?’

‘I don’t know … nothing! We were just chatting. Normal stuff.’

He is staring into his lap now, then back to the rain-splattered window. I was sure he wasn’t hiding anything before. Now I don’t know. I want to believe he is telling the truth. I want to, so much. But then I think again about the way he and Rachel looked, when I saw them talking at the party, the intensity of it.

And then later, when he came out to find me in the garden. Why was he covered in dust if he’d only gone down there for a moment?

When he speaks again, Charlie’s tone is different. Harder.

‘I don’t get it, Katie,’ he says. ‘You met this girl what – once, twice? Why are you interrogating me about it?’ He leans closer. ‘What are you asking? Are you saying you think I’ve got something to do with her going missing?’

‘Of course not. Don’t be stupid!’

‘Well, what then?’

‘I just … I need to know what happened.’

‘Well, maybe we’ll never know. People go missing all the time, usually because they want to. We don’t know what was going on with her. It could be any number of things. It could be nothing at all.’ He pauses. ‘Don’t you think?’

I stare out of the window, watching the rain thrash against the glass, the bent backs of people walking through it. I watch the buses and taxis throw waves of water over the pavement, the brown rivers running into drains. I think about what happened to Emily, about how she ran for help, her bare feet cold on the cobbled street. Anything could have happened to Rachel, I think. She could be out there, in this. Hitchhiking by a roadside. In a ditch somewhere. Under a bridge. She could have been hit by a car. She could have run away, somewhere north,