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

a coincidence, bumping into her all those times? Or had it been deliberate? Had she been following me? The thought makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. But why would she do that? Why?

‘John, Rachel told me she’d been signed off work with high blood pressure, because of her pregnancy. Do you know where she worked?’

‘A bar, or a club, maybe,’ he says. ‘I don’t remember the name. She never said anything to me about blood pressure. She just said she had something else she wanted to do. Some project. No point pressing her. She knows what she wants, Rachel. She does things her own way. Always has done.’

I grip the side of the sofa. The room feels as if it is tilting. I’ve told all this to the police. I think about what I said to them in that grey room that smelled of stale old papers. How I’d leaned into the tape recorder to make sure they got everything down. She was from somewhere in Greenwich, met the father through her work at a music venue. Heavily pregnant. Signed off with high blood pressure. And it was nonsense. All of it. They must think I am a complete idiot. Or worse. Maybe they think I am a liar.

John is still talking. ‘She wasn’t easy, you know. As a teenager. And then … after what happened to her … Well, she changed then. You couldn’t blame her. She was angry, very angry.’

He says this as if I must know what he is talking about. I blink, say nothing. He looks up at me, eyes glistening.

‘Didn’t she tell you?’ He drops his gaze, gives his head a little shake. ‘I expect she keeps it to herself,’ he mutters. ‘It’s just that I thought you two were so close.’

I clamp my mouth into a line. We weren’t close, I feel like screaming. We weren’t even friends. It’s nothing to do with me. She is nothing to do with me. I realise I want this man out of my house as soon as possible. But he is still talking. It is like he can’t stop.

‘She’d been calling me every week, until the day of your party,’ he is saying. ‘That was the last time I heard from her. I could tell she was looking forward to it. Said there was someone who was going to be at the party. Someone important to her.’

I feel the muscles in my shoulders tense. ‘Did she say who?’

He blows his nose on a hanky he has pulled from his cuff.

‘No, she didn’t. She said she’d call me soon. And then … nothing.’

He is sobbing now, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. I go and fetch my hospital bag, sitting by the front door, and find the packet of tissues in the side pocket. He takes them, gratefully.

I have no idea what to do. I am not used to seeing a grown man cry. I lean over, awkwardly, placing a hand on his shoulder.

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘do you think it might be worth you talking to her mother, seeing as she said that’s where she was going?’ I pause. ‘I mean, I’m guessing you’re estranged, but perhaps …’

John stares at me, his eyes narrowing.

‘What do you mean?’ he snaps. ‘She never said she was going to her mother’s.’

‘She did. That’s what she told me, the day after the party. That’s what I was trying to say to you, before. She texted me, saying she was going to her mother’s for a while. Didn’t the police tell you that already?’

John stares at me as if I have gone mad. ‘She wouldn’t have said that,’ he repeats. There is a new edge in his voice.

‘She did. That’s where she told me she was going. That was why I didn’t worry.’

John’s hands have started trembling.

‘Her mother’s dead.’

It is my turn to stare.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Her mother’s dead. She’s been dead for near on fifteen years.’

Stunned, I pick my phone up then, to show him the message.

‘But she sent me this.’

John snatches the phone, holds it in his hands, staring at it, his fingertips shaking. Then, he drops it like a stone, as if he is too frightened to hold it any longer.

‘Have the police seen this?’

‘Of course.’

He is agitated now. ‘Whoever sent that message, Helen,’ he says, with a tremor in his voice, ‘it wasn’t Rachel.’

40 WEEKS

HELEN

I know they say not to count the days, but what else is there? For nine months I’ve been repeating the date to people, who ask me endlessly when I am due. The question always seems to me to mean, when are you going to stop taking up so much space? When are you going to get on with it?

I’ve had dates before, of course. Dates I’ve never reached. This one always felt different to me, though. When I went to see the doctor to tell him I was pregnant, he put his glasses on. Let me see, he said. I’ll just calculate the date for you. There’s no need, I told him. I’ve done it already. There were tools online.

The doctor looked disappointed. Oh, he said. Did I want him to have a look anyway? I got the feeling he liked doing it. That it was one of the few nice moments of his day, in between the rashes, the hypochondriacs, the dying.

So I said all right, and he retrieved a little tool from his desk drawer, two interlocking cardboard circles, and moved them so that the first little window showed the date of my last period, and the bottom little window showed the due date. 26 November. An unremarkable date. No clashes, no thirteens, no lucky or unlucky omens. This time, I thought. This time.

Now the date is finally here, I should be excited. Something I have wanted for so long. It will happen, I tell myself, any moment now. I will have a baby. But it’s no use. There’s nothing. I feel as