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

rabbit hutches, the lawns perfectly manicured. I pull up round a corner – I know what these places are like about parking. Even so, as I approach, I feel the pale shrouds of net curtains twitching at me.

An overcast sky bears down overhead, huge and flat as the fens. An icy wind blows, a spinning washing line creaking on one of the front lawns. All the houses look the same. It takes me a while to find the right one, towards the end of a cul-de-sac. I see a shaft of movement inside after I press the doorbell, its artificially jaunty tune jarring in the wintery quiet.

The door opens, and I’m faced with him, a beaten-looking man, small and slight like a jockey. The man from the press conference.

‘Thanks so much for agreeing to see me,’ I say. He just nods, steps aside so I can pass.

He leads me into a conservatory at the back of the house. It’s chilly, the wind whistling loudly against its plasticky exterior. In the back garden is a rusty barbecue, half-heartedly coated in a rain cover. It looks like it hasn’t been used in years. Next to it is one of those plastic poles with a ball on a string attached, two broken racquets leaning against a shed at the back.

I didn’t tell Helen I was coming here – in truth, I hardly knew myself. I’d planned to go for a run on the heath, wander round Hampstead, find a new book, enjoy my day off. Instead, I’d found myself in my car again on the Archway Road, passing under the bridge and speeding out towards Cambridge, that same album playing over and over.

The other media had been warned off. Press conferences only, that was the deal. No door knocks. Family liaison were all over him. I broke the rules even by trying him on the phone. But I had to talk to him. He might know why Rachel was hanging around us, what she wanted. There must be a reason. He might know something that could help Charlie.

I tried not to think about the other possibility. That he will know something that will make Charlie look even guiltier than he already does.

John brings me a coffee and I sip it gratefully, even though it’s milkier than I’d usually like, and the instant coffee grains haven’t completely dissolved. They float on the surface, like little brown ants.

I gesture to a large silver frame, with the word ‘FAMILY’ engraved across the bottom. It shows John with a bottle-blonde woman and two little blonde girls.

‘That’s a lovely picture. Which one is Rachel?’

I realise after I’ve asked the question that neither looks particularly like her.

John looks embarrassed. ‘That’s me and my missus, and our two girls,’ he says. He picks up the frame for a closer inspection, as if he hasn’t really looked at it in a while. ‘My two youngest. Mine and Stacey’s. That’s Holly on the left and on the right is Abby.’ He sighs, puts the picture back, winces a little. ‘Rachel had left home by then. She and Stacey … well, they didn’t always see eye to eye.’

I look around the room, at the other photographs on the wall. There are pictures of the two blonde girls everywhere – in a holiday swimming pool, in their school uniforms, on a log flume in bright T-shirts and baseball caps, waves of water flying up either side of them. I can’t see any of Rachel.

‘So you and Rachel’s mother separated a long time ago?’

He snorts. ‘She just left one day. Rachel was only six.’ He sniffs. ‘Liked a drink. You know. She died a few years after that.’

I nod, slowly. ‘So you were a widower. That must have been hard.’

John shrugs, looks out into the garden. ‘I did my best,’ he says. ‘I always did my best for her.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘She wasn’t easy.’

The wind is picking up – one of the racquets leaning against the shed clatters over onto the patio. The rain cover on the barbecue looks as if it might fly away.

‘This man who’s been arrested,’ John says. I see his fingers twist into fists. ‘Do you know him?’

I nod. ‘I do know him,’ I say.

John takes a deep breath. ‘Could he have done something to Rachel? Could he have hurt her?’

I think about Rory when he was a little boy, bullying Charlie, throwing firecrackers at Helen, even though he knew she was scared. But then I think about him at his wedding, when Serena walked down the aisle. How he couldn’t resist turning round to look at her walking towards him. How his eyes had filled with tears when he saw her in her dress. I can think of times when I have disliked Rory intensely: the way he lords it at his parties, sneers at my job, belittles Charlie. But then I can think of moments when he has been kind to Helen, or when his love for his wife has been plain for all to see. I have known Rory most of my life. But do I know him, really?

‘I don’t think so,’ I say carefully. ‘But … I honestly don’t know for sure.’

John stands up, starts pacing up and down the conservatory. The wind rattles at the frame of it, as if determined to get in.

‘John,’ I say, ‘Rachel didn’t tell us the truth about who she was. Where she lived, what she wanted. She must have gone to some lengths. She told us she was pregnant, and she looked … So if she wasn’t, she must have been wearing some sort of prosthetic …’

I trail off. He has heard this already from the police. He is screwing up his eyes, as if the words cause him physical pain. I lower my voice.

‘I think Rachel must have had a good reason for doing all that. For coming to Greenwich. I think there was something she wanted from one of us. I can’t work out what it is.’ I pause. ‘I