As I listened to Peter’s ring tone repeat, I remembered he would be out on site today.
Giving up, I called the school. I was matter-of-fact with Clare the receptionist. ‘There’ll be a couple of police officers coming in to talk to Rosie after school today and I just wanted to confirm that this has been cleared by me,’ I said.
When I hung up, I put my palms to my cheeks and felt the hotness.
Humiliation pushed through my body right into my fingertips, hot under my nail beds.
Please train, move, I thought, please start moving. I need to get to my daughter. I need to protect her. Please, if there is a God up there, please help me.
The tannoy fired up again, the response to my pleas ignored: ‘Due to an electrical fault on the train, please could all passengers move off the 14.02 train to Hazelway and wait on the platform for further information. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to your journey.’
I wanted to scream. Who could I talk to about the delay? Might there be a guard who could shed some light, get things moving? Might there be a complaints line for me to call? Was there a manager I could shout at?
I piled off the train with the rest of the passengers, who began to sigh and text.
The guard I found to complain to ignored me as if I was invisible. The message board delivered no news in response to my insistence that it should. The other passengers stared blankly at my gesticulations and ‘can you believe this?’ eye-rolling. The complaints line put me on hold until I gave up. The rail website flashed me a red exclamation mark. It dawned on me – more slowly than it had on many of the other passengers seemingly – that there was nothing I could do.
I leant against a cold wall and I stared across the tracks, at nothing in particular, deciding that perhaps this delay was fate. My heart thumped; the rumble of a panic attack. The bustle of an over-packed train platform was like a buffer, like the padding on the walls of a cell, protecting me from myself. What would I be doing at Rosie’s school? Shouting at everyone, pacing outside the door? Exacerbating the situation? And if I was at home? Would I be cleaning and organising? Using the time to get started on the nursery? Pacing some more? Smashing Mira’s windows? Wherever I was in the world, I was utterly powerless until they had finished talking to her. The tension of the wait for the train stretched every minute into some unbearable endurance test. I focussed with tunnel vision on staying sane, on keeping it together, so that I could get home to Rosie in one piece. She needed me and I berated myself for not being there.
Chapter Thirty
Mira put two pieces of bread in the toaster. She didn’t notice the smell of burning until it was too late and Barry’s arm shot around her and pressed the release button. Two blackened slices popped out.
‘Whoops. I forgot to turn it down after the potato farls last night,’ Mira said.
‘Mind on other things?’
‘The foxes got in last night,’ she said bitterly. ‘Hancock’s gone.’
Barry sighed heavily. ‘I’ll fix the coop, again.’
‘They come in through the Bradleys garden you know.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do, it’s that gap at the bottom of their hedge. They come in through the woods.’
‘Do you want me to fence it up?’
Fearful it would stop Rosie coming in too, she quickly stamped on that idea. ‘No, no. You’re right. They’d come in somehow anyway.’
‘The less we have to do with that lot next door now the better, I say.’
‘You’d have been happy to leave Rosie to suffer, I suppose, would you?’ she muttered tetchily. The toast burnt her fingers as she removed it from the toaster.
Barry opened the window that backed onto the Bradleys’ hedge to let the smoke out. ‘I never liked that you were messed up in their business, that’s the truth.’
Aggressively, Mira scraped at the charcoal layer. Black speckles sprayed over the work surface until she was left with four brittle broken pieces of toast. They were still edible. She was not going to waste two fresh slices from the loaf.
‘If Gemma’s arrested, it’ll prove I was right.’
‘That’d be a terrible shame, love,’ he tutted.
‘Can’t take it back now, can I?’ she asked doubtfully.
Barry continued crunching loudly on his burnt toast. A few of the black crumbs had made it onto his lips. She watched them suspended there as he chewed. They made him look foolish.
And then he said, ‘My dad used to chuck books at my head when I got my spellings wrong. Every word. Clunk.’ He mock-hit the side of his own head, and scrunched up his nose, twice, which shifted his glasses up and down, like he was pressing the arms behind his ears for comic effect. He was not laughing. This facial twitch of his was becoming more frequent, like a nervous tick. Mira felt guilty about sniping at him. She wanted to tell him how cruel his father had been.
‘Times have changed,’ she said instead.
Barry poured his tea from his cup into his saucer and back again to cool it. He hadn’t done this in a while. Ironically, it was something his father had done when he was alive.
‘It can’t be hot, it’s been sitting there ten minutes,’ Mira said.
Barry took a small sip, and then gulped the tea down as though it was water. ‘Rosie is a strange child, I’ll say that for her.’
This offended Mira. He didn’t seem to understand how connected she felt to Rosie now. Rosie’s disclosure had made her feel special, as though Rosie had trusted her, chosen her above everyone else to confide in.
‘Gemma’s the problem, not Rosie.’
‘So you keep saying, love.’
‘Don’t be fooled by her nice appearance.’
‘Appearances make no difference to me.’
A pang of doubt shot through her. ‘You really think I did the wrong thing?’ she asked meekly.
‘Don’t you worry. Any decent citizen would have done as you have,’ he stated flatly.
‘Thanks,’ she sighed, relieved.
She took a napkin and wiped away the burnt bits from his lips. ‘Rosie will thank me one day,’ Mira said.
Chapter Thirty-One
Minutes after I had boarded a new train, finally, after over an hour of fraught waiting, DC Miles’ number flashed up on the screen.
‘Hello DC Miles,’ I said, haughtily, waiting for the grovelling apology.
I stopped in the cyclists’ carriage, letting the throng pass me into the Quiet Zone of this new train.
‘Hello Mrs Bradley. Are you home yet?’
‘My train has been delayed but I’m on my way now.’
‘Well, okay, we’ve spoken to Rosie,’ she paused, ‘and because of what she’s said, we want to do a video interview right away.’
‘What has she done to her?’ I demanded, immediately assuming that Rosie had implicated Mira. Is that where she had been yesterday? With Mira? Was that really possible? My heart began to race. It was all happening too fast. I couldn’t keep up.
‘Rosie’s told me some things that I’m concerned about and we need to get a bit more information from her.’
‘Why can’t you tell me what she’s said?’ My stomach was turning over and over with fear.
‘Again, I’m very sorry, but because it concerns you, that isn’t possible.’
I froze. ‘What do you mean it concerns me?’
‘As I said, we can’t give you more information at this time.’
What did Rosie say? She must have got muddled and said something wrong by mistake. ‘She can’t go through this without me. You have to wait until I get home. I need to see her. She needs me.’
‘Your nanny is here and has kindly offered to take her to the interview room and then return her home and wait for your husband’s return.’
‘But I haven’t been able to get hold of Peter!’ I cried desperately.
‘Harriet has offered to stay with her as long as necessary and wanted me to tell you that Noah is staying at his friend’s house tonight.’
Something inside me collapsed.