After about ten minutes of quiet, we could hear Miranda Slater moving about the house, stamping across rooms, opening and closing doors, cupboards and drawers.
The spare room was too far away for us to hear any exchange with my mother or Noah.
When she returned downstairs I half expected her to hold up a dirty pair of knickers and place them in a plastic bag for evidence of my slovenly nature.
I had a terrible urge to laugh. I bit hard on the side of my mouth and tried to compose my features into a suitable expression for the gravity of the situation.
‘Everything all right?’
Somewhere inside me, I could probably locate the fear that had been rampaging through my mind and body all through the dark sleep-deprived night, but now it was nowhere to be found.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Miranda Slater replied, sweetening her smile.
Peter closed his newspaper.
‘I’m just going to have a quick peek,’ she said, opening our fridge. I imagined her judging me for all the expensive supermarket ready-mades stacked up in there.
After making some notes, Miranda Slater settled down opposite Peter and I at the kitchen table.
For the first time, I took in her appearance. She had a large face, with skin mottled like hamburger meat and an oddly incongruous sleek grey ponytail, a mane beautifully brushed. She wrote on paper locked into in a pink file that was covered in what looked like a child’s sparkly stickers. Her pen was topped with a hat of homemade ribbons and beads that bobbed about as she bent over to mark her pages and her ponytail dangled onto her notes. She breathed with her mouth open, her two front teeth jutting out.
I waited for her to tell me what Rosie had said, to inform us that they would be taking the new information to DC Miles, and that they would be closing the case.
When she looked up at us finally, her insincere, ever so slightly bored smile fixed itself onto her face and she continued with the questions she had begun before taking Rosie upstairs.
‘You were saying, Gemma, that you go out on day trips as a family?’
I was incredulous. Where was the information about Rosie’s changed story? Peter and I shared glances. Perhaps she had to complete the forms to tidy up the bureaucracy before they discussed dropping the case?
I answered diligently, trying to hide my frustration.
‘Yes, on holidays we do loads of day trips – like last year when we went to the Matisse chapel in Venice, and when we went to Barcelona for a couple of days, the children loved the Gaudi buildings.’
Miranda Slater cocked her head to the side, as though she was expecting so much more of me. I didn’t know if we should simply ask her what Rosie had said to her, or if that might sound pushy and intrusive.
‘And at home? At the weekends? What kind of stuff do you do?’
‘Um,’ I began to feel a little panicky, like seeing an exam paper question I couldn’t answer, and I looked to the fridge schedule for help. ‘The children do Saturday clubs until about two, and then we have swim club at the leisure centre. And on Sundays, Noah has rugby, and I go for my run in the morning while Peter takes them for a bike ride and then we have lunch at one at the White Horse.’
‘The best roast beef in the country!’ Peter bellowed. At which Miranda Slater almost grimaced.
‘And then we’re home in the afternoon when the kids can watch a film.’
‘That sounds very organised.’
‘Oh, and they have birthday parties to go to sometimes.’
‘And we do see friends,’ Peter added.
The only people who dragged us kicking and screaming out of our weekend routine, were Jim and Vics. When I thought of Vics and how she laughed at me for my love of order, the urge to giggle came over me again, at the absurdity of my rules. I wrung my hands. ‘Yes.’
‘And Gemma, do you and Rosie have any days out, just the two of you?’
‘We went out for the day just the other week.’
‘That sounds nice.’ She smiled. ‘Do you do that often?’
‘It’s an area I could definitely work on,’ I replied, trawling my brain for an example of a frivolous, happy time with Rosie. I drew a blank.
‘Okay...’ she said, marking into her page. ‘So, Gemma, tell me a bit about Rosie.’
‘Well, I know she’s a handful, and she’s said all these awful things to the police, which we just can’t understand, but she’s got this incredible spirit and determination and she’s so funny and great fun to be with,’ I burbled. I felt passionate about Rosie, charged with motherly pride.
‘When you say she is a “handful”, tell me more about that.’
‘We do have a few issues with her tantrums, but I really feel we are working on them and they’re not happening as often these days, are they Peter?’
He shook his head, ‘No, not really,’ he replied, with an infuriating lack of conviction.
‘How often would you say they happen?’
Peter and I answered together. Peter said, ‘Two or three times a week?’ and I answered, ‘Once or twice a month.’
Miranda Slater looked up from her file and raised her eyebrows. She stretched her lips into a smile for us, ‘Which is it?’
‘Well, it is roughly once, and sometimes twice, a week, depending on how tired she gets at school.’
‘Yes,’ Peter agreed.
‘I just don’t want you to think that things are worse than they are,’ I added.
Peter squeezed my knee. He would have known that the probing was frightening me. I was under no obligation to tell Miranda Slater about Rosie’s beginnings in Prague, but I was petrified that she would prize it out of me. There was no way that this woman, this stranger, was going to know a secret that my own mother didn’t know. Anyway, I couldn’t trust her to keep it, however much she might try to reassure us about boundaries and trust.
She nodded slowly, with a half-smile that I couldn’t interpret as she wrote in her notes; concentrating hard, pressing down with her biro, her writing rounded and childish.
‘How is she at school?’
‘She always has glowing reports,’ Peter said.
‘The teachers say she is very motivated and well behaved.’
‘Good, good,’ Miranda Slater said, grinning and nodding at us. ‘That’s good.’ Seemingly we had just won some brownie points.
In response to her nodding, Peter nodded like a dope. It seemed impossible to be ourselves in front of this woman.
‘Peter, in your opinion, your job is secure?’ She was nodding again before he had even answered.
‘Yes. Well, as secure as any job is these days.’
‘Indeed,’ she said, rounding her letters on the page carefully. I could not see what she was writing, but she was pressing so hard I was surprised her biro didn’t break through the paper.
‘And your salary is what?’
Peter shifted in his seat. ‘Is this really relevant?’
‘We need to build a picture of your family’s emotional and financial stability, Peter, is that all right?’ The ponytail was flicked behind her back and her unfortunate toothy smile broadened again.
I spoke for him. ‘Peter earns ￡50K and I earn ￡100K.’
She wrote the figures down, seemingly unmoved by the enormousness of the joint income, and uninterested in who earned more than whom.
‘Would you say you had any money problems?’
I guffawed. Miranda Slater’s smile miraculously disappeared, and she tilted her head to the side slightly. ‘You do have money problems?’
‘No, no, we don’t,’ I said soberly.
I listened out for the children who had probably found my mother. Usually, they would be fighting and telling on each other by now, but they were being especially well behaved with Grandma Helen.
‘And your monthly outgoings are manageable?’
‘Mostly, I suppose they are,’ I replied.
‘Do you have any debts?’
‘We have credit cards, but nothing else,’ I said.
Peter stood up and began pacing around the kitchen.
‘Would you say you suffered from any stress or anxiety about money?’
‘No,’ I said, feeling stressed and anxious about Peter’s reaction to her questions about money. ‘We know what comes in and what goes out.’
Predictably, she nodded and smiled for what seemed like a long time, and then wrote in her report.