‘Yes, that would be helpful in just a moment.’ The officer put down her pen. ‘Is Rain the rebellious type? Do you think she could have done this on purpose to annoy you or her father?’
‘She’s feisty, but show me a teenage girl who isn’t.’ Maggie covered her face, her hands trembling. ‘She goes off partying and sometimes stays out all night and it never worries me. I know she’ll be safe because she’s with her friends. They all look out for each other. But going off on her own and not telling me, that’s what bothers me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s simply nothing to go off for around here. She won’t have gone fishing or taken a bike ride or anything like that. She hates that kind of thing. Rain was bored of being here already, I know that much.’
‘If she was fed up, could she have gone home?’
Maggie shook her head, wondering where it was exactly that Rain considered home to be. ‘She has no way of getting there, and besides, she only took a bit of loose change to the beach. Her phone and purse are upstairs in her room. She never normally goes anywhere without them.’ She stifled another sob. Breaking down would make it real, and she wasn’t sure she could stand that.
Someone was tapping on the sitting room door. When Maggie looked up, another officer in uniform was standing there. He was tall and stooping slightly to avoid hitting his head on the low beams.
‘Ah, PC Holt,’ the officer said. ‘Come and join us. I’m just taking some basics.’ She introduced Maggie. ‘Is Rain’s father here? We’d like to speak to him too.’
‘We’re not together.’ Maggie pressed her hands together in her lap, staring at the carpet for a moment. She felt her cheeks burning.
‘Do you think she might have gone to see her father in that case?’ the male officer suggested, sitting down.
Maggie shook her head. ‘He rarely sees her. We’re not married and we’ve never lived together.’ When she was forced into explaining, she always tried to avoid detail.
‘I take it you’ve already called him to check—’
‘No.’ Maggie looked away for a second. ‘It’s complicated,’ she added, sighing. ‘He’s a high-profile MP. And he’s married to someone else.’ There. She’d said it. Now she would just wait for them to put two and two together.
She’d always worried about her dirty little secret getting out, worried even more about kidnapping if it did. Surely, the police would pick up on that possibility too? It might focus Peter’s mind if they did.
Her hands shook as she waited but they said nothing. They just sat staring at her. She swallowed. ‘What you need to understand is that my daughter, however wild, however stubborn, however hormonal and crazy, would not take off without telling me where she was going, even if it was with her father. And she especially wouldn’t go without her purse or phone. She was only wearing beach clothes and not much else. She has no friends around here and it is now going on eleven o’clock at night. I just know that something bad has happened to her. Do you think she’s been taken… by someone who maybe knows about her father? Do you think there’ll be demands for money?’ Maggie swallowed again, staring at the floor.
‘Did the others at the beach say where she was going?’ PC Holt sat down next to his colleague, ignoring Maggie’s question. ‘Your friends in the kitchen gave me a brief rundown.’
Maggie closed her eyes and thought. She imagined Rain slipping on her shorts and top at the beach and cheerfully saying goodbye to Marcus and the others. In reality, she saw Rain cursing them for being so boring, cursing the entire week for being so lame, and stomping off on her own. She drew a deep breath, hardly able to get out what Claire had told her. Getting her story right was vital. ‘According to Marcus, Claire’s son, she… she said she was going off to get an ice cream from the beach shop.’ It came out in a breathy rush, as if she was drowning.
‘OK,’ PC Wyndham said, not knowing the significance. ‘Try not to get too worried at this stage. In most cases, missing persons turn up very quickly. But we’ll put out all the usual alerts, get it on the system. Meantime, I’d like to speak to a couple of your friends.’
‘Of course,’ Maggie said. She blew her nose and made to move, but the officer placed a hand on her arm.
‘You said you’d draw your daughter’s tattoo.’ She handed over her notepad and pen.
Maggie stared at the blank page, remembering the moment she’d first spotted it on Rain’s ankle a year ago. Her loose trousers had ridden up as she’d sat cross-legged on the floor, the freshly inflamed skin around the simple black design making Maggie’s heart pound. Even the cling film protecting it couldn’t hide the infection. But it was the design that made Maggie breathless. A course of antibiotics soon cleared up the redness, but the ink was still there to remind Maggie of her guilt forever. She hated what she’d done now, but as a kid her jealousy had burnt deep. Claire had had it all, hadn’t she? The happy family, the devoted parents, the beautiful home. And at the time she’d convinced herself it wasn’t actually stealing. But then, last year, she’d rediscovered the little pendant hidden away in an old trinket box she’d forgotten about and had taken to wearing it. It had obviously caught Rain’s eye.
She handed the notebook back to the officer. ‘That’s the tattoo,’ she said. ‘On her left ankle.’
PC Wyndham nodded and showed it to PC Holt. ‘We’ll get this circulated along with her description,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we could speak to your friend Claire now?’
Maggie stood, leaving the officers alone for a moment while she went to fetch her. They didn’t know of the significance of the ankh symbol – the little silver charm on the pair of necklaces Patrick had bought for his daughters all those years ago; wouldn’t know that Lenni’s had been found, along with her shorts, in the grass verge after she’d gone missing.
Chapter Forty-One
‘It’s going to be OK, Mum,’ Claire said, sitting next to Shona at the kitchen table, even though she was feeling more and more that it wasn’t. They all sensed it – a teenage girl had gone to buy ice cream at the beach and she hadn’t come back – but no one was ready to say it.
Patrick drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, in a manner reminiscent of how he’d been in the early days of Lenni’s disappearance. Somehow his silence had given him an air of control, even though Claire knew he’d felt as helpless as the rest of them. She wondered if it was the same now or if his mind gave him some protection from reality. For once, she hoped he wasn’t completely aware.
‘I tell you, this house is cursed,’ Patrick muttered, as Maggie emerged from the snug.
‘They want to have a word, Claire,’ Maggie said quietly. ‘If Rain doesn’t turn up soon…’ She paused, stumbling over the possibility, ‘…then they’ll need to speak to everyone.’
Claire squeezed Maggie’s arm as she headed for the snug, but stopped when she heard Callum’s voice.
‘You don’t have to say anything without a solicitor, Claire,’ he said.
She swung around. ‘I just want to help find Rain. I don’t need a solicitor.’ She gave him a small smile, hoping he’d return it. He didn’t. After their drive around the area earlier, Callum hadn’t gone back out searching with the others on foot. She noticed how preoccupied he seemed, but also knew that work was preying on his mind. He didn’t have the kind of job that could be cast aside.
She closed the snug door and sat down in the armchair with the two PCs facing her. Perhaps her father was right. Perhaps Trevellin was cursed.
‘We won’t keep you long. If you can just tell us about this afternoon, when you last saw Rain, how she seemed.’