Daisy is sitting on the swing at the bottom of the garden, twisting it desultorily from side to side. Behind her is the piece of fence her parents don’t know is loose. She went out through it a few minutes ago, lifting the greenish panel carefully in both hands so as not to mark her dress. If someone had seen her she’d have said she wanted to look at the ducks on the canal. But that wasn’t the real reason. And in any case, nobody saw. Not her mother in the kitchen, not the people on the path. No one noticed. No one ever notices.
She kicks her legs out and starts to move, backwards and forwards, higher and higher into the air. With each swing the metal frame wrenches slightly out of the ground where her father didn’t fix it firmly enough. Her mother is always moaning about it, on and on about how you’d have thought a builder could fix a simple thing like a child’s swing. Daisy lifts her face into the sun. If she closes her eyes she can almost believe she’s flying, gliding above the big billowy clouds that look like beautiful snowy mountains or fairy castles where princes and princesses live. It must be amazing to fly right through the clouds like a bird or an aeroplane. She went in a plane once but it was a long time ago and she can’t remember what it was like. She wishes she could. She wishes she could look down right now at the houses and the roads and the canal, and her own self, very small and very far away.
There’s a tap, then, on the kitchen window. Fingernails on the glass. Rap rap rap.
Sharon opens the window. ‘Daisy,’ she calls, ‘how many times have I told you about swinging too high? It’s dangerous, the state that thing is in.’
Sharon stands at the window until Daisy slows the swing down. As it comes to a halt there’s a sudden high-pitched buzzing, like a mosquito. Sharon can’t hear it because the frequency is too high. But Daisy can. She watches until her mother closes the window and disappears back into the kitchen before reaching into her pocket and taking out a small pink mobile phone.
There’s a new text on the screen.
I like your dress
Daisy looks round, her eyes wide. The phone buzzes again.
I’m always here
And then
Don’t forget
Daisy drops off the swing and goes back to the fence, and slips quickly through it. She looks up and down the towpath. At the families walking with their dogs and pushchairs, the group of teenagers smoking on the bench, the ice-cream van, and the cars parked on the other side of the bridge. She puts the phone back in her pocket and climbs back through the panel.
She is smiling.
*
When I pull up on the Northams’ semicircular drive it’s alongside a Bentley and a bright red Carrera. Like Canal Manor, this is new-build masquerading as heritage, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Because everything here is on an infinitely grander scale. A three-storey mock Georgian in cream stucco sitting in its own grounds, with an orangery one side, a separate garage block got up to look like stables, emerald lawns sweeping down to the river and a gleaming white and chrome gin-palace moored off a jetty, bobbing gently up and down. It’s like finding yourself inside a colour supplement.
I’m not surprised to find the door is opened by a housekeeper in a black dress and apron – in fact, the only thing that surprises me is that they haven’t gone the whole hog and got themselves a bloody butler.
The woman shows me into the cavernous sitting room and Moira Northam rises from a white leather sofa to meet me. The first thing that comes to my mind is that Barry Mason has a type. The blonde hair, the heels, the jewellery, the rather artificial way of dressing. The only difference is that Sharon is ten years younger, and getting her animal-print miniskirts from Primark.
‘I hear Jamie has got himself into bother again,’ says Moira, gesturing me to sit down. She has a large glass of gin and tonic by her side. She doesn’t offer me one.
‘I think this is a little more serious than “bother”, Mrs Northam.’
She waves a hand airily and her gold bangles clatter. ‘But he hasn’t actually done anything, as far as I’m aware?’
‘He’s been associating with members of a family who were involved in an East Oxford sex-grooming ring. We have still to establish how far he might be implicated.’
‘Oh, I doubt you’ll be able to prove anything against Jamie. He’s all talk. He likes to strut it about, but when it comes down to it, he’s a bit of a coward. He takes after his father.’
She may look superficial, this woman, but she has Barry Mason bang to rights.
‘Did you know he’d been seeing Daisy?’
She raises an eyebrow. An eyebrow that’s been painted on. ‘My dear Inspector, I didn’t even know he’d been seeing Barry. We don’t exactly keep in touch. I move in very different circles these days. Barry pays maintenance for Jamie, of course, my lawyer saw to that. He puts it into an account in my name. In cash.’
I look around. At the mirrors, the vast flat-screen TV, the swanky metal light fittings, the view of the river. So this is where Barry’s money has been going. Siphoned off to this house, month after month, for at least the last ten years. I wonder what Sharon thinks about that. Meanwhile Moira is watching me. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Inspector, but it’s a question of principle. Barry left me, and Jamie is his child. He can’t expect Marcus to fork out for him.’
I suspect that’s very much Marcus’s view as well, and for the second time today, I feel a tiny flicker of sympathy for Sharon Mason.
‘Barry has the standard access rights. Not that he’s ever exercised them.’
I’m incredulous. ‘Not at all? How old was Jamie when you split up?’
‘Just turned four.’
So Barry Mason walked away from a four-year-old child who up till then had called him Daddy. A child he’d read to, tucked in, piggy-backed, pushed on a swing.
Moira is still eyeing me.
‘To be fair to my less-than-estimable ex-husband, it was Sharon’s idea,’ she says. ‘The whole “fresh start” thing. Though I did bump into her and Barry once – it was London Zoo, of all places.’
‘I know. Jamie said. He recognized his father.’
That stumbles her for a moment. ‘Really? Frankly, you stagger me. He hadn’t seen Barry for years.’
‘You’d be surprised, Mrs Northam. How much children can hold on to things like that.’
She gathers herself once more. ‘Well, anyway, Jamie had dragged me to see the spider house, horrible child, and out of the blue there was Sharon, with this tiny pretty little girl. Desperately awkward, can you imagine? We just stood there staring at each other for about five minutes, trying to think of something to say. And then Barry appeared and she rushed him away like we’d just sprouted leprosy. I got a note from Sharon after that, clarifying – that was her word – that she and Barry wanted no further contact, and that it was best for the children too.
‘To be honest,’ continues Moira, ‘I think the real reason for all that fresh start baloney was that she didn’t want Barry coming round here, even to see Jamie. She wanted him all to herself. Not very keen on sharing, our Sharon. Unfortunately for her, Barry is very keen on sharing. Likes to spread himself around in liberal quantities. If you catch my drift.’