‘Don’t look so mortified.’ Melissa laughed. ‘You weren’t to know.’
‘No, but we covered food allergies on my course so it should have occurred to me to ask,’ Jade said dejectedly. ‘I did a childcare course in college,’ she supplied, as Melissa eyed her curiously.
‘Well, it will next time.’ Melissa smiled encouragingly. ‘I actually meant where will you stay?’ The girl was standing in the road with barely a stitch to her name.
Jade shrugged disconsolately. ‘I have a friend I could ring,’ she said, looking uncertain.
Again, Melissa felt her heart twist for her. ‘No family you can call?’ she asked carefully.
At that, Jade quickly shook her head, and then looked down at Poppy with a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll sort something out, don’t worry,’ she said, giving her hand a squeeze.
Poppy, though, didn’t look convinced. ‘You can’t go out in your nightie,’ she said, her huge brown eyes aghast. ‘It’s not allowed.’
‘Come home with us,’ Melissa offered. It was the least she could do.
‘Yay!’ Jumping on the spot, Poppy immediately gave that idea her seal of approval.
‘I’m sure I can find you something to wear. We’re about the same size,’ Melissa went on, as Jade hesitated, ‘if you don’t mind jeans or leggings, that is. I spend most of my life up to my eyes in clay when I’m not changing nappies or doing the school run, so it’s jeans or evening wear, I’m afraid.’
‘She can’t wear a sparkly dress in the day, Mummy,’ Poppy pointed out exasperatedly.
‘Who can’t?’ Mark asked, a familiar faraway look in his eyes as he turned back from his call.
‘Jade,’ Poppy informed him. ‘She’s coming home with us. Mummy’s going to share some of her clothes with her.’
‘Good idea.’ Mark smiled. ‘Sorry, got to go,’ he said, bending to plant a kiss on Poppy’s nose and another gently to Evie’s forehead.
‘Um, haven’t we forgotten something?’ Melissa asked him, as he turned towards his car.
‘Damn.’ Squeezing his eyes closed, Mark turned back to kiss Melissa, now looking definitely distracted, she noted. The call must have been important. She’d seen that look many times before.
‘I actually meant your car keys,’ she said.
‘Ah, right.’ Realising he was minus said car keys, and work jacket, and his ID, having dashed out when he’d spotted the fire, Mark headed swiftly past her back to their own cottage.
Rolling her eyes good-naturedly as he disappeared through the front door, Melissa beckoned Jade and – with Poppy skipping happily alongside her – they strolled more leisurely in the same direction.
Thirty seconds later Mark bowled past them again. ‘Bye,’ he said, spinning on his heel to smile apologetically. ‘Sorry, it’s—’
‘Urgent. I gathered. Go.’ Melissa waved him onwards.
‘Bye, Daddy!’ Poppy called after him. ‘Love you bigger than the sky.’
‘Bye, Poppet,’ Mark called. ‘Love you bigger than the sky and all the stars.’ Blowing her a kiss, he shrugged embarrassedly at Jade and then climbed quickly in the driver’s side.
‘He’s nice, your daddy, isn’t he?’ said Jade, as Mark started the engine and pulled away.
‘Yes.’ Poppy nodded adamantly. ‘Mummy says he’s too nice for his own good sometimes, but I don’t really understand what she means.’
‘That people might easily take advantage of him,’ Jade explained, with a knowing smile.
Two
MARK
Scratching his unshaven chin, Mark swung into the main office to find DCI Edwards pointedly checking his watch. ‘Problems on the home front, I take it?’ he asked him acerbically, his expression one of despair as he looked him over.
Mark followed the man’s gaze down to realise the front of his shirt hadn’t fared too well after his encounter with the cat and his none-too-elegant scramble over the garden gate to rescue it. As if it mattered what he looked like, with a child on the missing list.
‘House fire. Neighbour’s,’ he explained, heading straight to his own office and his filing cabinet for the clean shirt he kept there in case of emergencies – of which there were many lately, with a new baby in the house.
DS Lisa Moyes was two steps behind him.
‘Can you bring me up to speed, Lisa?’ he asked her, tossing his jacket on his chair and reaching for his shirt buttons.
‘It seems the girl was taken from home – assuming she was taken.’
‘Which is where?’ Mark asked.
‘Farley Village, close to the Herefordshire border.’
Just twenty miles or so away from his own house, Mark realised. God, it could have been one of his kids.
‘Parents were celebrating last night, apparently,’ Lisa went on. ‘Wife’s birthday party. It all went a bit pear-shaped when hubby decided to give her a big surprise and shag one of the young female guests.’
Mark arched an eyebrow. ‘Thoughtful bloke.’
‘Very. And doing it in their bed was a nice touch, I thought.’ Lisa smiled flatly.
Mark nodded, tugged off his shirt and reached for the clean one. ‘So, when did they notice she’d gone?’
‘This morning.’ Lisa sighed. ‘Mum went up to check on her and found the bed empty. They checked the house and garden and then called us.’
Which basically gave them a timeframe that was wide open. Mark tugged in a terse breath. ‘I take it they argued after the birthday surprise?’
‘Volubly, according to the residents of the neighbouring property. At it half the night. Husband makes himself scarce at some point. Wife falls asleep on the sofa with a bottle for company. Fairly standard stuff.’
In which case, it was possible the girl had slipped out, seeking to extract herself from what might have been one of many arguments, assuming the husband made a habit of screwing around. Mark’s inclination as a kid had been to do the same. Knowing the shouting was a prequel to his father’s violence, he’d been petrified. But wherever he went, whatever space he squeezed into, the bastard would always find him. He’d been terrified of the dark, imagining zombies or vampires lurking in shadows, but he’d felt a hell of a lot safer walking the streets at night than he had at home.
‘We’ve searched all the likely places – house and garden again, gardens of properties within walking distance of the house, fields beyond it,’ Lisa continued. ‘And we’ve also managed to contact the wife’s sister, who says that she poked her head around the child’s door before she left. She confirms Daisy was still in bed.’
Daisy. His thoughts immediately went to Poppy, imagining her missing and terrified in the company of some sick individual, and Mark felt something twist inside him.
‘We’ve currently got uniforms going door to door throughout the village. And we’re pulling up all local sex offenders,’ Lisa said, holding the door open for Mark as he hurried with the last of his shirt buttons. ‘There’s something else,’ she added, as they walked towards the incident room. ‘Might be relevant, might not, but I’m thinking it makes the husband definitely worth checking out.’
Mark read her expression and guessed he wasn’t going to like it. ‘Shoot.’
‘The young female he was caught in flagrante with, she was very young. Just three days past underage, to be precise.’
Mark felt his jaw clench. ‘Tosser. Find out whether he’s on the sex offenders’ register and make sure we have his PC and phone. If he refuses to hand them over, pull him in.’
‘On it,’ Lisa assured him. ‘Talking of tossers…’
Mark followed her unimpressed gaze to see DS Cummings strolling towards them, a sleazy smirk all over his face.
‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’ His gaze drifted from Lisa to Mark, who was hastily tucking in his shirt.
‘Piss off, Cummings.’ Mark eyed the man disdainfully and moved past him, only to meet the now decidedly despairing glance of his DCI.
‘Problem?’ Edwards asked him.
Mark got the message. Even now, years after he’d communicated his feelings to Cummings regarding his sexual harassment of female colleagues, Edwards never missed an opportunity to remind Mark of his ‘tendency towards hot-headedness’.