‘It might not have made any difference, Kate, if he’d found it sooner,’ Charlotte said to me, in the days after. And maybe she was right.
But I couldn’t forgive him for that.
4
It’s too late to wake up Dad, I tell myself, as I pull up at the house after the police station. I catch myself sighing. Coming home to our pretty old redbrick no longer lifts my spirits as it used to. This place is too big for me now, but I can’t leave. What if she came back and found us all gone?
In the drive, a small shape pads up and I bend down to stroke Tom – a ginger tom, unoriginally. Mark took the dog when we split. It was a surprise how much I missed him, I told my sister: King, not Mark. She didn’t laugh.
At least it meant I could house Tom. Lily, my neighbour, had seen a sign in the supermarket advertising a ‘free kitten’ and rung a number: a woman had rushed over with a cardboard box, the animal inside hissing furiously. He was already half-grown, I saw immediately, and – we soon found out – not yet house-trained. Lily had been so upset about it all.
Perhaps that episode was a sign: she was being too impulsive, not her usual sensible self. At least the cat doesn’t require a lot from me. Suddenly I’m exhausted, the adrenaline that’s borne me through this evening disappearing like bubbles from a fizzy drink.
I switch off the downstairs lights, listening to the noises of the house around me: soft creaks and hums as it settles, the warmth of the day evaporating. Climbing the stairs, I make a note to call the blinds company. In a rare burst of activity, I’d taken down the tired curtains at the landing window. I just haven’t got around to doing anything more and I’m reminded of it every time I walk past the pane of glossy black.
In the darkness outside, I can see the bulk of the nearest neighbour, Parklands, its towers confused by scaffolding, alien shapes against the night sky. There are no lights on, of course. A bend in the road means we don’t even have neighbours on the other side, not really.
I feel a sudden pang of longing for our smart London terrace – far too small for us, we thought, with a teenager and a dog.
For a long time, the idea of moving here had been just that – a ‘what if’ to ponder after dinner with friends over dregs of wine, plotting our escapes from the smoke. Then Mark got offered the chance to expand the Manchester practice. An RAF brat, he was cheerfully unconcerned about starting over. ‘Everyone’ll come and stay, it’s just a jaunt up the M6. Have you seen the space we could get up there?’ And we’d be closer to my family. Charlotte had stayed local to Macclesfield, near where we grew up. She, Phil and the boys were ten minutes from Dad, while Mark’s parents spent half the year in France anyway.
There were things we didn’t talk about: the distance between us.
I’d met him at a bar in the City, birthday drinks a friend had brought me along to – he was at the centre of a big laughing crowd, as always. He was a golden retriever in human form, Charlotte had said to me, when I brought him home, rolling her eyes. She’d been with Phil, even more sensible than my sister, since sixth form and through her tough first years as a teacher. But in the end she was charmed too. When I’d got pregnant, early among our group of friends, there was no doubt about what to do. We’d married that summer, me fooling no one by slowly draining half a glass of champagne.
And if sometimes I wondered privately how much we really had in common, if I was sometimes surprised to find myself with a husband, a house, a baby, even a dog, I can’t really say it worried me much. Even when it became clear there wouldn’t be any more to follow Sophie – after we both realised the other was ready to stop trying, too – we were OK, I think.
So we decided. We’d leave. There were tears from Sophie, an upsetting amount – she didn’t want to leave her friends – but it would be good for her, surely. They grew up so fast in London.
And we’d been excited to find this place so quickly: leafy Cheshire, near enough to the city that Mark could drive in but still, to a couple of London transplants, all so shockingly green and quiet. Out here where the village turns to countryside, the houses sit far apart, most of them stately Victorian mansions built by the cotton merchants behind low stone walls. If you keep driving along Park Road, away from the village, you end up at the entrance to the deer park, once the grand estate that gave Vale Dean its name.
I took voluntary redundancy. I’d loved my job, fund-raising for an arts organisation, but it didn’t pay like Mark’s, in the law, and I was sick of the endless cuts. I didn’t need to worry about working for a while, Mark told me, I could focus on doing up the house. I squashed down the thought that he’d prefer me not to work.
Looking out at the shadow of Parklands now, I can almost hear his voice: ‘It’s an eyesore, letting a good house get like that. Weren’t you going to ring the council?’
I suppress a shiver. Enough of the past. I know where I have to go tonight.
On the threshold, I stop, and touch the pink wooden heart hanging from the doorknob. She’d got into decorating her room a bit, starting to take an interest in having a more grown-up space around her, and I’d let her. Privately I’d smiled to see her taste: flowered cushions in soft blues and violets, the walls ‘apple white’. My sweet little girl was still there, I’d thought, even as she’d disappear to her room for hours, or rush out of the house – ‘out’, the only answer flung at me as I watched her retreating back.
‘She’s a teenager, Kate,’ Mark would tell me, bored of the discussion. ‘That’s what they’re like.’
I push the door open, slowly. I never keep it closed, just ajar. There’s a tang of furniture polish the air – Silvia, our cleaner, was good about that, she just carried on as if Sophie hadn’t gone, until I said she could stop coming. There wasn’t any need, any more.
Walking over to the bed, I curl up against her wrought iron headboard – she’d paid half, promising she wouldn’t complain it was uncomfortable – and let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding in.
My eyes wander around the room, over the school scarf flung carelessly over the cheval mirror; on the wall, the smiling faces of the boy band that’s since split up; a dried rose, a gift from Danny; the stuffed animals sitting on her wardrobe, faded souvenirs of childhood. Everything’s the same as it always is. I can’t bear it – and at the same time I feel closer to her here. I can almost pretend that she’s just stepped out, that she’s taken the dog for a walk, maybe, and that at any moment might be back again.
But tonight I don’t feel the usual sense of comfort. I’m antsy, even my skin itching, so I get up again. Maybe it’s because I can’t pretend now that she’s just gone for a moment – I know she’s out there, somewhere. I take one long look at the room, my hand on the door handle, and then go to bed.
I wake up suddenly, my heart thudding in my chest, my nightie sticking to my body with cold sweat. My mouth’s dry.
I turn my head to the alarm clock: the green figures tell me it’s still the early hours. Damn. I should have taken a pill. I’ve been trying to do without them, just as an experiment: to see if I could.
My dream … something niggles at my brain. Sophie …
It comes to me in a sudden rush. I was walking around my house, looking for her. Another one of those. Nightmares sounds so childish. Night terrors, they used to call them.