‘Our time is up. We’ll meet again on Thursday. I want you to think about this.’
They both stood up. He shook his head slowly from side to side again, in that futile, hapless gesture of his, as though he was trying to clear it.
‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ he said. ‘I’m not cut out for it.’
‘We’ll take it one step at a time.’
‘Through the darkness,’ said Alan, words that caught Frieda off balance so she could only nod at him.
When Frieda returned home, she found a small package on her doormat and at once recognized Sandy’s handwriting on the envelope. She stooped and picked it up very carefully, as if it might explode with any sudden movement. But she didn’t open it immediately. She took it to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea first, standing at the window while the kettle boiled, looking past her reflection at the darkness outside and the night sky, which was clear and cold.
Only when she had a mug of tea in her hand and was sitting at the table did she open the package and take out a silver bangle, a small sketchpad with a couple of her drawings in it and a soft-leaded pencil, five hair grips held together by a thin brown hairband. That was all. She shook the envelope, but there was no letter or note. She looked at the paltry objects lying on the table. Was that really all she had left there? How was it possible to leave so little trace?
The phone rang and she picked it up, wishing even as she did so that she had left it to the answering machine.
‘Frieda. You’ve got to help me. I’m at my wit’s end here and her stupid fucking father isn’t any help either.’
‘I’m here, you know,’ said Chloë. ‘Even if you wish I wasn’t.’
Frieda held the receiver slightly away from her ear. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Which one of you am I meant to be talking to?’
‘You’re talking to me,’ said Olivia, her voice high and shrill. ‘I rang you because I just happen to be at the end of my tether. If someone’s rude enough to pick up the other phone and eavesdrop, then that someone has only got themselves to blame if they hear things they’d prefer not to hear.’
‘Blah blah blah blah,’ jeered Chloë. ‘She wants to gate me for being drunk. I’m sixteen. I was sick. Get over it. She should gate herself.’
‘Chloë, look –’
‘I wouldn’t talk to a dog the way she talks to me.’
‘Nor would I. I like dogs. Dogs don’t shout and nag and feel sorry for themselves.’
‘Your brother just said it was part of growing up,’ said Olivia, ending on a sob. She always called David Frieda’s brother or Chloë’s father when she was more than usually angry with him. ‘He should try a bit of growing up himself. It wasn’t me who ran off with some young tart with dyed hair.’
‘Careful, Olivia,’ said Frieda, sharply.
‘If you try to gate me, I’ll go and stay with him.’
‘I’d love that, except why do you think he wants you? He left you, didn’t he?’
‘You both have to stop this now,’ said Frieda.
‘He didn’t leave me, he left you. I don’t blame him.’
‘I am now going to put the phone down,’ said Frieda, very loudly, and she did.
She got up and poured herself a small glass of white wine, then sat down again. She fingered the objects that Sandy had returned, turning them over in her fingers. The phone rang.
‘Hello,’ came Olivia’s small voice.
‘Hi.’ Frieda waited.
‘I’m not coping very well.’
Frieda took a sip of wine and rolled its coolness in her mouth. She thought of her bath, her book, the fire that was laid, the thinking she needed to do. Outside, it was winter and an ill wind blew through the dark streets. ‘Do you want me to come round?’ she said. ‘Because that would be fine.’
Chapter Twenty-three
The following afternoon, Karlsson called a press conference at which the Faradays faced a bank of photographers and journalists to make an appeal for the return of their son that would reawaken public interest.
Karlsson had spent the morning looking through the statements his team had gathered from hundreds of so-called witnesses and the dwindling reports of possible sightings. He stood to one side. He watched the couple as the lights flashed in their faces – faces that had undergone such a change since Matthew had disappeared. Day by day, he’d seen grief carving new lines, stretching the skin, dulling the light in their eyes. Alec Faraday’s face was still puffy and bruised from his attack, and he moved stiffly because of his broken rib. They both looked thin and strained, and her voice cracked as she talked of their darling boy, but they managed to get through it all right. They said the usual heart-breaking things. They begged the world at large to help in the search and the person in particular to give them back their beloved boy.
It was useless, of course. These shows were largely designed to put pressure on the parents, to see if they were the guilty ones. But they all knew the Faradays couldn’t have done it. Even the papers that had accused him had done a brazen U-turn, turning him into a suffering saint instead. He’d been with a client in the accountant’s office where he worked and had dozens of witnesses. She’d been rushing from her job as a medical receptionist to get to the school on time to collect him. And the notion that whoever it was who had grabbed Matthew would suddenly have a change of heart when he heard them speak and saw their ravaged faces was absurd, not least because the child was almost certainly dead and had been for some time. So it was left to the world to respond – and respond it would, and the deluge of misinformation and false hope that had been mercifully drying up would flood them again.
That evening, he stayed late at work. He stared at the photos of the boy, of the place he had disappeared, at the large map in the investigation room, dotted with pins and flags. He read through statements. His brain throbbed and his chest ached.
He stared and the other boy stared back. It was Simon. He put up a hand towards Simon, to see if he was friendly, and Simon put up his hand too, at the same time, but he didn’t smile. He was very thin and very white and his bones stuck out on his shoulders and his hips, and his willy looked like a little pink snail. When he took a step towards Simon, Simon took a step towards him. A jerky little step, like a puppet moves, and then like a puppet Simon folded to the floor and Matthew folded to the floor and they were staring at each other. Matthew put one finger to the boy’s tiny face, goblin face, hollows for cheeks and holes for eyes and a bandaged mouth, and touched the cold, speckled mirror and watched the tears stain the skin where he pressed.
He felt hands behind him, he felt himself being held. Soft words, breath on him.
‘You’re going to be our little boy,’ the voice said. ‘But don’t be our bad little boy. We don’t like bad little boys.’
When Frieda opened the door to Karlsson, he stood at the threshold as though she was expecting him, and in a way she was. She had known that this was not the end of the case of Matthew Faraday.
‘Come in,’ she said.
They went into the front room, where a fire was burning and a stack of academic journals lay on the arm of her chair.
‘Am I disturbing you?’
‘Not really. Have a seat.’ He was carrying a leather bag, slung over his shoulder. He laid it on the floor and took his coat off. He sat down. She hesitated, and then said, ‘Do you want something to drink? Coffee?’
‘Perhaps something a bit stronger.’
‘Wine? Whisky?’
‘Whisky, I think. It’s that kind of night.’
Frieda poured them both a small tumbler of whisky, adding a splash of water, then sat down opposite him. ‘How can I help?’
Her manner was softer than usual. It almost brought tears to his eyes.
‘It’s all I think of. I get up and I think about him and I go to bed and I dream about him. I go to the pub with the guys and we talk about stuff and I hear the words coming out of my mouth. It’s amazing how you can go around pretending everything’s normal when it’s not. I talk to my kids on the phone and ask them about their day and tell them silly, cheerful stuff about mine, and all the time I’m just seeing him. He’s dead, you know. Or, at least, I hope he is because if he isn’t … What’s the best that can happen? That we find his body and catch the bastard who did it. That’s the best.’