It wasn’t a usual upbringing, because Esther was a spinster, who’d always lived alone. She taught English Literature A level to the children of the local wealthy at a small private school and could quote a huge amount of poetry by heart. She also played bridge and had a passion for growing roses. She wore knee-length skirts and flat shoes, with simple cardigans, and had bobbed flyaway white hair that she clipped back with kirby grips. She kept gold-topped milk in the fridge, which the birds had invariably pecked at before she brought it in in the morning, so each lid had neat puncture marks in it when it arrived on the breakfast table.
I don’t think Esther was a naturally maternal figure. She was unaccustomed to young children apart from a regular annual visit she’d made to our family before our parents died, so when Nicky and I arrived suddenly in her life she treated us as miniature adults, and shared her passions with us. She surrounded us with art and music and books, she pointed out the possibility of beauty in life. Nicky drank this up as if it were nectar, and fell into Esther’s arms gratefully.
I was different. When I was growing up I always felt like the baby that I’d been when we arrived there, a bit of an addendum to their lives, too little to understand things properly, always in bed when the proper conversations took place. It was ironic, as I’d never known our mother or father, that I was the one who found it most difficult to accept Esther in her role in loco parentis, while Nicky, nine years old when we arrived, wouldn’t leave her side.
As a teenager I’d meanly thought that Esther was fusty, tweedy and better suited to another era, more like other people’s grandparents than their parents. I’d rejected her gentle offerings of culture and knowledge because they hadn’t immediately bolstered me, or given me an obvious direction or purpose. That came later in life, when I took up photography, when I sat beside John in St George’s concert hall and fell in love with him and with classical music, and then I regretted that I’d never thanked her for what she did for us before she died.
It was because things hadn’t always been easy when we were growing up that it pleased Nicky whenever I said a kind word about Esther. It pleased her immensely.
I agreed to go to John’s house. Laura came round to housesit because I still couldn’t stand to leave it empty. Just in case. Nicky and I had to fight through the journalists to get to Nicky’s car. They jostled us, shouted questions at us. We ignored them, but the questions hurt. They were aggressive, and accusatory. Some of the photographers ran alongside the car as we pulled away, lenses at the windows, snapping away at our white, scared faces.
John and Katrina’s house was only ten minutes’ drive away, on a quiet suburban street where everybody had driveways and two cars parked on them at the weekend. The house was semi-detached, art deco in style, painted white, and had long, linear windows along the front of it, which would normally give a view into both their sitting room and office. When we arrived the curtains were drawn in both rooms, and there were journalists lounging on their low front wall like teenagers at a bus stop. They leaped to their feet at the sight of us.
John opened the door and ushered us in quickly. He looked dishevelled, and he was unshaven.
‘In the kitchen,’ he said.
‘John,’ I said, before we stepped out of the hallway. ‘I’m so sorry about the press conference, so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to…’
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘At least you didn’t just cry like a baby.’
It hadn’t occurred to me that John might be berating himself for his own behaviour. I’d thought mine so much worse.
‘Don’t be ashamed,’ I said, but he was already on his way into the kitchen.
Before I joined him I couldn’t help noticing the parquet floor in the hallway, and remembered what Ben had said about it: ‘There’s a shiny floor, but I’m not allowed to skid on it.’
Katrina stood in the kitchen beside a small round table. Like John, she appeared haggard and undone somehow. She was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, a cardigan over it. She looked very young. She glanced at John as if expecting him to play host and when he didn’t she asked, ‘Can I get anything for you? Would you like a cup of coffee? Or water? Or tea?’
It was awkward being in their house, I can’t deny it, but together we made a flyer, and in some ways it was a relief to have something constructive to concentrate on.
Ben’s photo was prominent in our design, as was the phone number to contact. The word ‘MISSING’ ran along the top of the page. The plan was to print out one hundred copies there and then and Katrina said she would get more done at a local print shop. She and Nicky discussed how and where we should distribute them.
When we were done, Nicky said, ‘John, Katrina, do you mind if I ask, can either of you think of anybody who might have done this? Anybody at all?’
John’s reply was curt. ‘I’ve told the police everything I can think of.’
‘Are you sure you can’t think of anything odd at all, people behaving strangely around him, anything like that?’
Katrina said, ‘We’ve gone round and round in circles talking about this, haven’t we, John?’
He had his elbows on the table, his hands flat on its surface. It was almost a position of surrender. He nodded at her. ‘We have,’ he said. ‘And I can’t think of anything.’ His eyes were so bloodshot they looked painful.
‘It’s the teaching assistant I wonder about,’ said Katrina.
‘He only started this term,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything about him.’
‘Exactly,’ said Katrina. ‘That’s what bugs me. We don’t know who he is. He’s an unknown quantity.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’ I asked John.
‘No. You?’
‘Not once, he’s never out in the playground.’
John shrugged. ‘The police will be talking to everybody,’ he said. ‘They’ve assured me of that. I don’t see what we can do.’
‘Anybody else you’ve thought of?’ Nicky asked.
John had had enough. ‘Don’t you think I haven’t spent every second of every day going through this in my mind? I can’t think of anything else that would help. God knows I wish I could!’
He slammed the flat of his hand down on the table and it juddered.
‘Of course,’ Nicky said. ‘I’m sorry.’
In the silence that followed, Katrina stood up and began tidying up mugs. My eyes roved round, taking in John’s new home. Their kitchen was white and shiny, the granite surfaces immaculate. The only sign of disorder in the room was a large pin board, covered with stuff. I stood up and went to look at it, lured over there by one image in particular. It was a drawing, made by Ben.
The drawing was of three adults and a child. Each person was named underneath: Mummy, John, Katrina and Ben. We all stood equidistant from each other. Ben stood between John and me. ‘My family’ he’d written above it and on each of our faces was a smile.
And in that moment I realised that Ben had managed to do what I hadn’t done, couldn’t do: he’d moved on. I began to cry.
I felt an arm around my shoulders. It was Katrina, and what she said next made me realise for the first time that she had a heart, and feelings of her own.
‘Would you like to see his room?’ she asked me.
‘Yes.’
She took me upstairs. On the landing, the first door we came to had three colourful wooden letters on it that spelled out: ‘BEN’. She opened it and I stepped inside. ‘Take as long as you like,’ she said. She went back downstairs.
The room had been beautifully decorated. It was light, and fresh, with pale walls and striped bedlinen. The bed was made up with care. The duvet had been smoothed and tucked in and somebody had carefully arranged three or four soft toys against the pillows, which were plumped up and welcoming.