Barry Maitland: Silvermeadow

‘Stefan wanted custody when we split up. He’s never accepted things.’

‘Does he have access? Does Kerri visit him?’

Alison shook her head. ‘He lives abroad. I won’t let Kerri go to him, because I know he wouldn’t let her come back.’ She reached for her handbag and produced a slip of paper. ‘This is his address and phone numbers.’

‘Hamburg.’ Lowry scratched the back of his head. His hair looked newly cropped, very short, and the way he touched it made her think he was still getting used to it.

‘I tried ringing him. There was no answer from his home. The second number is his work. They said he’s been away. Abroad, they said.’

‘If Kerri packed up things to take with her, she must have been planning to go somewhere willingly,’ the woman constable said, in that detached, reasonable tone the nurses used with sick people. ‘Why don’t we have another look in her room and make a list of exactly what she took.’

The man looked at his watch impatiently. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said.

The uniformed woman, who told Alison to call her Miriam, stayed with her for another half an hour, drawing up a list of missing things, from which they picked out the clothes that Kerri would most likely have been wearing when she left, as well as other belongings-the Mexican silver ring and hair clasp, for example-that would identify her. Alison Vlasich felt herself become calmer as Miriam Sangster talked the matter through with her, discussing options and possibilities. It was only when the policewoman made signs of leaving that her agitation returned.

‘Why don’t you pay a visit to your GP, Alison?’ Sangster suggested. ‘You probably need something to help you sleep.’

‘It isn’t that.’ She gnawed at her bottom lip.

‘What then? Is something else worrying you?’

She hesitated, then nodded. ‘If she hasn’t gone with Stefan…’

‘Yes? Is there another possibility?’

‘I keep thinking… It makes me sick, thinking of it…’

‘What?’

‘But it couldn’t be that, could it?’

‘Mrs Vlasich, Alison, look, sit down. What’s the matter? What do you mean?’

Alison sank into a chair, keeping her eyes fixed on the other woman’s face. ‘She has a job, at Silvermeadow.’

‘Oh yes? What kind of job?’

‘A waitress. In the food court. Only a few hours a week.’

‘And was she due to work there this week?’

‘Not till the weekend. I checked. I phoned them.’

‘Well then?’

‘There are stories. About Silvermeadow…’

‘Ah.’ Miriam Sangster nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve heard the stories, Alison. But that’s all they are, just stories. We get that sort of thing from time to time. A rumour starts somehow, and then it goes round for a while until people get bored with it.’

‘But how can you be sure? People seem so, so… certain.’ She was becoming quite agitated, tugging at the sleeve of the blouse.

‘I’m sure because I checked it myself, Alison, on the computer. There have never been any disappearances from Silvermeadow. It’s just one of those fairy-tales that goes round, without any substance at all.’

‘You’re sure? You’re quite sure?’ She frowned intently at the policewoman, wanting to believe her.

‘Where did you hear the stories, Alison? At the hospital?’

‘Yes. And the hairdresser’s.’

‘Ah.’

‘But everyone seems so certain. One of the nurses told one of the cooks. She’d looked after an old woman in the geriatric ward, just before she died, who said her little girl was one of the missing.’

‘An old woman in the geriatric ward thought she had a little girl?’

‘Oh…’ Alison thought about it. ‘I see.’

‘Look, you can put that out of your mind, believe me. It seems to me the worst that’s happened to Kerri is that she’s having a few days with her dad. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing, eh? After they’ve got over the first excitement of seeing each other again, they may come to realise that the best place for her is here with you. It may clear the air, don’t you think?’

‘I thought I might bring the children up to town sometime before Christmas. Just for a couple of days.’

Brock nodded his head against the handset. ‘Good idea.’

He took a gulp from his mug of tea. The table in front of him was a jumble of newspapers and the remains of breakfast. He was still in his old dressing gown, although it was already mid-morning. A weak December sun glinting in through the bay window. He’d slept long and deep, the first chance in weeks, and felt expansive, reborn, completely relaxed.

‘The Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, Hamley’s toyshop, Billy Smart’s Circus, the Science Museum, pantomime at the Palladium… wonderful. They’ll love it.’ He beamed nostalgically and reached for the last piece of toast.

The voice on the other end chuckled. ‘Half those things probably don’t exist any more.’

‘You may be right. You’ll stay here of course.’

‘Are you eating something? I missed that.’

‘I said, you’ll stay here.’

There was a pause. ‘No. That’s sweet of you, David, but I think not. I’ve got the address of a little hotel near Madame Tussaud’s.’

‘Do you know how much hotels in the West End cost, Suzanne? That’s absurd. I’m only twenty minutes away in the train. Of course you must stay here.’

A longer pause. ‘They’re very active, David. You’ve no idea. You’ve forgotten what young children are like. Miranda is five and Stewart eight. It wouldn’t work.’

‘You make me sound antediluvian. I get on very well with them. You know that. And there’s enough space here. They could have the attic room, be independent.’

‘Thanks. I’ll think about it. And you think about it too. Realistically.’

‘You sound tired, Suzanne.’

‘I’ve been run off my feet. The Christmas rush.’

‘In Battle?’ he asked dubiously, picturing the high street in the little Sussex town. ‘Anyway, it’s a long time to Christmas yet.’

She laughed. ‘For you, maybe. I must go, there’s a customer. Speak to you soon.’ And she hung up.

He refilled his mug from the teapot and walked over to the big window at the end of the room. Outside, weak sunlight was struggling to penetrate the stubborn morning fog which still blanked out most of the features of the surrounding city: the houses perched up on the far side of the railway cutting, the signal gantry beyond the wall of the lane. He might be anywhere, at sea even, or in the air. His mind returned to the high street of Battle, and he pictured the front of Suzanne’s little shop. He imagined the customer closing the door against the cold wind blowing in from the nearby coast, and taking in the treasures that filled the shelves. Suzanne would smile a welcome and begin a gentle interrogation, perhaps, trying to figure out how much was to be spent, and what would really appeal-a Georgian spoon, an Art Deco coffee service, some Victorian lace? He pictured her intelligent face, the grey in the hair untinted but carefully cut, and he experienced a sudden pang.

He turned abruptly away from the window and began clearing up his breakfast things. It had been a rough couple of weeks. He should get out of the city, breathe fresh air, sell antiques. As usual, Suzanne had pretty well got it right.

Brock strode out of the archway into the intermittent stream of shoppers in the high street. He walked briskly with a long, rolling lope, hands in pockets, enjoying the wintry sun dappling through the skeletal plane trees in the street. It seemed very quiet for a Saturday morning, and he looked around him with the eye of a host, trying to imagine how the familiar would look to strangers, seeing it for the first time. And it struck him that the place was looking remarkably threadbare, as if the foliage on the trees, now gone, had been masking the underlying scruffiness. Nothing much to appeal to a five-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy, either. There had been a cinema once, but it had closed down ages ago.