Deborah Crombie - Necessary as Blood

“Now,” he said to Holly, “let’s stop kicking the chair.” Why, Tim wondered as he heard himself, did adults talk to children in the plural? It wasn’t as if he were kicking the bloody chair. If the inclusiveness was meant to be persuasive, it didn’t work.

Holly kept kicking the chair rungs. He ignored it. “We could go to the park after Charlotte visits.”

“I don’t want ta play wi’ Charlotte,” said Holly, and Tim heard the Scots accent that had been popping up intermittently since she’d come back to London. He found it both endearing and annoying, but on the whole wanted his daughter to sound like her old self. “Charlotte’s a baby,” she went on with disdain.

“And you’re a big girl, so you’ll do a good job of looking after her while I talk to her daddy.”

Mollified by this appeal to her bossy nature, Holly’s mouth relaxed. “Can we still go to the park?”

Tim glanced at the kitchen clock. Naz and Charlotte were now almost an hour late, and that was very unlike Naz. “We’ll have to see, pumpkin,” he told Holly. He tried Naz’s mobile, but it went straight to voice mail.

He didn’t normally see clients on a Saturday, and especially not when he had Holly. But Naz Malik was an old friend-they had been at uni together-and considering Naz’s situation, Tim had been willing to juggle his own schedule to suit his friend’s. He’d thought they could talk in the garden, and the girls could play.

And Naz had been insistent when he’d rung that morning, almost distraught, in fact. Why would his friend, who was punctual to the point of obsession, say he had to see Tim, then not show up?

“Let’s make the cheese toast,” Tim suggested. “I’m sure Charlotte would like some when she gets here.” Restless, he added, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll make a proper Welsh rarebit, like Mummy does.” Opening the fridge, he dug out some cheddar, mustard, and milk. Then he foraged in the cupboard for Worcestershire sauce, and cut thick slices of some slightly stale bakery bread.

“It won’t be as good,” Holly intoned with certainty.

“I know.” Tim repressed another sigh as he poured milk into the saucepan. “But we’ll do it anyway.”

By the time he had spread his cheese sauce on the toast and popped it under the grill until it bubbled, he was beginning to feel seriously worried about Naz. He rang his mobile again, with no result. He took a bite of the toast, which was better than he’d expected, and watched Holly make gratifying inroads on her slice, but he couldn’t stop himself from glancing at the clock. It was an old-fashioned clock with a big face, and its second hand seemed to tick at glacial speed as the light in the garden grew softer.

“Can we go to the park now, Daddy?” Holly scrubbed her greasy hands against her jeans, and Tim absently got up and dampened a cloth to wipe her fingers.

“Not quite yet, pumpkin.” He rang Naz’s mobile once more, then pulled up his home number and redialed.

It was picked up on the first ring. “Mr. Naz?” The voice was young, female, and rising with distress.

“No. Alia? It’s Dr. Cavendish here.”

Alia was Naz’s part-time nanny, a Bangladeshi girl who minded Charlotte during the day and took college classes at night. She wanted, Naz had told Tim, to be a lawyer.

“Is Mr. Naz with you, then?” asked Alia. “He was supposed to be home two hours ago and he’s not answering his phone. My parents are expecting me and I can’t leave Charlotte. I don’t know what to do.”

“He didn’t say where he was going?”

“No. And he’s never late. You know how he is. If I take Char out for an ice cream or something and we’re even five minutes late, he’s, like, ballistic.”

With good reason, thought Tim. “Is there anyone else you can call?”

“I tried the office, but no one answered. I don’t have numbers for Charlotte’s mum’s family. Mr. Naz won’t have nothing to do with them.” She said “nuffink” in the strong Estuary accent adopted by many young second-generation immigrants to the East End. “And I don’t know how to reach Ms. Phillips at home.

“He always answers his phone if he sees it’s me,” Alia went on. “Unless he’s in court, and then he tells me ahead of time. He knows I don’t call unless it’s important.”

Louise Phillips was Naz’s partner in his law firm, and Tim didn’t have her home number, either.

“I could take Char home with me,” said Alia, “but I don’t like to without his permission. I can’t think why he wouldn’t ring me if he was going to be late.” She sounded near tears.

Nor could Tim imagine a circumstance in which Naz Malik would miss an appointment without notice or fail to respond to his daughter’s nanny, and his anxiety spiked into fear. “Okay, Alia, let me think.”

He could leave Holly with his neighbors and be in Fournier Street within half an hour. “You stay there,” he told her, “and I’ll come straight over.”

But once there, he thought as he rang off, what could he do other than send Alia home?

He was going to have to find Naz Malik, and he was going to need help.

We carried on down Fournier Street. The back of Hawksmoor’s Christ Church loomed large over the Georgian town houses built by the Huguenots at a time when Spitalfields was known as Weaver Town.

– Tarquin Hall, Salaam Brick Lane

Hazel drove the secondhand Volkswagen Golf she had brought down from Scotland.

“I see you’ve joined the Sloane Rangers,” teased Gemma, the Golf having become the car of choice among the trendy in Chelsea. Having appointed herself navigator, she pulled her pocket-size A to Zed from her bag.

“They’re only Sloanie if they’re new and a gift from indulgent parents who don’t want their children to appear elitist,” said Hazel. “And this one has certainly seen better days.” She patted the dash as if consoling the car. “I was going to leave it behind, but then I considered the logistics of getting Holly from Battersea to Islington and vice versa with no tube stop on the Battersea end.”

They had crossed the Battersea Bridge and were driving east along the Embankment. Gemma glanced at Cheney Walk, then away. Her London seemed to be ever more populated by ghosts, and there were some she was more willing to allow real estate than others.

“Tell me what you know about this friend of Tim’s,” she said. Tim had rung just as Hazel announced it was time to open a bottle of wine, which seemed rather fortuitous timing on his part.

Hazel had listened, then put the bottle back in the fridge as she rang off, her brow creased. “Tim wants us both to meet him at a house near Brick Lane,” she’d explained. “If you can, that is. A friend who’s a single father hasn’t come home, and Tim’s worried about him and the child.”

Gemma had agreed willingly enough, but now she added, “Do you think Tim’s overreacting? Surely it’s a miscommunication of some sort.”

“I used to tell Tim his pulse wouldn’t go up in an earthquake. I wanted him to be more emotional.” Hazel’s emphasis made clear what she thought of that folly. “So, no, I’d say that if Tim’s worried, he has reason.” She coaxed the Golf’s sluggish gears through a down change, then tapped her fingers on the wheel as they idled at a light. “All I know about his friend is that they knew each other at university and recently got in touch again. He’s a solicitor called Naz Malik. Pakistani. I’ve never met him. There was some sort of scandal with Malik’s wife and I take it Tim felt sympathetic.”

Gemma glanced at Hazel, taken aback by the bitter tone, but Hazel went on, “I’m really not sure why he rang, except that he knew you were visiting and he wanted your advice.”