Deborah Crombie - Necessary as Blood

She then had to explain why she hadn’t come round herself, reluctantly relating the previous day’s trip to hospital and the doctor’s orders to take it easy.

She hadn’t admitted to anyone how much that hospital visit had unsettled her. The memories of pain and loss associated with the last time she had been there were still too close, too shatteringly clear.

“Oh, I blame myself for not making sure you got that head looked at,” said Betty, clucking a bit. “I could tell you were not fee-lin’ yourself yesterday.”

“I’m fine now, Betty, really.”

“Well.” Betty didn’t sound entirely convinced. “I’ll bring the little one round for an early tea, if you’re certain, but only if Duncan and the boys are back to help look after you.”

Kit had insisted on carrying her tea, giving Toby the task of bearing Charlotte’s cupcake, carefully enthroned on a plate. What neither Roy nor Melody had foreseen, however, was that there were now three children and one treat.

“Why don’t we get one?” demanded Toby. “Me and Kit should have a cupcake, too.”

“Kit and I ,” Gemma corrected automatically. “And the cupcake was a special gift to Charlotte from a friend. You’ve had plenty of treats of your own.”

“Don’t be greedy,” seconded Kit, handing Gemma her mug and settling on the end of the bed.

Charlotte had climbed up next to Gemma. “Wanna share,” she said unexpectedly, and when Toby handed her the plate, she thrust it back.

When Toby reached for the cupcake, Gemma smacked his hand. “Go downstairs and get a knife, then. You’ll divide it properly. And don’t run,” she called after him.

Toby returned, holding a table knife point-down as instructed, and, Kit having declined, the cupcake was ceremoniously divided in two.

“You’re a good girl, Charlotte,” said Gemma. “Toby should take lessons.”

“You eat some, too,” said Charlotte, holding her half up to Gemma, so Gemma cut off a tiny corner and nibbled it, then sipped her tea.

“I feel like the queen, being waited on in bed.”

“The queen never stays in bed.” Toby had dispensed with his half in two bites. “She’s always out with her dogs and waving at people and stuff.”

“I’ll bet someone brings her tea in bed every morning,” said Gemma.

“I wouldn’t want to be queen,” Toby declared. “It would be really boring.”

“Well, there’s not much chance of that, dopey,” Kit told him. “And stop bouncing. You’ll make Gemma’s head hurt.”

“Don’t call your brother names,” Gemma scolded, although she was touched by Kit’s solicitousness.

But Toby was undeterred by Kit’s teasing. “Charlotte could be queen, then, couldn’t she?”

“She could,” Gemma said, snuggling Charlotte a little closer. “But the job is highly overrated. I suspect she could do something much more fun.”

“What’s ‘overrated’ mean?” asked Toby.

Gemma sighed. “Never mind.” It amazed her how quickly she got tired. “Let’s read a story. Something for Charlotte.”

“No. I want pirates,” said Toby.

Kit rolled his eyes. “How about I read The Count of Monte Cristo? It has pirates, sort of.” He had discovered an old copy of Duncan’s on the bookshelf. The thin pages were almost translucent, and the smell of mildew that wafted from the book was so strong it made Gemma’s nose itch. But Kit had developed an attachment to it, and Toby loved it, although Gemma doubted he understood much.

“I want the ships, then.”

Kit nipped out and came back with a bounce of enthusiasm that almost equaled Toby’s, book in hand. He curled up again on the foot of the bed and flipped through pages. “Okay. Here’s a bit. ‘Look out there! All ready to drop anchor!’” he intoned, then glanced up at them to make sure he had their attention. Satisfied, he went on. “All hands obeyed. At that moment eight or ten seamen, who composed the crew, sprung some to the mainsheets, other to the braces, others to the ball’”-Kit struggled a bit with the word-“‘the balliards’-”

“What’s a ball-y-yard? ” piped up Toby.

“I’ve no idea,” said Kit.

Gemma’s eyelids were starting to droop, and the discussion of sails and jibs passed by her. Charlotte’s head was against her shoulder, and the child was humming to Bob, the plush elephant, and poking his black button eyes with cupcake-sticky fingers.

Then Toby, who had climbed up on the other end of the bed, said, “Who’s Charlotte’s friend?”

Gemma’s eyes flew open. “Which friend?”

“The one who sent her the cupcake.”

“Oh. His name is Roy, and he sells flowers at Columbia Market.”

“Why is he Charlotte’s friend? Could he be my friend, too?”

Sometimes Gemma wondered about the convolutions of Toby’s mind, but did her best to come up with an answer that would satisfy him. “He was Charlotte’s mum’s friend, but I’m sure he’d be your friend if you met him.”

Toby, however, was indefatigable. “Where’s Charlotte’s mum, then?”

Wide awake now, Gemma glanced at Charlotte and said quickly, “Toby, we discussed this-”

Charlotte looked up and said very clearly, “My mummy went away. My daddy went to find her.”

“Did he-Ow!”

Kit had pinched Toby, and now they got into a scuffle. Kit wrestled Toby into an arm hold, still managing to grip the book in his other hand. “I think you need to go downstairs now, sport. I can hear the dogs calling you.”

“They don’t talk.”

“Yes, they do. I’ll prove it to you.” Setting the book down, Kit wrapped an arm round Toby and, casting a conspiratorial glance back at Gemma, frog-marched him from the room. Gemma settled back, hoping that Charlotte hadn’t been upset by the mention of her parents. But Charlotte had gone back to playing with Bob, seemingly unperturbed by Toby’s questions.

Gemma wrapped one of Charlotte’s curls round her finger, frowning as she remembered something. Charlotte had said the exact same thing once before, that day at Tim’s when Janice Silverman had told her her father was dead. At the time, Gemma had assumed it was a child’s way of dealing with the idea of her father’s death. But what if Charlotte hadn’t meant it metaphorically, but quite literally?

What if Naz had told Charlotte that day that he was going to find her mother?

As Gemma mulled it over, Charlotte’s breathing slowed and the plush elephant fell from her relaxed fingers. Very gently, Gemma tucked the elephant back under Charlotte’s arm and brushed a stray strand of hair from her face. She eased herself down a bit into the pillows, taking care not to disturb the sleeping child, and closed her eyes. The late-afternoon light coming in the west windows seemed uncomfortably bright.

Drowsily, her mind went round and round, trying to make sense of the confluence of geography. Columbia Road, the center point, the vanishing point. Around it, like uneven spokes on a wheel, Lou Phillips’s flat…Naz and Lou’s office…Gail Gilles’s council flat…Pippa Nightingale’s gallery. All within a veritable stone’s throw, a five-minute walk of each other.

Were they connected by more than coincidence? Where had Sandra gone that day? If she had gone to confront her brothers, had it been at her mum’s flat? If they had killed her, had Gail Gilles been a party to it, or at least an accessory after the fact?

And if Naz had come to the same conclusion, would he have gone to talk to them, alone, and allowed them to drug him without putting up a fight? There had been no mark of violence on his body.

And if any of these things were true, where did Lucas Ritchie come into it? Or Ahmed Azad?

No, Gemma thought, there was something she was missing, some part of the pattern she couldn’t see. Sandra’s decision to leave Charlotte with Roy Blakely, when she had only a few minutes before she was to meet Naz for lunch, had surely been spur of the moment. What had happened to Sandra that Sunday afternoon, between Fournier Street and Columbia Road? And there was something about Sandra’s collage, the one on her worktable…Why did the girls have no faces? Why…