Sophie Hannah - The Wrong Mother

‘Not a happy girl,’ Gibbs muttered.

‘Shit.’ Sellers lowered his voice so that Barbara Fitzgerald and Jenny Naismith, the headmistress and secretary of St Swithun’s Montessori Primary School, wouldn’t hear him. He didn’t want to offend them, and imagined that because they worked with children they would be quick to take offence.

Sellers didn’t fancy either of them. Mrs Fitzgerald was old, had waist-length grey hair and wore glasses that were too large for her face. Jenny Naismith was in the right age bracket and had a pretty face and good skin, but looked too neat and meticulous. Bound to be a ball-breaker.

On the plus side, both women were efficient. They had produced the two photographs and confirmed the identities of their subjects within seconds of Sellers’ and Gibbs’ arrival. Now Mrs Fitzgerald was hunting in a filing cabinet for a list of all the people who went on the school trip to Silsford Castle ’s owl sanctuary last year. Sellers couldn’t imagine why she’d kept it this long. ‘We keep everything,’ Jenny Naismith had said proudly.

‘Shit what?’ Gibbs asked.

‘Nothing. For a minute I thought the name Amy Oliver rang a bell.’

‘From where?’

‘Don’t get excited.’ Sellers laughed away his embarrassment. ‘It’s Jamie Oliver I was thinking of. That’s why it sounded familiar.’

‘I hate that twat,’ said Gibbs. ‘Every ad break, he’s there telling me what to eat: “Try putting some butter on your bread. Try having some chips with your sausage.”’ Gibbs attempted a cockney accent. ‘As if he invented it!’

‘The spelling is different.’ Barbara Fitzgerald abandoned the filing cabinet. ‘Amy’s name is O-L-I-V-A. Oliva. Spanish.’

Gibbs checked his notebook. ‘So that’s why her mother’s called…’ He couldn’t read his own writing. ‘Cantona?’ He was aware of Sellers beside him, trying not to laugh. Too late, he realised what he’d said.

‘Encarna.’ Barbara Fitzgerald didn’t laugh, corrected him matter-of-factly, as if it were an easy mistake to make. ‘It’s an abbreviation of Encarnación. Which is Spanish for “Incarnation”. Many Spaniards have religious names. I told you, Amy moved to Spain.’

‘Mrs Fitzgerald’s got the most amazing memory,’ said Jenny Naismith. ‘She knows every detail about every child at this school.’

Gibbs altered the spelling of Amy’s surname. Evidently that was something the anonymous letter-writer didn’t know; had she never seen it written down? Esther Taylor: that was the name of the woman who had turned up at St Swithun’s with the two photographs. Or at least the name she had given Jenny Naismith. Taylor was a common name, but Esther was more unusual, and if she looked like Geraldine Bretherick… well, it shouldn’t be too hard to track her down.

‘This list isn’t leaping out at me,’ Mrs Fitzgerald said apologetically. ‘I’ll have a proper look later, and I’ll bring it into the police station as soon as we track it down.’ She folded her thick, tanned arms. ‘Actually, I went on that trip myself, and I’m pretty sure I could jot down most of the names for you now. Would you like me to?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Sellers.

‘You didn’t notice who took those two photographs, by any chance?’ Gibbs asked. ‘Or anyone taking photos of Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick?’

Barbara Fitzgerald shook her head. ‘Everyone was snapping away, as they always do on school trips.’ This was the first time the name Bretherick had been mentioned. The headmistress seemed unflustered by its appearance in the conversation. Jenny Naismith was still ransacking the filing cabinet. Sellers couldn’t see her face.

‘What can you tell us about Encarna Oliva?’ he asked.

‘She worked for a bank in London.’

‘Do you know which one?’

‘Yes. Leyland Carver. Thanks to Encarna, they sponsor our Spring Fair every year.’

‘Do you have the family’s contact details in Spain?’

‘I don’t think we were ever given a snail-mail address,’ said Mrs Fitzgerald, ‘but we did get an e-mail shortly after Amy left St Swithun’s, telling us all about her new home in Nerja.’

‘Nerja.’ Sellers wrote it down. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve still-’

‘No, but I do remember the e-mail address.’ Mrs Fitzgerald beamed. ‘It was amysgonetospain@hotmail.com. No apostrophe. My secretary and I had a long discussion about it. Not Jenny-my previous secretary, Sheila. The missing apostrophe annoyed me. Sheila said she’d never seen an e-mail address with an apostrophe in it, and I said that if one couldn’t use apostrophes in Hotmail addresses, then why not avoid the problem altogether by coming up with an address that doesn’t require an apostrophe?’

‘Is there a computer here that I can use?’ asked Gibbs. Jenny Naismith nodded and led him to her desk. ‘Worth a try,’ he said to Sellers.

‘What about Amy’s old address?’ Sellers asked the headmistress. ‘The people who live there now might have a forwarding address for the Olivas.’

‘They might,’ Mrs Fitzgerald agreed. ‘Good idea. I can root that out for you, certainly.’

Sellers was relieved that she didn’t know it by heart. He’d been starting to wonder if she had special powers.

When the head turned to face him again, armed with a sheet of A4 paper, she had a more reserved expression on her face. ‘Is Amy… all right?’

Sellers was about to say something reassuring when Gibbs said, ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’ He didn’t look up from the keyboard.

‘We have to work on the assumption that she’s fine unless we find out that she isn’t. Which hopefully we won’t.’ Sellers smiled.

‘Will you let me know the very second there’s any news?’ asked Mrs Fitzgerald.

‘Of course.’

‘I liked Amy. I worried about her too. She was extremely bright, very passionate, very creative, but like many sensitive, creative children, she tended to overreact. Hysterically, sometimes. I think she did it to make life more interesting, actually. As an adult, I’m sure she’ll be one of those women who creates drama wherever she goes. She once said to me, “Mrs Fitzgerald, my life’s like a story, isn’t it, and I’m the main person in the story.” I said, “Yes, I suppose so, Amy,” and she said, “That means I can make up what happens.” ’

‘Number 2, Belcher Close, Spilling,’ Jenny Naismith read from the piece of paper in her boss’s hand. ‘Amy’s old address.’

‘Do you want to look at our A-Z or have you got sat nav?’

Sellers covered his mouth with his hand to hide a grin. Barbara Fitzgerald had pronounced it as if it were the name of an Eastern deity: his venerable holiness, Sat Nav. ‘We’ll find it,’ he said.

Was a trip to Spain likely to fall into his lap? Why couldn’t it be France? He could take Stace; she could practise her French-there was no doubt she needed the practice. Sellers had done French O level, got a B, and he reckoned Stace was the sort of person who’d never be able to learn a language. She just didn’t get it. She was rubbish. If he could have taken her to France, it might have helped. Maybe Spanish was easier. Maybe he could persuade her to switch. Better still, he could take Suki to Spain…

Barbara Fitzgerald handed Sellers a list of names. He counted them. Twenty-seven. Great. Would Kombothekra want him to collect twenty-seven accounts of a visit to an owl sanctuary in the hope that someone would remember who took which photographs? That’d be fun. Sellers was halfway out of the school office when he remembered he’d left Gibbs behind. He turned, doubled back on himself.

Jenny Naismith was walking up and down behind her desk, too polite to ask when she might once again have the use of her computer. Gibbs had stopped typing and was staring at his Yahoo inbox, blowing spit bubbles. ‘Are you ready?’ Sellers asked him. How to be charming and graceful, by Christopher Gibbs. ‘You’re not waiting for Amy Oliva to reply, are you? She’ll be at school.’