LITMIR.BIZ

       2

      Suzanne was familiar with crisis. Crisis was something you moved through with cold detachment, an observer of your own life. Crisis was something that held you, panicked and terrified, behind a frozen façade. Crisis left you drained and wrecked once it had moved on. Crisis for Suzanne was Adam, her younger brother, dead these past six years, and it was her father’s thin, precise features, and his voice: I hold you responsible for this, Suzanne!

      She listened to the policewoman telling Jane that children often went missing, that the most reliable teenager in the world could get distracted, and wanted to fast-forward the day to the time when the crisis would be over, one way or another.

      Two officers had arrived in response to Suzanne’s call, with commendable but alarming rapidity. A man and a woman. The woman had introduced herself, calm, sympathetic, professional, ‘I’m Hazel Austen. I’m here about your daughter. Lucy, isn’t it?’ With a few quick questions she had the gist of the situation, and was now talking Jane through Emma’s and Lucy’s planned route and routine. ‘… going through the park right now, but I just need you to tell me …’

      To distract herself from the knot of tension inside her, Suzanne let her eyes wander round the familiar room. There were pictures: framed prints, some of Jane’s paintings, Lucy’s pictures Blu-tacked erratically to the walls and door. Her toys and books were piled into one corner and tumbled on the slatted shelves that stood by the window. A photograph of Lucy with her father, Joel, was pinned to the shelves by a single drawing pin. That was new. It looked like one of Jane’s photos, and the size and curling edges suggested it was one she had developed herself. The faces, both serious, looked out from a background of blurred lights, Lucy’s fair hair tangled against the darker hair of her father. Lucy’s drawings were stuck to the wall at the height of a child’s head, slightly rumpled, slightly uneven. They were captioned in Lucy’s words and Jane’s writing, each letter carefully copied in different colours by Lucy.

      The pictures were part of Lucy’s fantasy world. Flossy my cat in the park, a picture of a stripy animal with rather a lot of teeth; Me and my sisters in the park, a small, fair-haired figure with two taller figures, one fair, one dark; My mum and dad, two tall figures, both with yellow hair like Lucy; The Ash Man’s brother in the park, a dark-haired, smiling figure. Lucy’s invented family had a resident father – unlike the absent, peripatetic Joel – had cats and dogs, had sisters and sometimes brothers. The rest of her world was peopled with stranger characters, like her imaginary friend, Tamby, and the sinister Ash Man – and now, apparently, with monsters.

      Suzanne and Jane had shared a bottle of wine in this room the night before, talking among the haphazard clutter while Lucy sat at the table drawing. It had seemed warm and inviting then, with Jane’s vague irrelevancies and Lucy’s intermittent chatter. Now the clutter no longer looked homely and comforting, it looked disrupted, as though a high wind had taken the room apart and let things settle where they would.

      ‘… cup of tea.’ Suzanne brought herself back sharply. Hazel was speaking to her. Seeing Suzanne’s blank gaze, she said again, ‘I think Jane would like a cup of tea.’

      For a moment, the words meant nothing, then Suzanne said, ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’ She brought tea and biscuits from her own house, nipping across the shared yard to her back door. She went back into the room, carrying the tray, and occupied herself setting out cups, pouring tea, putting biscuits on a plate.

      ‘She’s very independent, and she knows about, you know, not talking to strangers … She wouldn’t go off with anyone.’ Jane was whistling in the dark, as if convincing Hazel could make it true, make it be all right. It was true that Lucy was resourceful and streetwise, Suzanne thought, but she was only six.

      She passed Jane a cup of tea, and offered her support. ‘Lucy’s very sensible,’ she said to Hazel, and Jane looked at her gratefully.

      Lucy’s colouring book and crayons were on the table and Suzanne moved them to one side. She tried not to look at the picture Lucy had been drawing, but it pulled at her attention and she found herself staring at it as she listened to Hazel telling Jane again that it was still early days, that most missing children turned up safe and sound. It was a typical child’s drawing, a blue sky across the top of the page, and green grass across the bottom. Two figures, a tall one and a small one, stood on the grass. Their arms came out of the sides of their bodies, each finger carefully drawn. They were holding hands. Lucy and Jane. Suzanne looked more closely. No, the taller figure had brown hair. Lucy and Sophie? She could picture Lucy sitting at the table, hunched intently over the paper, her face serious, talking her way through the picture, partly to herself, partly to her mother and Suzanne. And they’re in the park and they’re walking on the big field and also they’re holding hands and they’re smiling, look … But these faces weren’t smiling, she noticed. The mouths were turned down, grim.

      She looked up and saw Jane’s eyes fall on the book. She should have put it out of sight. Jane picked it up. ‘She did this,’ she said, her focus wavering between the two women. ‘She did this last night. She’s good at …’ Her voice died away and she swallowed.

      The man had now come back. He looked to where Jane and Hazel were talking, and then he signalled to Suzanne with his eyes. She went over, and he led her out of the room. Jane looked up as she went out, but only for a moment. The man was waiting by the phone in the hallway. ‘You said you phoned the mobile the babysitter has?’

      ‘Yes.

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