LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

experiment with drugs, is that we once had Keira’s mother knocking on our door.’

      He nodded.

      ‘She basically told us’ – I put my fingers in the air and acted out playful quotation marks – ‘in confidence and loving parent to loving parent, that Keira had hinted at how sexual Zoe had become. That apparently she tried to provoke older men.’

      ‘Has she had sex?’

      The directness of his question disarmed me and I stood up straight. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered quickly. ‘We’ve never talked about it, you know. She only turned sixteen in August. She’s young for her year and Stephen told me it was a mistake putting her in the year above, but I’m sure she’s coping. She’s a smart girl, she gets good marks. As for the conversation regarding sex, I haven’t broached it with her yet.’ I’d always told myself that I would have the conversation when Zoe had her first boyfriend, but I knew this was just an excuse and I’d been putting it off.

      ‘No,’ he agreed, his pen scrawling again, ‘it’s always a difficult one.’ He looked up. ‘And what do you think?’

      ‘What do you mean?’ I said, suddenly wishing I wasn’t having this conversation. An image of Robert’s hands on my breasts rushed through my mind and I shook it off.

      ‘I mean, do you think your daughter is like that? The way it was described by…’ He glanced at his notes. ‘Mrs Sullivan, was it?’

      ‘No, definitely not. She’s wayward but not at all like that. She and Keira are best friends, but they have fights like any teenage girls, so I suspect Keira was getting back at Zoe for something, and wanted to get her in trouble. So I never mentioned it to her. We don’t have the…’ I hesitated. ‘We don’t have the closest relationship.’

      ‘Right.’ The detective sat now, invited me to do the same. ‘Why’s that?’

      ‘It’s complicated,’ I said slowly. ‘Well, I never really bonded with her properly when she was a baby. The doctors told me it was fine, that some women do experience it. Of course now there’s a lot more awareness of post-natal depression, but all I knew was that I felt kind of detached from her. It took me until she was at least four to even accept that we had a daughter.’ I was surprised by my own honesty. ‘Gosh, sorry.’ I suddenly felt aware of myself. ‘Talking to you like you’re a counsellor.’ I felt the familiar pricking of tears whenever I was asked to broach the subject. ‘I was so excited to be pregnant and then, when she was born, I felt afraid for this tiny little thing that was suddenly my responsibility. Though my love for her grew every day, sometimes it was suffocating, too, and I couldn’t show it.’ I hung my head. ‘I don’t know why. Doctors told me that it was a chemical imbalance, that it would go with time and I had to be patient. They made it sound so simple but it was awful.’ I brought my head up again, wiping a tear away. ‘What I wouldn’t do to rewind those years and do it all again.’ I paused. ‘Sorry.’

      ‘No, it’s all useful. Do go on.’ He nodded encouragingly.

      I looked behind me, checking for Stephen, though I knew he was still out driving around the neighbourhood, and dropped my voice even further. ‘Stephen took over really after she was born and I clearly wasn’t coping. I suppose in some ways I should be grateful. Thanks to him we now have a smart, beautiful and confident young woman in our lives who we can proudly tell people is our daughter.’

      He flashed me a sympathetic look. ‘But, from your tone, I’m guessing you still feel detached from your family even now?’

      I nodded. ‘I have for some years, yes.’ I leant in. ‘Stephen is very protective of Zoe.’ I paused. ‘Which is obviously good because it’s better that he smothers her with love, since I….’

      ‘Don’t show her you love her?’

      ‘Me?’ I shook my head vigorously, my voice growing cooler. ‘If you’re suggesting that I love my daughter less than Stephen, you are very much mistaken. I am her mother at the end of the day and I love her so much, it hurts.’ A sob escaped my lips. ‘I desperately need her to be okay.’ I turned away from the detective, unable to deal with the worry churning around my stomach and the DI’s prying eyes.

      He nodded, held his hands up in the air. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t hinting at anything. Just getting the full picture. Anyway,’ he continued, ‘can you tell me again the last time you saw Zoe?’

      ‘Thursday evening. She went to bed at about ten and Stephen and I went up soon after.’

      ‘Right, so then you go to work early the next morning, Stephen heads out to this conference at five a.m.’ He studied my face. ‘That’s quite early. Wasn’t the conference in Oxford?’

      ‘Yes, but he had a paper to deliver. My husband doesn’t believe successful people arrive on time, and certainly not late. You have to be early to everything.’ I sighed just thinking about the years of wearying regimens around the house.

      ‘Okay, so you head out at what time?’

      ‘Six-thirty.’

      ‘Zoe normally gets up at what time?’

      ‘Between seven and eight, depending on what she’s got on.’

      ‘Okay, so Stephen stays overnight in Oxford?’ His gaze doesn’t leave the pad, but I know he’s thinking the same as me.

      ‘Yes, I don’t know why. I know what you’re thinking – why stay over when you live so close? He does like to have a drink with his colleagues, so maybe that was it.’

      ‘You haven’t talked about it?’

      ‘We don’t talk much any more.’

      ‘I see. Then Zoe texted to ask if she could stay the night with Keira?’

      ‘Yes,’ I nodded, looking at the flats of my palms, ‘that’s right.’

      ‘And you? Where were you last night?’

      I narrowed my eyes.

      ‘It’s part of my job to find out everybody’s whereabouts,’ he explained evenly.

      ‘I stayed late to finish off some work and came home.’

      ‘Did anyone else stay late?’

      ‘Are you questioning me?’

      He sucked the end of his biro. ‘No, but I’m a stranger to your family who now needs to find your daughter, which means I’m trying to understand how your family works.’

      I nodded. ‘No one else stayed late in my department and, as I say, I came home and watched a DVD, drank some wine.’ I felt heat prickling at my neck.

      He shut his notepad and thanked me for being so helpful. It was only after he had left the kitchen that I realised I had been holding my breath.

      ***

      I couldn’t ignore the niggling fear that maybe Zoe had returned to the farm. With Stephen still out, I waited until the DI’s team had either left or moved into the dining room, and quietly grabbed my car keys off the side. I walked out to the car, kept in our parking bays just up the road, and headed towards the farm. Carter had told me that they were taking Jerry Wyre in for questioning. I couldn’t sit at home. I needed to do something because I had convinced myself that Jerry Wyre had taken his attraction to my daughter one step too far. In my mind, it was clear that Keira had pressured Zoe to head to the farm to play their ridiculous game and Jerry Wyre had been unable to control himself. It made perfect sense and, with a racing heart, I headed up the road, my thoughts spiralling out of control at what I might find.

      The clocks had gone back, so dusk was drawing in early and an autumnal mist covered the fields. My headlights just caught the white tails of several deer as they sprang through a field and into the woods. I spotted a group of rooks in the distance, their large black bodies sweeping through the air in deathly circles. After a mile or so, I made the descent towards the farm.

      Pulling

Скачать книгу