LITMIR.BIZ

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always happening,’ Michael mumbled, or that was what it sounded like to her. ‘It’s not fair.’

      She closed the bedroom door softly behind her. The living room was empty. She found Oliver Rickford stooping over the sink in the kitchen, scouring a saucepan.

      ‘Where’s Yvonne?’

      ‘She went out to buy sandwiches.’

      Sally automatically picked up a tea towel and began to dry a mug. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

      ‘I’m on leave. How’s Michael?’

      ‘Sleeping.’

      ‘This is very hard for him.’ Oliver hesitated, perhaps guessing Sally wanted to yell, And don’t you think it’s hard for me too? ‘I mean, even worse than it would be for many other fathers in the same position. As you know, he’s worked on similar cases.’

      Jealousy twisted through her. Sally busied herself with the drying up. Michael rarely talked about his work to her. It had been different for a few months around the time of their marriage. Then the barriers had gone up. Michael was made that way, she told herself fiercely; it wasn’t her fault.

      Not for the first time she had a depressing vision of her husband’s life as a series of watertight compartments: herself, Lucy and the flat; his job and the friendships he shared with men like Oliver; and the past he shared with his godfather, David Byfield. Cutting like a sword across this line of thought came the fact of Lucy’s absence. Sally turned away, pretending to put the mug in its cupboard. Her shoulders shook.

      A moment later she heard Oliver say, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

      She turned round to him. The kitchen was so small that they were very close. ‘It’s not your fault. What’s Michael been doing?’

      ‘Getting in the way. Mounting his own private investigation. At one point he was hanging round the house where the child minder lives and trying to question neighbours.’

      Sally wished he had come home instead. ‘He had to do something.’ It was a statement of fact, not an argument for the defence.

      ‘Maxham was not amused.’

      ‘What are we going to do?’

      ‘There’s not much we can do except wait. Maxham’s said to be good. He gets results.’

      Alert to nuances, Sally said, ‘You don’t like him, do you?’

      ‘I don’t know him. He’s one of the old school. Must be coming up for retirement quite soon. The important thing is that he’s good at his job.’ Oliver hesitated, and she sensed that he was holding something back. ‘They’ll probably ask if you’d like psychological counselling,’ Oliver went on. ‘Might be sensible to say yes. Good idea to take all the help you’re offered. No point in making life harder for yourselves.’

      ‘You mean Michael needs help?’

      ‘Anyone in your position needs help.’

      They finished the washing and drying in silence. Oliver went to check on Michael. Meanwhile, desperate for the activity, Sally emptied the contents of the dirty-clothes basket into the washing machine. When she had switched it on, she realized that she hadn’t bothered to sort the clothes, and that the machine was still set for the fast-coloured programme.

      ‘He’s asleep.’ Oliver leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door. ‘Sally?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘This isn’t my case. I’ve got no jurisdiction.’

      ‘What are you trying to say?’

      ‘That I can’t do much to help.’

      ‘You’re not doing badly so far.’

      ‘I mean I can’t tell you any more about what’s in Maxham’s head than Michael can.’

      ‘Of course.’

      Sally’s voice sounded low and reasonable, which was all the more remarkable because simultaneously she was screaming to herself, I don’t give a fuck about Maxham: I just want Lucy. Oliver stood aside to let her pass into the living room. I am ordained. I must not use language like that even in my own mind. As she passed him, she was aware of his height and of the way he held himself back to minimize the possibility of accidental contact between their bodies. In the living room she crossed to the window and looked down to the street.

      Oliver picked up his jacket from the back of the armchair. ‘Still there, are they?’

      ‘I can see six of them, I think. Two of them are talking to the neighbours.’ She moved back from the window. ‘We’re besieged.’

      ‘You could go and stay with relations or friends.’

      ‘But this is where Lucy would come. She knows the phone number and the address.’

      ‘We could transfer the calls and leave someone here just in case Lucy turns up on the doorstep.’ Oliver stared down at Sally, making her feel like a specimen on a dish. ‘Think about it. This is just the beginning. If it goes on, there’ll be more of them. Maybe radio and TV as well. The whole circus.’

      She shrugged, accepting that he might have a point but unwilling to think about it.

      ‘I’ll phone this evening if that’s OK.’ He rubbed his nose, which was long and thin and with a slight kink to the right near the end. ‘Shall I leave my number?’

      As she passed him a pen and a pad, their eyes met. She wondered whether he was being diplomatic; whether he realized that Michael had erected an invisible barrier between his family and his friends. Sally knew that the Rickfords had bought a flat in Hornsey, but she had no idea of the address or the phone number.

      ‘I’m on leave till the new year,’ he said.

      ‘You and Sharon aren’t going away, then?’

      ‘Sharon’s already gone, actually.’ Oliver rubbed a speck of paint on his jeans. ‘Permanently. She moved out a couple of months ago. We decided it just wasn’t working out.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’ She had stumbled on another of Michael’s failures in communication. She was past feeling humiliated.

      ‘She got a chance of a job with our old force – Somerset.’ Perhaps Oliver sensed a need for a diversion, any diversion. ‘It came up at just the right time.’

      ‘It gave you a positive reason to separate as well as all the negative ones?’

      He nodded. He was very easy to talk to, Sally thought – quick on the uptake, unthreatening. She was not surprised that Oliver and Sharon had separated. They had made an ill-assorted couple. Sharon had struck her as a tough, sharp-witted woman, very clear about what she wanted from life.

      ‘We’re still good friends.’ Oliver’s fingers twitched, enclosing the last two words with invisible inverted commas. ‘But you don’t want to hear about all this now. Is there anything I can do before I go?’

      Sally shook her head. ‘Thank you for bringing Michael back.’

      The words sounded absurdly formal. Sally felt like a mother thanking a comparative stranger for bringing her child home after a party. A silence ambushed them as each waited for the other to speak. The sound of a key turning in the lock was a welcome distraction. They both turned as Yvonne came into the flat. She looked pale beneath her make-up.

      ‘You haven’t watched the news, have you?’ she blurted out. ‘Or had the radio on?’

      Sally took a step towards her, swayed and clung to the back of a chair. ‘What’s happened?’ she whispered.

      Yvonne opened her mouth, revealing

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