‘I hope you won’t think I’m wasting your time,’ I began.
Detective Inspector Kelly Jordan had come round from behind her desk as if she was trying not to be intimidating. I was relieved: for some reason, I had pictured a middle-aged, red-faced, beetle-browed and bulky man who would stare at me dismissively. But she was a woman. More than that, she was a woman who looked like she could be my friend. She was in her late thirties or early forties, I guessed, faint smile lines around her mouth and eyes, dressed in drawstring linen trousers and a long-sleeved black tee shirt. She didn’t wear make-up and hadn’t the time to do more than roughly bundle up her coarse dark hair. I felt I could tell my troubles to her.
‘So you’re reporting a crime,’ she said.
This was already starting to feel difficult.
‘I think there’s possibly been a crime committed.’
Jordan frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
I took a deep breath and began. I took Poppy’s black crayon drawing out of my bag and showed it to the detective. I recounted Poppy’s behaviour and what she had said. I described our visit to the psychiatrist. I felt increasingly awkward. When I finished, there was a long silence.
‘If you were me,’ she said finally, ‘what would you do?’
‘I don’t know.’ Though I did, of course. ‘You’re a detective. You know how to deal with things like this.’
‘All right, then. Let me rephrase it: what are you asking me to do?’
‘Investigate it.’
‘Investigate what?’
Jordan waited. She didn’t seem scared of conversational silences the way I was. They always made me feel that they need to be filled.
‘I’m not exactly reporting a crime because I don’t know what the crime is. I said that you’d think I was crazy. But I think my daughter witnessed something bad. A three-year-old girl can’t exactly report a crime but I think in her own way, in that drawing, in what she said to me, that’s what she was doing.’
‘So where is the crime?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who’s the victim?’
‘You can go on asking these questions. I don’t know.’
‘Do you have anyone you suspect?’
‘I don’t want to accuse anyone without any evidence.’
‘You must know that I’m going to ask this: do you suspect your ex-husband?’
‘Actually, ex-partner. We weren’t married. Not that it matters. And the answer is—’ I stopped for a moment because I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I just wanted someone to take me seriously and I could see that however sympathetic this detective was, she too was just going to tell me to go home and calm down. ‘No. I don’t. I mean, of course I don’t. He’s a good man.’ I hesitated for a fraction – was Jason actually good? Charming, yes. Energetic, certainly. Interesting, for sure. But good? ‘He’s one of the most trustworthy people I’ve ever met,’ I said, too emphatically. ‘If he says he’s going to do something, then he does.’
‘So who?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Who do you suspect?’
‘Nobody. I’m not here to name people like that. I’m here because I think Poppy’s witnessed something and you need to find out what.’
‘I’ve got two children myself,’ the detective said. ‘I share your impulse to protect your child. As a mother, I feel the same. I understand your fears. I also know that children are…’ She seemed to be searching for the right word. ‘Imaginative.’
‘You mean they make things up?’
‘I mean imaginative. And therefore, to some extent, unreliable. If I believed everything that my daughter Layla said, I’d have gone mad long ago.’
‘So you’re not going to investigate?’
‘Tess – is it OK if I call you Tess?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Tess, what is there to investigate? If there were a death you thought was suspicious, we would look at that. But there’s not only no suspect, there’s not even a crime. I can’t just send my officers out to look for one.’
‘Why not?’
I sounded like a child. Jordan stood up.
‘Since you’re not a journalist or a politician, can I tell you a dirty little secret? We’re so short-staffed here that there are whole categories of crime we don’t even investigate. There are some forms of theft that we don’t even send an officer to. It’s difficult enough doing the ones we’re actually doing. Being here with you, talking about a crime that doesn’t seem to exist, has meant that I’ – she looked at her watch – ‘am almost fifteen minutes late for a meeting about a current murder inquiry that has a real body and a number of very real suspects.’
I stood up as well. ‘So you’re saying I should just drop it?’
Jordan took a card from her pocket and handed it to me. ‘This is my direct line. You can always call me.’
‘You mean, if I find something?’
‘For goodness sake, don’t go playing the detective,’ she said. ‘In fact, don’t do anything except look after yourself and your daughter.’
‘You probably think I’m being ridiculous. I probably am being ridiculous. I’ve already taken up too much of your time.’
‘That’s all right. And if an actual crime occurs, you have my number.’ Jordan held out her hand and I shook it. ‘It’s impossible with children. You never know if you’re doing the right thing, but in the end things mostly don’t go too badly.’
‘Except when they do.’
‘That’s when we get called.’
‘I tried that,’ I said.
‘It hasn’t turned out badly yet.’
‘I hope not.’
Maybe the detective was right, I thought as I walked home. I even spoke the words aloud: ‘Maybe she’s right.’ I collected Poppy and Jake from nursery and tried to ask them in a relaxed tone how the day had been and they were uncommunicative in a way that seemed normal enough. At home, they ran around and shouted while I put a pizza in the oven and made a salad.
When Laurie came to collect Jake, Nellie fast asleep in the buggy, he ruffled the top of Poppy’s head and bent towards his son. They looked alike: slender, with silky dark hair and blue eyes. Gina was tall and her hair was a dark blond, cropped bristle short.
‘Hi, little guy. How’s your day been?’ he asked.
I waited, half-expecting Jake to start crying or to repeat something shocking that Poppy had said to him, but he just held up the little stuffed rabbit that he carried around with him all day and slept with at night.
Laurie stood up again. ‘How are things with you, Tess?’
He always asked me that. When Jason and I had separated, Gina had been one of the friends I’d turned to most for comfort and support. She had come to the house in Brixton and helped me pack up my things, hauling cases and boxes into her waiting car. She’d tried to make it into an adventure, determinedly upbeat. I remembered the first night Poppy and I had spent in the flat, and Gina and Nadine and a couple of other friends had come round with a takeaway. We’d sat on the floor, eating Thai food out of foil containers and drinking cheap red wine from mugs. Gina had lifted her mug and they’d toasted our new home and Gina had said: ‘Remember, Tess, you’re not alone. You’ve got us.’
She was someone I could say anything to, no matter how intimate, and feel I wouldn’t be judged. But I sometimes suspected that Gina had shared some of my secrets with Laurie, and he might know more than I wanted him to about my mistakes, my hurts and humiliations, rages and moments of disgrace. I looked at his smiling face and wondered what he’d say if I told him that I was seriously worried about Poppy, that today I had talked to a therapist and had also gone to a police station and talked to a detective.
‘Fine,’ I said breezily. ‘How about you?’
‘Knackered,’ he said. ‘Me and Nellie spent the day with my mother. She wore us out.’ He bent down to the buggy and spoke in a coo. ‘Didn’t she, Nell?’ I waited for his daughter to wake up and bellow. ‘She insisted we take her dog for a walk and I thought we’d be late.’
‘You didn’t need to worry. We’re not going anywhere.’
‘Thanks.’
He kissed me on the cheek; I felt the graze of his stubble and a puff of warm breath. Eucalyptus, I thought.
After Laurie and Jake had gone, I kept a close eye on Poppy as she pottered around, had her bath, was read to in bed, tucked up, the light switched off. Was she being a bit louder than usual? Was she a bit too clingy? Was she more fearful than usual when the bedroom light was switched off?
I asked myself these questions as I lay waiting for sleep to drag me down. Probably every child seemed strange in one way or another, if you looked at them closely enough.