My room smelt like a potpourri of body odour and unwashed dishes from the meals I’d snuck upstairs, desperate to avoid optimistic conversations with Steph. It reminded me of some of the family homes I’d visited, where I’d told them that the environment was unacceptable. Oh, if they could see me now. My windows were shut, trapping the putrid air in its prison.
Steph had taken my hint to leave to heart. Hours had passed, and she still hadn’t returned. My eyes were drawn towards my wardrobe and the old box of memories, wondering if my sibling lie was going to cost me more than it was worth. The buzz of my phone on my bedside cabinet pulled me from my thoughts.
My heart skipped a beat. It was an unknown number. Was it her? On a stranger’s phone? Maybe she’d escaped from where she’d been kept? My fingers were trembling like mad as I opened the text message, feeling a wave of dread.
It’s my birthday today. You promised you’d get in touch with my bro. Your office says you’re sick. Why are you ignoring me? I thought you were one of the rare people that gives a shit. Carly.
I didn’t know it was possible for one person to feel so much guilt all at once. Guilt about old cases, cases from which I had never fully moved on. Guilt for Emma Beale’s tragic end. Guilt for pushing Teigan away. Guilt for missing the signs that she was in trouble because I was so caught up in my own work. And, now, an extra serving for letting down Carly after promising I’d help find her brother.
She wasn’t supposed to have my personal number. I remembered that day when I desperately needed to talk to her, to warn her of a particular article that had come out about her brothers. It was a pile of discriminative rubbish written by Nancy Thompson, who had labelled them a low-life family, stating that the world was better off without another would-be thug. I had been signed off sick from work and had no access to my work phone, so I’d called her from my own mobile, desperate to shield her from the hurtful words.
I typed out a reply, fingers shaking as they hit the touch screen.
I’m so sorry, Carly. I am off work at the moment and may be for a while. Please call my office and ask them to check the system for your brother’s address. Tell them you want to arrange contact and that I advised you to call.
I felt bad, fobbing her off like that, but what else could I do? As much as I cared about her, my own family had to take priority. For once. I batted away the thought that the gesture had come too late.
A sudden knock at the front door jarred me back to the moment. I jumped out of bed and pulled at my creased clothes, which I hadn’t bothered to change since the shopping trip. I hurried downstairs and flung the door open, then stopped in my tracks.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Well, tha’s no way to greet the father of your child, ‘int it?”
There he was, Mr Absent-father himself, standing in my doorway, clutching his car keys. He looked different, yet somehow the same. He looked better than he did in that picture the police had pulled up — that had to be a few years old. Since that picture had been taken, he’d clearly started to work out and cut down on the fast food. I blushed and looked away, surprised by where my thoughts had gone. I looked back at his face. His hairline was receding, and he’d aged, of course, but his eyes were the same as they’d always been. Warm. Inviting.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated, as if dropping the “hell” made all the difference.
“I want to talk to you ‘bout Teigan. You going to let me in?”
If anyone had told me that morning that I’d end up sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea with my childhood sweetheart and father of my child, I’d never have believed them. Then again, I wouldn’t have believed most of the stuff that had happened in the last week.
“You’ve got a right nice place here,” said Ray, as he made himself comfortable on the sofa. “You did all right, after all that.”
I shrugged my shoulders, no longer proud of my home without my daughter in it. “It’s nothing special.”
Ray stared at me for a moment, studying me. “I want you to know that I got nothing to do with this, Suze. I promise, like. I care ‘bout Teigan — she a good kid.”
My poker face darkened into a scowl. The cheek of it. “If you cared about Teigan’s well-being, you wouldn’t have encouraged her to keep secrets from me.” My voice came out louder and more aggressive than I’d planned. “You’ve got no idea what you’ve done, Ray. You never had a fucking clue, and you still don’t.”
He looked physically pained at my words, his cheeks and neck flushing a deep red. “Hey, tha’s not fair. I never told her to keep no secrets. I asked her if you knew, like, and she said no, and that she weren’t going to tell you. I weren’t going to push her, were I? It were my chance to get to know her, finally.”
I stood up from the sofa so that I could move further away from him, my blood boiling. “But you’re meant to be a responsible adult, Ray. You encouraged her to keep secrets and that led to her keeping other secrets, which has got us to where we are now. I don’t even know if she’s alive.” My voice broke, and the hot tears spilled over. “You have no idea how this feels,” I choked out.
“No idea? I’m her father, like. I think I got some idea.”
“You’re no father,” I spat. “Where have you been the last fourteen years? Where were you when she broke her arm and needed stitches? Where were you on her first day of secondary school? The first time she experienced bitchy teenage girls? When she agonised over her choices for her GCSEs?”
“I were in Diss because you made damn sure that I couldn’t be here!” It was Ray’s turn to stand up from the sofa. He started pacing around the lounge, talking erratically with his hands. “You pushed me away all those years ago, and you know it. I were a nineteen-year old lad with a knocked-up girlfriend whose family life were messed up, like. I tried me hardest, and you pushed and pushed until I had no choice but to walk away.”
A wave of regret washed over me as I listened to him. “But I was nineteen and in a mess, too, Ray. I did what I thought was best at the time. It’s been nearly fifteen years. What about since then? You made no effort to try again.”
He pointed a stubby finger at me, revealing dry skin, a worker’s hands. “You didn’t want me to, and you know it. I sent birthday cards on her first and second birthdays, with whatever money I could give in the card and all.”
“Oh, whoop-de-doo, two whole birthdays.” I crossed my arms and turned away from his sad eyes.
He lowered his voice as well as his finger. “You’d have thrown every single one away if I’d carried on.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh, whatever. I ‘int here to argue with you.”
I looked back at him and uncrossed my arms. “Well, why are you here then?”
He pulled a thick envelope from his pocket and opened it to show me the wad of notes within. “Someone said best thing is to have a big campaign, like that Maddie McCann girl had, best chance of getting her found, like. I ‘spect it’s expensive and this ‘int much, but it’s something.” He held the envelope out to me and shrugged. “Just want to do what I can, like.” As he finished speaking, he looked down at his leg, where Tonks was purring and rubbing up against him.
I felt my shoulders sag as the resentment sank away. There had to be about a thousand pounds in the envelope, not a fortune, but for someone like Ray it was a lot. My heart swelled at his gesture.
“And I want to know wha’s going on, Suze,” he said, taking advantage of my visible softening. “You’ve got to see this from my point. I finally get some sort of relationship with my little girl. Then all of a sudden, I get two coppers turning up at me door, saying she missing and acting like I’m some sort of suspect, like. Now, I got no frigging idea where she is, but what I do know is that you can be pretty narky when you want to be. What happened? The morning she disappeared?”
I sighed. “We argued. You don’t need to know the details, thank you very much. If I’m being honest, I thought the same as you initially, that she may have run away to punish me or whatever.”
“But you don’t think that no more?” Ray started clicking his knuckles. He’d always done that when he was nervous or deep in thought. It used to really annoy me, and I was forever batting his hands apart.
“I think we’d be lucky if that were the case.” I allowed myself to sink back onto the sofa, knowing my body wasn’t strong enough to hold me up through what I had to say. “They now think she was potentially being groomed. They’ve arrested someone. A paedophile who was in the area when she disappeared.” I trailed off into a broken whisper. I could hardly bear to say the words out loud. Paedophile. Groomed.
Ray’s face and neck went from the modest red to a blotchy purple within seconds. “A paedophile? They think some fucking sicko’s got her?” He started pacing again, his fists clenched.
“Sit down, Ray. Christ, you’re making me dizzy. Look, there’s nothing we can do. They’ve got him. They’re questioning him as we speak.”
“We best get to the station then. I want to look this fucker in the eye.” He turned and marched towards the front door, not taking no for an answer.
Despite his unrealistic plan of confronting the suspect in the middle of Norfolk Constabulary Headquarters, and the now rather gruesome colour of the back of his neck, I couldn’t help but find his determination endearing. Perhaps he did care for Teigan more than I realised, after all.