I barely slept and was washed and dressed by the time Henri rang the doorbell at 8.30 the following morning. Mum took the girls out to the shops so that we could chat about him dropping Leo and Dee off at the station.
‘Where could they be now?’ I asked, willing him to say Outer Mongolia, or better still, Mars.
‘East, although they might have got off at the next stop, or any after that,’ he said, looking as exhausted as I felt.
I would have loved proof of their destination, but that wasn’t going to happen. Eventually Mum came back with the girls and we left them to go upstairs to play in Katie’s room. She joined us and I finally told them what Ashley had said to me the night before.
Neither of them spoke. I waited until they’d digested this latest shock.
‘She’s an odd child, Sera,’ Mum said. ‘Are you certain she wasn’t just messing with you?’
‘Mum, she’s five, supposedly,’ I argued, realising how little I knew about the child upstairs with my daughter. ‘How would she think up something so weird? She has a French accent.’
‘She’s grown up there, so that’s not surprising,’ Mum said. ‘Henri, what do you think? Should we take this seriously?’
He looked surprised at her question. ‘Of course. If it is not true then we have lost nothing, but if it is, this child must be returned to her parents immediately.’ He rubbed his stubbly chin. ‘I will contact my ex-colleagues. Maybe they can find information about a missing child. Do you recognise her accent?’
‘No,’ I said, aware I had no idea about different accents in France. ‘I suppose it could help narrow down the search for her family,’ I said. ‘I wish I could help.’
‘She has never spoken in front of me, so I cannot tell,’ he said, giving me a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll find out everything I can. We must act immediately, before they return and try to claim her.’
Mum looked horrified. ‘Thank you, Henri,’ she said. ‘I’m incredibly grateful to you for this and for being so generous about not pressing charges against those fiends. I don’t think I could have stood having them here for a moment longer than they were.’
He tilted his head in a half nod and left. I spent several hours catching up with my work. I had forgotten it was my day to have a stall at the market and decided that even though I was hours late starting, it would still be better to spend some time there than none. Mum was happy to have the children, saying it was too hot for her to go out anywhere.
Despite the humidity of the ongoing heatwave, I needed something else to take my mind off everything that had transpired over the past twenty-four hours. I took the photo of Hazel and Jack with me, pushing it carefully into my back pocket, so I could drop it off to Henri on my way home from the market.
I usually preferred to be somewhere in the middle, but had missed the opportunity by being so late to arrive at the town square, so ended up being at the far end of the pitches.
‘Ahh, Sera, we thought you weren’t coming to join us today,’ the elderly lady with the fruit stall said, as I gave the change to my first customer of the day.
I laughed. ‘I forgot what day it was,’ I admitted, which was partially true.
The heat was unbearable and because I’d only got the last stall in the market, the canopy didn’t shade me as much as I would have liked. I drank some water from a bottle and fanned my face with one of the booklets I gave away with each of my sales to advertise the rest of the stock.
I lifted the signs down at the end of the day, wrapping each one carefully and placing them in a box ready to take home. When I stood up I spotted Henri moving slowly through the thinning crowds.
‘Henri,’ I shouted, standing on my tiptoes to wave at him. ‘Over here.’
He stopped and held his hand up, moving as quickly as he could towards my stall.
‘Any news?’
He nodded. ‘It is not good.’ His tanned face was strained. ‘I am sorry.’
‘So, Ashley was telling the truth?’ His distress was obvious. ‘What do we do now?’
He came around to my side of the stall. ‘I’ve spoken with your mother. She has packed up Ashley’s belongings and is taking the girls to a soft play centre for the morning and then to pre-school for the afternoon. She is getting them away from the house in case Dee and Leo return. The pre-school leader has been informed and will keep the children there with your mother until the police arrive.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, stunned at how low Dee had sunk in my estimation. ‘Let’s go.’
He helped me pack my signs into the back of my car. ‘We must not go to your house, not until this has been sorted. We have no way of knowing if Leo and Dee will be there and I cannot take the chance they might follow us to Ashley.’ He was so in control and I realised what a loss he must have been to the police service.
‘I’ll drop these off at the studio. You follow me there and then I’ll come to the school with you.’
On the way to the school he filled me in on the rest of what had happened since I last saw him. It was hard to imagine that only four hours had passed since then.
‘Her real name is Sophie.’ He barely contained his emotions as he explained more of what he’d discovered. ‘Her parents moved to France a couple of years ago, so didn’t know many people there. Dee was a volunteer at the school; she helped the little ones with their reading.’
‘That’s how she got to know Ashley, I mean, Sophie,’ I said almost to myself.
‘Sophie’s mother recently started a new job, I am told. She worked long hours, sometimes arriving late to collect her daughter. Dee always offered to stay behind with the child. One day, the mother arrived late to collect her and they had both vanished.’
I pictured the horror on that poor mother’s face discovering her child missing. ‘Poor woman.’
‘Yes.’
An icy tingle ran down my spine making me shiver. ‘How didn’t we know about her being missing? Wasn’t the story reported in the international papers?’
‘No. The papers probably printed something about it, but they’re mostly publishing stories about this heatwave and fires, deaths caused by the situation. No one was looking for a kidnapped child around here. It’s not your fault you didn’t know.’
‘What happens when we get to the school?’
‘Her mother is on a flight. A benefactor is flying her on his private jet to the nearest airport. She arrives in an hour.’ He put his foot down harder on the accelerator. ‘We must hurry.’