Ridpath stared at his computer, the words blurring. He read the Ryder files and the search history Sophia had sent him. There were no documents relating to Jane Ryder after 2009.
He had been at it since nine o’clock, ever since Eve had gone to bed.
She’d come back exactly on time at 6.30, carrying her heavy school bag and complaining about her friends. ‘You know they just don’t get it. Blackpink is so much cooler than BTS, but they prefer the boys.’
‘I seem to remember you liked BTS too.’
‘That was years ago, Dad, when I was still a kid.’
He stood up, stretched and climbed the stairs to check her light was off. He opened the door a couple of inches, peering round to see her fast asleep, the night light gently illuminating her features.
He always loved watching his daughter sleep, her face peaceful and calm, her arms wrapped around a rabbit her mother had given her after she was born.
At her back lay a stuffed dog he’d bought her for Christmas. A tough time for both of them, when Polly’s absence was felt the most. He did his best to inject some joy, dressing up as Santa Claus on Christmas morning and cooking what almost resembled a Christmas lunch complete with overcooked sprouts, dry turkey, burnt roast potatoes and oily gravy. Desert was much better. He could hardly go wrong with microwaved mince tarts and custard from Marks and Sparks.
For Christmas he gave her three new BTS posters, a voucher for H&M, a new pair of cool trainers (at least he thought they were cool), the latest album from Blackpink and another shopping voucher for Claire’s. He knew the vouchers were pretty weak, but at least she could get something she really wanted.
She’d done her best to be excited, getting him a new Christmas jumper and a Montblanc pen for his notebook with money she had saved from her allowance. After lunch and the Queen’s Speech, they had played Monopoly as they always did on Christmas Day, but the third player was missing.
Polly.
Her absence a massive gap in both their lives.
It was on Boxing Day that Eve spoke to him, her face dark and brooding.
‘Dad, you know what I’m most afraid of?’
‘Spiders? Heights? Homework?’ he joked, trying to lighten the mood.
‘I’m most afraid of forgetting Mum. What she looked like, what she smelt like and even what it felt like to hug her.’
So that morning, they had created a memory box together using an old vanity case. She chose what she put inside: her mum’s lucky green jumper she always wore when Ofsted inspected the school. A bottle of her perfume, half used and still redolent of Polly. A bright red lipstick, the end shaped by Polly’s lips. Her whistle from school when she prowled around the playground, watching over her charges. A drawing Eve had made of her mum when she was five – a child’s drawing, but the likenesses still there. And, finally, a picture of all three of them, taken when they had visited London in the year before Polly’s death.
‘It’s like she’ll be with us forever now,’ said Eve, placing the box next to her bed, ‘it’s the best Christmas present ever, Dad.’
Afterwards, both of them decided to visit her grave at Stretford Cemetery. In front of the headstone, Eve arranged the flowers, and without any sense of embarrassment, told her mum of the time they had both had since she had died. Of the lockdowns and Covid and living with her grandparents and the new house and her new school.
Her mum didn’t reply, but Ridpath knew she was listening.
Somewhere.
Afterwards, he had taken Eve to stay with her grandparents for the New Year and he was left alone.
Not really alone, though. He still had his memories to keep him warm at night when the temperature dropped and frost rimed the garden.
It was all he had left now.
Memories.
He shook his head, closed the door and went back downstairs to his waiting computer.
He opened the history of Daisy House he had found on a blog. Dave Connor had most of the details correct, from its construction to its final closure as a children’s home in 2006. He’d correlated this information with the details of Operation Pharaoh. The police operation had been clinical in its examination of Daisy House, indicating the place had witnessed widespread abuse with physical, mental and sexual torture of the young inmates. Jimmy Saville had been a regular visitor, even shooting one of his Jim’ll Fix It programmes there. A predator lurking amongst the most vulnerable in society.
Some of the children had received compensation, up to £15,000, from Manchester Council, but nothing could compensate for a childhood lost. Many had gone straight from the children’s home to a life of crime. Others had become dependent on drink or drugs, using narcotics to forget the anger of the past. Yet more had simply bottled up their abuse, hiding it deep within their souls like an incubus ready and waiting to hatch.
He remembered a quote he had read somewhere: ‘Every childhood lasts a lifetime.’ Such simple words, but with such a profound meaning. Would Eve’s childhood trauma affect her in later years?
He would do whatever it took to make sure it didn’t.
The clock above the mantle chimed. It was midnight already, where had the time gone? He shivered, the room was getting cold. He’d set the central heating timer to go off at eleven p.m.; no sense in wasting money heating an empty room.
He switched off his laptop. It was time to climb the stairs to bed. For a nanosecond, he thought about pouring a glass of Macallan to help him sleep, but decided against it. The brain had to be clear for tomorrow’s meeting with the Ryders.
In the middle of the room, he stopped and listened to the joists creaking as if a ghost walked across the ceiling. However, his rational mind knew it was only them cooling and contracting.
His rational mind also told him he was going to spend another night alone.
That was harder to bear, much harder.