At lunchtime, Stephen went out in his car to search, making me promise to stay put in case she walked back through the door or rang the house phone. Before he left, I followed him to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, watched as he put his favourite cashmere jumper on.
‘Freya, were you really in the office yesterday morning? Did Zoe really not see either of us since Thursday night?’
I felt my palms grow sweaty. ‘Yes, I’ve had a lot on recently.’
‘But for neither of us to know that Zoe wasn’t well yesterday…’ His gaze rested on me. ‘I mean that’s awful. You’ve let her down. You’ve let Zoe down.’
I brought my head up sharply. ‘I’ve let her down?’
‘Yes, you’re her mother and you knew I was going away as of the early hours of Friday morning.’
‘Well, I realised I was late with marking papers so I left before Zoe was awake,’ I said, defensive. ‘But she is sixteen! She’s hardly a little girl any more, even though you insist on treating her like one.’
Stephen eyed me and I looked away. ‘While she’s under this roof, we look after her. It doesn’t matter if she’s twenty-something and still living here.’ His voice grew gruff. ‘I love Zoe to the moon and back, and it makes me sick to think she was alone, feeling unwell, for even one second. Now she’s not even answering our texts. She might be in trouble and I’m not there for her.’ He paused. ‘You know she’s been a bit quiet for a few months now. Maybe she found out. Found out your secret.’
‘Well, the only way she would have found out is if you had told her.’
‘Or she happened to find something…’
I pushed my tongue around the inside of my mouth, desperately biting back all the cutting remarks I wanted to make. Stephen, knowing my weak points all too well, picked up on this; he was testing me.
‘Go on, Freya, tell me what’s going through your mind.’
‘Well, it’s interesting how my role is to ensure she goes to school, is cared for when unwell, and yours is to save her when she’s in trouble.’ I pursed my lips. ‘Like a knight in fucking armour.’
‘You’re unreal,’ he said. ‘Provoking an argument when our daughter’s missing. Not cool, Freya, not cool.’
‘No, Stephen, not cool is making out I’m the bad guy here when we both dropped the ball. I think Keira most probably has something to do with this. Carter needs to question her, find out what she knows.’
‘If anything,’ he said firmly and left, without another word, leaving the ever-growing rift between us to keep on growing.
Keira had mentioned the farm up the road and a memory surfaced of the farmer, Jerry Wyre, spotting me eating out with Robert a few months ago, just after the trouble with Zoe. He had stopped and smiled, almost knowingly, just beyond the window. His look, that day, had unnerved me; as if he now knew my secret, and might have some sort of power over me.
I realised now that the police needed to search the farm and fast. I approached DI Carter in the kitchen.
‘You know Keira Sullivan? The girl we were talking about earlier?’
‘The one you don’t appear to like much?’ He gave a wry smile.
I nodded, pushing down the nervous butterflies clawing away at my stomach. ‘She has led Zoe astray before,’ I was keen to emphasise.
‘Go on.’
‘She told me that on Thursday they had a study day and headed to the farm, Rook Farm, up the road.’ I nodded firmly, my eyes not leaving his, keen for him to understand the urgency. ‘I think you need to get up there now. The man – the farmer, Jerry Wyre – he isn’t to be trusted.’
‘Why not?’ The DI scribbled something on his pad.
‘Why not what?’
‘Why isn’t he to be trusted?’
I was about to mention the time he had seen me and Robert eating out but bit my tongue. ‘I’ve had to talk to him, the farmer, before about the way he is around Zoe.’
‘How is he?’
‘She told me once that he made a pass at her. I warned him off and told him she was just a schoolgirl.’ I was talking fast. ‘They’re loners, you know? No children.’
‘She told you that? What did Jerry Wyre say?’
I felt my frustration mounting. ‘He told me she was lying.’ I paused. ‘But why would Zoe lie about something like that?’ I balled my fists.
‘Was Zoe grateful you did that?’
My gaze shifted to the ground. ‘As much as any teenager is grateful for anything you do.’
‘Meaning?’ DI Carter raised a brow.
‘Meaning’ – I brought my eyes up to his once more – ‘she shouted and told me she could fight her own battles.’
‘Did she tell you in no uncertain terms that he had made an unwarranted pass at her?’
‘That’s what she insinuated, yes.’
He nodded, acknowledging something and jotting it down. Then, pausing, I watched his forehead crease in confusion. ‘But why did Zoe and Keira head that way if Zoe feels like that about him? Are you sure he made a pass at her, or did you read into that?’
I clenched my fists. ‘Because Keira persuaded her, I’m sure of it. They were playing a stupid Truth or Dare game. One I thought they had grown out of, but I discovered that not only do they play still it, but the stakes are higher. But they’re still just teenagers.’ I felt the onset of a migraine, my mind unable to cope with the sudden realisation of how little I knew about my daughter. ‘My point is, Detective, what if this was them playing their silly game and it went wrong? What if that farmer has done something to my daughter?’ I stepped closer to him, my tongue moving fast around my mouth. ‘Are you listening? I’m giving you as much information as I can.’
‘Trust me,’ he said, unfazed, ‘we are doing everything we can to bring your daughter home safe and sound.’ He scratched his head. ‘So tell me more about Keira. Tell me why you have these negative feelings towards her.’
I lowered my voice. ‘Well, one reason I have a bit of a thing against Keira, besides the fact that it was Keira’s influence that got Zoe to experiment with drugs, is that we once had Keira’s mother knocking on our door.’
He nodded.
‘She basically told us’ – I put my fingers in the air and acted out playful quotation marks – ‘in confidence and loving parent to loving parent, that Keira had hinted at how sexual Zoe had become. That apparently she tried to provoke older men.’
‘Has she had sex?’
The directness of his question disarmed me and I stood up straight. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered quickly. ‘We’ve never talked about it, you know. She only turned sixteen in August. She’s young for her year and Stephen told me it was a mistake putting her in the year above, but I’m sure she’s coping. She’s a smart girl, she gets good marks. As for the conversation regarding sex, I haven’t broached it with her yet.’ I’d always told myself that I would have the conversation when Zoe had her first boyfriend, but I knew this was just an excuse and I’d been putting it off.
‘No,’ he agreed, his pen scrawling again, ‘it’s always a difficult one.’ He looked up. ‘And what do you think?’
‘What do you mean?’ I said, suddenly wishing I wasn’t having this conversation. An image of Robert’s hands on my breasts rushed through my mind and I shook it off.
‘I mean, do you think your daughter is like that? The way it was described by…’ He glanced at his notes. ‘Mrs Sullivan, was it?’
‘No, definitely not. She’s wayward but not at all like that. She and Keira are best friends, but they have fights like any teenage girls, so I suspect Keira was getting back at Zoe for something, and wanted to get her in trouble. So I never mentioned it to her. We don’t have the…’ I hesitated. ‘We don’t have the closest relationship.’
‘Right.’ The detective sat now, invited me to do the same. ‘Why’s that?’
‘It’s complicated,’ I said slowly. ‘Well, I never really bonded with her properly when she was a baby. The doctors told me it was fine, that some women do experience it. Of course now there’s a lot more awareness of post-natal depression, but all I knew was that I felt kind of detached from her. It took me until she was at least four to even accept that we had a daughter.’ I was surprised by my own honesty. ‘Gosh, sorry.’ I suddenly felt aware of myself. ‘Talking to you like you’re a counsellor.’ I felt the familiar pricking of tears whenever I was asked to broach the subject. ‘I was so excited to be pregnant and then, when she was born, I felt afraid for this tiny little thing that was suddenly my responsibility. Though my love for her grew every day, sometimes it was suffocating, too, and I couldn’t show it.’ I hung my head. ‘I don’t know why. Doctors told me that it was a chemical imbalance, that it would go with time and I had to be patient. They made it sound so simple but it was awful.’ I brought my head up again, wiping a tear away. ‘What I wouldn’t do to rewind those years and do it all again.’ I paused. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, it’s all useful. Do go on.’ He nodded encouragingly.
I looked behind me, checking for Stephen, though I knew he was still out driving around the neighbourhood, and dropped my voice even further. ‘Stephen took over really after she was born and I clearly wasn’t coping. I suppose in some ways I should be grateful. Thanks to him we now have a smart, beautiful and confident young woman in our lives who we can proudly tell people is our daughter.’
He flashed me a sympathetic look. ‘But, from your tone, I’m guessing you still feel detached from your family even now?’
I nodded. ‘I have for some years, yes.’ I leant in. ‘Stephen is very protective of Zoe.’ I paused. ‘Which is obviously good because it’s better that he smothers her with love, since I….’
‘Don’t show her you love her?’
‘Me?’ I shook my head vigorously, my voice growing cooler. ‘If you’re suggesting that I love my daughter less than Stephen, you are very much mistaken. I am her mother at the end of the day and I love her so much, it hurts.’ A sob escaped my lips. ‘I desperately need her to be okay.’ I turned away from the detective, unable to deal with the worry churning around my stomach and the DI’s prying eyes.
He nodded, held his hands up in the air. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t hinting at anything. Just getting the full picture. Anyway,’ he continued, ‘can you tell me again the last time you saw Zoe?’
‘Thursday evening. She went to bed at about ten and Stephen and I went up soon after.’
‘Right, so then you go to work early the next morning, Stephen heads out to this conference at five a.m.’ He studied my face. ‘That’s quite early. Wasn’t the conference in Oxford?’
‘Yes, but he had a paper to deliver. My husband doesn’t believe successful people arrive on time, and certainly not late. You have to be early to everything.’ I sighed just thinking about the years of wearying regimens around the house.
‘Okay, so you head out at what time?’
‘Six-thirty.’
‘Zoe normally gets up at what time?’
‘Between seven and eight, depending on what she’s got on.’
‘Okay, so Stephen stays overnight in Oxford?’ His gaze doesn’t leave the pad, but I know he’s thinking the same as me.
‘Yes, I don’t know why. I know what you’re thinking – why stay over when you live so close? He does like to have a drink with his colleagues, so maybe that was it.’
‘You haven’t talked about it?’
‘We don’t talk much any more.’
‘I see. Then Zoe texted to ask if she could stay the night with Keira?’
‘Yes,’ I nodded, looking at the flats of my palms, ‘that’s right.’
‘And you? Where were you last night?’
I narrowed my eyes.
‘It’s part of my job to find out everybody’s whereabouts,’ he explained evenly.
‘I stayed late to finish off some work and came home.’
‘Did anyone else stay late?’
‘Are you questioning me?’
He sucked the end of his biro. ‘No, but I’m a stranger to your family who now needs to find your daughter, which means I’m trying to understand how your family works.’
I nodded. ‘No one else stayed late in my department and, as I say, I came home and watched a DVD, drank some wine.’ I felt heat prickling at my neck.
He shut his notepad and thanked me for being so helpful. It was only after he had left the kitchen that I realised I had been holding my breath.
***
I couldn’t ignore the niggling fear that maybe Zoe had returned to the farm. With Stephen still out, I waited until the DI’s team had either left or moved into the dining room, and quietly grabbed my car keys off the side. I walked out to the car, kept in our parking bays just up the road, and headed towards the farm. Carter had told me that they were taking Jerry Wyre in for questioning. I couldn’t sit at home. I needed to do something because I had convinced myself that Jerry Wyre had taken his attraction to my daughter one step too far. In my mind, it was clear that Keira had pressured Zoe to head to the farm to play their ridiculous game and Jerry Wyre had been unable to control himself. It made perfect sense and, with a racing heart, I headed up the road, my thoughts spiralling out of control at what I might find.
The clocks had gone back, so dusk was drawing in early and an autumnal mist covered the fields. My headlights just caught the white tails of several deer as they sprang through a field and into the woods. I spotted a group of rooks in the distance, their large black bodies sweeping through the air in deathly circles. After a mile or so, I made the descent towards the farm.
Pulling up on the opposite side of the bungalow, I got out and my shoes sank into the mud. I cast an eye over the house and walked a few metres up the road, giving myself time to think. A noise above made me look upward and I saw the rooks I had spotted earlier, their squally shrieks persistent.
I started back towards the farmhouse and opened the small gate leading onto the property. Off to my left stood a red tractor; a radio sat on its bonnet with the odd, wispy note of a song only just able to penetrate the static. Whoever had put it there hadn’t bothered tuning it properly. Glimpsing movement off to my right, I turned and caught sight of six dogs caged in kennels. They were busy tearing through large cuts of raw meat. An albino sheepdog looked up momentarily, blood staining the fur around its mouth.
‘Yes?’
I looked away quickly and towards the door. A small woman stood in its entrance. She had an apron on and held a dishcloth in her hands.
I started, unsure of what I wanted to say. ‘I’m Zoe Hall’s mother. My daughter’s missing.’
The woman strode out of the house. ‘You have no right being here. The bloody old bill have been, scoured the farm.’ She pointed. ‘The land.’ The woman pulled the door behind her. ‘Get away from here.’
I stood up straighter. ‘I know my daughter was here. Her friend said they came up this way on Thursday and spoke to your husband.’
The woman glared at me. ‘I bet your daughter’s little friend didn’t tell you how she was acting. Like a girl who needs her mother, if you ask me.’ She took a few steps towards me again.
I started to back away, my pulse quickening. ‘What is that meant to mean?’
‘Like she knew exactly what she was doing.’ She glared. ‘She wouldn’t even have been up here if you kept an eye on her.’ She gestured abruptly with her hand. ‘Now, get off my land.’
I stumbled as I made my way further backwards. ‘It’s not true,’ I sobbed. ‘Please, I just want my daughter to come home.’ Finally, I turned, fumbled with the latch on the gate, my eyes blurring over with tears.
‘I don’t know where your daughter is. We keep ourselves to ourselves. That’s how we like it,’ the woman shouted after me.
I moved hurriedly towards the car and got in. Sitting back momentarily, I tried to control my breathing, gripping the steering wheel. I glanced in my wing mirror and spotted a patrol car making its way up the road, and took one last look at the bungalow. The woman was standing at a window, unmoving, watching. Waiting for me to leave.
I started the engine and made a U-turn in the road. I was relieved to see a woman behind the wheel of the patrol car, no one I recognised. And then, I saw him. Jerry Wyre, his forehead pressed up against the glass of the rear seat window. As the car drove past, I braked to get a better look at him. My heart stopped when I saw the whites of his eyes. He caught my eye and ran his tongue over the glass; a long, slug-like smear was left in its wake, and I could have sworn, once again, he smiled.
***
As I drove home, I spotted Keira walking hurriedly from the corner shop back in the direction of her house. I drove up alongside her and put down the passenger window. She looked in and drew a sharp breath, her eyes widening.
‘Keira, I think we need to talk, don’t you?’
‘Nothing to talk about,’ she said quickly.
Keira started to move faster and I was forced to pull up and run after her.
‘Keira, turn around!’ My voice cut through the quiet of the empty Chilcote street.
She stopped and turned her body slowly to face mine, her face streaked with tears.
‘Leave me alone. My mum said if you talk to me, I have to tell you to leave me alone.’
I came up close. ‘Look, Keira, I need you to be straight with me. This is no time to play games. Zoe is missing and if you know anything, if you know where she is, just tell me now.’ I looked at her, imploring. ‘Keira, please.’
‘I don’t know anything. Me and Zoe went up to the farm on Thursday. Zoe was kind of…’ She paused. ‘You know?’
‘No, Keira, I don’t know. Tell me.’
‘She flirted a bit with Jerry Wyre, the farmer.’
My heart started to beat faster. ‘And what did he do?’
‘He got angry.’ She looked down at her scuffed trainers. ‘I guess we did kind of take it too far.’
‘Too far?’ I stepped closer, clenching and unclenching my fists.
Keira backed off slightly. ‘Yeah, I mean he told us to go away and I was filming because we thought we could use it in some way for our film project. Only we didn’t go when he asked. Zoe kept at him.’ She cleared her throat, her lower lip wobbling. ‘I told her to stop but she wouldn’t. She was in a really angry mood and wouldn’t listen.’
‘Why was she so angry?’
Keira brought her head up, her eyes on mine. ‘Because she feels like you’re never around any more. That’s how I know how much time you’ve been spending at work. Zoe told me you care more about your students than you do her.’
I blinked and swallowed hard. ‘It’s not true. It is quite the opposite.’
Keira jutted her jaw out defiantly. ‘That’s not how Zoe sees it.’
I saw Keira’s mother at the end of the street and watched her head quickly our way.
‘Freya, leave my daughter alone! She’s told me how you think she got Zoe in trouble. You shouldn’t go around accusing my daughter of things like that,’ Angela Sullivan was shouting, her gait fast as she pounded the pavement, getting closer and closer.
Keira had turned to look at her mother and now backed away from me, moving towards the safety of Angela’s arms.
Angela drew Keira in and then, as quickly as she had arrived, led Keira away.
‘Keira,’ I called after her, my voice cracking with fear. ‘Do you know anything?’
‘Leave her be, Freya,’ Angela called back, the light from the street lamp pooling around their feet. ‘Just leave my daughter alone. It’s your own fault you let Zoe out of your sight.’