As I drew close to our house now, I saw someone on our doorstep: Charles. I felt such a rush of relief. We were hardly friends but here was someone who knew Nick, who would sympathize and help. Maybe he even knew something about why they had taken Nick, or what could have happened to Lorelei, and could lead me through the confusion.
‘Mrs Cawson. I have been calling for an hour. Is Dr Cawson here?’ he asked as soon as I was within earshot.
‘Oh, God, he’s been arrested,’ I said.
He stopped, confused. ‘The police?’
‘NatSec.’
Confusion turned to amazement. ‘They took him to Great Queen Street?’
‘Yes. They–’
‘No.’ He looked around to see if anyone had overheard. ‘Tell me inside.’
I was gabbling, I knew, as we hurried to the parlour. Charles had a limping gait, the result, Nick had once told me, of taking a round to his hip on D-Day, and I was rushing ahead of him. ‘Lorelei. She’s…’ The shock came back to me as we reached the room. ‘I found her dead.’ His mouth fell open. ‘In her home.’
‘Her home?’ He could only repeat what I had said, as if it couldn’t be true.
‘The bathroom. She drowned.’
‘Why?’ he asked after swallowing hard. ‘What–’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. They’ve taken Nick. Why do you think they did that?’
He stared at me. ‘I have no idea. Was he there?’
‘No,’ I said, fighting back tears.
‘What happened to her?’
‘They’re trying to find out. Can you think of anything about her, why it could have happened?’
He shook his head, scratching that rash on his hand until it became an angry crimson. ‘What did they tell you?’
‘Nothing!’ I related what had happened. When I had finished, he went to the window and stood there for a while, before pulling the curtain fully across and sitting in the wing-backed chair. ‘What shall we do?’ I begged him. Now that the shock was wearing off, my stomach was twisting at the thought that it was my baseless suspicions that had resulted in Nick being taken in. If I hadn’t gone there, he would never have been sent for and would probably have come home from the surgery like any other day.
Charles rubbed his forehead. Mine still ached from where I had hit it on the bath, although the pain was lessening. ‘It’s hard to say. I have some friends in the Party. I’ll contact them and ask them to find out the situation.’
‘Can they get him out?’ It was a glimmer of hope.
‘I believe they can try.’
‘Well, please call them. Please. Do anything you can think of. Anything.’ That guilt, I knew, would tear me to pieces if things turned worse.
‘Yes, yes, I will. Straight away. Can you think of any friends of your husband’s who might be able to exert some influence?’
I sat mentally running through all of Nick’s friends and colleagues who might be of use. But my mind just wasn’t working properly. And, besides that, I didn’t really know many or what they could achieve. Charles put forward a few names but I was only vaguely aware of them. He knew them and their potential far better than I did, so I just agreed to whatever he suggested. I ran out of words. I had never known anyone taken away by NatSec.
We were interrupted by a knock on the front door and my heart leaped at the thought that it might be news of Nick’s release. When I dashed to answer it, I found a woman in police uniform on the doorstep and I felt sure this must be it, she had come to tell me Nick was coming home – but then I saw, behind her, a tall, thin fourteen-year-old girl, her orange hair falling across her face from under a school cap, and I realized that the officer’s visit was for a different reason. ‘Oh, Hazel,’ I said, going to the girl with my arms outstretched.
‘Are you her stepmother?’ asked the policewoman.
‘Yes.’
Nick’s daughter had been at one of the state’s dreary boarding schools until the beginning of the new academic year, when she had come back to live with her mother and go to a normal school. I had only met her a handful of times and now she was here. Nick’s parents were dead and Lorelei’s mother was old and frail, I knew, so there was no immediate place of safety and familiarity to take her in. I tried to put my arms around her shoulders in the hope that I could bring her some comfort, but she pulled back and hugged her bag to her torso. My arms hung in mid-air before I let them drop.
‘She was at a friend’s. Got home and found us there, packing up,’ the officer explained quietly, as if the girl wouldn’t hear her. Why do people think children can’t see what’s right in front of them?
‘Come in,’ I said. The girl shuffled into the hall. She looked like all the blood had been drained from her.
‘Will she be staying with you?’
‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ Hazel looked at her feet and seemed to shrink further into herself. ‘She’ll be all right here.’ The officer nodded, glanced at the girl and left, joining a male colleague stamping his feet to keep warm in the five o’clock twilight.
Charles had appeared behind me. ‘Are you really going to look after…’ he began, with a sceptical look on his face.
‘Yes.’
‘As you wish.’ He returned to the parlour.
‘Hazel.’ I lifted her satchel from her hands, placed it on the floor and wrapped my arms around her. She was shaking. ‘You’ll be staying with us now. You’ll be all right.’
She tried to speak but could hardly form the words. She was in shock too, I could see; the grief hadn’t yet hit her. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she managed to stutter.
I didn’t know what to say. I had presumed the policewoman had informed her about Nick, but the girl had been told only that her mother had died.
‘He’s not here right now,’ I said.
‘Where is he?’ There was need in her voice, but in her eyes there was something else. A flash of what? Resentment? She wanted her father and instead here I was swanning around in his home.
It was best she knew, I thought, or she would become more frantic the longer it was delayed. ‘The National Security people are talking to him.’
‘He’s in Great Queen Street?’ she gasped. I had hoped she wouldn’t know much about 60 Great Queen Street. A forlorn hope.
‘Yes, but he’ll be fine,’ I said quickly. ‘He’s done nothing wrong; they just think he can help them work out what happened.’ She dropped on to the stairs and buried her face in her arms. I could do nothing but stroke her back. She flinched from my touch. ‘He’ll be with us soon.’ Her mouth opened as if she were trying to form words, but closed again as tears began to course down her cheeks. ‘I have to…’ she sobbed, trying to speak. ‘My mum. I…’ But she couldn’t go on and I gave her a few minutes just to cry.
‘You’ll be all right,’ I said again, at a loss for anything else to say, anything with depth to it. I wanted to talk more to Charles, to see if there were anything we could do for Nick, but right now this girl needed me.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘You will.’
She gazed up at me and her expression changed, as if she were making her mind up about something. ‘I have to go back to my house,’ she said, her mouth still twisted by sadness.
‘What?’ I couldn’t understand. Did she want to say goodbye to her mother? ‘Why?’
‘I just have to go there. I need to get something.’
‘What is it?’
She froze. I turned to see Charles with his arms folded. Hazel looked at her feet. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘Perhaps I can help.’
‘Thank you, but no,’ I said forcefully.
‘As you wish.’ He walked back to his chair and I closed the door behind him – this looked to be something that Hazel wanted to keep private.