When he had disappeared inside, swallowed up by the automatic doors, she turned the engine on and reversed out of the parking space. Relief that he was gone, off her hands, washed over her, mingling with a deep sadness that it had come to this.
‘Janet,’ her mother sounded weird, ‘Elise has gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean she’s gone?’
‘She was going home, but Taisie’s just rung up asking for her. She should be there by now.’
‘When did she leave?’ Janet said, her guts tightening.
‘An hour ago,’ Dorothy said.
Christ. It took fifteen, twenty minutes tops to walk the distance between the houses. ‘I could have collected her,’ Janet said, ‘or Ade. Why did you just let her go?’ She regretted saying it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Chucking blame at Dorothy was no solution.
There was a brief silence before Dorothy replied, the hurt clear in her voice. ‘She said she wanted to walk. I’m sorry.’
‘Look, Mum, it’s probably just-’ All the usual explanations… she’s called at Olivia’s, she’s with friends, she’s got something after school… no longer applied. ‘I’ll go look for her. I’ll ring Ade. You stay there in case she comes back.’
Janet told Lee she had to go, asked him to cover until Gill returned. She rang Ade, heard his phone go to voicemail as she clattered down the stairs. She wondered about leaving a message explaining to him what had happened but hated the thought of the alarm it might cause. Instead she just asked him to call her as soon as he’d picked up her message. When she tried Elise’s phone she got the automated response ‘unable to take your call’, suggesting the handset was either dead or off.
Janet drove as quickly as she dared. She decided to check in with Taisie first and then trace the route back to Dorothy’s. There were a handful of shops between the two, might Elise have stopped off in one of them?
Taisie was in tears, her face pinched with worry. Janet’s heart flipped over at the sight of her.
‘Hey,’ Janet pulled her close, ‘come here.’ No point in telling her not to cry. Of course she should cry if she felt like it. ‘I’m going to go look.’
‘Can I come?’ Taisie begged.
‘No, I need you here so you can let me know if she gets back. Keep trying her phone, yes, every ten minutes, you ring me if you hear anything – and ring round her friends, any you’ve got numbers for.’
Taisie sniffed, nodded. ‘OK.’ Taisie rarely cried, most often in anger, when she was frustrated with the world.
‘Good girl.’
‘Mum?’ Taisie became agitated again as Janet reached the front door, a high note in her question.
She needed reassurance, Janet saw. Olivia dead, now her big sister missing, the world must suddenly seem such a treacherous place. Janet didn’t usually lie to her girls, she felt it was part of her role as a parent to answer their questions about life with unflinching honesty. Now she took a breath, put her hands on Taisie’s head, a benediction, kissing her forehead. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said, ‘she’ll be fine.’
She prayed the lie would not come back and destroy them all.
Janet drove along the road to her mother’s and back twice, the knots in her stomach twisting tighter with each pass. At the back of her mind a question thrummed. She did her best to ignore it. It was like a drill boring into masonry, or a woodpecker hammering on a tree over and over. What if she’s done something stupid? It happened, Janet knew, too often, more usually to boys than girls but still… In the course of the job she’d attended some heartbreaking scenes. Pushing the images away, she turned into the side street close to the run of shops and parked.
She selected a photo of Elise on her phone, ignored the lump in her throat, and asked in each place, a hairdresser’s, hardware store, bakery, newsagent’s and Indian takeaway, if anyone had seen her daughter. All she got were negative replies and pitying looks.
Janet went back to her car. Half an hour had passed with no word. An hour and a half since Elise had left her grandma’s. Maybe Janet should report her missing. Fifteen, vulnerable given recent events, a witness to a sudden death. She felt a spike of fear. Might Elise have attracted the wrong sort of attention, could someone have seen them going to the police station yesterday? That’s stupid, she told herself, you’re being paranoid. But what if she ignored these fears and in doing so exposed Elise to danger?
She drove back towards home, unsure what to do next, sick with worry. A band of pain tight around her head. When her mobile rang she braked quickly and pulled in, earning a blast of the horn and a raised middle finger from the driver following.
‘Ade?’
‘You found her?’
‘How did you know?’ Janet said.
‘I’ve had Taisie on. Well?’
‘No sign, I’ve been up and down the road. I’ve tried the shops.’
‘Well, where the fuck is she?’
‘Don’t shout at me, Ade, that isn’t helping.’
‘Have you tried the common?’ he said.
The common, some reclaimed land that had once been a tip, ran south of the main road about a block away. Janet hadn’t been there for years and she’d no idea if Elise had. The rough ground had been landscaped and grassed over, saplings planted. She remembered a pool in the centre.
‘I’ll go there now.’
Janet parked at the end of the cul-de-sac. Carved tree trunks, an owl and a fox, guarded the entrance. Signs warned about dog fouling, fire lighting and camping.
The saplings were more mature now, in leaf too, and there was little sign of the area’s previous use save for occasional bits of rubble, concrete blocks, half-bricks, lumps of cinder which must’ve worked their way to the surface in among the grass hillocks.
The light was dappled on the path and Janet walked quickly. She remembered rightly that the main route followed close to the outskirts of the grounds with several smaller paths leading from it to the centre, like the spokes of a wheel. Occasionally there were benches made of fake wood which were flame and vandal resistant. She met a man with a spaniel and showed him Elise’s photo. He shook his head, ‘Sorry.’
Once she had made a full circle she took the next path into the middle. As she drew closer she could see the tall rushes that edged the pond, obscuring a clear view across. The water was an opaque grey-green, sickly looking, grease on the surface. Ducks and ducklings paddled in the shallows.
Janet went left, her eyes burning, fists and jaw clenched. Would she be here now, her daughter lost, if Vivien hadn’t been so cruel?
She rounded the curve of the shore and her legs went weak. Elise was there, on a bench, perfectly still, her face in profile, gazing at the water.
Janet fought the temptation to cry out, to run, and made her way to the bench.
Elise glanced up at her. She looked exhausted, pale, her eyes rimmed with shadows. She scowled at the light.
‘We were worried about you.’ Janet sat down.
‘Sorry,’ Elise said.
There was silence, broken only by the occasional squabbling of the ducks and the alarm call of a blackbird somewhere in the trees.
Janet’s head was full of recriminations: why weren’t you answering your phone, Elise, how could you just disappear, have you any idea what that might do to us? But she kept her counsel. Elise had already had one deranged mother badmouthing her.
Janet steadied her breathing, waiting for her body to recognize that the immediate trauma was over, to shift into a lower gear. She texted Ade. All OK back soon. Tell T and D.