“I went to the art college—” he began, but I interrupted. The smell of coffee in his Styrofoam cup had become nauseatingly strong.
“You must be very worried about her.”
“I like to be thorough.”
“Yes, of course.”
I didn’t want DS Finborough to think me hysterical, but reasonable and intelligent. I remember thinking it shouldn’t matter what he thought of me. Later I would discover that it mattered a great deal.
“I met Mr. Codi,” said DS Finborough. “He didn’t say anything about his relationship with Tess, other than as a former student.”
Emilio still disowned you, even when you were missing. I’m sorry. But that’s what his “discretion” always was—disownership hiding behind a more acceptable noun.
“Do you know why Mr. Codi wouldn’t want us to know about their relationship?” he asked.
I knew it all too well. “The college doesn’t allow tutors to have sex with their students. He’s also married. He made Tess take a ‘sabbatical’ when the bump started to show.”
DS Finborough stood up; his manner had shifted up a gear, more policeman now than Oxbridge don. “There’s a local news program we sometimes use for missing people. I want to do a televised reconstruction of her last known movements.”
Outside the metal-framed window a bird sang. I remembered your voice, so vividly that it was as if you were in the room with me:
“In some cities birds can’t hear each other anymore above the noise. After a while they forget the complexity and beauty of each other’s song.”
“What on earth’s that got to do with me and Todd?” I asked.
“Some have given up birdsong altogether, and faultlessly imitate car alarms.”
My voice was annoyed and impatient. “Tess.”
“Can Todd hear your song?”
At the time, I dismissed your student intensity of emotion as something I’d grown out of years before. But in that police room I remembered our conversation again, because thoughts about birdsong, about Todd, about anything were an escape from the implications of what was happening. DS Finborough sensed my distress. “I think it’s better to err on the side of caution. Especially now I know she’s pregnant.”
He issued instructions to junior policemen. There was a discussion about the camera crew and of who would play you. I didn’t want a stranger imitating you, so I offered to do it. As we left the room, DS Finborough turned to me. “Mr. Codi is a great deal older than your sister?”
Fifteen years older, and your tutor. He should have been a father figure, not a lover. Yes, I know I’ve told you that before, many times, building to a critical mass that forced you to tell me in so many words to butt out, only you would have used the English equivalent and told me to stop putting my nose in. DS Finborough was still waiting for my reply.
“You asked me if I am close to her, not if I understand her.”
Now, I think I do, but not then.
DS Finborough told me more about the reconstruction.
“A lady working at the post office on Exhibition Road remembers Tess buying a card and also airmail stamps, sometime before two p.m. She didn’t say Tess was pregnant, but I suppose there was a counter between them so she wouldn’t have seen.”
I saw Mum coming along the corridor toward us as DS Finborough continued.
“Tess posted the card from the same post office sometime before two-fifteen.”
Mum’s voice snapped with exhausted patience. “The card was my birthday card. She hasn’t been to see me for months. Hardly ever phones. But sends me a card as if that makes it all right.”
A couple of weeks before, I’d reminded you that it was her birthday coming up, hadn’t I?
Before we go on, as I want to be honest in the telling of this story, I have to admit that you were right about Todd. He didn’t hear my song. Because I’d never once sung to him. Or to anyone else for that matter. Perhaps I am like one of those birds that can only imitate car alarms.
Mr. Wright gets up to close a venetian blind against the bright spring sunshine.
“And later that day you did the reconstruction?” he asks.
“Yes.”
Mr. Wright has the reconstruction on tape and doesn’t need additional details of my extraordinary game of dress up, but I know you do. You’d love to know what kind of you I made. I didn’t do badly, actually. I’ll tell you about it without hindsight’s glaring clarity.
A middle-aged woman police officer, PC Vernon, took me to a room to change. She was pink cheeked and healthy, as if she’d just come in from milking cows rather than policing London streets. I felt conscious of my pallor, the red-eye flight taking its toll.
“Do you think it’ll do any good?” I asked.
She smiled at me and gave me a quick hug, which I was taken aback by but liked. “Yes, I do. Reconstructions are too much of a palaver if there isn’t a good chance of jogging someone’s memory. And now we know that Tess is pregnant, it’s more likely that someone will have noticed her. Right, then, let’s get your clothes sorted out, shall we?”
I found out later that although forty, PC Vernon had been a police officer for only a few months. Her policing style reflected the warm and capable mother in her.
“We’ve fetched some clothes from her flat,” she continued. “Do you know what kind of thing she might have been wearing?”
“A dress. She’d got to the point where nothing else would fit over the bump and she couldn’t afford maternity clothes. Luckily most of her clothes are baggy and shapeless.”
“Comfortable, Bee.”
PC Vernon unzipped a suitcase. She had neatly folded each tatty old garment and wrapped them in tissue paper. I was touched by the care that she had shown. I still am.
I chose the least scruffy dress: your purple voluminous vintage one with the embroidery on the hem.
“She got this in a sale five years ago,” I said.
“A good make lasts, doesn’t it?”
We could have been in a Selfridges’ changing room.
“Yes, it does.”
“Always worth it if you can.”
I was grateful to PC Vernon for her ability to make small talk, a verbal bridge between two people in the most unlikely of situations.
“Let’s go with that one then,” she said, and tactfully turned away while I took off my uncomfortable tailored suit.
“So do you look like Tess?” she asked.
“No, not anymore.”
“You used to?”
Again I appreciated her small talk, but suspected it would get bigger.
“Superficially I did.”
“Oh?”
“My mother always tried to dress us the same.”
Despite the difference in age, we’d be in kilts and Fair Isle sweaters, or striped cotton dresses depending on the season. Nothing fussy or frilly, remember? Nothing nylon.
“And we had our hair the same too.”
“A decent trim,” Mum would command and our hair would fall to the floor.
“People said Tess would look just like me when she was older. But they were being kind.”
I was startled that I had said that out loud. It wasn’t a path I had gone down with anyone else before, but it’s well worn with my footsteps. I’ve always known that you would grow up to be far more beautiful than me. I’ve never told you that, have I?
“That must have been hard on her,” said PC Vernon. I hesitated before correcting her, and by then she had moved on. “Is her hair the same color as yours?”