He raised his hands helplessly. Frieda saw his fingernails, dirty from the garden. Was that it? Had she come all the way to Croydon just for that?
‘Can I talk to you about her?’
‘What for?’
‘I met someone who used to know her,’ said Frieda. ‘An old friend of hers called Agnes Flint.’
Dawes nodded slowly. ‘I remember Agnes. Lila used to go around with this little gang of girls. She was one of them. Before things went wrong.’
‘Can I come in?’ said Frieda.
Dawes seemed to be thinking it over, then gave a shrug. ‘Come through to the garden. I was just about to have some tea.’
He led Frieda through the house. It was clearly the home of a man – a very organized man – living alone. Through a door she saw a large flat-screen TV and rows of DVDs on shelves. There was a computer. Underfoot was a thick cream-coloured carpet, so that all the sounds were muffled.
Five minutes later they were standing on the back lawn, holding mugs of tea. The garden was much larger than Frieda had expected, going back thirty, maybe forty, metres from the house. There was a neat lawn with a curved gravel path snaking through it. There were bushes and flowerbeds and little flashes of colour: crocuses, primroses, early tulips. The far end of the garden was wilder and beyond it was a large, high wall.
‘I’ve been trying to tidy things up,’ said Dawes. ‘After the winter.’
‘It seems pretty tidy to me,’ said Frieda.
‘It’s a constant struggle. Look over there.’ He pointed to the garden next door. It was full of long grass, brambles, a ragged rhododendron, a couple of ancient fruit trees. ‘It’s some kind of council house. There’ll be a family of Iraqis or Somalians. Nice enough people. Keep themselves to themselves. But they stay a few months and move on. A garden like this takes years. Do you hear anything?’
Frieda moved her head. ‘Like what?’
‘Follow me.’
Dawes walked along the path away from the house. Now Frieda could hear a sound, a low murmuring that she couldn’t make out, like a muttered conversation in another room. At the end of the garden, there was a fence and Frieda stood next to Dawes and looked over it. With an improbability that almost made her laugh, she saw that there was dip on the other side and in the dip a small stream trickled along the end of the garden with a path on the other side, then the high wall she had already seen. She saw Dawes smiling at her surprise.
‘It makes me think of the children,’ he said. ‘When they were small, we used to make little paper boats and put them on the stream and watch them float away. I used to tell them that in three hours’ time, those boats would reach the Thames and then, if the tide was right, they’d float out to sea.’
‘What is it?’ asked Frieda.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’m from north London. Most of our rivers were buried long ago.’
‘It’s the Wandle,’ said Dawes. ‘You must know the Wandle.’
‘I know the name.’
‘It rises a mile or so back. From here it goes past old factories and rubbish dumps and under roads. I used to walk along the path beside it, years ago. The water was foamy and yellow and it stank back then. But we’re all right here. I used to let the children paddle in it. That’s the problem with a river, isn’t it? You’re at the mercy of everybody who’s upstream from you. Whatever they do to their river, they do to your river. What people do downstream doesn’t matter.’
‘Except to the people further downstream,’ said Frieda.
‘That’s not my problem,’ said Dawes, and sipped his tea. ‘But I’ve always liked the idea of living by a river. You never know what’s going to float by. I can see you like it too.’
‘I do,’ Frieda admitted.
‘So what do you do, when you’re not looking for lost girls?’
‘I’m a psychotherapist.’
‘Is it your day off?’
‘In a way.’ They turned and walked back down the garden. ‘What do you do?’
‘I do this,’ said Dawes. ‘I do my garden. I do up the house. I do things with my hands. I find it restful.’
‘What did you do before that?’
He gave a slow smile. ‘I was the opposite, the complete opposite. I was a salesman for a company selling photocopiers. I spent my life on the road.’ He gestured to Frieda to sit down on a wrought-iron bench. He sat on a chair close by. ‘You know, there’s an expression I never understood. When people say something’s boring, they say, “It’s like watching grass grow.” Or “It’s like watching paint dry.” That’s exactly what I enjoy. Watching my grass grow.’
‘I’m really here,’ said Frieda, ‘because I’d like to find your daughter.’
Dawes put his mug down very carefully on the grass next to his foot. When he turned to Frieda, it was with a new intensity. ‘I’d like to find her as well,’ he said.
‘When did you last see her?’
There was a long pause.
‘Do you have children?’
‘No.’
‘It was all I wanted. All of that driving around, all that work, doing things I hated – what I wanted was to be a father and I was a father. I had a lovely wife and I had the two boys and then there was Lila. I loved the boys, kicking a ball with them, taking them fishing, everything you’re supposed to do. But when I saw Lila, the moment she was born, I thought, You’re my little …’ He stopped and sniffed, and Frieda saw that his eyes were glistening. He coughed. ‘She was the loveliest little girl, smart, funny, beautiful. And then, well, why do things happen? Her mum, my wife, she got ill and was ill for years and then she died. Lila was thirteen. Suddenly I couldn’t get through to her. I’d thought we had a special bond and then it was like I was talking a foreign language. Her friends changed, she started going out more and more and then staying away from home. I should have done more but I was away so much.’
‘What about her brothers?’
‘They’d left by then. Ricky’s in the army. Steve lives in Canada.’
‘So what happened?’
Dawes spread his hands helplessly. ‘I got it wrong,’ he said. ‘Whatever I did, it wasn’t enough or it wasn’t what she needed. When I tried to put my foot down, it just drove her away. If I tried to be nice, it felt like it was too late. The more I wanted her to be there, the more she rejected me. I was just her boring old dad. When she was seventeen, she was mainly living with friends. I’d see her every few days, then every few weeks. She treated me a bit like a stranger. Then I didn’t see her at all. I tried to find her, but I couldn’t. After a while, I stopped trying, although I never stopped thinking of her, missing her. My girl.’
‘Do you know how she was supporting herself?’
Frieda saw his jaw flexing. His face had gone white.
‘She was having problems. I think there may have been drugs. She hadn’t been eating properly. Not for years.’
‘These friends. Do you know their names?’
Dawes shook his head. ‘I used to know her friends when they were younger. Like Agnes, the one you’ve met. They were lovely the way girls are together, laughing, going shopping, thinking they’re more grown-up than they are. But she dropped them, took up with a new crowd. She never brought them back, never introduced me to them.’
‘When she moved out for good, have you any idea where she lived?’
He shook his head again. ‘It was somewhere in the area,’ he said. ‘But then I think she must have moved away.’
‘Did you report her missing?’
‘She was almost eighteen. One time I got so worried, I went to the police station. But when I mentioned her age, the policeman at the desk wouldn’t even write a report.’
‘When was this? I mean, the last time you saw her?’
He knitted his brow.
‘Oh, God,’ he said at last. ‘It’s more than a year now. It was November of the year before last. I can’t believe it. But that’s one of the things I think about when I’m working out here. That she’ll walk through the door, the way she used to.’