Frieda sat for a moment, thinking.
‘Are you all right?’ Dawes asked.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Maybe it takes one to know one, but you look tired and pale.’
‘You don’t know what I normally look like.’
‘You said it’s your day off. Is that right?’
‘Yes. Basically.’
‘You’re an analyst. You talk to people.’
Frieda stood up, ready to go. ‘That’s right,’ she said.
Dawes stood up as well. ‘I should have found someone like you for Lila,’ he said. ‘It’s not really my way. I’m not good at talking to people. What I do instead is to work at something, fix something. But you’re easy to talk to.’ He looked around awkwardly. ‘Are you going to search for Lila?’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘If you hear anything, you’ll let me know?’
On the way out, Dawes found a piece of paper, wrote his phone number on it and gave it to Frieda. As she took it, an idea occurred to her.
‘Did she ever cut your hair?’ she asked.
He touched his bald pate. ‘I’ve never had much to cut.’
‘Or you hers?’
‘No. She had beautiful hair. She was proud of it.’ He forced a smile. ‘She’d never have let me anywhere near it. Why do you ask that?’
‘Something Agnes said.’
Back on the street, Frieda looked at the map and set off, not back to the station she’d come from but the next one along. It was a couple of miles. That would be all right. She needed the walk and she felt more alive now, alert to her surroundings in this part of the city she’d never seen. She found herself walking along a two-lane road, lorries rumbling by. On both sides there were housing estates, the sort that had been quickly knocked up after the war and now were crumbling. Some of the flats were boarded up, others had washing hanging from their little terraces. It didn’t feel like a place for walking, but then she turned into a street of little Victorian terraced houses and it suddenly became quiet. Still she felt uncomfortable, miles from home.
As she approached the station, she passed a phone box and stopped. There wasn’t even a phone in it. It had been ripped away. Then she looked more closely. On the glass walls there were dozens of little stickers: young model, language teacher, very strict teacher, escorts de luxe. Frieda took a notebook from her bag and wrote down the phone numbers. It took several minutes, and two teenage boys walking past giggled and shouted something but she pretended not to hear.
Back in her house, she made a phone call.
‘Agnes?’
‘Yes?’
‘Frieda Klein.’
‘Oh – did you find anything?’
‘I didn’t find Lila, if that’s what you mean. She seems to have vanished. Her father can’t find her. It’s not good news, but I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Yes. Yes, I do. Thank you.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m going to the police to report her missing. I should have done it months ago.’
‘It probably won’t do any good,’ Frieda said softly. ‘She’s an adult.’
‘I have to do something. I can’t just let it go.’
‘I understand that.’
‘I’ll do it at once. Though now that I’ve waited all these years, I don’t know what difference an hour will make.’
Jim Fearby was nearly three-fifths of the way through his list. There were twenty-three names on it, obtained from local newspapers and missing-person websites. Three he had already put a tick by; one he had put a query by; others he had crossed out. He had nine families left to visit – nine mothers who would look at him with stricken faces, haunted eyes. Nine more stories of missing and nine more sets of photos for him to add to the collection of young women’s faces he had tacked up on his cork board in his study.
They stared down at him now as he sat back in his chair with his tumbler of whisky, no added water, and his cigarette. He never used to smoke inside the house, but now there was no one to care. He looked from face to face: there was the first girl, Hazel Barton, with her radiant smile – he felt he knew her well by now. Then there was Vanessa Dale, the one who had got away. Roxanne Ingatestone, her asymmetrical face and grey-green eyes. Daisy Crewe, eager and a little dimple on one cheek. Vanessa Dale was safe, Hazel Barton was dead. What about the other two? He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another at once, sucking smoke down into his lungs, staring at the faces until it almost seemed that they were alive under his gaze and were looking back at him, asking him to find them.
That was a very enigmatic little email. What’s going on? Tell me how you are, tell me how Reuben and Josef and Sasha are? What about Chloë? I miss hearing the details of your days. I miss you. Sandy xxx
THIRTY-FIVE
Frieda had arranged to meet Sasha at eight o’clock. Sasha had rung to say there was something she needed to tell her. Frieda hadn’t known from her voice whether it was good or bad, but she did know it was important. Before then, as she had promised, she went to see Olivia.
She didn’t know quite what to expect, but she was taken aback by Olivia’s appearance. She came to the door in a pair of striped drawstring trousers, a stained camisole and plastic flip-flops. The varnish on her toenails was chipped, her hair was greasy – but, above all, her face, puffy and pale, was bare of any makeup. Frieda thought she had never seen Olivia without it. As soon as she got out of bed in the mornings, she would carefully apply foundation, eyeliner, thick mascara, bold red lipstick. Without it, she looked vulnerable and defeated. It was hard to feel angry with her.
‘Did you forget I was coming?’
‘Not really. I didn’t know what time it was.’
‘It’s six thirty.’
‘God. Time flies when you’re asleep.’ She made an attempt at a laugh.
‘Are you ill?’
‘I had a late night. I was just having a nap.’
‘Shall I make us some tea?’
‘Tea?’
‘Yes.’
‘I could do with a drink.’
‘Tea first. There are things we need to discuss.’
‘Like me being a crap mother, you mean.’
‘No.’
They went into the kitchen together, which was as bad as Frieda had ever seen it. It was a bit like the disorder Chloë had created in Frieda’s kitchen, with glasses and bottles everywhere, rubbish spilling out of bin bags on to the sticky tiles, puddles of wax over the table, a sour smell in the air. Frieda started stacking things in the sink to create a space.
‘She ran away from me, you know,’ Olivia said, who seemed not to notice the state of the room. ‘She might have told you I threw her out, but I didn’t. She said terrible things to me and then ran off.’
‘She says you hit her with a hairbrush.’
‘If I did, it was only a soft-bristled one. My mother used to hit me with a wooden spoon.’
Frieda dropped teabags into the pot and picked two mugs out of the sink to wash. ‘Things have got a bit out of control here,’ Frieda said. ‘You need to sort them out before Chloë comes back.’
‘We’re not all like you. Everything in its proper place. That doesn’t mean I’m not coping.’
‘You look ill. You’ve spent the afternoon in bed. The house is in a dreadful state. Chloë’s left. I gather Kieran’s left too.’
‘He’s a fool. I told him to get out but I didn’t think he’d take me literally.’
‘How much are you drinking?’
‘You can’t tell me how to live my life, you know.’
‘Chloë’s in my house and we need to talk about how long she’s going to be there, and when you’ll be ready for her to come home. She can’t come home at the moment, can she?’