A beech tree was offering shade to a bench not far from the entrance to the park, so Deborah led them there. She sat with a sibling on either side of her. Simisola was happily doing her Bunny Ears proud as Deborah made short work of the flake and went on to her ice cream. Tani still held his mint Cornetto unopened. “You should eat it,” she said to him, but he shook his head. He did begin to remove the wrapping, though. This, Deborah thought, was a good sign.
They watched two little boys kicking a football. They were on the path rather than on the summer-brown lawn. One of them was very good. The other wasn’t happy about that fact.
“Do you play?” Deborah asked Tani, and when he shrugged, she said, “Are you sporty at all?”
He blew a breath out between his lips, impatient with her question. Simisola looked at him, then at Deborah. She nodded to indicate he was sporty indeed. Or he played football. But in either case, it might have been something they could talk about, but Tani wasn’t having conversation with her.
She said, “I thought Sophie seemed quite nice. Have you been together long?”
He gave her a look. He said, “You don’t have t’ pretend you’re in’erested in me an’ her.”
“Actually,” she said, “I am interested. But you don’t have to answer if you’d rather not.”
He was using his thumb to work the ice cream topper off the Cornetto. He studied the resulting chocolate, mint, and vanilla confection. Finally, he spoke to it rather than to her. He said quietly, “She thinks I c’n do whatever I set out to do.” He said nothing else, but the set of his shoulders suggested what was going unsaid.
“That’s good to hear,” Deborah told him. “But c’n I just say . . . ? In this situation, you’re not to bear everything on your shoulders, Tani. What I mean is that you don’t have to bear everything. Aside from your dad, you’ve got everyone on your side of what’s been going on. There’s no one on your dad’s side at all.”
He shot a glance at her, then said, “You don’t know.”
Deborah said, “So tell me. I want to know.”
“My mum was going to do it to her, is what. She was just calling it something diff’rent so Squeak—so Simi—wouldn’t know. And both my grans want it done as well. That puts them on his side. Do you see?”
“I didn’t know that. But if that’s the case, Simi won’t go home. She’ll stay with me till everything’s sorted.” Deborah turned to the little girl and said, “Sorry, Simi. We’re talking about you in front of you and that’s very rude. Can I ask: Are you happy to stay with us till we’re absolutely certain you’re safe? We’d love to have you stay, by the way. We quite enjoy your company.”
With vanilla cream ringing her mouth, Simisola looked from Deborah to Tani. She said, “But wha’ about Tani?”
“Tani is very welcome to stay for as long as he wants, if he wants to stay. Of course, he’d have to be able to handle Peach and Alaska. D’you think he could do?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “He’s not afraid of animals at all.”
“Then if he would like to stay with us—”
“I got to find Mum,” he said. “And I got to get those passports, Squeak.”
“Won’t you allow the police to do it?” Deborah asked him. “Surely, your dad’s not going to defy the police, Tani.”
Tani gave a look that said she was more than half mad. He said, “You hear me, okay? The coppers can tear the flat from top to bottom. They won’t find them cos the passports aren’t there. Even if he had them hidden this morning when I was looking, he’ll move ’em now. He’s got the perfect place to keep ’em till he needs ’em. Unless I c’n get to them first.”
Deborah didn’t like the sound of this. But how could any of them stop Tani from going his own way? Short of tying him to a pipe or locking him inside a room in their house, she and Simon and her father were powerless to stop him if he wished to leave. He’d learned over time that the only person he could really trust was himself. And perhaps Sophie. But Deborah reckoned he intended to keep Sophie as far away as possible from whatever he was planning to do.
She stood. “I hope I can change your mind. In the meantime, come with me. I must take a photograph to a friend nearby.”
Back at her car with the siblings, she removed a package from the Vauxhall’s boot. That done, she led them to the building in which Leylo and her husband lived. She’d rung in advance, so they were expected. Leylo was home and, this time, so was her husband.