“But you are the only one who can help me. Please, you must listen. Let me tell you why this is important.”
“You got to try to understand . . .” Easter Lange’s voice drifted off. She paused. This was followed by a long sigh. Then she said, “Right. Let me ring a couple ’f people, Mrs. Bankole. Not promising, mind you, but I’ll try my best. Keep your phone nearby today.”
“Oh thank you, thank you,” Monifa said. “You do not know how important—”
“Right. I’ll ring you.”
CHELSEA
SOUTH-WEST LONDON
It was during a morning stroll with Peach that Deborah picked up a copy of The Source. Someone had left the tabloid lying on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the blue double doors of what once had been Chelsea Town Hall. This was a distinguished place of Corinthian columns, dog-toothed cornices, double-hung windows, and a shallow balcony that would have done excellent service for the wily Duke of Gloucester waiting for the citizens’ appeal to his royal blood. But it was now, dismally, what was referred to as an “event space,” that event generally being an amateur art show, a jumble sale, or a fair offering either vintage clothing or dubious antiques. She’d left her father seeing to Simon’s bad leg and Alaska seeing to his post-breakfast bath atop one of the window sills in the kitchen. With a good amount of time before she intended to leave for Whitechapel, she decided that walkies were in order.
Peach preferred the Embankment because she knew the route and hence its length and the time required for her to accompany Deborah before returning to the comfort of her bed and the hope of something edible falling to the floor. But Deborah preferred the sight of people to the rush of traffic, so she urged the dog in a crisscross to Old Church Street and from there up to the King’s Road.
Peach took her time, naturally. Walking the dachshund was like attempting to walk a hoover: every inch of the route had to be sniffed and sorted. These things could not be rushed.
Deborah was grateful when she saw the tabloid. Peach’s progress being more the tortoise and less the hare, along with her complete unwillingness to be hurried in any way, meant that her companion on the walk either needed the patience of Moses waiting for the Pharaoh to wise up or, better yet, had brought reading material or earbuds connected to soothing music. Deborah, alas, had neither, so The Source would have to do.
Thus she saw the front-page headline and its accompanying pictures. The tabloid was continuing to feature the disappearance of Boluwatife Akin as its main story. The concentration on this day, however, gave the reader copious background information on the girl’s parents, revealing to the reader that Boluwatife had come into the world via IVF, and the girl’s mother, Aubrey Hamilton, had undergone four rounds of the procedure to have the child. Her relations were coming forward to share further details. The child was the centre of her parents’ lives, they said, she was a treasure, and her parents were devoted to her.
A sidebar accompanied this on page three, where the story continued. It revealed background on the girl’s father, Charles. Born in Nigeria, he possessed a first-class degree in geography from Oxford. The veracity of this was examined, as was his time at Lincoln’s Inn, where he’d completed his pupillage and where, at present, he was a barrister associated with an international chambers. He was high profile, according to the sidebar, within the field of civil law. Nothing he’d done in court was either controversial or glamorous. He was not flashy, and if he was said to have ambition, it was to take silk one day.
He’d spoken to a reporter about his daughter’s disappearance, saying that he wanted to believe that Bolu was only lost in town somewhere. If not that, he wanted to believe that she was being held for ransom and, although he was not a rich man, if it was money that was wanted to bring Bolu back to them, he and his wife would find it. He wanted, in short, to believe anything that was not the worst fear a parent faces when a child goes missing.
Accompanying the story, both on the front page and on page three, were half a dozen pictures that the parents had handed over for publication: Bolu as an infant in her mother’s arms, Bolu as a toddler gripping her father’s fingers, Bolu perhaps six years old on the lap of Father Christmas, Bolu on her father’s shoulders, Bolu on her mother’s hip.
Deborah closed the tabloid, but she didn’t toss it into the nearest rubbish bin. Instead, she took it with her.
Peach picked up the pace once she realised they were heading in the general direction of home. Home was where the treaties were. Home was where the bed was. Home was where that obnoxious feline dozed, just out of reach of fierce canine jaws.