The journey starts well. The train is on time. I get a seat with no one next to me, and no one talks to me or so much as smiles in my direction. It is best if they don’t because I’m not allowed to talk to strangers, but some strangers are women who look like grandmas; they don’t know the rules about talking to children, I don’t think. Then it’s embarrassing because my choice is to a） look rude by ignoring them or b） talk to them, which is against the rules. The journey starts to go wrong when there is no one to meet me off the train. There isn’t always. Sometimes I have to get the bus, but I thought today that Dad was going to pick me up. That’s what he’d said. So now I have to think do I a） get the bus but what if he is on his way and he arrives, and I am already gone. That will make him cross or b） wait for him here at the station but it is getting dark and it’s the last bus—if he doesn’t come and I miss the last bus I’ll be in real trouble.
I get the bus.
It’s a ten-minute walk from the bus stop to Dad’s. “Nothing at all,” he says, although I have never seen him catch a bus ever. He drives a BMW car. It’s raining hard now so I walk as quickly as possible, sometimes running, although it is hard to run carrying a suitcase. I do it in seven and a half minutes. I time myself.
I quietly let myself in with my own key. I saw a report on the news about latchkey kids. It made me feel a bit sad. Until then, I thought having my own key was grown-up, now I lie to my friends about it, so they don’t think I’m weird. I pretend there is someone waiting for me with milk and biscuits too.
I take off my shoes and coat at the doorway, because I definitely don’t want to drip rain on the shiny tiled floor. I carry them and my suitcase straight upstairs because I don’t want to leave anything lying around for other people to trip over, because that’s just selfish and asking for trouble. Upstairs I can hear sounds coming from Dad and Ellie’s bedroom. I know I have to sneak past their room without them noticing me because I’m not stupid and I know what sort of sounds they are. Making sex sounds is even worse than rowing sounds. Their bedroom door is open. This is bad for two reasons a） because there is a greater risk of them seeing me b） because I might catch a glimpse of them, which would be gross!! I try to keep my eyes on the floor. I really do. Why would I want to see that but somehow my eyes don’t listen to my brain and I find myself just quickly flicking a glance that way. I don’t even know why I couldn’t stop myself. It’s utterly awful. Worse than I could have imagined. I can see my dad’s hairy bottom thrusting forward and backward into Ellie, who is not lying on her back, like in the picture of women making sex in the textbook we were shown at school—Ellie is on her knees, bent over. They’ve got it all wrong. The sounds they are making—grunting, screaming, breathing fast like they’ve been running forever—prove that it’s wrong! He’s hurting her.
And something else is more wrong. The woman who Dad is thrusting at is not Ellie. She’s a totally different shape. She’s not pregnant for a start, she has huge boobs and my dad is reaching forward and grabbing at them, with the same enthusiasm as he grabs a handful of caramelized peanuts when Ellie puts them in a bowl as a treat.
“Oh,” I say. I don’t mean to. The oh must come out quite loud. Maybe I shouted it or screamed it. I must have, to have been heard above their groans. The woman turns my way, she sees me at the door and starts scrabbling away from Dad, reaching for the sheet, pulling it around her. Dad doesn’t notice me at first, he lunges after her, laughing, “Come here, you little tease!” he says.
I run into my bedroom, slam the door behind me.
When Dad comes to see me a bit later, I am not sitting on my bed. I feel funny about beds now. I am sitting on the floor with my back against the radiator. The warmth is comforting.
“How’s school?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say as usual.
“Good, good.” I’m expecting him to tell me to wash my hands, come downstairs to set the table.
“Who is she?” I ask quickly, before I can decide not to. I think I deserve to know. I am not like Ellie’s best friend or anything, but if I am going to have a new stepmum, I want some warning.
“She’s no one. She’s nothing,” says Dad. He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the wall above my head.
“Nothing?” I repeat, unsure. Confused.
“There are women you marry and there are women you do that with.”
“Make sex, you mean?” I want him to know I am not a baby. I understand.
“Have sex with, yes,” he corrects and I’m embarrassed that I’ve shown I’m not really sure about any of this after all. “The women you marry are something. The others are nothing. Remember that. I don’t want a daughter of mine not understanding that.”
I squirm. I feel I’ve done something wrong, but I don’t know what. Surely he’s the one who has done the wrong thing. “Now wash your hands and come downstairs to set the table. And, darling, obviously as that woman was nothing, we don’t need to mention this to Ellie. It’s between us.”
He doesn’t often call me “darling” and I can’t help but be happy about it.
14
DC Clements
Thursday 19th March
Back at the station, Tanner returns to his desk, as another senior officer hands him a pile of traffic offenses to process. Clements hardly sees her environment anymore; it is familiar to the point of being void. Curling posters on the wall, detailing policies and advertising helplines, no longer catch her attention. She doesn’t know if the walls are beige or gray. She still notices smells, though—today the station smells of wet clothes and mud; there have been two sudden downpours this morning. Sometimes there is an energy to the place that overrides what she can see, hear and smell; sometimes she can just feel. Feel danger or excitement. Challenge. Lots of her colleagues have their eyes pinned to their phones or screens absorbing the news from European cities in lockdown. Normal citizens being told to stay indoors, doing so. Locked up, not like criminals exactly, but… Clements can’t process it. It’s too wild. A sense of urgency ripples through her body. She needs to find Leigh Fletcher.
Clements walks swiftly to her desk and starts to fill in the paperwork. There is a myth that the police regard any missing persons case which is not that of a child, or where a crime is not obviously suspected, as beyond their remit. It is not true. Clements wants to find this woman, bring her home—if that is what Leigh wants. Clements uploads the personal details they collated: name, age, marital status, last sighting, physical description. She attaches the photo, noting that Leigh Fletcher is pretty. It shouldn’t matter—it doesn’t really—unless the case becomes something bigger than a missing person and ends up in the papers. Then it will have a bearing. The public are always more sympathetic toward a pretty woman than a plain one, although this one is a bit old to fully catch the nation’s attention. Women over twenty-seven have to work so much harder to exist, even being murdered isn’t enough to incite sympathy, unless you are cute. Clements sighs, frustrated at the world. Frustration is not a bad reaction; it means there is some fight in her, still. Sometimes Clements is furious and wants to kick and punch at the invisible, insidious walls that limit, cage, corrupt. Other days she’s just out-and-out depressed. Those are the worst days.