Theirs is a strong marriage. It has survived a lot. And still they are able to find a way to feel good about each other.

  But as Cate walks to her patient appointment that morning, a watery sun playing on the flush on her skin, she thinks of DI Currie’s very particular question, and she thinks again of the figure outside her window and she wonders again where Roan was and what he was doing at midnight on Valentine’s night.

  24

  ‘The police came this morning,’ Cate tells Roan that evening. ‘They were asking about Saffyre Maddox.

  Roan’s phone has been switched off all day and this is the first chance she’s had to discuss the day’s events with him.

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Said they were doing door-to-doors. But I didn’t see them going to anyone else’s door. Just ours. I suspect they’ll probably be on your trail soon, too.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Yes. They came to see me this morning.’

  He says this nonchalantly, as though the police coming to talk to him about a missing girl was a day-to-day occurrence. Cate almost gets the feeling that if she hadn’t asked him about it, he wouldn’t have brought it up.

  ‘What did they say?’

  He shrugs, goes through the mail on the kitchen table, unties his woollen scarf. ‘They wanted an insight, I suppose. An idea of what sort of person she is, why she might have run away.’

  ‘Run away?’

  ‘Yes. Although I had to tell them that I haven’t seen her for months. So I’m not sure really what sort of state she’ll have been in recently.’

  ‘But I thought she was missing. Not run away?’

  He looks at her blankly. ‘Well, it’s kind of the same thing really, isn’t it? Until you know what’s happened.’

  ‘But a runaway would take a bag, surely?’

  He shrugs. ‘Maybe she did?’

  ‘She did. But there was nothing in it. Look.’ Cate points firmly at the flyer. ‘That’s exactly what it says. Surely that’s what they said to you?’

  She’s being overzealous, but she’s feeling some kind of bizarre complicity with the whole thing, as if it is oddly connected to her in some way.

  ‘They didn’t say, no. They gave me very little information at all. They were much keener to understand her condition while she was under my care.’

  ‘And what was it? What was her condition?’

  He looks at her again. ‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘But she’s not even your patient any more, surely you can—’

  ‘No,’ he snaps. ‘You know I can’t. I can’t believe you’re asking me.’

  And there he is again, that man from last year, the brittle, righteous man she’d nearly left because of all her misgivings about him. The man who’d made her feel mad and bad and toxic. But this time round it’s different; this isn’t her feeling that something’s amiss and hunting desperately for evidence to back up her feelings; this time something is amiss: a young girl is missing.

  ‘But was it something that could make her behave like this? I mean, you don’t have to tell me exactly what it was, but do you think she was unstable?’

  She’s pushing him but she doesn’t care.

  He puts his hands palm down on the kitchen table, raises his eyes to her and says, ‘I signed her off because she was doing well. She’d stopped certain harmful patterns of behaviour. Beyond that I have no idea. I don’t know what was happening in her life before she disappeared.’

  ‘You didn’t see her again?’

  He sighs, audibly, for her benefit, so she can see how far she is pushing him. ‘No. I didn’t see her again.’

  ‘So, what’s your theory? What do you think’s happened to her?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. She’s seventeen. Rocky upbringing. Buried trauma. Who knows?’

  He sounds as if he finds the whole concept of Saffyre’s disappearance bothersome in some way. He sounds almost glib.

  She looks at him and says, ‘You sound like you don’t care.’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘Of course I care.’

  ‘But you don’t sound like you do.’

  ‘My professional duty of care is one thing and Saffyre no longer comes under that. But of course I care about her and her outcome. Of course I care that she’s disappeared. I just don’t really see what I can do about it.’

  Cate pauses. She collects two used mugs from the table and slowly takes them to the sink. She rests her hands on the edge of the counter and stares out of the window. ‘They asked what we were doing at midnight that night,’ she says. ‘You know, Valentine’s.’

  He doesn’t respond.

  ‘I said we were in bed.’

  ‘Well, we were, weren’t we?’

  ‘Well, I was. You were … I don’t know. I lay there for quite some time waiting for you to come. And when you did, I asked you what you’d been doing and you said you hadn’t been doing anything and then we had sex.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, what had you been doing?’

  And there it is. A question too far. Immediately they are back in the same place where they’d spent all those hellish weeks last year.

  ‘Cate,’ he says, in that tone of voice she’d got so used to back then, that patient, do-I-really-have-to-put-up-with-this-nonsense tone of voice, ‘what on earth are you talking about?’

  She unpeels her fingers from the kitchen counter and turns again, puts a smile on her face. She doesn’t want to go there.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says lightly. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  25

  SAFFYRE

  I watched Roan Fours’s adulterous affair with the girl with the red hair unfurl over the summer months.

  Her name was Alicia. I knew that from overhearing him calling to her across the car park at the clinic. They went to the scruffy pub on the corner quite a lot. They’d press themselves into the tightest corners of the beer garden and talk like they were gonna die of each other. They looked quite good together, despite the age gap. A better match than him and his wife, in some ways. His wife looked like life had got to her, whereas Roan had this box-fresh look about him; he never looked tired or worn down, always looked like he’d just had a shower, just had a holiday, was ready to get up and go. He had a glow. I don’t know how old he was, but around fifty I’d say. Alicia was much younger, but somehow they matched.

  I did some googling and found a junior psychotherapist at the Portman called Alicia Mathers. There was a biography for her on the website. She had a degree and a masters in psychology from UCL and a PhD. Clever girl. I followed Alicia home one night after one of their early-doors dates (they rarely said goodbye to each other later than about eight, nine o’clock). She lived in a flat in a small block off Willesden Lane. Kind of nondescript. I saw a light go on on the fourth floor after she got home. So that was where she lived, then. Useful to know. I took some photos and I found my way home.

  Of course, Granddad and Aaron were getting a bit worried about the amount of time I was spending away from home. I just said vague things like: I’m seventeen now, I’m nearly an adult, give me some space. I could tell Aaron was particularly worried about me. He even said at one point, ‘You seem anxious, Saff, maybe I should get in touch with Dr Fours?’ (Aaron loved Roan, was virtually reverential towards him. If Aaron had had a cap, he’d have doffed it, that sort of thing.)

  I said, ‘Don’t be stupid. What for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘maybe you’re stressed about your exams? Maybe there’s something else going on in your life. I mean, is there a … like a boy?’

  I laughed. There’d never been a boy and I couldn’t imagine for a moment there ever would be. That part of me had shrivelled and died when Harrison John did what he did to me when I was ten years old. I could look at a boy and see nice eyes, or a good face, or even a fit body, but that never translated to feelings. I never wanted them or their attention. I said, ‘No, there’s no boy. I’m just walking a lot. Clearing my head. You know.’

  Sometimes if I had a free period during the day I might come down and look at Roan’s wife. I felt so bad for her. There she was in her Fat Face jeans and her flowery tops, trundling about the place, obliviously buying stuff to cook for her family, fluffing out duvets, filling in forms, clearing out the fridge, wiping down floors, all that stuff I imagine middle-class housewives do. And for what? For her husband to walk through the door one day and say, ‘I’ve met someone. She’s younger than you and prettier and I want to have sex with her whenever I like.’

  And then what? What happens to a woman like that with a pretend job and children just about to leave home? Where would Cate Fours end up? I honestly really ached for her. I truly did. It’s horrible when you know something that someone else doesn’t know; it makes you feel somehow responsible for their predicament.

  Then, towards the end of that summer, the day after I got my GCSE results in fact (I got six A’s and three A*’s, in case you were wondering), a strange thing happened.

  It was late on a Friday night; I’d been at my friend Jasmin’s for a takeaway and to listen to music. She was getting ready to go out to a club or something. I didn’t want to go. Not my scene, not my thing. But I like watching my friends get ready, I like listening to music, I like chicken tikka and paratha, I like Jasmin, so you know, I hung out for a while.

  It was about nine o’clock when I left Jasmin’s. The sky was darkening but it was still warm, so I decided to walk home via Roan’s house. I wasn’t intending to hang around, just pass by, take a look, carry on home. It was such a part of my make-up by this point, I was like a dog or a pigeon: it was like a homing thing.

  I came from the other direction because of being at Jasmin’s, past the side of the building site that backs on to another road. Even before I got to the site, I could smell it, the sickly-strong smell of weed. I stuck my head through a gap in the foliage and peered around the plot. Couldn’t see anything at first, but then I saw the glow of a phone and the burning red tip of a fat zoot. I saw a face, a boy’s face. He was alone. He looked young. The red tip grew bigger and brighter as he inhaled. The light of the phone died when he switched it off. And then I saw him turn and look behind him. I heard him make a noise under his breath and saw him put his hand into his pocket. He brought something out of his pocket and then turned again, making the same noise.

  And then there he was: the fox. He stopped for a moment and just stared at the boy. I thought he would just run away eventually, like every fox I’d ever met on the street always did. But this fox did not. This fox started to creep forward, very slowly, an inch at a time, his head down, his shoulders back. He looked behind himself every few seconds. But eventually he was side by side with the boy. I heard the boy say, ‘Good evening, sir,’ to the fox and I saw him hand the fox something to eat. The fox took it a few feet from the boy, let it drop from his mouth and ate it slowly and methodically from the ground. The boy held out another piece of food, between his finger and thumb. The fox came back and took it gently.

  Then, crazily, the boy touched the fox’s head and the fox let him.

  My jaw fell open. I had never seen such a thing in my life. I took a photo: boy and fox, side by side. I took it just as the fox turned to look up at the boy. Almost like a faithful dog looking at his master.

  The boy finished smoking his zoot and ground it out at his feet. The fox heard a sound from somewhere far off and scampered away from him. I saw the boy get to his feet, pick up a rucksack, wipe down his trouser legs and backside with his hand. I turned away sharply so he wouldn’t see me. I got out my phone and pretended like I was just standing about looking at SnapChat and then he peered out of the foliage by the corner, climbed up on the top of the wall and jumped down on to the pavement. He turned the corner and I saw him saunter towards Roan’s house and it was only then that I clocked who it was: it was Roan’s boy. Old gangly legs.

  And I thought: Every family has its black sheep, its shady character. I’m that one in my family, that’s without a doubt. Now it looked like I’d found the shady one in Roan’s family. Who was this young boy picking up his draw from? Why was he smoking it all alone on a building site? And how was he hanging out with a fox? What kind of Dr Dolittle weirdness was that?

  I zoomed in on that photo when I got home. I loved it. The boy had a good face, like his dad’s but not quite formed. In the dark, colourless shadows of the photograph with his harsh haircut, his raw, over-developed features, his earnest expression, he looked almost Victorian. And then I zoomed in on the fox, its eyes fixed on the boy, the light from the street just glinting off one white whisker. So beautiful. So calm. It was a photo that could have won a prize in a competition.

  I saved it into my favourites.

  Then I put down my phone, closed my laptop and, while Jasmin headed into town with her boobs popping out of her Boohoo top and a hip flask of vodka in her tiny bag, while Roan did whatever Roan did with that beautiful pre-Raphaelite girl with the PhD after work on a Friday, while his son sat in his room stoned and with his pockets full of meat, I sat on my bed and opened a book.

  26

  The following morning Cate’s road is cordoned off. Two squad cars are parked diagonally across the street, their blue lights slowly revolving, casting patterns across the walls of Cate’s bedroom. There’s an unmarked van parked in the middle of the road and two uniformed policemen standing by the ribbon telling people to go the other way. Across the road curtains are twitching, people are peering through front doors in their dressing gowns.

  Georgia appears behind Cate and says, ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘I have no idea. I assume it must be something to do with that girl. Saffyre Maddox.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Georgia claps her hands to her cheeks. ‘Do you think they’ve found her? Her body?’

  ‘Oh, God, Georgia. Don’t. That’s …’ Cate trails off, but it had already occurred to her. The big wooden gate into the building site across the road is wide open and there are plain-clothes officers going in and out.

  ‘I’m going to ask,’ says Georgia, turning on her heel and leaving the room.

  ‘Georgia, don’t,’ says Cate. ‘Leave them, they’re trying to get on with their …’ She hears the front door go, then sees Georgia, still in her pyjamas with her hoodie thrown on over the top and just the fronts of her feet wedged into trainers which she is still trying to put on properly as she hops along towards the uniformed policemen. Cate watches through the curtains as her daughter stands in front of them, her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie, nodding, shaking her head, pointing to the building site, pointing back towards their house. After a moment she turns and heads back. Cate meets her at the front door.

  ‘What did they say?’

  Georgia kicks off the unfastened trainers and heads into the kitchen, talking to Cate over her shoulder. ‘They said they’ve found something in that building site. They’ve got forensics in there. I asked if it was a body. They said no, it wasn’t a body. I asked if it was to do with Saffyre Maddox. They said they weren’t at liberty to tell us. They said they’re going to be in there all day, maybe tomorrow, too.’

  Cate nods. Her stomach turns. She looks at the time; it’s just after 9 a.m. Roan had left early for work this morning at 7 a.m. She wonders if the police were already here when he left. She wonders how that would have made him feel. She sends him a WhatsApp message: Police cordon on our street, forensics in the building site over the road. Any idea what’s happening?

  The tick stays grey. She puts down her phone and fills the kettle. ‘Want a cup of tea?’ she asks Georgia.

  Georgia is halfway through a Cadbury’s Mini Roll. She says, ‘No thank you, I’m going back to bed,’ then tugs off her hoodie and drapes it over the back of a chair. She drops the Mini Roll wrapper in the vague area of the bin, but it misses and lands on the floor. Cate is about to call her back to pick it up, but she can’t find the will, so sighs and picks it up herself.

  Tiny shocks pass through her nervous system as she moves.

  She goes to the drawer where the tea towels live and pulls out Roan’s mysterious Valentine’s card again.

  As she does so, something occurs to her: Molly’s card is not the same shape as the envelope. It is slightly too tall, not quite wide enough. The card did not come with this envelope. She pulls it out again, opens it, reads it. Little Molly. What a strange little girl she must be, sending Valentine’s cards to old men.

  She turns the card over in her hands, examining it for something, some tiny thing, that might make more sense of it. But there’s nothing. Roan’s job, after all, is the care of strange children; why should she be surprised that one would behave strangely towards him?

  She sighs and puts the card back in the drawer.

  Then she turns and jumps. Josh is standing in the doorway. He is wrapped up in a towelling dressing gown; his hair is rumpled. ‘Why are there loads of police outside?’ he says.

  ‘Don’t really know,’ she replies. ‘Something to do with that missing girl, maybe. They’ve found something in the building site, got forensics in there.’

  ‘Really?’ he says, wandering back to the hallway, into Cate’s room, peering through the window. She follows him. The back of his neck is raw from a fearsome haircut the day before, the Peaky Blinders haircut all the boys seem to be getting these days that makes their heads look too big for their bodies.

  She stands behind him at the window. They both watch as a man and woman in plain clothes exit the entrance to the site holding plastic boxes. The police manning the cordon pull it back for another police vehicle to pull in. Two more people get out. One of them Cate immediately recognises as the detective who’d sat on her sofa the day before, the one who’d asked so very specifically about where she’d been at midnight on Valentine’s night. There are fifty streets between Alfred Road, where Saffyre lives, and the village, where she told her family she was going. A thousand houses. Tens of thousands of people. Yet the police chose her doorbell to ring, her sofa to sit on, her whereabouts to ask after and now the building site opposite her house to investigate. Not to mention the fact of her husband’s relationship to the girl they’re trying to find.