Gina drove past Ronkswood Hill Meadows in Worcester. The smell of cattle and cut grass filled the car. She remembered bringing fifteen-year-old Hannah for a walk over the meadows in an attempt to reconnect with her. By the end of the walk, she realised it was too late. The girl spent most of their time together texting on her phone, asking when they were going home and moaning that she was missing out on what her friends were doing.

Back then she was working hard in the police to give them a better life. That day had changed things. Gina realised that she had to do things for herself. People told her the teen years were difficult and that she’d see the funny side of it one day. They also said that as Hannah aged a few more years, they’d become really close. She was still waiting. Maybe Gina had been selfish and put her work first – she still did and she knew it riled Hannah, especially as Gina was her only parent.

‘You just missed the turning into Mrs Dawson’s road,’ Jacob said.

‘Sorry, I was miles away just then.’ Now was not the time to dwell on her past and present problems with Hannah. She continued down the road and pulled up outside Mrs Dawson’s small end of terrace house.

---

‘Take a seat in the living room,’ Mrs Dawson said. Roy sat beside his partner on the small sofa. Jacob perched on the edge of the tiny footstool, leaving Gina with the only other chair. The rims of the woman’s eyes were a flaming red colour. Several mascara dabbed tissues were strewn on the floor. The man placed a protective hand around her shoulder. Her gaze moved over to Roy Fisher and his light red hair. The girl they had found in the shallow grave had red hair. ‘This is her, well how I want to remember her.’

Gina took the photo as she flicked her pad over and checked the brief notes she’d taken that related to the case of missing Christina Dawson. Roy Fisher was not her father. Maybe the red hair was a coincidence or maybe there was more to Christina’s disappearance than appeared on the surface. She cast her gaze across the photo. Christina had brown, shoulder-length hair but there was a definite reddish-chestnut tone to it. She could see the tones as the sun shone through the frizzier strands that gathered in a curl by her ears. The girl had her mother’s features and hair colour, a perfectly symmetrical nose and a thinner top lip. ‘Are you related to Christina, Mr Fisher?’

‘No. We, Julia and I, have been together a couple of years and I moved in last summer.’

Jacob made a note. She had to stop and think. Julia thought her daughter was the girl that had passed away in the hospital and here she was, considering that she might be the girl they found in the shallow grave. She glanced at her notes again. The girl in the shallow grave could not be Christina as she’d been there longer, or had she been? Weather conditions all play a part in decomposition and Bernard wasn’t one hundred per cent sure how long she’d been there. It had been dry, especially over the past several weeks. The girl she’d seen in the hospital also had red toned chestnut hair. She felt her skin prickle. There was a very real possibility that the girl in the hospital could be Mrs Dawson’s daughter. She glanced at the photo again. The girl that was looking back at her looked healthy, slightly round in the face, smiling with a set of white teeth. The girl in the hospital had looked like she was dying. Thin, sunken. Is that what Christina looked like after being on drugs for a few months?

‘Is the girl on the news my daughter?’ The woman pulled a tissue from her sleeve and began dabbing her nose.

‘I can’t be sure, Mrs Dawson. I really am sorry for all that you’ve been through. We would need a DNA sample from yourself.’ The woman said nothing, then her bottom lip began to quiver before she began to weep.

‘I want to see her!’

‘You don’t have to—’

‘I do.’

‘Of course. I can arrange that.’ Gina knew the formal identification would be useful and would be quicker than waiting for test results to come back. Maybe seeing the girl would be best for both of them.

‘When?’

‘Hopefully, later today. I’ll need to call you in a while to confirm arrangements.’

‘Thank you. I need to see if it is Christina. You do understand, don’t you?’ The woman wiped her cheeks and the damp tissue began to break up, leaving specs of white on her eyelashes. Roy gripped her hand.

‘Did Christina have any tattoos?’

She shook her head. ‘Not when she left. But she didn’t tell me everything, she never did.’

Jacob scribbled more notes.

‘Do the initials E Ho, mean anything to you? Maybe they are initials or short for something?’

‘Her middle name begins with an E.’ The woman blew her nose. ‘The Ho means nothing at all.’

‘I see from the case that the last time you saw Christina was on Wednesday the fourth of April. You say you have some new information relating to her disappearance?’

Julia leaned forward. ‘Westley. I think she left with him, I don’t know how old he is. Her friend said Christina told her to keep it a secret.’

‘Do we have the friend’s details?’

‘Her details were lodged when I called. She’s gone on holiday with her parents for a couple of nights, camping. She’ll be home late Thursday night.’

‘We’ll make sure we speak to her as soon as she’s back. So, what do you know about Westley?’

‘Christina met him in Worcester and they hung around by the river. She must have gone with him. I don’t know what he did to my Christina after that,’ she cried as she flopped back. Roy pulled her head towards his shoulder and began stroking her hair as she wept. Gina made a note of the name, Westley.

‘I’m so sorry. I know this is difficult for you.’

‘This person might be a paedophile and he’s probably looking for his next victim as we speak,’ Roy spat as he held Julia. ‘She went off with him. We have no idea who he is, how old he is, where he’s from or if he targeted her.’

The room was intensely hot with the four of them crammed in. Had Christina felt this crammed in? Maybe she’d felt like an outsider in her own home, the home she and her mum had lived in before Roy invaded their tiny space. ‘Mrs Dawson, where does Christina’s father live?’ That was a piece of information that seemed to be vague in the notes. He was noted as living in a bed and breakfast establishment after being evicted from a flat in Penzance.

She pulled away from Roy. ‘Cornwall, at the moment. She has nothing to do with him. I have checked and, because of what’s happened, I have to keep in touch with him. He left us when she was four. Got a young woman pregnant, one he’d been seeing while working away. He was a salesman, a bad one at that. She even saw sense and threw him out. He lives in a room in a converted barn now after being of no fixed abode for months.’

‘Did Christina keep in touch with him?’

‘She tried but he wouldn’t always call her back. She gave up in the end. It’s funny how he calls all the time now, asking if I’ve heard from her. Some people just don’t know what they’ve got until they lose it. He’s one of those people. Me, I’ve always been there for her.’

‘I can see that.’ Gina looked at all the photos on the bookcase against the far wall. They were full of framed photos, documenting Christina’s whole life. They started at the top with a baby photo, followed by a little girl in a pink tutu. A whole shelf was dedicated to school photos and there were a few of mother and daughter. They had once been so close. ‘We’ll arrange a time and I’ll give you a call in a short while. Is there anything we can do for you in the meantime?’

‘Tell me it’s not her.’ Roy pulled her closer to him and began stroking her hair.

Gina wished she could. She hoped their girl wasn’t Christina but if she wasn’t, she was somebody’s daughter. Someone will feel like their world has come to an end when they eventually get the news. She didn’t want Mrs Dawson’s world to come to an end though.

‘Was anything said before she left? Arguments?’

‘No,’ Roy said as he held Julia and gazed in her direction.

Something didn’t ring true. Teenagers were epicentres for volatility. She would have expected a fair amount of conflict within any family. She’d also scanned over the reports on her case. Christina had been in trouble at school on numerous occasions and the neighbours had opened a case with the council about the noise coming from the Dawson’s home.

‘Everything was fine when she left,’ Roy said as he pulled away from Julia. ‘Thank you for asking though.’

---

‘That was tough,’ Jacob said as they buckled up and pulled away.

‘I’d be devastated if that were me. I don’t know why, I don’t quite trust Roy. No one has no arguments when there’s a teenager in the house, especially one with Christina’s record. The family had the council on to them about her noise and the school was always calling about her playing truant.’

‘You think he might have something to do with it?’

‘I’m keeping that thought in my mind. He has a guilty look about him but I can’t arrest him for that.’ The times she’d only temporarily lost Hannah, those nights when she’d come home in the early hours, when she hadn’t answered her phone – on many of those occasions, Gina had thought something bad had happened. For Mrs Dawson, that had been a reality. She had lived the devastation and anguish that came after that. ‘Two dead girls and there’s a chance that one of them is Christina. I can’t wait for today to be over.’