There’s no wind, only a few puffs of cloud hanging high and still in the sky, as I drive through Amberton. Surely there will be a storm soon, this weather’s got to break. It’s not far at all to where I’m going, but I notice the change, the houses getting smaller, less cared for, as the town merges into the outskirts of the city.
I was already nearly home, when I decided, and turned back in the direction I’d come.
I’m going to try to see Danny, Sophie’s old boyfriend, and ask him about what Holly said. I’ve been wondering if I am just being ridiculous, after what DI Nicholls said on the phone. Then I realised I was wasting time, and got angry with myself. Just do it.
There’s a body in the garage, half under a car on a rig, as I drive in. That’ll be Danny’s grandad, Len. I came here a couple of times before it all happened, I was always pranging my big car before I got used to it, and keeping it quiet from Mark. So I knew him to speak to, I would nod if I saw him around.
Afterwards I stopped coming. But that could mean anything, I might not have needed my car seeing to. I’ve a vague idea that I’ll book the car in for an MOT, then see if Danny’s about. Something tells me he won’t be as amenable as Holly, so I decided, well, not to ask him if he’d meet me. I’ve got my running kit on, so I can run home after leaving my car.
I park in the small paved forecourt. An old collie uncurls itself from beside the garage doors and barks twice, more out of habit than warning.
As I step towards the open garage doors, Len’s already emerging from under the car, wiping his hands on his overalls. He can’t be much older than me, really, but he looks it. His hair’s gone grey since I saw him last.
‘Morning. What can I do for you today?’ There’s not a flicker of recognition.
‘Hi, um, I don’t know if you remember me but I’m Kate Harlow, my—’
‘I know who you are.’ His expression remains blank.
‘Oh right.’ The collie runs up and starts nosing my crotch. I push it away gently. ‘Well, my car needs an MOT.’
He nods towards the office. ‘Step in and we’ll fill out the paperwork. It shouldn’t take more than a few days.’
‘The paperwork or the MOT?’ He doesn’t laugh as I follow him in. ‘So is Danny around?’
He turns round. ‘And why do you want to know?’
I stop too, the collie now sniffing around my feet. ‘I’d like to talk to him, if that’s OK.’ Polite – but it’s not a question. The dog’s coat is dusty, but I pat his wiry back, avoiding Len’s eyes.
‘What about? Haven’t you people done enough?’
I straighten up. ‘My people? Done what?’
‘You nearly ruined my boy’s life, got him locked up.’ His voice is stony, his arms folded.
‘Are you kidding me? It was a police investigation …’
‘And who pointed them straight to Danny, made them think he had something to do with it?’ His voice is getting louder. ‘I know what you’re like, the lot of you, think you and your daughter are too good for him—’
‘Hang on, hang on.’ I put my palms up. ‘I never said that. I never said she was too good, they asked us who she was hanging around with, that’s all and—’
He takes a step towards me, the dog suddenly jumping around us, giving anxious little barks. ‘Do you know that people still talk? I told him not to get mixed up with that silly, spoiled …’ I can see him grasping for it, what to hurl at me next – ‘bitch —’ He spits the word.
My hands are still up, as if I’m warding him off.
‘Grandad!’ A tall figure lopes round the corner as the collie, seriously worried, butts up against me, whining. ‘What’s going on?’ He slows, clocking me. ‘Mrs Harlow.’
‘Hello, Danny,’ I say, pushing the fretting dog off me. ‘Can I have a quick word?’
‘You’re not welcome here.’ Len’s no longer shouting, but his face is red.
‘I don’t care,’ I say, any veneer of civility gone. ‘I need to speak to him, it’s important.’
‘Grandad, it’s OK,’ says Danny. ‘I’ll deal with this.’ Len’s undecided, his mouth half open. ‘Take Billie off, will you, he’s going nuts.’
Len takes the dog by its collar, patting it absently. The touch seems to calm him. ‘All right. I’ll be here.’ He looks smaller now, the anger shifting into upset.
I’m shaky as I follow Danny into the small office, him pulling out a chair for me. Now emotion’s ripped through me I’m quiet, shocked at myself for raising my voice. And at him.
‘I thought we were fine,’ I say, finding myself suddenly on the verge of tears.
‘I’m sorry about Len,’ says Danny in that soft voice. ‘He’s just protective. He found it very hard. He’s getting older now. The police – anyway.’ He sits down, waits for me to do the same.
‘How’ve you been?’ I say, then kick myself inwardly. We’re not here to make conversation.
‘I’m doing well,’ he says, a touch of defiance in his tone. ‘I’m basically running the garage, Grandad’s handed a lot of responsibilities over to me these days, he prefers working on cars to doing the books, anyway. We’ve taken on an apprentice.’
‘Congratulations!’ I’m slipping into my mum-at-the-school-gates mode. ‘Sounds like you’re doing really well for yourself.’
‘Yes,’ he says pointedly. ‘I am. Better than everyone expected.’
There’s a lull. I could swear he’s got even taller. He’s filled out, lost that puppy-dog lankiness.
‘And you’re with Holly now.’
‘And?’ he says, hostile.
‘I didn’t mean …’ I give up on the pleasantries. ‘I know we haven’t spoken since Sophie’s gone. But I’ – I find myself veering away from the details – ‘I’m trying to understand a bit better why she ran away. To help me understand when she might come back. What do you think happened, Danny?’
‘She’d had enough,’ he says. ‘Sometimes people just need to get away.’ But you didn’t. The thought crosses my mind, unexpected. You stayed to help your grandfather. ‘Why d’you care what I think anyway? You didn’t seem to back then.’
‘But I did speak to you, so did the police,’ I say falteringly, ‘to see what you knew …’
‘What I knew,’ he echoes, opening the binder in front of him. ‘You know they thought I had something to do with it?’
‘I had an inkling.’ Following up all leads, was how they’d put it, before her first postcard removed some of the urgency. Of course they’d look at her boyfriend, especially one like him. But I don’t want to say that with him looking so, well, grown-up in front of me.
‘They kept me there for hours,’ he says. ‘Asked loads of questions about me, Sophie, what we used to do. And they went round the neighbours. Whether I was the type to – to do something. Hurt her. It made things difficult. For Grandad … kids threw stuff at our house.’
‘I didn’t realise.’ I didn’t know it had been quite that bad. ‘But of course they’ve got to follow all avenues,’ I add. ‘You were a, well, an unexpected couple …’
Danny was a year ahead of her at school – until he’d left. And no, I wasn’t keen when Sophie told me, casually, that she was seeing him. Running wild at his grandad’s, his parents who knows where. It was just minor stuff, really: scuffles outside the pub; that time a teacher left his keys in his car outside school and it was taken for a spin. It turned up the next morning in his drive, with dried mud sprayed up the side. But somehow Danny Mason’s name always got mentioned. Even I’d heard of him.
Now he bends his head over the paperwork in front of him. His eyelashes, I remember Sophie telling me, in an unexpectedly confiding mood, are ridiculously long – softening that face, all hard angles. She was right, I see now.
‘It wasn’t really like that,’ he says finally. ‘It was kind of … innocent.’
‘Oh? I thought maybe Sophie had a … that you …’ I take a deep breath. ‘She did a pregnancy test, before she went. I wondered if you might have had a scare.’
‘That would have been a miracle.’
‘Oh, really.’ I don’t mean to sound as sarcastic as I do.
‘Yes, really.’ The tips of his ears are going pink. ‘We weren’t much more than friends.’
‘Friends.’
‘Friends. We had nowhere to go, anyway.’
I flash back, suddenly, to when I’d come home and found them all in my kitchen once, Sophie, him and Holly, the laughter drying up as I walked in. She didn’t bring him round much once they were together, but teenagers find a way, don’t they? Sophie was always off with him, at the cinema, she said, or someone’s house.
‘If you want to know, I think she liked the fact that it wound you up,’ he says now. ‘But she intimidated me, a bit.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘It’s true. It was the whole thing. Her life, her home.’ He looks away. ‘Her family. I mean, her dad was going to buy her a car! And he’s picking her up from school and all that, it’s not exactly easy to …’ He trails off. ‘Do you have your car key? We’ve still got your details. You can pick it up tomorrow.’
‘Oh. Of course, yes.’ I’m being dismissed. ‘Here you go.’
‘I’ve got stuff to do,’ he says mildly. He stands. ‘I’m sorry you had all this upset.’
He’s polite, but I know our conversation’s over. I stand too, automatically brush the seat of my leggings down from the tatty office armchair. I notice him watching me doing it and I stop, abashed.
‘All right. Thanks.’
Len’s gone off somewhere with the dog, so my path to the road is clear. But some impulse makes me turn in the doorway, as I set off for home. ‘Sophie was a daddy’s girl. But he didn’t pick her up,’ I add. Petty, but I can’t resist scoring the point. ‘I did, if she was late finishing. Mark was always at work.’
He shrugs.
‘Bye, Danny.’
I should have got a taxi. I’m regretting running, at first, the pavements throwing up the heat of the day at me. My muscles feel stiff. Too much sitting in front of my computer. But soon, as ever, I feel calmer once I’m really moving, heading down the roads that will take me from these brick terraces to the fringes of the countryside. Why did I ever stop? I suppose I just got used to being indoors, these last few months. Or year. And once Mark took the dog, there seemed less reason to run.
I’m going to make my way home round the outskirts of the village. It’s nicer this way, anyway, along the edges of fields and under the trees. I veer off the tarmac onto the track I’m looking for. It’s instantly cooler, the leaves cutting out the sunshine.
My mind starts to wander as I pad along, my thoughts unspooling.
Holly says that pregnancy test was Sophie’s. Danny says he and Sophie didn’t sleep together. Someone’s wrong. Or lying. And if so, who?
Maybe even today Danny just didn’t want to admit to me, Sophie’s disapproving mum, that she wasn’t still my little girl in the way I thought. I suppose it’s respectful, in a way.
Still. I could have sworn he was telling the truth to me.
Does it even matter?
I almost trip, and right myself. My lace is loose. I stop, bend down to retie it.
The thought occurs to me: what if it wasn’t negative? Would that have been enough to prompt my sensible, good girl to run away?
I actually shake my head, almost stumbling as I start off again. I can’t really believe that. I would have helped Sophie, wouldn’t I? Mark and I, of course we wouldn’t have been pleased, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. We just wanted what was best for her. Surely that couldn’t have been enough to prompt her running away?
But then I know that’s what so many families say. I’ve read the research, the plaintive comments from case studies. ‘We couldn’t think of a reason as to why he’d disappear.’ ‘She didn’t give us any sign, it came as a total surprise.’
Suddenly I picture Len again, red-faced with anger. It shocked me. Danny’s always seemed so quiet, so still. But what if he’s got his grandfather’s temper too? The track’s opened up into fields now, great torn-up stretches of dark soil under the huge sky.
A black shape bursts out of the hedge in front of me, leaving the branches moving. I pull up, my heart pounding, even as I register that it’s just a bird – a big one, a crow or maybe a raven. I must have startled it. As I watch it wing its way across the field, low and fast, I’m reminded once again how quiet it is here. There’s not a soul around.
I set off again, picking up my pace.