Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (read book txt) 📗

our inquiries to do some analysis. Help us locate Miss Wells. Make sure that she is safe.’

The way they say it, I feel like I can’t say no. But can they really do that? Take my phone?

‘The thing is,’ I say, ‘I’m about to have a baby. And I’m having our landline disconnected. Too many cold callers, you know? So …’ I look from one officer to the other. ‘I really need my phone. Anything else is fine, but – I really need it.’

DS Mitre glances down uncomfortably at my bump. Then he looks at DC Robbin. She gives an infinitesimal nod.

‘Very well. Just a few more questions, Mrs Thorpe.’

There are a lot more questions, it turns out. They want a list of who was at the party. I write down the ones I know. I tell them they will have to talk to Charlie about the rest. They want to know other things, too. Like whether I have the details of anyone who might know her. Associates, is the phrase they use. Friends, colleagues, anyone she knew locally. And do I know much about the father of her baby?

I seem to be unable to give them any of the answers they want. The more they ask, the more I realise how little I knew about Rachel. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, for what feels like the twentieth time. ‘Like I said, I only really know her through that antenatal class.’

‘And yet she moved into your house.’

‘Not moved in – it wasn’t like that.’

I need to reset my tone of voice. I sound shrill, defensive. I sound like someone who has done something wrong. DC Robbin has stopped writing things down. She is leaving that to DS Mitre. Instead she is looking at me, her lips closed, her eyes unblinking.

‘It was meant to be just a couple of nights at most,’ I say, more slowly. ‘It turned into a bit longer. That’s why there had been a bit of tension, I suppose. She said she’d found a new place. That she was moving out in mid-November. But it was all a bit vague.’

‘I see. And where had she been living before she came to stay, with you?’

I shake my head. ‘I know she lived round here, but I never went to her home and I … I never met any of her friends.’

The detectives glance at each other. I have the feeling I am getting everything wrong somehow.

‘And the father?’

‘She never actually mentioned a name. Just that it was someone she met through work.’

‘And they were together?’

‘I don’t think so. They had a relationship – I got the feeling it was quite casual – and the pregnancy wasn’t planned. She said she would have liked to be with him but … but she’d found out that he … he was taken.’ He belonged to someone else. Those had been the words she used, hadn’t they, that time at the pub? I remember the damp smell of the tables, the staring eyes of the ship lights.

‘You say she’d met the father through work,’ DS Mitre is asking now. ‘Where exactly was that?’

‘I, um … I don’t know. I think she once said something about working for a music venue or something. But she was on maternity leave early, like me, you see – for health reasons.’

‘Health reasons?’

‘Yes. She had the same as me, I think – very high blood pressure. Risk of pre-eclampsia. So you’re advised not to work too much, certainly not in the third trimester. We just never really talked about work, because neither of us was working. It was mainly babies and stuff.’ I glance at DC Robbin, wondering if she has children. I guess she doesn’t. She doesn’t look much older than me, if at all. She must be clever to be a detective. I wince, thinking how dull I must sound to her. ‘Sorry,’ I mutter.

DC Robbin doesn’t say anything. She keeps looking at me.

‘Not at all.’ DS Mitre flips his notebook shut, and stands up. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Thorpe. Thanks for your time.’

I lead them both into the hallway and open the door.

‘Look,’ I say, my hand resting on the latch, ‘can I just ask? Sorry if it’s obvious but – is she not at her mother’s then? Like she told me she would be?’

DS Mitre glances at DC Robbin. He pulls his jacket on, the jumper cuffs sticking out of the too-short sleeves.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ he says. ‘In the meantime, if you do hear from Rachel, please do give us a call.’

‘Of course.’

They step outside and I close the door behind them. I lean back against the weight of it, slide down to the floor until I am crouched in the hallway, my bump pushed up against my knees. I am shaking, actually shaking, all over, as if I’m outside in the cold. When I close my eyes, all I can see is Rachel’s face, her slightly parted lips, her childlike horror, like a burst balloon, as I utter those awful words, the last ones I said to her. We’re not friends. We never were. I want you to leave, tonight, and not come back.

I open my eyes again. You are a liar, I tell myself. You are a liar, Helen Thorpe.

39 WEEKS

KATIE

He is late, as usual. The venue was his choice, an Indian restaurant on Church Street in Stoke Newington. There are thick white tablecloths, a tea light at each place setting, paintings of Kerala on the walls; fishing nets against an orange sunset in Fort Kochi, houseboats in the lush backwaters. There is a smell of cardamom and fennel. The Virgin Mary watches over us from a candlelit shrine in the corner. Outside, raindrops dribble down the windows. A passing woman abandons her umbrella after it is blown inside out by the wind, leans over a puddle to shove it into a bin.

I am the only person here, and my presence seems