‘She was a delightful child. Both of them were. Clare is five years older and couldn’t wait for her little sister to come along. The first couple of years were hard, you know, toddlers can be jealous and, dare I say it, annoying, but we all got through it. Susan was so beautiful with her dark locks and large brown eyes. She even won a couple of beautiful baby competitions. I thought I had a little model in her, even tried to get her an agent at one point. Like all these things, I parted with a few hundred pounds for a portfolio and never heard from any of these so-called agents again. She turned heads though. Her primary school years went without a hitch. She was popular, active in lots of sports clubs and was forever bringing her friends home for tea and sleepovers.’
‘You mentioned her teens. Did something happen?’
Mary nodded. Howard slid a box of tissues across the table. ‘Their father died suddenly of an aneurysm. We’d just split up which made it worse, the girls were heartbroken and I think Susan felt a lot of resentment towards me but I couldn’t stay in an unhappy marriage any longer. He hadn’t been a bad husband and he wasn’t abusive or drunk, I just didn’t love him. Clare was working in her first job out of school and she was so stable during this time. Susan however ditched all her clubs and sports and began smoking and hanging out at a local park with gangs of kids. She’d come home stinking of cheap vodka and would cause turmoil in our little household. I relied on Clare so much to keep it together while I was working shifts at the hospital. I sometimes think I put too much on her. One night…’ Mary swallowed and pulled a tissue from the box and sobbed into it.
‘It’s okay, love. You’re doing really well. This isn’t a time Mary likes to think of.’ He placed his arm around her again.
‘That night, I came home and Clare was pacing around the house, her clothes all ruffled. Susan had come home in a strop as she often did. She’d pushed Clare to the ground, they’d wrestled as Clare tried to calm her down and Clare had lost even though she was much older. Susan was like a rabid dog once she started. There was no reasoning with her. She’d grabbed her bag and stormed out. This had been teatime. When I arrived home at around ten thirty on that night, Clare was distraught. She’d been trying to call me at work but I’d been with my patients at the time. When I got home, I remember calling all of Susan’s friends and no one had seen her. She had our lives on hold. We thought she was dead in a ditch. After two days, the neighbours all rallied around and helped us search for her. Nothing. She breezed back into the house five days later as if nothing had happened and basically told me to shove off for asking where she’d been. I lost control of her that day. I’d lost my perfect, beautiful little girl.’
Gina scribbled a few notes. The blue ink bleeding a little into the damp edges of the notepad. So, Susan had run away before. Although it was in her teens, could it be that she had run away again and would turn up tomorrow or the day after? ‘What happened after that?’
Mary shrugged and dropped her hands to the worktop, almost knocking her coffee over. ‘She wouldn’t talk to any of us. She’d hang out alone in her room, playing grunge type music loudly. Her long dark hair looked as though it had been badly cut short with a pair of blunt shears and she pierced her own nose. I didn’t know her any more. She’d test me and Clare to our limits. We never knew where she went for those five days but she came back a changed person. To cut a long story short, she ran away again and again. We soon stopped worrying as much as she always came back but it hurt when she left. The last time she ran away was when she was eighteen. Slowly, the young woman, the daughter I no longer knew, came back to me. Slowly she mellowed and began dating occasionally. She no longer came home drunk. Not long after she met Ryan and those hurtful years were over. They married, had two beautiful girls. She went back to college and I was so proud of her.’
Howard guided Mary’s head towards his chest then stroked her back.
‘She wouldn’t run away again. That was all in the past. Something bad has happened to her, I know it. You have to keep looking for her. I didn’t want to mention her past. I knew you wouldn’t take it seriously. I need you out there. Find her, please?’
Mary stroked Howard’s arm and leaned back up, her gaze pleading with Gina.
‘Has anything serious or traumatic been happening in her life at the moment?’
The woman shook her head and wiped her nose with the crumpled tissue. Little pieces of it fell away and floated to beyond the worktop. ‘She and Ryan are getting a divorce and it’s a messy one. I found the papers amongst her belongings when I was cleaning up her house.’
‘And…’
‘It wasn’t straightforward. She wanted the house, she wanted the kids and she had listed how much maintenance she wanted. To me it seemed high as I know roughly how much Ryan earns. They’ve borrowed money from us in the past just to keep the roof over their heads. But then she listed the reasons why and it felt as though my heart were in a vice and being twisted. She’d stated that he’d never let her go out alone, that he followed her when she went out, that she wasn’t allowed friends or privacy. She was being slowly suffocated by him. I had no idea she’d been so unhappy. I wish she’d spoken to me.’
Gina could understand why Susan hadn’t said anything. Her face reddened as she thought about all the secrets she had. Susan would be mortified that Mary had read her divorce papers.
Mary continued. ‘From what I see, he has been very good with the children, even stepping up with the girls this past couple of days. She had confided to me that he didn’t do enough for them but he seems to have stepped up in our hour of need. There is one other thing.’
Gina almost woke up from the automatic note-taking. ‘And what’s that?’
‘She accused him of having an affair.’
Gazing at Mary, Gina wondered if the family had recently had an argument. Is that why Susan had left? Susan was accusing Ryan of an affair and Ryan had mentioned that there was another man in her life.
‘This isn’t serious to you any more, is it? You think she’s just run away and she’ll come back. That’s why I didn’t want to say anything.’
Shaking her head, Gina flipped her pad closed and threw it into her bag. ‘Mary, of course we don’t think that. We will keep following leads and we will keep looking for Susan. Today, we have followed up on her appointments that you passed to us. We are still searching for her car and we will keep searching. Just because Susan ran away in the past wouldn’t mean we’d stop looking for her.’ She knew Mary found that hard to believe. Even though Susan’s teens were a long time ago, she couldn’t dismiss that this was maybe Susan’s way of coping with all that was happening. She tried to push that thought out of her mind. It was her job to find Susan and find Susan she would. ‘One last thing, do you know if Susan knew anyone living in Beech Street?’
Mary’s brow furrowed. ‘No, not as far as I’m aware.’
‘The postcode you gave me covers Beech Street. Maybe it belonged to a client she was meant to visit on Tuesday.’ The information they had so far flashed through her mind. Mother of three in her thirties, missing. Job where she visits people’s houses, possibly compromising her own safety. Marriage breakdown. Messy divorce. Possessive husband. Affairs on both sides.
The two children above had escaped onto the landing. Clare’s yell filled the silence and Gina’s trail of thought was long gone. ‘Baby Shark’ bellowed out, a song Gina was beginning to loathe. Maybe a bath followed by a good night’s sleep would give her the clarity she needed.
‘I know this is difficult for you which is why I have a family liaison officer on standby—’
‘No way. I don’t want anyone in my home. Whatever is happening, we can manage this as a family.’ Mary turned her head.
‘But—’
‘No, thank you. I know you mean well but you can help us all by just being out there and finding out where Susan is. We just want her home. Some officer hanging around making cups of tea and getting in the way isn’t going to help one bit.’ Mary was adamant.
‘Of course, I understand,’ Gina replied as she headed towards the door. ‘Do you recognise the names Michaela Daniels or Dale Blair?’
She shook her head. ‘Not that I can think of.’
