Your daughter is very pretty
You know what we want. And you know how to make this go away
Otherwise this is just the start
34
FRIDAY
Jess wants to keep Leah off school the next morning.
Daisy doesn’t want to go in either.
And Callum is very much against the idea that he should be the only one to spend the day in a classroom.
In the event—after a short period of confusion, arguing, and general disruption to the morning schedule—all three of them go to school as normal. Jess drops Leah, promising to watch her right to the school gate, and I do the run to St. Jude’s Primary.
There is a dull ache low in my chest as I watch Daisy join a line of other four- and five-year-olds filing into the Reception classroom. Mrs. Pett stands smiling by the door, as she always does, greeting each child by name and giving out the unspoken message to the parents who are lingering just a little too long:You can go. Your child will be fine. I’ve got it from here.
There’s no danger, I tell myself. Not while they’re here. This is a good school, a safe place surrounded by a seven-foot steel fence, and the staff know what they’re doing.
I walk Callum around to the junior school side, waiting and watching until he’s safely through the door. On the way back, I take my time, checking the long rows of tightly parked cars for any sign of the gray Volvo, studying the individuals hurrying back to their cars on the way to the office or the motorway. Checking the knots of stay-at-home parents too, the ones in less of a hurryto get on with the rest of their day.That’s me now, I realize with a twinge of recognition. For the first time since the week of paternity leave I’d taken after Daisy’s birth, I’m a stay-at-home parent too. Even if I can’t quite bring myself to admit it to my wife yet.
There’s no gray Volvo and no one who looks especially out of place.
But there is a police patrol car parked outside my house when I get home.
Two uniformed officers are knocking on my front door as I pull onto the drive. There is a sick plunge of alarm in my stomach as I imagine they’re here to give me bad news—that there’s been an accident, a crash, that Leah and Jess are in the hospital after the threat of last night’s message.What comes next will be all your fault…
“Mr. Wylie?” the younger officer says.
“Is everything all right?” I say as I get out of the car. “Has something happened?”
The older one, trim and wiry, with strands of gray in his neat beard, holds up a calming hand.
“Everything’s fine, sir. We were in the neighborhood, hoping to have a quick chat about yesterday.”
I feel myself relax slightly as he introduces himself as Sergeant Goodridge and his younger colleague as PC James. Both of them are bulky with stab vests, radios, pouches, pockets, and equipment on their belts. PC James is younger, fresh-faced, at least six foot three, and built like a rugby player.
I show them into the lounge, offering tea, which they both decline in favor of water.
“So,” Goodridge says, perching on the edge of the sofa. “You reported an incident yesterday involving your daughter?”
He takes notes on a small pad as I run through the events of yesterday, from Leah initially noticing the car waiting outside her school, to its appearance three more times on her journey home and her headlong dash for the house. He frowns when I relate my own dash out into the street in an effort to track down the Volvo.
“As a rule,” he says evenly, “we’d generally advise you to lock your doors, stay inside with your family, and call us first in that kind of situation—if it should ever happen again. Rather than running out into the street seeking out a confrontation with someone who may or may not have committed a criminal offense.”
“He followed her home,” I say. “There’s no ‘may’ about it. And I wasn’t looking for a confrontation.”
“So whatwereyou looking for?”
“To see who it was, see if he was still there. Get a look at him.”
“And did you?”
“No.”
“How about the number plate?”
