‘Mrs Leeson – sorry, Beth – I understand that you’re concerned, but you need to be careful. What you’ve just said could be construed as a threat to those children.’
‘What?’
‘Beth wasn’t making a threat, she was making a point,’ says Dom. ‘Her point was, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and it’s a good one. We might not have witnessed any physical harm to anybody, but I think there’s enough in what we’ve told you to justify a quick check. You could talk to the head teacher at the prep school, ask her if she’s aware of any issues in the family. Maybe he or she could tell you who the woman Beth and I met really is. She introduced herself to us as Jeanette Cater, but she had a non-English accent, and the school receptionist told Beth that Jeanette Cater didn’t. She also told her the Cater kids are called Thomas and Emily, when Kevin Cater and that woman, whoever she was, said their names were Toby and Emma. Is that not sufficiently worrying? I mean … can you say with a hundred per cent confidence that you believe the children in that house aren’t at risk?’
Dom’s words seem to be having an effect.Please, please. See reason.‘PC Pollard, you didn’t hear Flora on the phone last night. I did. She sounded the way someone would sound if someone had a gun to their head.’
‘Got it. Got it. Let me ask you something, Beth. Last Saturday, you were convinced you saw the Thomas and Emily you’d known twelve years ago getting out of that silver Range Rover. Correct?’
I nod.
‘Yet all through our conversation, you’ve referred to the children living at 16 Wyddial Lane as Thomas and Emily Cater.’
‘As far as I know, their surname is Cater. That’s what the school calls them.’ What’s he getting at?
‘But if they’re Thomas and Emily Cater, five and three years old, then they can’t also be the Thomas and Emily Braid you used to know. So which is it?’
‘Are you asking me if I still believe that the two young children I saw on Saturday are actually the same people as the Thomas and Emily Braid I knew twelve years ago?’
‘I am, yes.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Then you think I’m either crazy or stupid. They can’t be the same people, can they? It’s impossible. People age. Children grow. Time doesn’t go backwards. Last Saturday, what I saw were two children who looked pretty much identical to my memory of the Thomas and Emily I knew. I heard them called by the same names. It was such a shock, I … for a while, a short while, I thought it was them and they hadn’t grown. But obviously I soon realised that would be impossible.’
‘Got it.’ Pollard writes this down, smiling. He seems to have liked that answer. ‘All right, let me see what I can do to help here. How about if I arrange for someone who’s more well versed in child protection issues than I am to have a word with a few people at the school? If any member of staff there has concerns about the Cater children’s safety or welfare, that’ll give us an angle to do more.’
‘That would be amazing,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
‘Did you note down the registration plate of the silver Range Rover?’ Pollard asks me.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘No particular reason.’
‘You seem to have been looking into the Caters and the Braids fairly thoroughly, that’s all. You’ve said you think the Cater children must be Flora Braid’s because of the strong resemblance, and you think the photos of …’ He looks down at his notes ‘… groups of birds on the wall at number 16 have to belong to Lewis Braid. The registration number’s a way of knowing for sure who that car belongs to. I’m surprised you didn’t write it down.’
‘I don’t care who the car belongs to. Kevin Cater, Lewis – who cares? They’re both involved in this, either way.’
‘Got it.’ PC Pollard stands up and gives his upper lip one final rub. ‘Leave it with me. If anyone at the school thinks the Cater children are at risk, then, as I say, we might be able to get somewhere.’
Ten minutes later, Dom and I are sitting in his car outside the police station. ‘I think that went pretty well,’ he says. ‘Better than I expected. It’s a relief to hand it over to the professionals.’
Not for the first time in our twenty-three-year marriage, I wonder how two people can live happily side by side and sleep in the same bed every night – two people who would probably die for each other if necessary – and yet see the world in such profoundly different ways. I try to imagine how I might feel if I believed Paul Pollard was capable of resolving the problem. Why don’t I believe it? Maybe I should try to.
Dom starts the car and we pull out of the car park and set off for home. ‘Beth, I need to tell you something,’ he says. ‘I don’t think it means anything – beyond what we already know, that something messed up’s going on – but I wouldn’t feel fair keeping it from you. I was going to tell you last night, but then—’
‘Just tell me.’
‘Yesterday, all the Braids’ social media accounts disappeared. Every last one.’
‘What do you mean? Why would they disappear?’
‘It’d only happen if they’d been deliberately deleted by their owners.’
I swallow hard. ‘And … you didn’t think this was worth mentioning to PC Pollard?’
‘No,’ says Dom. ‘Because about three hours later, they all reappeared. I looked through them all – Lewis’s Instagram and Twitter, Thomas and Emily’s Twitter. Nothing looked different. All the stuff that had been there before was still there, so it’s not like they did it because they wanted to delete stuff. You don’t need to deactivate an account to delete individual posts anyway.’
