Cassian raised his eyebrows at me. “Yeah?”
I realised what he was implying. “Not like that. He’s a friend, that’s all. He isn’t my type.” I was rambling now. “I haven’t dated for years. So Gully is just a friend.”Shut up, Romy.
“Romy doesn’t date.” Liv thankfully re-entered the room. “She watches rom-coms and gets involved in the parent teacher association at school, usually smiling as she accepts the shittiest jobs. If you want to stay in my good books, make sure she gets a better role in the summer fair.” Liv sat back down and took a long swig of her rosé. “Mia update, she’s smiling and making friendship bracelets that they want to send to Taylor Swift. I know there’ll be meetings tomorrow with school, Cassian – how come you’re here, by the way? Are you trying to woo my friend because that’s great news if you are. I’ll get a duster ready for her.”
“Liv. With all the love, shut the eff up.” If she was closer to me, I’d have elbowed her.
“Okay, I miss-read the room. We have a team meeting at seven tomorrow. What do you know about Mia and Cara – I need all the tiniest details, even if you don’t think they’re useful.” She sat back and pulled a notepad and pen out of her pocket.
I glanced at Cassian, knowing my cheeks were stinging with embarrassed heat. “Cara was quiet when I saw her. We would meet up every few weeks to take the girls out together at one point, but I found it awkward to talk to her – you know when someone gives you one-word answers and doesn’t ask anything back? So I started suggesting I took Mia out with us and Cara could have some time to herself. There were a couple of times when I took Mia home and Cara wasn’t there or answering her phone, so Mia stayed with us for longer.”
“How was Mia when that happened?” Cassian asked, sipping his drink a lot slower than Liv who was almost polishing off the glass. I was struggling not to stare at his forearms, the corded muscle making them look powerful, his skin tanned and dusted with dark hair.
“She would be a bit sad, almost resigned sometimes, like this was what happened all the time. Heidi once asked me if Mia could stay all weekend because she didn’t want to go home – I said no, of course, which I felt bad about but it seemed wrong to indulge her. I know not every mum and daughter get along like I do with Heidi.” I was hoping that mine and Heidi’s relationship would last like this as she got older but I wasn’t going to hold my breath. She was headstrong like Joel had been, and just as adventurous as him. Spirited, as her grandmother described her.
“Cara had jobs doing a bit of cleaning and she did some delivery driving for take aways too. This is confidential, but at one point she had around fifteen thousand pounds in her account, which was withdrawn or moved around over the courseof a week. It was flagged, but not investigated. Would either of you have any idea where that money was from?” Liv was in full police officer mode now.
Cassian leaned forward. “I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, and I’ve stayed out of the way of the gossip. I know my deputy had concerns about Mia – she was often tired, looked underweight and her clothes weren’t always the cleanest. The school staff makes sure she has breakfast and a good lunch in case food’s scarce at home. Cara didn’t always come to pick her up, but it isn’t that far from school to her house so they let that go. I think someone – probably Diane who’s the school admin – said that Cara had a lot of boyfriends, but that’s the limit of what I know so far.”
Liv gave a serious nod, watching him. “Why are you here, by the way?”
“I was walking back from the Puffin Inn and ended up in a circle. Mia and Heidi saw me and shouted me over. I’m still working out where everything is.” He’d almost finished his wine. “If I hear any gossip about Cara, I’ll pass it on.”
“Most of the gossip’s about you at the moment,” I said, regretting the words as soon as they came out.
Cassian smiled and shrugged. “Nothing I’m not used to. Is there anything else we need to do at school?”
Liv tapped her pen against her notepad. “You have strict safeguarding procedures in place already, so your perimeter gates are locked where you have them, visitors have to sign in, no one apart from staff or police checked visitors can walk around by themselves, so that’s all good. I’d take extra care on any school trips, don’t let Mia go home with anyone apart from Romy, and give staff that work closely with her the head’s up so they pay attention to any changes in her mood, or anything that she says that’s unusual. Given she’s said something today about this Logan, I wouldn’t be surprised if more things slip out. Shemight even talk to Heidi about it, so Romy, you might want to have a chat with Heidi about secrets and not keeping them with you.”
I’d already thought of that, my head still whirring at a hundred miles an hour. “Have you heard the name Logan before?”
Liv shrugged. “Yes, but it might not be the same one. There is a Logan who’s connected to Mia’s dad. We can get some photos of him and see if Mia recognises him. That’ll possibly happen tomorrow, Romy.” She turned to me, relaxing her shoulders. “I’m going off my gut – I have no evidence for what I’m about to suggest – so don’t panic. I’m worried that Cara’s gotten into something bad and she’s either hiding somewhere or something’s happened to her. From what my boss has said this afternoon, we’re going to be treating her disappearance as suspicious, although we’ll be trying to keep it out of the media. We don’t need their help and interference right now. Romy, you need to watch out for the media near your house. Say nothing to them. If they’re taking photos let me know and my super will tear them a new one. But I am worried that Mia staying here makes you a target.” She stretched, her relaxed pose all for show. “It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Cara’s up to her neck in something. Your house doesn’t get ransacked for nothing, and you don’t disappear without your daughter unless you’re up shit creek. Mia has seen this Logan and maybe other people involved. They might think she knows something they don’t want her to know, or they may see her as leverage with Cara. You see where I’m going with this?”
I nodded, wondering whether Cassian would authorise a term time holiday somewhere remote and secure. That wasn’t fair on the girls though, and this was just Liv’s gut feeling.
“Cara could’ve ransacked her own house, couldn’t she?” I said, needing a less radical theory. “She could’ve been looking for something before she took off.”
“You don’t think it’s weird that she told Mia she was leaving the key for her and then the key wasn’t there?” Cassian asked, his elbows on the table now, body leaning forward.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think her mental health was in the best place, and if she was using drugs then she might not have been thinking straight.”
“This is also a possibility. She could’ve had a breakdown, so we are planning on searching the area starting at dawn tomorrow. They’re checking the coasts and CCTV in the area, which will be fun.” Liv actually cracked a smile, so it wasn’t going to be as bad as she was making it sound, I guessed.
But then she lived for big cases.
“So you’re staying tonight because you’re worried about me here?”
“Pretty much. Roe Holland should be able to help you out with security here. He knows what’s going on as he’s doing some civilian work for us on this.” Liv turned her attention back to Cassian. “You might want to look at security in school. I’m not saying what you’ve got already isn’t good, I’m going to assume it is, but you’ll kick yourself if something happens and you realise there was more you could’ve done.”
He nodded, his dark eyes serious. There was no smile on his face and I’d noticed that he kept glancing over at me, his brief gazes cindering my skin. “I’ll ask Roe Holland to visit after school tomorrow then.” Cas stood up, all of his attention on me now.
My skin felt tight, any movement clunky, like I didn’t quite know how my body worked any more. I wanted to toy with my hair or fiddle with something, just needing something to do to distract myself from this man who made me remember thatI was a woman still, not just a friend and a colleague and a mother.
And a widow.
I swallowed, remembering Joel, knowing what he’d tell me to do right now. He was fearless. Brave. He never let anything stop him from what he wanted to do. Some would’ve called him tenacious. I called him stupidly stubborn and single minded.
We’d talked once about what would happen if one of us died, one of those odd conversations couples have when they’ve just come out of the early days. He’d said he’d carry on living. I’d been far more romantic and told him he was it for me.
