‘She did a second ago.’
‘She’s a child, Harry.’
‘I want to know what she meant –’
‘Ilse’s right.’ It was the first time Liz had spoken since they sat down. She had been crying again, Nathan could tell. She had lost weight in the past few days, and the skin on her face looked slack. ‘You’re scaring her, Harry.’
Lo sat very still, her eyes on the table, then finally picked up her pencil and continued drawing.
‘Daddy didn’t come back because he was sad,’ Lo said to the paper. ‘About all those things going missing.’
There was an audible collective sigh of relief around the table.
‘Oh God, this again. It’s okay, Lo.’ Ilse took her daughter’s free hand and held it between her own. She saw Nathan and Xander’s confusion. ‘Lo was a bit scared for a while that there was a burglar –’
‘There is!’ Lo snatched her hand away. Her scribbling became more furious.
‘Sweetheart, there’s not –’
‘Or a ghost, then.’
‘No ghost either,’ Ilse said. She gave a tiny shake of her head and looked at Nathan. ‘She thought a few things had got lost. Some of your toys and bits and pieces went walkabout, didn’t they, Lo?’
‘They didn’t go walkabout! Someone was here and took them.’
At the other end of the table, Simon gave an awkward laugh. ‘Maybe it was Santa,’ he said, trying to lighten the mood.
Lo gave him a look that could kill a cow. ‘Not Santa.’ She left thedickheadimplied. ‘Someone else. Someone bad.’
She was getting upset now and Ilse took the pencil from her hand.
‘Lo, if someone was on the property, we would know. No-one has been here.’ But as Ilse glanced at the night sky darkening in the window, Nathan caught a hesitation in her voice. ‘We thought a few things had gone missing but we found them again, didn’t we?’
‘What kinds of things?’ Xander shifted in his seat.
‘My toys and clothes,’ Lo said.
‘But we found them,’ Ilse replied firmly.
‘Not all of them, and not straight away. Anyway,’ Lo pushed her mother’s hand away, ‘Daddy never found his things.’
‘What do you mean?’ Harry said.
Lo didn’t answer. She looked nervous. Her hand inched towards her confiscated pencil and she hid her face behind her hair.
‘No,’ Harry said, his voice unusually sharp. ‘Answer please, Lo.’
‘Sweetheart.’ Ilse leaned in. ‘What things?’
‘Money, I think,’ Lo whispered. Nathan was struggling to hear her. ‘And other things. I don’t know what. Daddy was searching but he couldn’t find them.’
‘How much money are we talking?’ Harry said, and Ilse glared at him.
‘For God’s sake, she struggles to count to a hundred, she’s not going to know that. Anyway, Cam wasn’t missing money. Or anything else. Don’t make things worse.’
Lo’s eyebrows shot up. ‘He was! He was, Mummy. He was looking everywhere. Someone has been here –’
‘Jenna.’
