Finding Grace(27)

Office is a bit of a fancy word really; it’s the fourth and smallest bedroom, just about big enough for a single bed but no wardrobe. Our plans to make it a kitsch little guest room faded into oblivion when, by default, it became the dumping ground the week we moved into the house. It stayed that way until just over a year ago, when Blake decided he’d run to be a local councillor.

He needed a quiet space away from the television and Grace’s constant chatter. And from me too, I suppose.

So we spent a gruelling weekend bottoming the room. Seeing as we’d barely touched anything in there for the best part of four years, we ended up throwing most of the stuff out and relocating what was left to the garage.

Blake’s mother insisted on ordering some Scandinavian-style bleached-wood furniture that looked a bit incongruous in such a cramped space; she refused to listen to Blake’s protests about not needing anything new. He’d planned to recycle some furniture he’d been offered from the nearby vicarage.

‘I’m not having my son, possibly the future prime minister, working on a scruffy desk that somebody else threw out,’ Nadine announced haughtily. ‘It simply won’t do.’

Blake laughed and tried to protest he’d never get so high up in the government, but I could tell he was flattered underneath.

Grace knows not to disturb her daddy when he’s working up here, and I hardly ever cross the threshold, mostly because the space is so small. If I need to speak to him, I can do it from the doorway. I can even pass him a cup of tea from there.

I walk past the stairs and open the office door.

Blake doesn’t keep it locked; there’s no need. He takes care of the cleaning in here, insisting I have enough to do in the rest of the house. So it’s rare for me to enter the room.

I glance around. It’s surprisingly tidy for a man who doesn’t even think about picking up his dirty socks until he starts to trip over them.

I sit down on the plush padded swivel chair and lay my flat palms on the cool blonde wood. I saw the price of the new furniture on the delivery note and it was enough to make my eyes water. We could furnish two rooms with what Nadine paid for it.

There’s nothing on the desktop apart from a wire rack with a few loose papers on each shelf and a green plastic desk tidy with various tubes for storing pens, pencils and paper clips.

I look up at the wall in front of me and my heart squeezes in on itself. Blake has fixed one of Grace’s pictures up there. The kitchen walls are covered in her artwork, but I remember him claiming this picture. He particularly loved it because Grace had drawn all three of us standing in front of the house and had put newborn baby Oscar in a wheelbarrow, which Blake thought was hilarious.

This is a pedestal desk, so it has drawers built in either side. I open the top one on my right. At least I try to open it, but it’s locked, and the other drawers are the same.

I stand up and pull at the free-standing filing cabinet behind me, only to find that that’s locked too.

It’s a bit over the top, I think. Neither Grace nor I are likely to come in here messing anything up, but maybe he’s worried about intruders. I know some of the stuff he deals with is confidential.

I shrug to myself and turn to go. Blake’s left his casual sports jacket on the back of the chair. He usually lives in it at weekends, but this is no ordinary weekend. All our routines have disappeared. Nothing is important any more apart from finding our daughter. Nothing.

There’s a mark on the back of the jacket near the hem. Looks like he might have leaned against a wall, or perhaps it’s from the gate.

I’m desperate to do something normal, something that takes up no thinking time, to alleviate the terrible ache in my head, even though I know that’s impossible. I slide the shoulders of my husband’s jacket from the chair. I’ll take it down to the kitchen, see if I can get the mark out. It’s the sort of meaningless little task I’d be doing if Grace was downstairs watching television and Oscar was taking a nap.

I check the two pockets and take out an unused folded handkerchief, which I place on the desk. When I fold the jacket over my arm, I notice there’s one of those deep inside pockets too.

I plunge my fingers in there and wriggle them around, and they close on something small and cold and clinky. I pull it out to find I’m holding three tiny keys hanging from a single thin metal ring.

I put the keys on the desk with the handkerchief and take a step towards the door. And then I stop and turn around again.

Blake will be back from the police station soon. Doubts flood my mind again about the reason for his sudden change of heart in leaving the house. It feels disloyal even to admit to myself that I don’t trust my husband. Blake’s a good man, I know that. Everybody says so. Except Barbara Charterhouse; she doesn’t seem too impressed with him.

I pick up the keys and look at them nestled in the centre of my palm. This is probably my only chance to glance inside the desk drawers and the filing cabinet.

I dangle the keys over the desk again and then snatch them back into the palm of my hand and insert one into the filing cabinet. Second try, it twists and I open the top drawer.

Blake has organised the contents of the cabinet in suspended files, each one bearing a little white tab with neat printed letters to mark out the contents. ‘Monthly Surgery’, ‘Statutory Docs’, ‘Minutes & Agendas’.

I’m surprised at his efficiency. In everything else he’s so laid-back, haphazard… the moss on the path, the dirty washing by the bed.