Greenwich Park(59)

‘I see.’

DS Mitre drops his gaze to his notebook, and starts writing, his long pale fingers curled around a black biro.

DC Robbin takes over now. She is speaking just a little bit more loudly than she needs to. Her tone makes me sit up straighter.

‘Before she left – did Rachel say where she was going?’

I shake my head. ‘No – she left without saying anything. I mean, she had told us she was moving out, around the middle of November. That she had found a place.’ The detectives write this down. ‘But no, we didn’t know she was leaving that night. We woke up the next morning and she’d gone.’

‘Any idea where this new place was?’

‘She didn’t really say,’ I murmur. ‘Sorry.’

‘You don’t know why she might have left so suddenly?’ DS Robbin’s head is cocked to one side, her thin eyebrows arched like punctuation. Her eyes are fixed on mine. The room feels airless, my tongue dry and thick, as if it is stuck to the top of my mouth.

‘No, not really.’

‘So there hadn’t been an argument at this party, nothing like that?’



My pulse is climbing. My face feels red hot. Before I’ve even really thought about it, I find I am shaking my head and saying: ‘No.’

‘So you weren’t concerned? At her leaving like that, without telling you why, or where she was going?’

‘No, I was concerned, of course I was,’ I say, feeling the heat in my cheeks again. ‘I texted her. I wanted to make sure she was OK. And she replied, pretty much straight away.’ I reach for my phone. ‘She said she was going to her mother’s. Here, let me find the message.’

I pull my phone out, find the message she sent me the day after the party, show it to DS Mitre. I think for a moment that he will be pleased, will thank me for my time, tell me he’ll give her mum a ring now and he’s sorry to have wasted my time. Instead, the atmosphere changes. The officers both examine the phone. They exchange glances again.

‘Is that not where she is, then?’ I ask. ‘At her mum’s?’

DC Robbin closes her notebook, leans forward slightly.

‘Mrs Thorpe, what did she mean when she said she was sorry about last night?’

I blink.

‘I … I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Well, I suppose we’d fallen out a bit. Not badly.’

She looks at me intently. ‘I thought you said you hadn’t had an argument.’

I’m tapping my leg under the table, the bench underneath me shaking slightly. ‘We hadn’t,’ I stutter. ‘Not an argument. That’s not what I meant.’ I force myself to stop, place my feet flat on the floor. I wish Daniel were here. He said he was just going out for a run. He’s been ages.



‘I mean, look … it had been a bit awkward, the three of us. We’d been a bit – a bit snappy with each other, perhaps. I did tell her that night that I thought … perhaps the time had come for her to leave.’

‘You wouldn’t class that as an argument?’

DS Mitre looks at DC Robbin. His radio crackles, and he glances down. None of this seems real, I think. None of it belongs in our kitchen, on our quiet Sunday evening, with the sounds of the washing machine, a car outside, the next-door neighbour’s girl doing her clunky piano practice.

DS Mitre leans towards me.

‘Mrs Thorpe, would it be all right if we took that phone away with us today?’

I stare at him. ‘My phone? Why?’

‘It might help our inquiries to do some analysis. Help us locate Miss Wells. Make sure that she is safe.’

The way they say it, I feel like I can’t say no. But can they really do that? Take my phone?

‘The thing is,’ I say, ‘I’m about to have a baby. And I’m having our landline disconnected. Too many cold callers, you know? So …’ I look from one officer to the other. ‘I really need my phone. Anything else is fine, but – I really need it.’

DS Mitre glances down uncomfortably at my bump. Then he looks at DC Robbin. She gives an infinitesimal nod.

‘Very well. Just a few more questions, Mrs Thorpe.’

There are a lot more questions, it turns out. They want a list of who was at the party. I write down the ones I know. I tell them they will have to talk to Charlie about the rest. They want to know other things, too. Like whether I have the details of anyone who might know her. Associates, is the phrase they use. Friends, colleagues, anyone she knew locally. And do I know much about the father of her baby?

I seem to be unable to give them any of the answers they want. The more they ask, the more I realise how little I knew about Rachel. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, for what feels like the twentieth time. ‘Like I said, I only really know her through that antenatal class.’

‘And yet she moved into your house.’

‘Not moved in – it wasn’t like that.’

I need to reset my tone of voice. I sound shrill, defensive. I sound like someone who has done something wrong. DC Robbin has stopped writing things down. She is leaving that to DS Mitre. Instead she is looking at me, her lips closed, her eyes unblinking.

‘It was meant to be just a couple of nights at most,’ I say, more slowly. ‘It turned into a bit longer. That’s why there had been a bit of tension, I suppose. She said she’d found a new place. That she was moving out in mid-November. But it was all a bit vague.’