Where the Missing Go(25)

‘But I did speak to you, so did the police,’ I say falteringly, ‘to see what you knew …’

‘What I knew,’ he echoes, opening the binder in front of him. ‘You know they thought I had something to do with it?’

‘I had an inkling.’ Following up all leads, was how they’d put it, before her first postcard removed some of the urgency. Of course they’d look at her boyfriend, especially one like him. But I don’t want to say that with him looking so, well, grown-up in front of me.

‘They kept me there for hours,’ he says. ‘Asked loads of questions about me, Sophie, what we used to do. And they went round the neighbours. Whether I was the type to – to do something. Hurt her. It made things difficult. For Grandad … kids threw stuff at our house.’

‘I didn’t realise.’ I didn’t know it had been quite that bad. ‘But of course they’ve got to follow all avenues,’ I add. ‘You were a, well, an unexpected couple …’

Danny was a year ahead of her at school – until he’d left. And no, I wasn’t keen when Sophie told me, casually, that she was seeing him. Running wild at his grandad’s, his parents who knows where. It was just minor stuff, really: scuffles outside the pub; that time a teacher left his keys in his car outside school and it was taken for a spin. It turned up the next morning in his drive, with dried mud sprayed up the side. But somehow Danny Mason’s name always got mentioned. Even I’d heard of him.

Now he bends his head over the paperwork in front of him. His eyelashes, I remember Sophie telling me, in an unexpectedly confiding mood, are ridiculously long – softening that face, all hard angles. She was right, I see now.

‘It wasn’t really like that,’ he says finally. ‘It was kind of … innocent.’

‘Oh? I thought maybe Sophie had a … that you …’ I take a deep breath. ‘She did a pregnancy test, before she went. I wondered if you might have had a scare.’

‘That would have been a miracle.’

‘Oh, really.’ I don’t mean to sound as sarcastic as I do.

‘Yes, really.’ The tips of his ears are going pink. ‘We weren’t much more than friends.’

‘Friends.’

‘Friends. We had nowhere to go, anyway.’

I flash back, suddenly, to when I’d come home and found them all in my kitchen once, Sophie, him and Holly, the laughter drying up as I walked in. She didn’t bring him round much once they were together, but teenagers find a way, don’t they? Sophie was always off with him, at the cinema, she said, or someone’s house.

‘If you want to know, I think she liked the fact that it wound you up,’ he says now. ‘But she intimidated me, a bit.’

I raise my eyebrows.

‘It’s true. It was the whole thing. Her life, her home.’ He looks away. ‘Her family. I mean, her dad was going to buy her a car! And he’s picking her up from school and all that, it’s not exactly easy to …’ He trails off. ‘Do you have your car key? We’ve still got your details. You can pick it up tomorrow.’

‘Oh. Of course, yes.’ I’m being dismissed. ‘Here you go.’

‘I’ve got stuff to do,’ he says mildly. He stands. ‘I’m sorry you had all this upset.’

He’s polite, but I know our conversation’s over. I stand too, automatically brush the seat of my leggings down from the tatty office armchair. I notice him watching me doing it and I stop, abashed.

‘All right. Thanks.’

Len’s gone off somewhere with the dog, so my path to the road is clear. But some impulse makes me turn in the doorway, as I set off for home. ‘Sophie was a daddy’s girl. But he didn’t pick her up,’ I add. Petty, but I can’t resist scoring the point. ‘I did, if she was late finishing. Mark was always at work.’

He shrugs.

‘Bye, Danny.’

I should have got a taxi. I’m regretting running, at first, the pavements throwing up the heat of the day at me. My muscles feel stiff. Too much sitting in front of my computer. But soon, as ever, I feel calmer once I’m really moving, heading down the roads that will take me from these brick terraces to the fringes of the countryside. Why did I ever stop? I suppose I just got used to being indoors, these last few months. Or year. And once Mark took the dog, there seemed less reason to run.

I’m going to make my way home round the outskirts of the village. It’s nicer this way, anyway, along the edges of fields and under the trees. I veer off the tarmac onto the track I’m looking for. It’s instantly cooler, the leaves cutting out the sunshine.

My mind starts to wander as I pad along, my thoughts unspooling.

Holly says that pregnancy test was Sophie’s. Danny says he and Sophie didn’t sleep together. Someone’s wrong. Or lying. And if so, who?

Maybe even today Danny just didn’t want to admit to me, Sophie’s disapproving mum, that she wasn’t still my little girl in the way I thought. I suppose it’s respectful, in a way.

Still. I could have sworn he was telling the truth to me.

Does it even matter?

I almost trip, and right myself. My lace is loose. I stop, bend down to retie it.

The thought occurs to me: what if it wasn’t negative? Would that have been enough to prompt my sensible, good girl to run away?