Where the Missing Go(48)

‘I’m sorry, Lily. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘All right,’ she says fretfully. ‘But you ask too many questions. I don’t like it.’ She sounds like a child.

‘OK. We won’t talk about it again.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I’ve got a few things to do but I’ll come and see you again soon. Have a nice afternoon.’

What the hell’s going on with her? Back home I hurry to my computer, still on the kitchen table, and type in the name of the drug: the morphine I saw in her cabinet. I click on a website aimed at patients and start scanning: ‘It’s a controlled medication … Strict rules …’

One paragraph I read twice: ‘Don’t break, crush, chew or suck morphine pills. If you do, the whole dose might get into your body in one go. This could cause a potentially fatal overdose.’

Another note makes my stomach give a little flip: ‘What if I forget to take it?’ There’s a warning: never double up your dose to make up for a missed one.

Lily’s so forgetful now. And she’s got so much of it, bottles of pills and liquid. What are they all for?

That decides me. Lily isn’t in a state to be managing this, not when the medicine itself could be making her more confused. The note on the bottle, to take when needed – she could be taking it around the clock.

I don’t care if I’m interfering, I don’t want to wait around for Dr Heath to have a polite word with a colleague. Before I can think about it more, I call the surgery and give full force to the unsuspecting receptionist. She won’t even confirm that Lily’s a patient, which doesn’t help my mood.

‘It’s dangerous,’ I finish. ‘Whoever’s prescribing this stuff to Lily – I mean, Mrs Green – could be in serious trouble. It’s … it’s negligent,’ I add, grasping for a legal-sounding word.

‘Mrs Harlow,’ says the receptionist, Valerie. ‘I do understand. Now, I’ve taken down all your details, and I’ll pass your message on to the practice manager.’

‘OK. Good. And will they call me back? Because I’m going to keep calling you until they do.’

‘Yes,’ she says. I can swear I hear gritted teeth. ‘Someone will call you back.’ Hopefully not me, I can almost hear her add, before she hangs up.

I feel a little better once that’s done. But it’s not the receptionist’s fault. I know I’m venting my frustration – at the police, at Nicholls, at my failure to get anywhere.

I get, up restless, and go to the window. How could I have made the conversation with Nicholls go better? I don’t know if I could. Now I remember his comments, when he’d called me at the start, about how I came to pick up the phone call that night at the helpline:

‘I guess it could have been anyone,’ I’d said then.

‘Yes. Quite the coincidence, really,’ he replied, nice as pie. ‘And is it always that quiet – just you on your own?’

I should have known that’s where he was going. That this is what they’d conclude: that maybe I didn’t even get a call, not from Sophie anyway. That I was, at the least, unreliable.

Because it was weird that it was me who picked up.

I can admit that, now that I’m not trying to convince anyone else. Of all the times she could have called the helpline, for her to get through when it was just me.

I frown. For some reason, I felt like the caller was as surprised as I was … the line going dead, like she panicked.

But maybe she was just overwhelmed. What if she had been trying to reach me? What if she knew I was working there, somehow?

Think. If you search for me online … I go to the computer and do it quickly – yes, there I am. You have to scroll down a bit, to find it, but there’s my name, mentioned in that newspaper article from last Christmas about the helpline. In the picture, I’m gurning away in the back row of volunteers – and yes, my name’s in the caption. She could have found me there.

So maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe the call was meant for me: perhaps, Sophie understood how much I needed to hear her voice again, even as she asked me not to worry any more – to let her go. And of course getting through to me at the helpline, not our home, has meant I’ve had no way of tracing the call: it keeps me at a safe distance. It keeps her at a safe distance.

It’s just an awful lot of effort to go to to reach me, only to stay hidden …

And now my mind’s drifting to something else, because that isn’t the only odd thing in all this. That diary was found by a dog walker, the police said. And for that to happen now, so soon after the call …

I picture the diary again, as Nicholls showed it to me in that little room: the frontispiece with an email address that looks right – it just doesn’t match the one I know.

But, then again, who else would notice a detail like that, other than Sophie’s mother?

My heart starts to hurry, just a little. I want to try something.

I pull up the page I’ve had open: the email account that I can’t get into. Now, typing gibberish, I deliberately get the password wrong and get myself into the security process.

The question flashes up again. I’ve tried so many times to answer it, racking my brains as to what Sophie might answer: What was the name of your first pet?

This time, I type it in quickly: Matilda.