Property of a Lady(21)

But Ellie, suffering what sounded to be the same nightmare, had not lost her father. Ellie was surrounded by love and stability, and she had two eminently sane parents who had a happy marriage. She was probably one of the best-adjusted children on the planet. Or was she? Who knew what darknesses existed in any child’s mind?

He reached Oriel College on Saturday evening to find that Wilberforce had got into the buttery and eaten an entire cream trifle intended for the weekend visit of a second-year’s parents, after which Wilberforce had apparently been sick on a pile of essays about Swinburne. Michael apologized to everyone he could think of, told the second-year to buy another trifle from the pastry shop in the High at his expense, and cleaned up the Swinburne essays as well as he could. After this he sat down to send the photos of the unrepentant Wilberforce to Beth West, with an email for Nell saying he would see her next weekend.

He surveyed the Swinburne essays with distaste and, instead of reading them, sat down at the computer to record Wilberforce’s adventures in the buttery before he forgot it. He would send it to Ellie later. He might send it to Beth as well.

Nell hoped she had not been too pushy with Michael Flint over the decanters, but he had definitely said he was intending to buy them. He had been great with Beth. She and Beth had talked about Wilberforce over their supper, and Beth had asked if they could invite Ellie Harper to tea one day, did Mum think that was a good idea?

‘Terrific,’ said Nell, so grateful for Beth’s apparent return to normality that she would have agreed to the entire population of Marston Lacy coming to tea.

They spent most of Sunday in the workshop at the back of the shop. Nell was currently stripping a small oak table that had been semi-vandalized by several applications of dark brown varnish at some stage in its life. The work was slow, but it was immensely satisfying, and she was uncovering an inlay on the top – squares of African blackwood and pale beautiful beech, immaculately dovetailed into a chessboard. Beth pottered around, fetching rags and cloths, singing to the radio.

After they’d had supper and Beth was in bed, Nell tidied the sitting room, coming across Alice Wilson’s journal, which she had thrust on top of a bookshelf. It was annoying that it ended so abruptly. Alice had hidden the pages in the clock and then seemed to vanish. What had happened to her? It was a good forty years ago, and the trail – if there was a trail – would be very fragile by this time.

Next morning she dropped Beth off at school, relieved there had been no more nightmares. She generally opened the shop at ten, but Mondays were always quiet, so she finished work on the oak table. She enjoyed being in the workshop: it was a large, one-storey outbuilding, and it was exactly right for storage of furniture not currently on display and for renovation projects. There was electricity and even an old Victorian stove, although Nell was not inclined to trust its efficiency and she had fitted modern convector heaters.

She was hoping she could hold antique weekends next spring, booking small groups of people into the Black Boar and providing practical workshop sessions on restoration, interspersed with trips to one or two nearby National Trust properties to study furniture and tapestries. It would be an interesting project, and Nell was enjoying working out the details.

She locked up the outbuilding around eleven, washed the cobwebs and dust away and put on a clean shirt and cords, then opened the shop, flipping her mobile on, which she had switched off while she was sanding the table.

There were two messages. The first was from Beth’s school asking her please to telephone them as a matter of some urgency.

The other message was from the local police station requesting her, in even more urgent terms, to call them without delay. There was no immediate cause for panic, said the fatherly voice on the voicemail, but there was a strong possibility that her daughter was missing.





EIGHT




Nell drove to the police station as if the denizens of hell were chasing her and was taken straight to an interview room, where the owner of the fatherly voice, who introduced himself as Detective Inspector Brent, explained there was no immediate cause for concern. The thing was that Beth’s school had phoned them when Beth had failed to appear for class at nine o’clock.

Nell, fighting to keep panic down, said, ‘But I dropped her off at the gates. It was ten to nine – I didn’t watch her go in, but the gates were open and I saw her wave to a couple of friends and walk towards them.’ She frowned, then said, ‘Why did the school phone you so quickly? Oh God, is there something you haven’t told me? Was she seen getting into a strange car or—’

‘Nothing like that at all,’ said Inspector Brent at once. ‘At first they thought Beth was sick and not coming in. As there didn’t seem to have been a note sent in or a phone call, her teacher asked if anyone knew where she was. A couple of her classmates said they had seen her get out of your car and walk towards the school gates.’ He spread his hands.

Nell said with horror, ‘But she didn’t turn up in the classroom?’

‘No.’

‘She disappeared between getting out of my car and her classroom.’ It was bizarre and impossible and terrifying.

But Brent said, ‘I’m afraid that’s what seems to have happened. After the teachers realized she had been on her way through the gates, they were a bit concerned. They searched the school – thinking, you know, she might have fallen down and sprained an ankle or something of that kind. The search didn’t take long – it’s only a small place.’