The Girls in the Garden Read online

  Clare nodded, as if what he’d just said was reasonable. Then the truth of his words hit her consciousness and she shook her head and said, “Are you telling me she tried to kill herself?”

  “Well, no, that’s unlikely. Possible, but unlikely.” He paused; she could see him carefully forming his next words. “Mrs. Wild,” he said, “as well as its medical uses and recreational uses, Ambien does have another reputation. It’s what is commonly, somewhat sensationally, known as a date-rape drug.”

  Clare brought her hands, balled up into fists, straight to her mouth. Then she whispered one word. “Rape.”

  “That doesn’t of course mean that your daughter has been raped, Mrs. Wild. But it does mean that we should consider it as a possibility. So I need your permission to bring in a sexual-­assault nurse examiner. A forensic nurse. Who would be able to examine Grace for any signs of assault. You could be present, of course.”

  “But”—she held her fisted hands against her chest—“is there any sign of anything? I mean, surely, if there’d been—a rape—there would have been something. Blood. Or something.”

  “So far we’ve been focusing on other things. Now that we’ve got Grace stabilized we can look at further factors. I’ve been told this happened in your garden. Is it possible that someone could have got into your backyard? Someone you don’t know?”

  “It didn’t happen in my backyard,” she muttered. “My house backs onto a private park. It’s communal. And there was a party.”

  He nodded, knowingly. “Ah. Well, in that case it is possible that a sexual assault might have been a motive for the overdose. Would you like me to leave you to think about it? Or I could send someone to talk to you? From the unit? Talk you through what will happen. What it entails? Although . . .” He paused. “I would recommend taking action sooner rather than later. In cases like this time really is of the essence. Forensically speaking.”

  Clare nodded. Then shook her head. Wished that Chris was here. Not the Chris from outside the burning house, but the Chris on Roxy’s doorstep, the one in the socks. What would he do? What would he say? Would whatever it was even have happened if Chris had been around?

  There’d been times in the year building up to his breakdown when she’d fantasized about being on her own with the girls, away from his dysfunctional and occasionally alarming presence. And now here she was. A single mother. And she would have given anything for Chris to walk into the room with his smell of sleepy man and hug her so hard it almost broke her ribs.

  She would say, Chris, someone hurt Grace. And his big, open face would crease into a frown and he would say, Who? And she would say, I don’t know who. It could be anyone. It could be the boy whose lap I found her sitting on the other day. It could be the boy’s learning-disabled brother. Or the ancient glad-eyed grandfather of her new friends who’s just had a prosthetic foot fitted. Or a stranger hiding in bushes all day waiting for their chance.

  And Chris would not stop to ask any more questions. He would grab his jacket, stride into Virginia Park, and start banging on doors. What have you done to my daughter? he would boom in that voice that was so unapologetically posh he’d twice been punched in pubs because of it. What have you done?

  But that option did not exist. It was all down to her. And Clare had never felt smaller or less capable in her life.

  Mr. Darko’s expression had passed from concern toward impatience. He had other people’s lives to save. Other mothers in other rooms. He needed an answer. She nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Okay. You can do the exam.”

  He looked relieved. “Good,” he said, closing his notebook definitively and smiling. “I think that’s the right decision. I’ll see if we can get someone to come today, but in reality I think we’ll be looking at tomorrow morning. Obviously we won’t know what really happened until Grace regains consciousness, but in the meantime at least we can start building up some kind of rough outline.”

  Until Grace regains consciousness.

  She grabbed the consultant’s arm as he rose from the seat. “She will?” she said. “She will regain consciousness?”

  Mr. Darko looked glad to be asked a question to which he had a firm and happy answer. “Yes,” he said. “She will. It’s a matter of when, not if.”

  She released his arm and sank into the sofa. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”

  22

  On Monday morning a pair of police officers in uniform rang on the Howeses’ doorbell. A small woman with pale red hair tied back into a bunch and pale blue eyes and a man of average height, slightly balding in spite of youthful features, both around thirty years old.

  “Good morning. Mrs. Howes? PC David Michaelides.” The man gestured at himself. “WPC Tara Cross.” He gestured at his colleague. “We’re from West Hampstead Police Station, just making some general inquiries in the area after the occurrence on Saturday night. Which I assume you are aware of?”

  “Grace?”

  “Yes. Grace Wild. A neighbor of yours, I believe. And according to her mother, Clare, a friend of your daughters? Would it be possible to come in and speak to you for a short time? Or we could come back later if it’s not convenient right now?”

  “Well, my husband’s not here right now—I don’t know if you’d rather come back when he’s at home?”

  PC Michaelides checked his notebook, running a fingertip down the lines. “Ah, yes, Leo Howes. Yes, we do need to speak to him. But not necessarily at the same time as you.” He shrugged, good-naturedly. “It’s up to you.”

  Adele looked behind her at the hallway. The girls were all engaged in silent study. Gordon was having a nap. “Fine,” she said, opening the door wider. “Sure, come in. How is she, by the way? Clare’s phone is switched off so I haven’t managed to get any news from anyone. Is she okay?”

  “She’s still in a coma, but stable.”

  “And do they have any idea yet . . . ?”

  WPC Cross shook her head. “Not yet. They’ve done scans, blood tests; I think they’ll be getting a fuller picture by now. But our last update was inconclusive.”

  Adele took them into the kitchen and made them cups of tea under the curious gaze of her three daughters.

  “No school today?” the WPC asked them all jauntily.

  Willow replied at once. “This is school. We’re home­schooled.”

  “Oh!” WPC Cross looked taken aback. “Lucky you!”

  Adele could see them taking in the detail of her home, the expensively thrown-together shambles of it. Mismatched kitchen units, reclaimed shop display cabinets full of vintage kitchenalia, piles of paperwork heaped up all over the place, scuffed wooden floorboards, and graffitied dining table. And her girls: Fern still in her oversized fleece pajamas with her head of asymmetric brown and turquoise hair, rubbing her silk comforter back and forth across her top lip; Willow, rocking hyperactively on her wooden chair, staring at them with undisguised fascination; and Catkin, imperious and disinterested, in her charity shop summer dress, bony white shoulders, knotty hair, grubby, threadbare Scandi slipper-socks.

  “Are you here about Grace?” said Willow. So outspoken. So confident. Almost preternaturally so. Adele had wanted to raise her girls to feel unassailable, the equal of anyone they encountered. She herself had been raised to be a good girl, to blend in, to put other people at their ease. When none of her three daughters had shown any early signs of being naturally compliant or sycophantic she’d let them be; pleases and thank-yous and sorrys were about as far as her expectations went. She led by example, hoping that if her daughters saw her being polite and charming, at some point on the road to adulthood they would follow suit.

  “Yes,” said WPC Cross. “That’s right.”

  “We were there,” Willow continued. “We were with her all night. You could ask us questions too.”

  Adele laughed nervously. “I think we can leave the police to do their jobs, Wills.”

  “Well, actually,” said the WPC, “we will probably want to talk to you. W
e’ll be talking to as many people as possible.”

  “Cool!” said Willow, jumping off her chair and doing a rain dance.

  Catkin looked at her in disgust and tutted. “Wills,” she hissed, “that’s not appropriate.”

  “Girls,” said Adele, handing mugs of tea to the police. “I’ll be next door with the police officers. Just carry on as you were. And no eavesdropping . . .” She directed this at Willow with a stern glance.

  The police officers stopped at the threshold to the living room and she could feel it in their body language: the impact of the otherness of her home. What was beautiful to her was peculiar to others; what was normal family clutter and dirt was squalor and laziness: the threadbare psychedelic sixties sofa; the high ceilings with the ornate plasterwork and ancient cobwebs, some as old as her children; the mishmash of artwork; the sumptuous chinoiserie wallpaper, exquisite but ripped in places, stained brown in others; the old dusty curls of paper streamers hanging from the seventies chandelier; the handprints on the huge picture windows; the paintwork peeling off in sharp-edged ribbons. And a smell probably, she couldn’t be sure, of dog and teenager and damp and dust. She hated seeing her home, her children, her life through the fresh eyes of the professionals and tradesmen who occasionally had cause to be here: the awful shock of objectivity.

  “Come in,” she said, “sit down.” She shooed the dog off the sofa, as though he wasn’t usually allowed to sit there, although he absolutely was.

  WPC Cross looked through the picture windows and out into the park. “Gosh,” she said, “what an amazing space.”

  Adele nodded, glad for the attention to be turned away from her. “Yes,” she said, as she always did. “We’re very lucky.”

  “How big is it?” asked PC Michaelides, standing at the window with his mug of tea.

  “Almost three acres.”

  “Wow,” said WPC Cross. “That’s massive.”

  “I know. It’s an incredible amount of space to have in central London.”

  “So,” said WPC Cross, consulting her notebook, “Saturday. You had a big party here? In the communal park?”

  “Yes. We have one every year. It’s an institution. It’s been going on for about thirty years.”

  “And who organizes it?”

  “Well, there’s a party committee; my husband is the chair. We have a meeting a few weeks beforehand and divide up the jobs, so it’s a group effort. I usually do the face painting. With my daughters.”

  “And did you do that this year?”

  “Yes. Well, at least, I started off doing it and then the girls, well, they’re all so big now, they kind of ended up running it themselves. And we had guests. So I left them to it after a couple of hours. Went back later on to help them clear up.”

  “And meanwhile you were here?” WPC Cross indicated the flat.

  “Well, we were out on the terrace all day.”

  “ ‘We’ being . . . ?”

  “Me; Leo, my husband; Gordon, my father-in-law; my sister, Zoe; and her husband, John. Their two little ones. Then Grace’s mother, Clare, came later, about fiveish, when the jazz started, with her youngest, Pip.”

  “And all this time, your daughters were on the face-painting stall?”

  “Yes. I’d say from two p.m., when the doors opened, to about five thirty, six o’clock.”

  “And where was Grace during this time?”

  “Not on the face-painting stall, no. But around and about. Yes.”

  “And was there anyone else? That you’re aware of? Just generally. Hanging out. Anyone who might have been spending time with Grace?”

  “Well, there’s the whole gang . . .”

  WPC Cross looked up at her with sharp interest.

  “The children who live around the park,” she said, “they’ve all grown up together. From babies. So when I say ‘gang,’ I don’t mean that in the ‘street gang’ sense of the word. Just a gang of friends. They’re all very close. They spend a lot of time together.”

  “And this group of friends, who does it consist of, would you say?”

  “Well, there’s my three, another girl called Tyler who lives in a flat at the other end.”

  “A girl? Called Tyler . . . ?”

  “Yes. Tyler Rednough. Her mother is Cecelia Rednough.”

  “Funny name for a girl, isn’t it? And how old is this Tyler?”

  “She’s thirteen.”

  “Same age as Grace?”

  “Yes. And my middle girl, Fern. And then there’s Dylan. He’s thirteen too. Nearly fourteen. He lives in the attic flat of this building.”

  “And his surname?”

  “Maxwell-Reid. Dylan Maxwell-Reid. His mother is called Fiona.”

  “Thank you. Anyone else?”

  “Well, there was Robbie on Saturday. Robbie is Dylan’s half brother. He’s ten years older. Has quite severe learning difficulties. He usually lives in residential care but he was home on Saturday, for the party. And when he’s around, he always hangs out with Dylan. They’re kind of inseparable.”

  “That’s great, thank you, Mrs. Howes. And if you could give me some sense of the timescale of events on Saturday, from your perspective?”

  “From what sort of time? You mean, right from the beginning of the party, or . . . ?”

  “Well, shall we say from around five thirty, when you helped pack up the face-painting stand?”

  “Right, well, okay. I told them they could go. I mean, some smaller children had got to the face paints and the whole thing was chaos, so I said I’d do it. They all headed off to the top of the hill in the park, their normal place for hanging out.”

  “ ‘They’ being the whole gang?”

  “Yes, all of them. Oh, and Max. I forgot Max.”

  “And Max is . . . ?”

  “He’s younger, about nine. Bit of a loner, but hangs around with them on the off chance of an impromptu game of football. That’s all he wants to do, as far as I can tell. I don’t know his surname and I’m not sure where he lives, I think on the other side, on the terrace. And I think his parents are American.”

  “So, at five thirty they all went off on their own?”

  “Correct. And I packed up the stall, took the folding table and gazebo to the middle of the park; that’s where we leave everything for the van to collect this morning; they take it to a storage unit. So at about six o’clock I rejoined our guests, here. Leo did a barbecue. The children came back for an hour or so at about seven p.m., to have something to eat. Then they all disappeared again.”

  “Including Grace?”

  “Yes, including Grace. But her little sister, Pip, stayed on the terrace with us. She’s a bit of a mummy’s girl, not so keen on being part of the clique.”

  “Clique?” WPC Cross looked up at her again with those penetratingly clear blue eyes.

  “Yes. Gang. You know. Anyway, we all helped clear up after the barbecue. Drank some more. Talked. Then at about nine o’clock it was obvious that Grace’s mum, Clare, had probably had a bit too much to drink. I don’t think she’s much of a drinker. Small bones, you know?” She laughed nervously. “Anyway, she was a bit wobbly on her feet and Leo offered to get her home but Pip said she could manage.”

  “And Pip is Grace’s sister?”

  “Yes. She’s twelve. Very sensible girl. Anyway, that was at about nine. Then I made Leo go over and check on them both—I was a bit worried, not sure Pip could handle it by herself. So he took the dog and went over and spoke to Pip . . .”

  “And this was roughly what time?”

  “I guess, just after nine?”

  “Okay, thank you.”

  “Leo came back about twenty minutes later, then my sister and her family left. Her children had fallen asleep on the sofa. In their pajamas. They got a minicab back to Willesden.”

  “And then?”

  “Leo and I tidied up. Went back onto the terrace. Had another glass of wine.”

  “And did you see any of the children during th
is time?”

  “Yes, we saw them come down the hill and head into the playground. At about a quarter to ten.”

  “Did you speak to them?”

  “No, I waved, but they didn’t see.”

  “And was Grace with them?”

  And there it was. The black spot on Adele’s consciousness, the moment she had replayed and replayed until she’d driven herself almost insane the past two nights. She had seen the children as an amorphous mass that had looked roughly the right size and shape. She could not remember who had been in the group. Not specifically.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know,” she said, her face filling with color, her heart racing with nerves, feeling inexplicably culpable.

  “That’s okay, Mrs. Howes. That’s fine. We can put the rest of the picture together talking to other people. You’ve given us loads. Plenty. We’ll go and ring on a few doorbells. And if we wanted to speak to your husband and your children, when would be a good time to come back?”

  “Well, Leo normally gets back from work around six, unless he’s with clients, in which case it might be a lot later. I can call him now, if you like? See what his plans are?”

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll just try again after six and if he’s not here, we’ll maybe get him to come into the station.”

  “The station?”

  “Yes. Just for convenience. But really, whatever’s easier.” WPC Tara Cross put her barely drunk mug of tea on the coffee table, put her neat leather bag over her shoulder, exchanged a look with PC Michaelides, and got up to leave.

  In the hallway she popped her head into the kitchen. “Bye, girls, see you later!”

  They all looked up from their textbooks and Willow jumped to her feet and ran to the doorway. “Are you coming back to ask us questions?”

  “Possibly,” said WPC Cross. “We’ll see how it goes.”