The Girls in the Garden Read online

“Where?”

  “On the hill. When I was looking for Grace. He came down the hill and he looked really weird.”

  “How old is he, this Max?”

  “Nine,” said Pip.

  “Too young to have had anything to do with it then?”

  “Yes. But he might have seen someone. He might have seen something happening. And someone needs to talk to Rhea. The old lady. Fergus’s owner. She lives in the flats at the top of the hill; her balcony overlooks the place where I found Grace. And Gordon. Willow’s granddad. He was out there, when I was in the playground with Tyler and Willow and Fern. He was wandering about in the park. He might have seen something. And Dylan. They really, really need to talk to Dylan. He was with her nearly all day and night.” Memories and fragments of memories spun around her head, and then came another, suddenly, hard and fast.

  “Leo,” she said. “They have to talk to Leo. I think . . .” She felt her whole body fill with ice as she talked, with the frozen enormity of what she was saying. “I think Leo had something to do with it.”

  “What?”

  “He was out there. Remember? Before it happened. And . . .” She was sure now. So sure. “There’s something not right about him.”

  Her mother stared at her with her jaw left open. “Leo?” she said. “Our Leo?”

  “He’s not our Leo.” Pip tutted. “And that’s exactly what I mean. Everyone thinks he’s so great. He thinks he’s so great. Grace thinks he’s so great. But he’s not. He’s weird. Do you know”—she was gabbling—“once, ages ago, like the first or second time I went to their house, I walked past Willow’s bedroom and Leo was in there, on Willow’s bed. Holding Tyler in his arms. Holding hands with her.” She left a pause for her words to sink in. “Seriously,” she said. “That seriously happened.”

  Clare rested a hand on her thigh, pushing a lock of hair from her face with her other hand. “Pip,” she said, “there were dozens of people in the park on Saturday night and if it turns out that there was some kind of sexual assault on Grace, then the police will be launching a full-blown investigation and if that’s the case, then you really, really can’t go around casting aspersions on our neighbors. Leo is a good, good man . . .”

  “But what about Phoebe?” she cried. “Phoebe Rednough. Leo was her boyfriend when she died. Of a drug overdose. In the same park. In virtually the same exact place! Isn’t it obvious? Can’t you see? History repeating itself? Can’t you see?”

  “Who is Phoebe Rednough?”

  “She was Tyler’s mum’s sister. You know, the one who was found dead in the park when she was fifteen.”

  Clare nodded, thinking of the bench in the Rose Garden with the girl’s name on it and then suddenly remembering something her mother had said the first time she’d come to see them in their new flat, something about a girl dying in a private park years earlier. Could it have been Virginia Park she was remembering?

  As she thought this the door opened and a nurse appeared with another woman, middle-aged, slightly overweight, wearing a cotton jacket over a blue tunic. The nurse pointed out Clare to the other woman and then left the room. “Hello,” the woman said, “Mrs. Wild? My name’s Jo Mackie. I’m a forensic nurse examiner. I think your daughter’s consultant told you to expect me?”

  Clare sat up straight and nodded. “I wasn’t expecting you so early.”

  “Pure luck,” she said in a gentle Scots accent. “Good timing. I was just over Islington way. And, obviously, it’s been a while now since the incident?”

  “Thirty-six hours,” said Clare.

  “Yes. Quite a while. So there’s no time to waste.” She looked at Pip and smiled. “Is that your sister in there?” she asked pleasantly.

  Pip nodded.

  “Well, I’ve spoken to Mr. Darko and he says she’s stable enough for me to start straightaway. So. If it’s okay with you?” She gestured at Clare, who nodded, and then she was gone.

  Pip didn’t know what a forensic nurse examiner was exactly, but she knew what forensics were and she knew what a nurse was and she knew what an examination was and she could take an educated guess.

  She thought again of the bunched-up top, the yanked-down shorts, and she thought of Leo on Willow’s bed looking up at her with those darkly hooded eyes and she prayed to herself: Please, Jo Mackie, don’t find anything on my sister. Please. Jo Mackie, find nothing at all.

  25

  The doorbell rang again about two hours after the police constables had left. Since their visit Adele hadn’t been able to concentrate on the girls’ lesson at all. She’d set them a reading objective, left them all curled up in various spots around the flat reading their set pieces while she sat at the kitchen table staring through the window at the park beyond. Gordon was out there with his physiotherapist. She could just see them in the distance. There were other people too, sitting in the sun, making the most of another glorious summer’s day. It felt as though summer was happening now only to other people, no longer anything to do with her. She got heavily to her feet and went to the hall to answer the door.

  “Hello again!” It was PC Michaelides, alone this time. “Sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Howes, but I’ve just had a call from WPC Cross; she’s been up at the hospital talking to Mrs. Wild, and there’s been a further development. Regarding Grace. I wonder if I could just have a short word with you about it. Won’t take more than five minutes.”

  “She is okay, isn’t she?”

  “Well, no change as far as we know.” He wiped his feet on the doormat, despite days of dry, sunny weather, and followed Adele into the kitchen.

  He turned down her offer of a hot drink, said he’d had enough tea and coffee this morning to wire himself up to the National Grid. Then, once they were both seated at the table, he ran his finger absentmindedly over the etched-in grooves of the wooden surface and said, “They’ve had the test results back, for Grace. The MRI and the bloods, and apparently there is no evidence of any kind of head trauma or injury commensurate with her current condition. But . . .” He looked up at her with his chocolate eyes and said, “They found drugs in her system. And alcohol.”

  “What!”

  “Well, yes. Quite a surprise. I mean, obviously. She’s very young. Although, according to your daughter earlier, maybe mature for her age?”

  She nodded, then shook her head. “What sort of drugs . . . ?”

  “Er, sleeping pills. Apparently. Prescription ones. Heavy-duty.”

  She shook her head before he’d even asked her the question. “We don’t have anything like that. Not in our house. I’m anti all those kind of nonessential drugs. You know, the painkillers and muscle relaxants and decongestants, that kind of thing. I treat those sorts of smaller problems homeopathically. Or naturally.”

  “Herbs and stuff, you mean?”

  “Yes. Sort of. If anyone has trouble sleeping in this family it’s chamomile and essential oils and half an hour of meditation before bed.” She laughed, overloud, overinsistent.

  “I see.” He smiled. “So they’re unlikely to have originated from here then?”

  “Highly,” she said. “Definitely, in fact.”

  “Great,” he said. “But maybe you could ask them to think about who else might have had access to that type of thing. Older teenagers, maybe? And the alcohol. Did they see anyone giving Grace a drink? That kind of thing.”

  “I did see something,” Adele said, a memory suddenly opening up in her consciousness. “When I was face-painting. Around two p.m. I saw Grace and Dylan leave the park together. They looked like they were up to something. She had a shoulder bag with her and they were looking inside it and at the time I thought they were going to the shops to get sweets or something. It’s possible they were going to get alcohol, I suppose. Or something worse?”

  PC Michaelides rippled his fingertips over the tabletop as though it was a piano keyboard and then jumped nimbly to his feet. “Right, well, that’ll do for now. I’ve got some more calls to make and we’ll be back
later to speak to your husband and to your daughters, and in the—” He stopped and looked up as a cacophony of sound came from the direction of the terrace and Gordon and his physiotherapist appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “Oy oy,” said Gordon, heaving his bad leg over the step and eyeing the PC unpleasantly, “back so soon?”

  Adele saw the PC take in the unusual form of Gordon: the improbable hair, the garish shirt, the swollen girth, and then, last of all, the prosthetic foot. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “I’m PC Michaelides. That’s a fine-looking foot you’ve got there.”

  “Yes,” agreed Gordon. “Fucking marvelous. Taking some getting used to, but fuck me, the things they can do these days. You know, if I’d lost a foot even fifteen years ago I’d have been stuck with a fucking peg and a crutch.”

  “Recent addition then?”

  “Yes, yes.” Gordon hobbled to the table and flopped down heavily on the bench. “Blasted diabetes. Had to have it chopped off. They were going to do it in the CAR, that’s where I live, but I thought, Fuck me, I love this country but you’re not sawing me up with a knife. Straight back here to the good old NHS. They took it off last month. Biggest relief of my life. Christ, the pain of that foot by the end. It was unspeakable.”

  “So, do you live here, sir?”

  “Live here? Well, yes and no. It’s my flat. I own it—”

  “You own half of it, Gordon.”

  “Okay, okay. Half of it. Yes. But currently I am residing here with my son and his family while I recover from my operation and get used to this thing.”

  “Talking of which, Gordon,” said his physio, “we’ve still got another ten minutes.” She tapped her watch.

  Gordon sighed and pulled himself heavily to his feet. “Love you and leave you,” he muttered before hobbling to the kitchen door.

  “Were you here, sir?” said the PC. “On Saturday night?”

  “Yes, I most certainly was.”

  “In which case, sir, I wonder if it would be possible to speak to you later on, when we come back to talk to the rest of the family?”

  “Nothing to hide, be delighted to.”

  “That’s great, sir. Thank you. I’ll see you this evening.”

  After he’d gone, PC Michaelides turned to Adele and smiled. “Quite a character,” he said.

  “You could say that.”

  “Anyway. I’ve taken up way too much of your time already today. Forgive me. I’ll be around the area if you think of anything else. If anything occurs to you. I’m off to see”—he leafed through his notebook—“Fiona Maxwell-Reid now. Dylan’s mum. She lives upstairs from you, I believe?”

  “Yes,” said Adele, smoothing down the skirt of her summer dress. “But I’m not sure you’ll get much out of her. She’s very introverted. Keeps herself to herself. She doesn’t get involved in stuff in the park. Or anywhere else for that matter.”

  “Well, thank you for the warning. I’ll see what I can do.” He stood in the doorway, looked upward at the top floors of the house. Then he looked back at Adele and smiled. “See you later.”

  “Yes,” she said, “see you later.”

  “Gordon,” Adele said, finding him a moment later emerging from the bathroom with a crumpled newspaper in his hand and his fly not quite done up properly. Something had occurred to her while Gordon was chatting with the PC about his foot. Something she’d almost but not quite said, because she’d realized as the words had hovered at the tip of her tongue that once it was said it could not be unsaid.

  “Yes, Mrs. H. What can I do for you?”

  “Just wondering: when you were undergoing surgery—you know, before and after—did you have any trouble sleeping?”

  “Dear God, did I ever. You try sleeping with an open wound for a foot.”

  “And did they give you anything? To help you sleep?”

  “Sweeties, you mean?”

  “Well, yes. Sleeping pills.”

  “I should say they did. Jesus Christ.”

  “And do you have any left?”

  “Oh, dear girl”—his face lit up—“don’t tell me the old hippy-­dippy magic potions aren’t working? You’ll be telling me you think the children should go to proper school and be taught by proper teachers next. Heh heh.” He squeezed her hand conspiratorially. “Leave it with me, Mrs. H. I’ll be right back.”

  She watched him hobble down the hallway toward his room.

  “Thin end of the wedge!” he shouted joyfully over his shoulder. “It’ll be microwave chips for tea next! Heh heh.”

  She chewed at the inside of her cheek while she waited for him. It seemed to take him a long time and the longer it took him, the more she chewed her cheek, pressing the flesh closer to her teeth with the tip of her index finger. Come on, Gordon, she chanted under her breath, come on.

  Finally he appeared, looking flustered and confused. In the palm of his hand he held out two small blue and white pills. “Mrs. H.,” he said, solemnly. “We appear to have a problem. Last time I looked I had half a fucking pot of these things. Now I’ve got two.” He paused, jiggling the pills in the palm of his hand. “Someone,” he said at last, “has been stealing my sweeties.”

  “Well,” said Jo Mackie, a while later. “No sign of any trauma or injury. The hymen is intact.”

  Clare felt an overwhelming upsurge of relief pass through her. She reached behind her to find the wall.

  “No bruising. No scratches. I’ve taken a swab but I think it’s safe to say that Grace has not been raped, vaginally or anally. Also, your younger daughter mentioned that Grace’s top had been pulled up. So I’ve examined the breasts for trauma but there are no signs of anything. And I’ve taken swabs from that area.”

  An image passed through Clare’s mind so terrible that she needed to blink several times to dislodge it.

  “And also from inside her mouth. Now, unfortunately, because of the time that has elapsed since your daughter was attacked, it’s possible that any sperm traces in the mouth may have been destroyed by salivary enzymes. But we might get lucky. It’s not been quite two days yet and I’ll take these swabs myself to the lab and wait with the technician. We’ll move ­everything along superfast.”

  Clare blinked again. Sperm. On her daughter. In her daughter. No.

  “Is that likely?” she said. “I mean—in these cases. Is that what happens?”

  Jo Mackie smiled at her. “Anything can happen, Clare. But, hopefully, given the lack of any other signs of sexual assault, it didn’t happen in this case. I’m really just going through the tick list.”

  Clare felt a small hurt of hope inside her heart. A tick list. No sperm. Just a tick list.

  “So.” Jo Mackie clipped down the lid of a metal case that she’d filled with swabs and samples. “I should have some news for you in a few hours. Or, better still, no news at all. But either way, I’ll be back.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “And in the meantime, off you go.” She held open the door of the small office they’d been talking in, a quiet smile on her face.

  Clare looked at her questioningly.

  “You can see her now.”

  “I can?”

  “Yes. I asked the nurse in charge. She said it’s fine now.”

  “Oh.” Clare touched her heart. She hadn’t seen her daughter for thirty-six hours. “Can I take my other daughter in? Do you think?”

  “Maybe just you for now,” she said. “Get used to it. Make yourself strong first. Right.” She picked up the metal case. “I need to run. I’ll see you later.”

  She watched Jo Mackie leaving with her box full of bits of her child’s DNA and then she headed toward the intensive-care ward, her breath held tight inside her lungs.

  Grace was beautiful in her repose. The bruises to her face, bruises Clare could barely remember from the night they’d been inflicted, had faded to early evening storm clouds. Her skin was not broken. Clare wondered where all the blood had come from. A small hump on the bridge of her nose led h
er to conclude it had been a simple nosebleed. She remembered the thoughts of brain damage, of internal bleeding, of ineradicable facial scarring that had spun around her head in the back of the ambulance. Before the test results had come through she’d thought, crazily, that Grace had fallen out of a tree.

  Out of a tree!

  Like a plucky, foolhardy kid!

  She’d thought that her daughter was still a little girl.

  She looked strangely adult now lying here with her chalky skin, her unmade-up face. Clare thanked the nurse who had silently passed her a cup of water. She rested the cup on the bedside table and reached out for Grace’s hand. “Is it okay,” she said, “if I touch her?”

  “Of course,” the nurse said kindly. “And do talk to her. She’ll like to hear the sound of your voice.”

  “Will she?”

  She thought of Chris and herself talking to her pregnant bump. Someone had told them to do that. Told them that it meant that when the baby was born it would immediately recognize its parents’ voices. That that would be a good thing. It had seemed an abstract concept at the time, pregnant with her first child, no possible notion of what a parent–child bond would feel like in reality as opposed to in theory. And now that person who’d been hidden away inside her body was hidden away inside her own head and once more she was being asked to talk to someone who couldn’t hear her, being asked to accept and act upon an abstract notion.

  How could it be possible, Clare thought, that she knew so little about a person she’d once grown inside her? A person who had taken milk from her body and slept on her shoulder? Who had, at one stage, given her a bullet-pointed rundown every day of what she’d done at school, missing not one detail? And now, for all Clare knew, she might have been abused, her body might have been violated.

  She took Grace’s hand. It was warm and pulsed with life. “Hello, my baby girl,” she said. “I’m sorry I haven’t seen you for so long. They wouldn’t let me. But I’ve been here the whole time. Me. And your sister. We’ve both been here. And all the news is good so far. Your head hasn’t been hurt. And a nice lady just came to look at some other parts of you and she says those haven’t been hurt either. I hope you didn’t mind her coming to look at you? Anyway, your face looks fine. No scars. Just some bruises. And we’re all just waiting for you to wake up now, baby girl. Wake up and tell us what happened.”