Creeping Ivy (3 page)

‘Antonia?’ she said urgently into the receiver as soon as she had picked it up.

‘Trish, thank God you’re there. And thank you for your message. I should have known you’d ring. It’s … it’s … I can’t … oh, you know.’

‘I can imagine.’ Trish turned down the sound on the television. ‘Antonia, has there been any news?’

‘No. Nothing. It’s hell.’

‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Look, I don’t want to get in your way or anything, but would it help if I came round?’

‘Would you?’ Antonia sounded so surprised that Trish wondered whether her increasing reluctance to accept invitations to her cousin’s stultifying dinner parties had been misinterpreted as rejection. ‘It’s terrible here. The press are outside and they keep banging on the door all the time, wanting me to tell them how I feel. How the hell do they
think
I feel? I’m desperate and I could slaughter bloody Nicky. She’s a fully trained nanny: how could she let something like this happen?’

‘God knows. Look, I’ll come straight round, but as soon as it feels as if I’m in the way, you must tell me. OK? Promise?’

‘All right. The police may be here when you arrive. They’ve rung to say they want to talk to me, God knows why. Apparently they haven’t got any clues yet. Oh Trish, what am I going to do?’

‘Is Robert with you?’

‘No. He’s got some crisis on at the office. He couldn’t stay.’

For a moment Trish was speechless. No one’s work crisis could possibly be more important than this.

‘Hang on, Antonia,’ she said tersely. ‘I’ll be round as soon as I can.’

Bloody Robert, Trish thought as she put down the receiver; that’s absolutely bloody typical. As soon as there’s any trouble, he’s off. How could he? He may not care about Charlotte, but even
he
must have some idea of how Antonia’s feeling. And he owes her. My God, how he owes her.

She grabbed her car keys and some money out of the jar that stood between the tea-bags and the dried milk powder, and was halfway to the door before she remembered the state in which Antonia lived. Dithering uncharacteristically by the front door for a moment, Trish told herself that her present sloppy get-up was irrelevant in the circumstances; Antonia probably wouldn’t even notice.

Even so, she ran back up the spiral stairs to the gallery where her bed and clothes were, wrenched off her T-shirt and changed into an almost-pressed shirt, socks and boots, and a linen jacket.

Chapter Two

‘Come off it, Nicky. Charlotte didn’t just disappear, and she didn’t wander off into the pond like you said she must of, or meet up with one of her schoolfriends or anything.’ There was real anger mixed in with the impatience in the older policeman’s voice. ‘We’ve checked everyone on your list, and it was a right waste of time.’

‘I told you it would be.’

‘Yeah, but you didn’t say why. And you should’ve, you know. You should’ve told us everything you knew straight away. Still, better late than never. You’d best tell us the whole lot now, however bad it is.’

Nicky Bagshot felt her eyes go blank. She stared down at the grey plastic top of the table that kept him away from her and struggled to get herself sorted.

It was her fault Lottie’d disappeared. She knew that. There was no getting away from it, and she wasn’t trying to. She shouldn’t have turned her back; not for a minute. But it wasn’t fair of them to accuse her of doing something to hurt Lottie. She could never do that, not in a million years. They must see that.

It was the sort of thing the police always did. When they didn’t have anything on you, they forced you into saying something they could twist into evidence against you. But they shouldn’t be doing it like this, not while Lottie was still lost. They should be spending their time out there, looking for her.

‘P’raps she was nicked by aliens, Sarge,’ said the younger of the two.

His sarcasm didn’t bother Nicky. In a way, knowing he was stupid enough to make sneery jokes about something this important made her feel less bad.

‘That it, Nicky? Come down in a UFO, did they, and kidnapped her?’

‘I’ve told you all along,’ she said, pushing back her fringe, which felt sticky with sweat from her forehead. ‘Charlotte was quite safe in the queue for the big slide. When I heard another child fall behind me and. start screaming, I looked round to see what had happened. Anyone would’ve done the same.’

‘And then what?’

‘Like I said before, it was a small boy who’d jumped off the swings and tripped. His knees were bleeding and no one was helping him. I did what I could for him – someone had to. When I’d finished seeing to him, I turned back to check on Charlotte and she’d gone. She hadn’t made any noise at all, and everyone I asked said they hadn’t seen anything – no little girl in trouble or upset, nor anyone struggling or protesting.’

‘Sounds as though Dave’s alien theory must be right after all,’ said the older man with a stupid lying smile. ‘You must’ve heard something, Nicky. Children don’t just disappear in a puff of smoke, now do they? Come on, love, you must see it’s not a very good story. It’ll be easier for all of us if you tell us what really happened.’

‘I have told you,’ said Nicky. ‘I’ve told you over and over. It’s not my fault if you don’t believe me. There was no noise and no trouble and no one saw anything. There’s no way I could’ve known anything was happening to her.’

‘Yeah. You’ve told us. Trouble is, Nicky-love, it doesn’t hang together, does it? You must see that. Clever girl like you.’

She put both hands over her eyes. As she pressed her fingers into the closed lids, she could see brightly coloured figures from the park. There was Charlotte in her blue skirt and red tights and shirt. The tights were too hot for the weather, but she’d been cross and wanted to wear them. It seemed silly to force her into something else just because it was more suitable, and anyway Nicky liked her to have what she wanted when she could. It made up a bit for all the other things she wasn’t allowed to have.

Then there was the boy. She could see him, too, fizzing on the inside of her lit-up red eyelids. He looked about a year younger than Charlotte and he was wearing little thin brown shorts that left his bony knees bare. He would’ve been all right if he’d simply tripped over when he was running like most of them did. But he hadn’t. For some reason he’d let go one of the chains of the swing at the furthest point of its arc. The swing seat banging into his back had probably bruised it and scared him, too, but what had got her going was his screams and the blood on his knees. She couldn’t have left him like that, not for anything. Not screaming like that.

Antonia always made her take a bum bag with a first-aid kit whenever she went anywhere with Lottie, and so she had lots of antiseptic wipes and plaster in all different sizes. By the time she’d cleaned the scrapes and picked out the grit and little bits of bark, his short, shrill screams had turned into pride-saving whimpers. She’d asked him to choose the plasters he liked and he’d got quite interested in the pictures of bears that were printed on the wrong side. She’d let him play with one while she fixed the other two firmly to his knees.

It was comforting, that feeling of strength and stickiness around the wounds. She could remember it easily. With the blood staunched and the scrape hidden, it was all much less frightening; and a big bit of plaster gave you a nice feeling of importance, too, when you were his age.

He’d got calm enough to smile at her by the time she’d told him she was done and set him on his feet. Before he’d said anything, a woman had come running up and pulled him out of Nicky’s arms. He’d started crying again then, of course, and the woman had turned on Nicky and told her off in the most snotty voice – even worse than Antonia’s.

She’d been a typical weekend mother, not knowing anything about what her child could manage or what he needed. She’d let him swing on his own when he was far too little for it. And she was so ignorant about who he really was that she didn’t even recognise his screams when she heard them. Too busy gossiping with the other mothers, that was her problem, and probably saying how boring it was when your nanny had a day off. And how inefficient she was and ate too much, and used too much toilet cleaner. They all did that. Then she’d had the cheek to bawl Nicky out for helping! It wasn’t fair. She should have felt grateful – and guilty.
Guilty
.

Nicky quickly took her hands away from her eyes.

‘Why aren’t you out in the park, asking people what they saw?’ she said. ‘It’s Sunday so they’ll be the same ones there today. And even if none of them noticed what happened to Charlotte, lots of them must’ve seen that mother slagging me off for helping her boy. She yelled at me like I was some kind of animal, and all I’d done was what she should’ve been doing. Ask them. They’ll remember her. Then you might believe me. And one of them might’ve seen something that could help you find Charlotte. That’s what you should be doing. She’s lost and you’re not even trying to find her.’

Her eyes felt hot and she clenched her hands together on the table to keep the tears well inside.

‘We’ve got people out there,’ said the sergeant, sounding a bit more reasonable and kinder, too. ‘We just thought you might’ve remembered something yourself that would help us ask them the right questions.’

Nicky still didn’t trust him in spite of his reasonableness. She’d read John le Carré’s books and she knew why interrogators changed their tactics like that: it was to trick you into telling them things they thought you were hiding.

She hadn’t ever thought she’d like books like his, but the principal of her training college had lent her a copy of
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
once after they’d been talking about novels, and she’d liked it straight off for the secrecy and the awful quiet pain of it all. After that, she’d read his others, too, as soon as she could get hold of them, but she hadn’t liked all of them; only the ones with Smiley in them. She really did like him and if she could keep thinking of him, she’d be all right, even if these two men went on shouting at her.

If she’d ever had a father, he might have been like Smiley: quiet and kind and not very happy, and so decent that it hurt. She’d go on thinking about him and not about the policemen shouting at her, pretending they thought she’d done something to hurt Lottie. She hadn’t done anything wrong except turn her back for a minute or two. She shouldn’t have done it, but that’s all it was. Turning her back. Nothing worse, whatever they said.

‘Well, love?’

‘Well, what? There isn’t any more to tell,’ said Nicky, digging her short nails into the palm of the other hand and wishing it wasn’t so sweaty. ‘I’ve told you over and over. When I saw she wasn’t there in the playground, I asked everyone there if they’d seen her, but because it was a Saturday of course they hadn’t.’

‘Saturday? Why does that make a difference?’ asked the older of the two officers, looking really surprised. Nicky sighed; she couldn’t believe he didn’t know.

‘In the week it’s nearly all nannies there at that time in the afternoon, and we mostly know each other and each other’s kids. We look out for them. If it had been a weekday, someone would have seen what Charlotte was doing and stopped her, or warned me. But the parents hardly know their own kids, let alone other people’s. They’re out working all day in the week; they leave before breakfast and don’t get back till their kids are asleep. The nannies live with them and … and know them.’

Nicky paused to wipe her eyes with a grimy, hardened lump of toilet paper she’d found in her pocket. Antonia had ordered her to call it loo paper when she was talking to Lottie and she usually remembered, but she always called it toilet paper to herself and it felt like giving Antonia two fingers, which was great.

‘Then at weekends the nannies go off and these mothers take over. They take their children to the park, dump them in the playground, and sit talking to each other and not paying attention. That’s why none of them saw anything and why they were all so awful when I said she was lost. And it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t!’

‘OK, OK. Calm down. So, you saw that Charlotte had gone. Fetch Nicky a cup of tea, will you, Constable?’

The younger one looked as though he hated being given orders like that and slouched out of the interview room to show how far above fetching and carrying he was.

‘There, he’s gone, Nicky-love. It’s just you and me. We can sort it all now. What did you do next?’

‘When I’d got nowhere with the parents?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I asked all the children I knew, but none of them could tell me anything useful. They’d seen Charlotte all right when we arrived, but none of them noticed what happened to her. And so then I just ran through the whole park, calling for her and stopping everyone I met to ask if they’d seen her. I went on and on till the gates were shutting and then I came here. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.’

Nicky felt the tears again, hot and wet like blood, but she wasn’t going to let them spill out in front of him. Not if she could help it. He was less awful than the other one, but even so she hadn’t let anyone see her crying for years and years, and she wasn’t going to start now.

‘What about Charlotte’s parents?’

‘What about them?’ She didn’t even want to think about Antonia. Telling her in person what had happened was going to be awful. The thought of it made Nicky’s stomach start boiling. Robert was all right; he’d understood she hadn’t done it deliberately, but Antonia’d never see that. And if it came to a showdown, Robert would side with Antonia. Nicky knew that well enough. In a way he’d have to, even if it wasn’t fair.

‘Here’s your tea, love,’ said the sergeant. ‘Thanks, Constable.’

Nicky took a sip, but it tasted awful.

‘OK, love. Now tell me something. Why’d you come back here this morning? You reported what had happened yesterday. I reckon you came back this morning to tell us something. What was it?’

‘Nothing,’ said Nicky, pushing the plastic cup away from her. ‘I didn’t come to tell you anything. I came to ask if you’d found her, because I knew you’d never bother to phone someone like me, and Antonia isn’t due home till later this morning. I wanted to find out straight away.’