The Red House (12 page)

Cambourne didn’t exist when I was growing up; this area used to be part of the ubiquitous farmland that framed my village life. Now it’s become relentless iterations of coordinated housing, which contrast with the singular police station. The building is hyper-modern. What isn’t green copper is glass. I’m led through a hotel-like atrium to an office with a floor-to-ceiling window. It must normally give way to a view, but the summer night has gone dark at last. I can only see myself.

The person I’m to speak with is distractingly pregnant, and dressed in ordinary business clothes rather than a uniform. Her only jewellery is a plain wedding band. I feel like my engagement ring is gaudy in comparison.

‘Ms Wright-Llewellyn,’ the woman greets me formally, introducing herself as Detective Inspector Chloe Frohmann.

I’m glad that I’d dressed conservatively to meet Patrick. It feels exposed enough being subjected to questions; I wouldn’t want to bare my shoulders or cleavage or thighs
to the suspicious, tired glances of the men I’d passed on the way into this private room, or to this Detective Inspector, who seems like she wouldn’t approve.

‘Have a seat,’ she continues, gesturing to the other side of the table. ‘It was good of you to come.’ She isn’t even looking at me. She’s sorting through pages of notes, reordering them, then tapping them together on the table to align them. Our London address is on one, and the name of our Cambridge hotel. Maxwell’s name is in the middle of a long paragraph on another. I wait.

The Inspector sets the papers aside and leans forward, far forward to reach the table over her belly.

‘Where’s Maxwell?’ I ask, interrupting whatever she’d been about to say. I need to see him. I need him to undo what the accusation has stirred in my imagination.

‘We’d like to hear your version without him. Do you know where he went this evening?’

‘Yes. That is, he told me where he went. Highfields Caldecote. He was looking for me.’
Surely
, I realise,
that must be true. If he wanted to do something illicit, he wouldn’t do it in the very place he was expecting me to be.

‘But you weren’t there.’

‘No. No, I – I’d told him that that’s where I would be, but I changed my mind.’

‘Without telling him.’

‘Yes, well. We’d had a fight. An
argument
,’ I correct. I wouldn’t want her to think that we’d had a physical altercation. ‘I changed my plans to meet my friend in Cambridge instead.’

‘Name of this friend?’

‘Patrick Bell.’ The Inspector writes it on one of those
pieces of paper, along with some key words from my brief explanation.

‘Why were you planning to go to Highfields Caldecote?’

Maxwell must have said. She’s testing me. ‘I grew up there. I was a child there,’ I correct myself.

‘Years?’

‘1981 to 1989,’ I answer without hesitation. Those years are burnt into my brain.

‘As the Wright-Llewellyns?’

‘Just Llewellyn. The Wrights are my adoptive family.’ We’d discussed carefully which name to put first. Together we eventually settled on Wright, so that I’d be alphabetically sorted near my adopted siblings. ‘My parents were Joseph and Isobel. Isobel with an “o”.’

‘Address?’

‘Meadow View. That’s what I remember. It was painted peach, at least it was back then.’

The Detective Inspector leans back in her chair, her belly making a hill over the table. It’s mesmerising, and has a kind of energy around it. I remember my mother’s bump, and how protective she’d been of it and the baby inside.

‘Did you know Rowena Davies?’ the Inspector asks, startling me out of my reverie.

I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry, who?’

‘In the white house with the red barn. Back then she would have been … forty-five, maybe? She worked at Hinchingbrooke Hospital.’ I ignore the coincidence of this Rowena Davies’ place of employment. The police have reason to ask me about Maxwell. My father’s job at that same hospital isn’t their business. ‘She had a daughter,
Morgan, who would have been a teenager then. Maybe she babysat for you?’

‘No.’ The times that Mum and Dad went out, we had looked after ourselves. Besides, ‘What does this have to do with anything? I thought one of Maxwell’s students lived there.’

‘Indeed. Morgan Davies’ daughter Fiona. Has Maxwell had any previous relationships with students or teenagers?’

‘He hasn’t had any relationship with a student or teenager since he was no longer one himself,’ I say precisely. The Inspector’s sloppy question had been purposeful in its implication that there is a current relationship.

‘Is he attracted to underage women, for example on the Internet?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You check his computer?’

I narrow my eyes. ‘If I say I have, you’ll ask me why I was suspicious. If I say I haven’t, you’ll ask me how I know.’

‘Of course. Reasonable, if you ask me.’

‘Look at me. I’m five years older than he is. He near worships me. I hardly think that’s the behaviour of a predator of teenagers.’

The Inspector looks me up and down, as if taking inventory, then has to shift her whole weight over to lean forward and write something down.

‘Must be uncomfortable,’ I add spitefully, about her temporary girth.

She acts like that wasn’t a direct hit, but she winced when I said it. She shuffles papers again, not meeting my eyes, then drops a bomb of her own: ‘Any accusations?’

I suck in a breath.
She knows.

Then,
No, she’s fishing
. And what does it matter if she does know? He hasn’t done anything wrong.

I admit it: ‘Three years ago, a girl in one of the choirs he directed sent an inappropriate photo of herself to his phone. He immediately reported this to the headmistress, who called in the girl’s parents. At first the girl claimed that they had a relationship, which she later confessed was an elaborate fantasy to cover her embarrassment. Meanwhile, her parents had whipped the families of the other girls into such a frenzy that the one girl’s denials were hardly heard. Rightly, there were no formal repercussions, but he was encouraged to “move on”, which he did.’

‘You were together then, were you?’

How much detail does she have?
‘No, but that’s what I know.’ I don’t phrase it as
That’s what he told me.
Even inside my head that sounds weak.

‘And now he’s’ – paper shuffling again – ‘taking a job working with a girls’ choir?’ Our eyes meet.

‘Yes,’ I say through my teeth. ‘And if it were a boys’ choir, you’d make something out of that, too.’

‘Well, that’s all, really. Thank you very much.’ The Inspector stands, which in her case requires a heave.

‘Where’s Maxwell? I want to see him.’

She holds the door open for me. ‘You can wait out here.’

Back to the atrium. I settle myself in a rounded plastic chair.

I scroll through email on my phone. Nothing new from Patrick Bell. Maybe the whole thing was a joke. Or maybe he went to Highfields Caldecote and was frightened off by the police activity. That doesn’t mean he’s necessarily a
scammer who’s set me up. Maybe he had drugs in his car or unpaid parking tickets. He could still be Sebastian.

I try to imagine him as a grown man. What if his adopted family hadn’t been good to him? What if, by chance, he’d been given to people who were unkind, or uneducated, or extremists of some kind? Would he be jealous of my luck, and Robert’s and Ben’s? I don’t only need to wonder if Patrick Bell is truly Seb or not. He could be Seb for real, and still be angry, or after money, or just not safe to be around.

Can we talk on the phone?
I email him. In our original back-and-forth, we’d leapt to the plan of meeting as soon as we realised that we were geographically able. He’d said he’s in Norfolk, a few hours’ drive. He probably had gone to Caldecote. He probably didn’t have email on his phone, and found my message only after returning home, disappointed, and frustrated. Or perhaps he’s not home yet, wondering why I didn’t show, still looking for me.
Why hasn’t he called?
I’d given him my number straight off.

He hadn’t offered me his phone number in return. I remember thinking that that was strange, but maybe he doesn’t have a mobile.
Not everyone does
, I remind myself.

‘You all right?’ Maxwell says, suddenly standing over me. His voice is hesitant, apologetic, hopeful. He’s been escorted out by the same Detective Inspector who’d interviewed me.

I click off my phone. ‘Max!’ I jump to embrace him, but the Inspector’s presence makes me hold back. I reach out for his hands instead. We lean and touch foreheads.

She, the Inspector, says: ‘I’ll take you back to your car now.’

I glare at her. I just want to be alone with Maxwell. I want to get into his car and drive and drive with him, without getting anywhere for hours, just talking. I’ve already explained everything away in my own mind, and just need him to colour it in.
You went there for me. You were sorry. You didn’t know the girl would be there. Finding her there instead of me was an accident, just an accident, surely
…

I want to ask him about the girl, but I can’t do that in front of the Inspector. I ask instead, ‘Why didn’t you drive your own car here? Did it break down?’ I whisper, though that doesn’t make sense either, because it would do no good to then take us back to it now. ‘Were you hurt?’ I add, picturing an ambulance and a hospital, though he doesn’t appear damaged.

‘I was near-arrested,’ he says.

‘Why? What exactly did they catch you doing?’ My voice has upped. The Inspector walks ahead of us, leading the way through the car park, but I’m sure she’s listening.

‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ he hisses.

An arrest – even ‘near’ arrest – has changed the situation. I’m no longer willing to wait. ‘Why not tell me now?
She
knows everything already,’ I point out, tossing my head towards the Inspector. I’m not sure why I feel surprised by Maxwell’s revelation of the extremity of the situation. He’d called me from a police station, after all. But I’d pictured it like it had been at the school: just a formality, a mediated discussion, not an arrest.
Near-arrest,
I correct, wondering what, exactly, that means.

‘A man was killed,’ the Inspector says, clicking a button on her key ring, making her car lights flash.

‘Who?’ I bark.
Is that what happened to Patrick Bell?
Had Maxwell caught up with him? Had Maxwell done something to him?

‘I had nothing to do with it,’ Maxwell says, to both of us. He doesn’t look like he’s been in a fight. Dishevelled, but not like he’s taken any punches. I don’t think he’s ever punched anyone.

We belt ourselves into the back seat. It’s an ordinary car, so it feels more like riding in a taxi than being escorted by police. ‘Who was killed?’ I demand of the Inspector in the driver’s seat.

‘We’re not yet releasing that information.’

‘Was it Patrick? Patrick Bell?’

The Inspector pauses the car at the mouth of the exit. She tugs up the parking brake and turns to face Maxwell. ‘You said they weren’t there.’

‘They weren’t!’ he defends himself.

To me, she says, ‘I thought you changed your plans to meet your friend in Cambridge instead.’

‘I did change the plans. He hasn’t replied. He didn’t show up. He probably didn’t get my message.’

The Inspector releases the brake and drives forward, shooting questions back at me over her shoulder. ‘So you’re saying that he could have been there? He might have been there, looking for you?’

My breathing gets faster. I tamp down the panic stirring in my stomach. ‘Is it him? Tell me!’ I insist.

‘Is Patrick Bell a builder?’

‘No. No, he said he works with computers.’ I don’t know what that means, I realise. Does he program them, or repair them, or sell them? ‘I don’t think he’s a builder.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘I don’t know!’ I wail.

I’d ridden in a police car once before, with Robert and Ben, the night that Mum and Dad had died. Seb had fallen down the stairs and Mum and Dad were taking him to the hospital. They didn’t make it that far. It took the police hours to wonder if there was more to the family than the miracle toddler in the back seat who had survived the crash. They came and woke us up to take us to a foster home. They turned on the lights in my room and I had screamed.

The Inspector turns off onto a narrow road and parks. I can’t see much on either side of us in the dark, just a cluster of bright lights and activity far ahead. Big lamps splash light onto a red wall, throwing the people near it into silhouette.
Someone died
. A man. A builder. Probably not Patrick Bell.

I rattle the car door to get out but it doesn’t give. The Inspector gets out and opens it for me. She must have the back seat doors set to child locks. I remember trying to get out of the police car that night twenty-three years ago.
If the doors hadn’t been locked back then I would have fallen out onto the motorway
…

‘Where are we?’ I ask, getting out of the car, turning in a circle. Maxwell’s car is here, foregrounding wide, empty fields.

Max slips his arm around my shoulders. ‘The houses have come down, Im. It’s gone.’

I blink fast but, to my surprise, don’t have to fight off any bigger reaction. My old house is gone now, but the home had evaporated decades ago.

The Inspector counts instructions off on her fingers as she tells us: ‘I would like you to stay in the county, please. I’ll let you know when you’re free to return to London. I want you’ – she turns to Maxwell – ‘to claim illness tomorrow. You don’t deal with those girls in any way. You understand that?’

Maxwell nods.

Then it’s my turn, and the Inspector taps her third finger: ‘If Patrick Bell contacts you, arrange to meet him. Then call me.’

‘Why?’ I’d been afraid that he was the dead man.
If he isn’t, then …?

‘If he was here, he may be a witness,’ the Inspector says, and she returns to the driver’s seat. She starts up the car and heads for the activity around those two houses in the distance.