She opened her door and slid out, her legs stiff, an ache low in her back. Outside the car the air had a pre-dawn chill to it. The daylight was growing slowly, trickling through the trees and washing away the moon.
Bonnie was running around with her nose to the ground, released from the captivity of the car, a bounce in her step. She chased around the side of the whitewashed mill and disappeared from view. Holly slammed the car door and hurried after her, pushing open the little gate in the picket fence and running up the uneven stone path to the door, calling for Bonnie as she went.
All the lights were on inside the mill. The door opened before she reached it.
‘Ben!’ she burst out. ‘What the hell—’
‘Miss Ansell?’ A uniformed policewoman stood there. ‘I’m PC Marilyn Caldwell. We spoke earlier.’ She had kind eyes in a pale face pinched with tiredness, and there was something in her voice that warned Holly of bad news. Her heart started to thump erratically again. A headache gripped her temples.
She noticed that one of the door panels was splintered and broken.
‘We had to break it to get in.’ There was a note of apology in PC Caldwell’s voice. ‘The handle is too high for Florence to reach.’
‘Yes.’ Holly remembered that the door had a heavy, old-fashioned iron latch. So Ben had not been there when the police had arrived and there was no sign of him now. Her apprehension was edged with something deeper and more visceral now.
She fought back the terror; breathed deeply.
‘Is Florence OK?’
‘She’s fine.’ Marilyn Caldwell laid a reassuring hand on Holly’s arm. She shifted a little so that Holly could see through into the mill’s long living room. Florence was sitting on the sofa next to another female police officer. They were reading together, although Florence’s eyes were droopy with tiredness and puffy with her earlier tears.
Holly’s heart turned over to see her. She took an involuntary step forwards. ‘Can I go to her, please—’
‘Just a moment.’ The note in PC Caldwell’s voice stopped her. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t found your brother, Miss Ansell.’ She was looking at Holly with forensic detachment now. ‘We’ve searched the house and the woods in the close vicinity, also all the roads nearby. There’s no sign.’
Holly was taken aback. Fear fluttered beneath her breastbone again. This was not right.
‘Is that Dr Ansell’s car outside?’ PC Caldwell asked.
‘Yes.’ Holly rubbed her tired eyes. ‘He can’t have driven anywhere.’
‘Perhaps a friend came to pick him up,’ PC Caldwell suggested. ‘Or he walked to meet someone.’
‘In the middle of the night?’ Holly said. ‘Without his phone?’
PC Caldwell’s expression hardened. ‘It’s hardly unknown, Miss Ansell. I imagine he thought Florence was asleep and slipped out. Perhaps he’s lost track of the time.’
‘That would be ridiculously irresponsible.’ Holly felt furious and tried to rein herself in. She was tired, worried. She had driven a long way. She needed to calm down. Evidently PC Caldwell thought so too.
‘We fully expect Dr Ansell to turn up in the morning,’ she said coldly. ‘When he does, please could you let us know? We’d like to have a word.’
‘You’ll have to stand in line,’ Holly said. Then: ‘I’m sorry. Yes, of course. But …’ Doubt and fear stirred within her again. The emotions were nebulous but strong. Her instinct told her that Ben had not simply walked out.
‘He left his phone,’ she said. ‘And all his stuff’s scattered about. It doesn’t look as though he planned to go out.’
PC Caldwell was already signalling discreetly to her colleague that it was time to leave. She seemed completely uninterested.
‘We’ve traced Mrs Ansell,’ she said. ‘She’s on her way back from Spain but might not make it until tomorrow night. Apparently she’s been,’ she checked her note pad, ‘helicopter skiing in the Pyrenees?’ She sounded doubtful.
‘Very probably,’ Holly said dryly. ‘Tasha works for a travel show – Extreme Pleasures?’
‘Oh yes!’ Marilyn Caldwell’s face broke into a smile. ‘Wow! Natasha Ansell. Of course! How exciting. Well—’ She stopped, realising that the situation did not really merit celebrity chit-chat. ‘We’ll be back tomorrow,’ she said. She turned on an afterthought. ‘Do you know what your brother was doing here, Miss Ansell?’
‘It’s his holiday cottage,’ Holly said. ‘We co-own it.’ She rubbed her eyes again, feeling the grittiness of them. Suddenly she was so tired she wanted to sleep where she was standing. ‘He was down here with Flo whilst Tasha was away working,’ she said. ‘He said he was doing some research. Family history. It’s quiet here. A good place to think.’
PC Caldwell nodded. ‘Right,’ she said. Holly could see her wondering how on earth someone as glamorous as Tasha could be mixed up in a messy situation like this with a man whose idea of fun was family history research.
‘Well,’ the policewoman said. ‘We’ll call back to chat to Mrs Ansell tomorrow.’
I bet you will, Holly thought.
She felt utterly furious, livid with PC Caldwell for being more interested in Tasha’s fame than in Ben’s disappearance, angry that Tasha hadn’t even bothered to ring her to make sure it was OK for her to look after Flo until she got back, and most annoyed of all with Ben for vanishing without a word. The anger helped her, because behind it the fear still lurked, the sense that something was wrong and out of kilter, that Ben would never voluntarily disappear leaving his daughter alone.
Bonnie, picking up on Holly’s mood, made a soft whickering noise and Holly saw Florence look up from the storybook. Her niece’s eyes lit up to see them and she scrambled from the sofa.
‘Aunt Holly!’ Florence rushed towards her, arms outstretched. ‘You came!’ Holly scooped her up automatically, feeling the softness of Florence’s cheek pressed against hers, inhaling the scent of soap and shampoo. Florence clung like a limpet, her hot tears scalding Holly’s neck. Holly could feel her niece’s fear and desolation and her heart ached for her. Security was such a fragile thing when you were a child. She understood that better than most.
‘Hello Flo,’ she said gently. ‘Of course I came. I’ll always come when you call me. You know that.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’ Florence was wailing. ‘Why has he gone away?’
‘I don’t know,’ Holly said, hugging her tighter. ‘He’ll be back soon. I’m sure of it.’ She wished she were.
Later, when Florence had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, Holly carried her niece upstairs in the pale light of the May dawn and put her gently on the big double bed in the main bedroom with her toy rabbit cuddled up in her arms. Then she went over to the window seat and leaning her head back against the panelled wall, closed her eyes for a moment.
Although as children she and Ben had shared the smaller bedroom next door, this was the room she had been drawn to every time. She loved the way the light poured in from the high windows.
So early, the room was still full of morning shadow. Ben’s stuff was scattered all around; a shirt discarded over the arm of the chair, his watch on the chest of drawers, the bed half-made. It looked as though he had just stepped out for a second and would be back at any moment and