Cooper waited a few minutes, watching hospital staff come and go. He was unsure of his reception, and didn’t want to rush in where he wasn’t welcome. But he needed to know the worst. And somehow he also needed to make contact.
The father of Emily Nield had his back to the window, but Cooper could see he was a man in his forties, with short dark hair turning grey at the temples. He was dressed in the style that some politicians adopted when they were trying to look casual for the cameras. A blue shirt with the cuffs turned back on strong-looking wrists, cream chinos that were now stained around the knees. The mother’s face was red and puffy, half hidden by a tissue. Cooper wondered where the boy was. Hadn’t there been a teenage boy with them?
He caught the attention of the doctor as she came out and identified himself.
‘Yes, I’m afraid Emily Nield was declared dead on arrival. Very sad.’
‘Thank you. Can I speak to the parents?’
‘If they’re willing.’
Finally, he judged the moment was right, and went into the room to introduce himself.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said.
There had been so many times that those three words had seemed to convey very little. They were said without sincerity, with only self-interest in mind. But right now, they seemed to mean no more than the amount of breath he’d used to inhale before he said them. What words could you say to parents who’d just seen their youngest child die in front of their eyes?
He always hated meeting people for the first time in circumstances like these. It was impossible to know from looking at them what sort of people they had been before they were broken, before their world was turned upside down for ever. They might have been people full of joy, the kind who took the greatest delight in life, their expressions always lit up by smiles. No one would know that from their faces now. In just a couple of hours, the pain had been etched too deeply into their faces, the light in their eyes had been dimmed too far. Sometimes that light never returned.
It was always worst for parents, too. No parent should have to be present at the death of a child. It was contrary to the natural order of things. And Emily Nield had been, what – eight years old? To Cooper, it felt like a tragedy beyond measure. He had no words that could express to the Nields the way he felt.
Mr Nield stood up and shook his hand in an awkward, solemn way. Nield was a tall man, an inch or two taller than Cooper when he was standing. The slight hunch of his shoulders suggested he was uncomfortable about his height.
‘We need to thank you,’ he said.
‘No. There’s no need, sir. I did nothing.’
His thanks made Cooper’s throat tighten with a surge of emotion that he struggled to hide.
‘You tried,’ said Nield. ‘You did your best for our little girl. Yes, you did your best. No one can say more than that in this world.’
Cooper smiled. But when he looked the man directly in the eyes, his smile faded. He recognized him now. This was the man he’d seen on the bank of the River Dove, hands raised as if in blessing. Yet a few minutes later, Nield had been standing in a little group with his family. Cooper wondered if his sense of time had been distorted during the incident. He would have to find out from Sergeant Wragg how long it had taken from the girl entering the water, or from the alarm first being raised. Possibly events had seemed to happen much faster than they really did.
‘I’m Robert Nield, by the way,’ said the man. ‘This is my wife, Dawn. Our son Alex is here somewhere. I think one of the staff took him out of the way of…Well, they’ve all been very kind. They couldn’t have treated us better.’
‘I’m Detective Constable Cooper.’
‘You’re a policeman. We actually didn’t realize that, did we, love?’
Mrs Nield shook her head. She hadn’t spoken yet, but at least her face appeared briefly from behind the tissue.
‘I’m a detective with Derbyshire Constabulary.’
‘We know a few of your people,’ said Nield, ‘but I don’t think I’ve come across you before.’
‘I’m based in Edendale, sir.’
‘That would explain it. We’re Ashbourne people.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Nield looked at him curiously, as if he too was searching for an elusive memory, a connection that he wasn’t quite making. Cooper was used to that look from people he’d never met before. Often they’d known his father, a long-serving police sergeant of the old school who’d practically been the centre of the community in Edendale. Sergeant Joe Cooper was known to thousands, even now. And those who’d never met him in life knew of his death.
Well, it would come to Nield later, when he was thinking straight again. He could deal with it then.
‘I don’t know what arrangements have been made, but I could run you home,’ said Cooper. ‘My car is just outside.’
‘That’s good of you. I’d completely forgotten, but I left our car behind when we came in the ambulance.’
‘In the Dovedale car park?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you like, we can drop your wife and son home, then I’ll take you to pick up your car. How does that sound?’
‘Excellent.’
‘As long as you feel up to driving. If not, I can arrange for it to be taken care of.’
‘No, I’ll be fine. We’ll find Alex, and we can be off.’
‘I keep thinking “if only we could turn back the clock”,’ said Dawn Nield as they walked to Cooper’s Toyota. ‘Just a few minutes, or a few seconds. If only I’d been watching Emily more closely, if we hadn’t been throwing the stick for Buster, or we’d chosen to go somewhere else that day instead of Dovedale. Robert said it would be crowded on a bank holiday. That was why we went early. If we’d set off a bit later, we might not have been able to park the car, or there might have been more people around when it happened…’
‘Love, there’s no point in tormenting yourself,’ said Nield.
‘No, you’re right.’
Dawn wiped her eyes and looked briefly at Cooper. He read everything in that fleeting glance. While she might tell her husband he was right, those were no more than the words that came automatically from her mouth. What was happening inside her head was a whole world away. He knew she would never stop tormenting herself, could never rid herself of the endless ‘what ifs’. That list of possibilities would run through her mind in a constant loop, the moments when history might have been changed, playing over and over again like scenes from a film she had never actually watched. For the rest of her life, she would still be asking herself: What if?
The drive back to Ashbourne on the A52 took only twenty minutes. Cooper was glad it wasn’t a longer journey. The atmosphere in the car became uncomfortable as the Nields fell silent, each of them absorbed in their own thoughts. He’d tried to fill in some of the silences himself, but there was a limit to how much you could say in these circumstances without starting to sound ridiculous and insincere.
Ashbourne was a town built mostly of red brick, which made it look totally different from the limestone and millstone grit of Edendale to the north. This was clay country, softer than the White Peak, less forbidding than the bleak moorlands of the Dark Peak.
At school, in Geography