‘It’s best if you go alone; we don’t want to frighten her. Try and act as naturally as possible with her, Mrs Richards. Children get some weird ideas in their heads. If she does know anything we don’t want to frighten her into keeping it to herself.’
The sergeant’s words made sense, but they were hard to put into practice. Claire could feel her voice turning croaky with anxiety as she casually asked if Heather was at school, already knowing what the answer would be.
Lucy shook her head. As Claire looked down at her she saw that her daughter was avoiding her eyes.
Did Lucy know something about Heather’s disappearance? Striving to seem calm, she said, ‘Oh dear, Heather’s daddy’s waiting for us at home. He thought Heather might be coming home with you.’
No reaction, but Claire felt the small hand tucked into hers clenching betrayingly.
She took Lucy into the kitchen and settled her with a glass of milk and a biscuit before going into her sitting-room.
‘I think she knows something,’ she told Sergeant Holmes worriedly.
‘Will you let me talk to her?’ he asked. ‘I promise I won’t frighten her.’
Knowing what was at stake Claire could hardly refuse. She took the two police officers into the kitchen and made sure that Lucy knew who they were before leaving her with them. She sensed that the sergeant was more likely to learn something if she was not hovering anxiously at his side.
As she opened the sitting-room door she saw that Jay Fraser had slumped down into one of her chairs, his head in his hands. He looked up as she walked in, and she saw the dread and the pain in his eyes.
‘I pray to God that we can find her.’
Instinctively she placed her hand over his, shocked to feel its fierce tremble. ‘I’m sure Lucy knows something … she looked so guilty. Perhaps Heather’s …’ she broke off, his eyes widening as she suddenly remembered Lucy’s disappearance and the missing cakes.
‘What is it?’
‘I think Heather might have run away,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Last night Lucy disobeyed me and left the garden … I found some cakes missing, I …’
Before she could say any more the sitting-room door opened and Sergeant Holmes appeared, holding a tearful Lucy in his arms.
‘I promised Heather I wouldn’t tell Mummy …’ her bottom lip wobbled. ‘She wanted to come and live with us, but you said she couldn’t and Mrs Roberts was very cross because she’d come here for her tea. Heather wanted her daddy, but he wasn’t there …’
Oh, the anguish of that innocent double indictment! Over the tousled brown curls, grey eyes met green, both of them mirroring their guilt and anguish.
‘It seems that Heather spent the night in one of the huts on the old allotments down by the railway,’ Sergeant Holmes informed them. ‘She made Lucy promise not to tell.’
‘Mrs Roberts smacked her,’ Lucy whimpered, ‘she made her cry …’
‘I was wondering, Mrs Richards—if WPC Ames here stays with Lucy, would you …’
Claire didn’t even think of refusing. After hugging and kissing her daughter and reassuring her that no one was cross with her, she was half way out of the door as Jay opened it.
It was less than half a mile to the allotments, but none of them spoke. All of them must surely be thinking of the terrors that could be inflicted on a small girl of six on her own.
As they reached the allotments, the Sergeant suggested softly, ‘I think you’d better be the one to go first, Mr Fraser. If she’s still there, we don’t want to frighten her.’
From the white look on Jay’s face, Claire knew that nothing on earth would have prevented him from going first. Hands clenched, her body tense with dread, she waited as he walked towards the tumbledown hut.
He opened the door and went inside. Claire held her breath, all sensation suspended as she prayed harder than she had ever done in her life before. It was illogical to feel this depth of emotion for someone else’s child, but she knew the horrors that could be inflicted on the innocent—oh, how she knew—and in that aeon of waiting there was an emotional bonding between her personal anguish and the fear she felt for Heather that coalesced in a wave of love so strong and intense that when Jay walked out of the hut, carrying his daughter in his arms, nothing on earth could have stopped her from stumbling across the distance that separated them to take the sobbing child in her arms.
Small arms clung to her, heaving sobs swelling the childish chest. Jay looked white and stunned—lost, almost.
‘She was frightened of me!’ Claire heard him say disbelievingly. ‘She was frightened …’
‘Let’s get her home now,’ Sergeant Holmes suggested, ‘time for questions later.’
As Jay leaned forward to take her from Claire, Heather clung to her, and wept piteously. ‘I want to go to Lucy’s house, Daddy. I don’t want to go home!’
Claire avoided looking at him. She could sense everything that he was feeling. If he had resented and disliked her before it must be nothing to what he was feeling now.
They took Heather back to the small cottage, a look of relief and guilt mingling on Lucy’s face as they walked in.
‘I think we should leave her with Mrs Richards for a few minutes, sir,’ Sergeant Holmes suggested to Jay.
Busy trying to soothe Heather’s tears, Claire was absently aware of Jay stepping back from them and allowing the sergeant to take him into the kitchen.
It was a long time before Heather calmed down enough to be coherent, and the story she told left Claire shaking with rage and appalled by the enormity of what could have happened.
She took her upstairs and put her in the spare bed in Lucy’s room, knowing from experience that such an outburst would soon result in sleep. She was emotionally and physically drained, poor little mite, and even in sleep she clung to Claire’s hand, not wanting her to leave her.
She went down to the kitchen, where the sergeant was entertaining Lucy by reading her a story.
‘She ran away because she was frightened of Mrs Roberts,’ Claire told them tiredly. ‘It’s partly my fault.’ She looked at Jay Fraser and saw that his face was shuttered and remote. Who knew what he was thinking behind that iron mask? ‘She wanted to have tea with us the other day and I … I refused. I said she must ask Mrs Roberts’ permission. The next day she said she had; I didn’t check—I …’ She couldn’t look at Jay Fraser; surely he must know why she hadn’t felt able to speak to his housekeeper. ‘Apparently she hadn’t asked at all, and after I took her home that evening Mrs Roberts was very angry with her—the poor woman must have been out of her mind with fear when she didn’t turn up from school. Apparently she shut Heather up in her bedroom and told her she was going to tell her daddy what she had done. Mrs Roberts told Heather that her father would be very cross.’ Claire bit her lip, wondering if she ought to suppress the next bit, and then, deciding that she could not, ‘Apparently Mrs Roberts threatened to leave and told Heather that if she did, Heather would have to go into a home