But she also liked to be home to greet Steve when he came in from school. He came as near as he ever did to talking to her then. Anyway, it was the time that messages passed back and forth between them.
Because she wanted to stay in the neighbourhood from which she sprang, a desire reinforced by her wish to give a strong background to Steve, she had moved to a flat in a new block overlooking the river not far from Mouncy Street. She could walk there in ten minutes, but she drove in her Porsche. She was a slow and cautious driver, causing both alarm and irritation to other drivers by her handling of her fast car.
She wanted to get home but she also had several business matters she needed to check up on, not least of which was the possible destination of the portfolio of designs she imagined that Gabriel was creating. You couldn’t keep that sort of thing secret in the relatively tight world they lived in. Only as youthful an operator as Gabriel would have expected to.
On looking the field over, it seemed to Rose that there were two candidates: on the one hand there was the old-established firm of Senlis Styles which was seeking (and rightly so in Rose’s opinion) to change its image. On the other hand there was the small and thrusting new firm of Lizzie Dreamer whose super-active boss, a stout young man called Touch, was busy scooping up all the new talent available.
Rose herself had had a brush or two with Teddy Touch and almost wished Gabriel joy of him, but this was a weakness she could not allow herself. You hung on to what you had and you never let go, that was her style.
Then the telephone rang on her desk, not the red one that was entirely office and work, but the blue one which was her private number. Only family and friends used it.
‘Hello. Is that you?’
A young, gruff voice, she knew it at once, even though it was so rarely used for her.
‘Steve, what is it? Why are you calling?’
‘Well …’ A hesitation, a fumbling for words. Was it that he could not speak, or would not? ‘Just to say – that something bad has happened.’
‘Steve … Please … What is it?’ She was almost shouting.
The telephone was removed from his hand, and another voice spoke. A woman’s voice, educated, gentle but with a hint of command and a slight Scottish accent. ‘Miss Fraser speaking …’ Steve’s headmistress at Hook Road School.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Can you come round, Mrs Hilaire? At once? I think it would be best. There is something you have to be told.’
It seemed to Rose Hilaire that she could hear other voices in the background. Another woman and perhaps a man.
Yes, certainly a man, and why not, in a school? But all the same she didn’t like the sound of it at all.
Before she left, she picked up her blue phone. ‘Joe? I’m sorry, darling. Tonight’s not on. Trouble here.’ Hook Road School had lately undergone a face-lift. As cosmetic surgery, it was minor and superficial, designed as is usually the case with such surgery to raise the spirits rather than change the character. Old woodwork had been replaced with newer structures, strip lighting had taken the place of glass globes hanging from the ceiling. Pale turquoise paint had replaced the steady old green paint of the old days. A new heating system boosted the temperature so that some rooms were uncomfortably warm, though the lavatories and washrooms for both staff and children were as chilly and damp as ever. Within the next decade the buildings were due to be demolished to give place to a glittering new place of stone and glass. The staff had seen pictures of it and were profoundly uneasy.
But for the moment Hook Road School was much as it had been when the Victorian School Board of Governors devised its architecture and meant it to last. As indeed it had done, through two world wars, Zeppelin raids and the Blitz. The ghosts of the old pupils (who still seemed to hang about in the smells and noises) would have felt quite at home.
There was a piano being played somewhere in the building; there had always been a piano being played.
Miss Fraser shut the door against the noise. She was young for a headmistress, and as tough as her job demanded, which was tough enough. She gave the impression of having an active and vital life outside school. Otherwise she was fond of children and good-humoured. But today she looked tense and preoccupied, as if underneath she was frightened.
In the room with her was a bearded man, sitting down, a uniformed policewoman, standing up, and Steve Hilaire who was half sitting, half crouched on a hard chair, beside him his sports bag.
‘Come in, Mrs Hilaire.’ Miss Fraser took her hand away from the door, and momentarily leaned against it as if she could do with its support. ‘Let me get you a chair. Steve, get one for your mother.’
Silently Steve got off his chair for his mother to sit down. Their eyes met and passed each other without comment. Rose’s gaze slid on and settled on the policewoman.
‘What’s this? Why is she here?’ Rose, when frightened, was always aggressive.
The policewoman looked at Miss Fraser, who gave a slight nod. They settled it between them that Miss Fraser would do the talking. At first.
Rose’s eyes flicked nervously to Steve. ‘What’s it about, then? Why am I here? What’s it to do with Steve?’
She couldn’t stop her eyes going back to that bag of his.
‘This afternoon,’ began Lovella Fraser, ‘the school had its uniform inspection, there’s always one once a term. Just a check-up to see that everyone has the right shoes, and blazer and so on. Sports equipment, that sort of thing. Every child lays out his stuff, and we do it form by form.’ She nodded towards the bearded man. ‘Mr Gordon is Steve’s form-master.’
‘So what’s the mystery?’ Rose was getting her nerve back. ‘Steve – you haven’t taken anything that doesn’t belong to you?’ At times of pressure the old Paradise Street slipped out; petty theft had been an occupation there, and accusations of it a commonplace of life.
‘No, we don’t think he’s taken anything.’
‘Come on then. Why am I here?’
Miss Fraser cleared her throat, she was still to do the talking. ‘I don’t know if you have heard about Ephraim Humphreys?’
Rose stared at her, she appeared to be searching her memory. ‘I don’t know.’ She frowned, temporarily off balance. ‘Ephraim Humphreys … ? He’s a boy, a little boy?’
The policewoman made an involuntary move. Young, yes, still a boy, aged twelve. But not so little. Tall for his age. Above average. Steve was tall also, although his choirboy-like innocent face sometimes made you forget this.
‘I don’t read the papers much,’ Rose stumbled on.
Miss Fraser accepted the tacit admission that Rose knew more than she seemed capable of getting out. ‘Yes. It has been in the newspapers.’
‘He’s gone away?’ Her gaze fell upon Steve’s sports bag, her Christmas present to him and now on the headmistress’s desk. Open.
The woman detective thought: Gone away was one way of putting it. Two weeks ago a twelve-year-old boy called Ephraim Humphreys, a pupil at Hook Road School, left his family home after a sparse breakfast in good time to do his paper round and then get to school … The woman detective shifted her stance from one foot to another.
‘No one knows if he ever got here, his papers were delivered but no one noticed if he arrived at school or not.’
‘I’m remembering,’ said Rose. It had all happened at a time when she was busier than usual getting together the winter collection of clothes. They made four collections a year, as did most wholesalers (and