‘Emma’s very talented, you know,’ said Howard. ‘You must see some of her work. We have all kinds of things in the house. Some of them are pieces we brought back home from her room at Bearwood – work she’d done during term time.’
‘She wouldn’t want those to be lost,’ said Sarah. ‘There are some pieces that she hasn’t finished yet.’
Not finished yet? Diane Fry looked hard at the couple. Hope was one thing – but did the Renshaws genuinely believe their daughter would turn up tomorrow, or the day after, to finish her latest design project or take her Audi for a run?
She watched Sarah Renshaw turn towards her husband. They exchanged a meaningful glance and a little private smile, as if there were no one else in the room.
‘We made our own posters,’ said Howard. ‘My brother had them done for us at his office. “Have you seen this girl?” they said. We put them up in newsagents and at the students union, and at all the places she went to in Birmingham and the Black Country. Some of them weren’t the nicest of places, you know – bars and clubs, not the sort of establishment we would go in normally, or expect Emma to, either. But she’s a student, and they live a different life. We understand that.’
‘She’s an art student, of course,’ said Sarah. ‘They’re allowed to be a little Bohemian, aren’t they?’
‘But no one had seen her?’
‘No.’
‘Mr and Mrs Renshaw, you know that the West Midlands police did make some enquiries at the time.’
‘Oh, yes? But what sort of enquiries? We expected them to be going door to door, doing fingertip searches. Helicopters with thermal cameras. All the things we see on the TV news when other people’s children go missing. They didn’t do any of that. We kept complaining. We spoke to an inspector several times. We went to the local newspapers to expose the shortcomings of the police. But it didn’t do us any good. They just thought we were a nuisance.’
‘For children, some of those things would be done. But Emma was nineteen. And, as I say …’
‘… it happens all the time. Yes, we know. Hundreds of young people go missing every year, and nearly all of them turn up again unharmed. We’ve been told that. But none of those are our daughter.’
‘I realize it must have been very difficult for you. A difficult thing to live with.’
‘Difficult? Do you know, we panic if we ever get separated in a crowd, or if it ever feels as though we’ve lost each other. Until it’s happened to you, it’s impossible to understand that sense of suddenly losing a person that belongs to you. It’s like being cut off from something you were part of. It’s the sort of fear that can take a hold on you completely, on your entire life. I don’t think we’ll ever lose that feeling, either of us. Not until we find Emma.’
‘What sort of mood had Emma seemed to be in up to that point?’
‘Mood? Well, her usual sort of mood, I suppose.’
‘We all know there are a lot of pressures on young people at university,’ said Fry. ‘Sometimes it’s very difficult for them, being away from home, and worrying about being short of money, as well as having all the exams and things. I wondered if you thought she might have been worried or depressed about anything?’
‘Nothing in particular. Not that you could put your finger on.’
‘I see. But being away from home, being short of money, doing exams … You’re right, it is a lot for them to cope with. Sometimes an emotional complication can be the last straw.’
The Renshaws looked at her in slight puzzlement.
‘A boyfriend,’ said Fry. ‘I wonder if she had a problem with a boyfriend?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Perhaps there was somebody she was due to meet that night, that Thursday. Something could have happened to upset her. She could have had an argument with a boyfriend. Don’t her housemates know who she might have been seeing?’
Mrs Renshaw shook her head. ‘Her friends say there was nobody special – just a group of college friends. Both male and female, we gather. They used to meet up for a drink at a local pub, or go into Birmingham for the evening, that kind of thing. Unless Emma had a headache and didn’t feel like going out.’
‘Did she suffer from headaches a lot?’
‘Now and then. She said it was stress. She found some of the assignments and exams a bit stressful.’
‘Did she ever see a doctor about her headaches?’
‘Not so far as we know.’
‘Or about the stress?’
‘We don’t think so.’
‘Stress can be a difficult thing to cope with, for young people living away from home. It isn’t a good idea to bottle it up.’
Even as she said it, Fry knew it was a particularly useless piece of advice. Not bottling it up involved having someone you could talk to about things like that. She couldn’t follow the advice herself, and wouldn’t have appreciated being given it. But the Renshaws took it well.
‘She wouldn’t talk to us about it much, but there was another girl in the house, Debbie. They were very friendly.’
‘How many people shared this house?’
‘Four.’
‘So the other two were boys?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you happy with that arrangement?’
‘We trust Emma,’ said Sarah. ‘Besides, we know Alex Dearden. He’s a nice boy – we had no worries on that score.’
Fry waited for one of them to say the same about Neil Granger, but they didn’t. Instead, the Renshaws glanced at each other again, passing some hidden message.
‘I understand Emma knew both of the boys from an early age,’ said Fry.
‘They both lived in Withens as children, so they went to the same school.’
‘So both Alex Dearden and Neil Granger were old friends of Emma’s. You knew them both well, and you were happy for your daughter to be sharing a house with them.’
‘We know them both,’ said Howard.
‘A set-up like that could be enough to cause stress in itself, in some circumstances.’
‘I don’t think Emma found it a problem. She is a very well-balanced girl.’
‘Apart from the stress she suffered because of the work and the exams.’
‘Yes.’
Mr Renshaw had been listening to his wife carefully. Now he looked at Fry. ‘She isn’t the sort of girl to kill herself,’ he said. ‘We’re quite sure of that.’
‘Oh, quite sure,’ agreed his wife.
‘Thank you.’ Fry sighed. She had noticed that every time she slipped up and used the past tense in referring to Emma, one of the Renshaws corrected her gently.
‘You realize there’s no reason why she shouldn’t come back,’ said Sarah.
‘It’s been over two years now, Mrs Renshaw.’
‘But there’s no reason why she shouldn’t come back.’
Howard Renshaw leaned forward with a smile, trying to look like a helpful intermediary, ready