the world with me as I come awake. If only I could manage to hang on to it for long enough, I could make it real. But I’ve never been able to do it. Every time, the moment slips away from me.’
Sarah sighed, and looked up at something above Fry’s head.
‘Then I open my eyes, and everything falls back into perspective. And suddenly two years have gone by, and here I am. Here, today. My new self takes over again.’
Howard had pulled up another armchair to be near her. He leaned over and touched her shoulder.
‘She’ll be back soon,’ he said.
But Sarah didn’t seem to notice him or feel his touch. ‘I always keep Emma’s clock going in her bedroom,’ she said. 1 make sure I replace the batteries regularly. It’s important that the clock shouldn’t stop. As long as it’s ticking, it’s counting down the
120
minutes until Emma comes home. It mustn’t stop, until then.’
‘Mrs Renshaw, when Emma went missing -‘ said Fry.
‘When she didn’t come home/ Sarah corrected her gently. But she had a resigned note in her voice that suggested she had said it often before, had said it too many times to too many people.
‘When she didn’t come home,’ said Fry, ‘you said you spoke to all her friends.’
‘Yes, of course we did.’
‘By that, do you mean the young people she shared the house with?’
‘Yes, and a few others, such as some of the girls she knew on the same course.’
‘Was that before or after the local police had spoken to them?’
‘Before,’ said Howard. ‘If they bothered to speak to them at all, that is.’
‘The West Midlands officers went through the correct procedures at the time, Mr Renshaw.’
‘I suppose you have to say that. You have to stick together.’
‘They’ve sent us copies of all their reports. I read through them yesterday.’
‘A journalist on one of the local newspapers told us nine months ago that the police had arrested a man for attacks on two other female students in the area around the same time,’ said Howard.
‘Yes, I’m aware of that.’
‘He told us that the police had tried to make out a case that this man had done something to Emma, too. He said they had no evidence, but they were connecting it. “Tying it in,” he said.’
‘Yes.’
‘I think they’ve given up. They decided to use that as an excuse.’
The man convicted of attacking the students was in the files, too. One of his victims had died some days later, and it had become a murder charge. Those incidents had been in Birmingham, a few miles from Bearwood, but within easy reach. The defendant had refused to accept responsibility for the disappearance of a third student, and the police had been unable to prove a connection. They said this was probably because the body had never turned up. Fry hoped they hadn’t said that to the Renshaws.
‘We looked through her diary for clues,’ said Howard. ‘We’d heard it was the sort of thing the police do. We were looking for indications of her state of mind, mentions of people she might have been meeting up with. The names of any boyfriends.’
121
‘And?’
‘She was planning on coming home for Easter. That was all.’
‘When was the last entry in the diary?’
‘On the Wednesday, the day she rang us.’
‘No appointments for the following couple of days?’
‘No.’
‘Emma wrote in her diary a lot/ said Sarah. ‘She is a very thoughtful, sensitive sort of girl. Very artistic, you know. She wrote about her feelings all the time. She wrote poems, too, sometimes.’
‘In her diary?’
‘Yes.’
‘This diary of Emma’s - did you find it at Bearwood?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And where is it now?’
‘In her room here, with the rest of her things.’
‘I wonder if I might see it?’
‘You’d be welcome to.’
‘She won’t need it when she comes back,’ said Sarah. ‘We’ve bought her a new one for this year.’
And now Fry thought she could guess the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway.
‘Have you kept Emma’s room as it was?’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah.
