Although the bedroom contained so much of Emma’s, it was obvious that there were also things of hers dispersed all around the house. A pair of her shoes stood next to one of the chairs in the
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sitting room. Another of Emma’s teddy bears sat on one of the spare chairs at the kitchen table, where the Renshaws usually ate breakfast. And as they walked from the sitting room to the dining room, they passed a bookcase, full of books in perfectly neat rows.
‘These are Emma’s books,’ said Howard, though it was unnecessary by now.
Fry was starting to see the way the Renshaws’ minds were working. They were trying to convince themselves that Emma still lived with them, every moment of the day. For them, each teddy bear contained a lingering fragment of Emma’s personality, just like the shoes and the books, and the scent bottles on her bedside table. And perhaps they were right. Perhaps each of their daughter’s possessions retained faint strands of her spirit, her essence and her memories, locked inside their plain physical reality. And no doubt the Renshaws prayed that all these small parts of Emma might one day be brought together to re-create her, in the same way that scientists could bring extinct animals to life from the DNA traces in their bones. Fry felt sure that Sarah Renshaw believed it could happen. She believed with all her heart that it could happen.
‘Mrs Renshaw, do you really still believe Emma is going to come home one day?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you, sir?
Howard laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder again. ‘No one has shown us any proof otherwise,’ he said.
Sarah nodded. ‘People seem to think that we should give up hope. But how can we? We’d be letting Emma down, if we did that. We have to do everything we can for her. We have to keep trying all the ways we can think of. Because if we stopped trying, we might miss the one little thing that would lead us to her. I couldn’t bear the thought of that.’
Gavin Murfin had been very still for a while. Fry looked at him to make sure he was awake. She was amazed to see that he was surreptitiously trying to wipe moisture from his eyes with his finger. Sarah Renshaw had noticed, too, and passed him a box of tissues from the side table without a word.
‘Mr and Mrs Renshaw,’ said Fry, ‘I know you’ve gone over all this many times before, but I have to ask what Emma’s exact relationship was with Alex Dearden and Neil Granger.’
‘The only relationship Emma had with Neil Granger was that he was a fellow sufferer,’ said Howard.
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‘Sufferer?’
‘Migraines. Granger has them, too. Apparently, his are so severe that he can black out completely.’
‘I see. And Alex Dearden?’
‘We had hopes of Alex. But he has another girlfriend now.’
‘Oh? Someone he met at university, or since he came back?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
But Fry remembered Alex Dearden complaining that Mrs Renshaw rang him every week. What was she really trying to find out from him? Did she really think he might hear from Emma? Wouldn’t she ask him about his new girlfriend? Or was that another thing she didn’t want to face - another indication that life had moved on and left Emma behind?
‘I understand you’ve had counselling,’ said Fry.
Sarah laughed. ‘Oh, yes. We learned phrases like “Letting go”, “Moving on”, and “Closure”. But all the time I kept asking myself: “How could I have allowed it to happen?”’
‘We’ve talked about it a lot,’ said Howard. ‘We thought it was important to talk. We decided it isn’t about letting go, but about getting a new perspective on your life. It’s more like turning over a piece of earth. Everything on the surface disappears, and new things appear in their place. But it’s still the same piece of earth, isn’t it? It’s still the same life.’
Fry had been told different. She had been advised that sometimes people felt the need to clutch their suffering to them, fearing that if they ‘let it go’, they would themselves vanish. Their suffering began to define them.
But Sarah Renshaw was right - commemoration was important. A person you had lost could touch you sometimes, in unexpected ways. You might glance into a room and see her sitting on her bed, or catch a fleeting trace of her familiar scent passing along the corridor. You could hear her voice in the silence at night, or her footsteps crossing the floor above your head as you watched television in the evening. Commemoration was an important thing. It was like reaching out to let her know you were there for her. Commemoration was like returning the touch.
On their way back through Withens from the Renshaws’ house, Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin noticed the police Vauxhall immediately.
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‘Anyone we know?’ said Murfin.
‘I doubt it.’
‘I’m not so sure. Who’s that coming across the road?’
Fry stared. ‘What the hell’s Ben Cooper doing here?’
‘Not sightseeing, that’s for certain,’ said Murfin. This place looks like something the cat ate and sicked up again.’
‘Pull up in front of the pub, Gavin.’
‘Ah. Now you’re talking.’
Fry wound down the window of the car as Cooper came across.
‘Well, well. I thought we’d lost you,’ she said.
‘It’s wonderful how people worry about me.’
‘No such luck, though, eh?’
‘No such luck. This is Tracy Udall, by the way, from the Rural Crime Team.’
