As she gathered up the pieces of the game and placed them, in long-remembered sequence, into an old flat biscuit tin, Dorcas felt no need to apologize for her parents’ lateness – or indeed to say anything else.
Carole, inept as ever at making small talk, asked what the girls’ names were.
“Their real names are Chloe and Sylvia, but they’re called Zebba and Tamil.”
The assertiveness of Dorcas’s tone put Carole off asking the obvious question: Why? Instead she observed that the girls had been playing what looked like an interesting game. Dorcas did not think the comment worthy of response.
“Is it something you’re going to develop commercially?”
“What?” The girl stopped packing the game away and for the first time looked directly at her visitor. The eyes, which Carole had previously noted as ‘honey-coloured’, were, close to, more complex than that, a very pale hazel flecked with black.
“Well,” Carole explained, “you keep reading in the papers of people who’ve made huge fortunes from devising computer and – ”
“This is not a computer game!” Dorcas snapped. “It’s a board game. Daddy wouldn’t have a computer game in the house.”
“No, but hearing you playing it, it sounds very similar to a computer game.”
“It is nothing like a computer game!” The girl’s pale face was now red with anger.
“All I’m saying is that that kind of game can be very lucrative. If it’s a good idea you’ve got there, you could – ”
“Nobody wants to make money out of the Wheel Quest.”
“But just think about it. You know, when all that fantasy stuff is being so successful…
Dorcas Locke was deeply affronted by the suggestion. “We don’t want to have other people playing it.”
Her indignation was so strong that she might have said a lot more, had she not heard the sound of a car scrunching to a halt on the weedy gravel outside. Carole turned to the window to see a beat-up Volvo estate, out of which Rowley Locke and his wife were emerging.
Bridget Locke was a good-looking woman, nearly as tall as her husband. Her hair was shoulder-length ash- blonde, with a well-cut fringe. The dark trouser suit gave her an aura of efficiency, separating her from the feyness of her daughters. Indeed, they didn’t appear to have inherited any of her genetic make-up. She unloaded Waitrose carrier bags from the back of the estate, while her husband came straight through into the sitting room to greet Carole.
“Good of you to come,” he said, with no apology for his lateness. “Has Dorcas offered you coffee?”
The girl gave her father a look which implied that was the last thing she’d have done.
“No, but it’s fine. I don’t want anything, thank you.”
Dorcas put the biscuit tin containing the Wheel Quest in its regular place on the shelf and announced, “I’m going to read.”
“All right, Doone,” said her father. Oh God, another nickname, thought Carole.
Bridget Locke had by now come in through the front door and was presumably taking her shopping to the kitchen.
“How old is Dorcas?” asked Carole.
“She’s twenty-one, just finished at uni.” It was a surprise to hear the abbreviation from a man of Rowley’s age.
“Has she got a job lined up?”
He shook his head. “No, she needs a bit of time to chill out. She’s worked hard the last three years.”
“What was she studying?”
“English with drama.” That figures, thought Carole. “At Reading.”
“So you just have the three girls?”
“No, there’s a fourth. Doone – Dorcas – has a twin. Mopsa. She’s, erm, working in Cornwall at the moment, arranging holiday lets.”
“Ah.” Mopsa! You wouldn’t need a silly nickname if you were called that. Though in the Locke family, Carole would have put money on the fact that Mopsa had one. “Is that near your own place?”
“Sorry?”
“When we met before, you said you had a family place in Cornwall, called Treboddick.”
“Well remembered, Carole.” His tone was patronizing, the omniscient teacher to the aspiring student. “Yes, the cottages are in Treboddick. Mopsa’s staying down there for the duration.”
“So you have four girls.”
“Yes,” said Rowley with pride. “I do girls. Arnold and Eithne do boys.”
“How many have they got, apart from Nathan?” She thought it might be intrusive to call him ‘Fimby’. And she couldn’t have brought herself to do so, anyway.
“Just the one. His older brother Julian.”
Diggo, thought Carole. I’m getting the hang of this.
“Arnold never had my sticking power.” It was delivered as a joke, but Carole got the feeling that there was some truth behind it as well. Seeing the two brothers together, she had been left in no doubt that Rowley was the dominant one. And he, rather than the boy’s father, was very definitely leading the family investigation into Nathan’s disappearance.
Further revelations of sibling rivalry were prevented by the arrival of Bridget Locke from the kitchen. Carole was immediately impressed by how sensible she seemed, a beacon of sanity in the midst of her flaky family. Maybe, to allow the family to be as flaky as they appeared, someone had to be in touch with the real world.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to meet you the other day in Fethering,” Bridget apologized. “One of us has to work, I’m afraid.”
The words weren’t spoken viciously, but there was no doubt they represented a dig at her husband. Carole wondered what Rowley Locke did for a living. Not a lot, was the answer implicit in his wife’s remark.
“Don’t worry. I did seem to meet quite a lot of the family.”
“That’s always the case when you mix with the Lockes.” Rowley Locke spoke as if Carole were the recipient of a privilege, but his wife’s ‘Yes’ again suggested less than full-bodied support for his view.
“Have you come here because you know something about Nathan’s whereabouts?” Carole realized that this was the first time she had heard anxiety about the boy’s fate from any member of the family. Bridget Locke was not the sort to give in to panic, but she was obviously deeply worried about Nathan.
“No, sadly, I don’t know anything about that.”
“Don’t worry about it, Bridget. The boy’s just lying low for a while,” Rowley said.
“And where does a boy of sixteen lie low for more than a fortnight? What does he live on? Eithne says he hasn’t drawn any money out of his account.”
Carole felt this gave her an opportunity to mention the unmentionable. “The gossip around Fethering is that the boy might have committed suicide.”
“Well, that’s nonsense!” said Rowley forcibly. “Like all gossip it’s totally unsubstantiated.” His wife was not so sure. “Oh, come on, Bridget, you’ve known Nathan for ten years. He’s not the kind to harm himself.”
“Not under normal circumstances, no. But who knows how any of us would react to being the prime suspect in a murder investigation?”
“We’d do what Nathan has done. Go underground until it all blows over.”
“You make it sound so easy, Rowley. You can’t just disappear in a country like this. And also the idea that a police investigation is just going to ‘blow over’ is, I would say, at the very least naive.”
Carole did not get the impression that the Lockes normally argued like this. Maybe her presence in connection with Nathan’s disappearance was the catalyst that enabled Bridget to unburden herself of what she was really feeling.
“And I wonder whether what Carole calls ‘Fethering gossip’ may not have some truth in it. Particularly if…”
“Particularly if what?” asked her husband sharply.
Bridget Locke took a deep breath. She knew he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. “Look, Nathan’s at a difficult age and he was in the throes of his first big love affair. That’s confusing enough for anyone.
