I slammed my hand against the wall, hard enough that my palm rang with pain. It was satisfying to watch Tony jolt a little, his expression sharpening, becoming more watchful. I wondered if he thought I was going to attack him with the Take Down Spray. Who knew? I might.
‘Read it!’ I told him. ‘Read the fucking article! Someone in Whitehawk has opened up the community centre – they’ve had hundreds of volunteers out looking for her, putting up posters. Read what the police spokesman was quoted as saying.’
‘I’m getting to that; hold on.’
I snatched the paper from him. He looked at me despairingly, his coat half-shrugged from his shoulders.
‘Here. Look. “We will not rest until this girl is safe and home with her family.” That’s pretty – that’s pretty noble, right? Constant vigilance. She’s been all over the news. I saw it last night, and again this morning. You know what I just heard on the radio? They found her. Alive and well, just hiding out at a friend’s place.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘She’s only been missing thirty-six hours and look at the fuss. Look at the coverage. I can hardly get Edie’s name into the local rag – don’t touch me!’
His hand, which had been edging towards me, dropped.
‘Why didn’t you ever say that to me? Why didn’t you not rest until my daughter was home?’
‘Samantha, here. Let me make you some tea. Sit down. Come on. Please.’
I stared at him. ‘I remember you saying to me that girls like Edie will always find their way home. I didn’t know what you meant by that then. I do now. You mean girls like Edie aren’t photogenic enough. Girls like Edie have been in trouble at school and have a bad home life. Girls like Edie don’t warrant the same level of attention the Brighton Belle got. For one thing, girls like Edie can’t be relied upon to make a nice story at the end of the news. Girls like Edie never do.’
Tony looked at me. He didn’t tell me what I was saying wasn’t fair. He didn’t tell me they’d done all they could. He didn’t tell me about the slashed funding, the budget cuts, the lack of resources. He didn’t try to explain at all. I was sobbing, great wracking gulps that squeezed my chest like a vice. He ran his hands over his face and gestured for me to sit. He made us tea in silence, watching me smoke in quick, darting puffs.
‘I let her down,’ I said. ‘Edie. If I’d worked harder, if I’d got her some help – she was disadvantaged from the start with her shitty father and me, desperately trying not to sink. I couldn’t scrape together a search party if I fucking tried.’
Tony lowered himself into the seat opposite me. I didn’t know it then, but he’d already had the first in a string of heart attacks that would eventually kill him. He was grey-faced and looked suddenly old and washed out, sun-faded.
‘Sam, I don’t know what to tell you. I can say, though, with one hundred per cent bloody certainty, that you did not let your daughter down. You did the best you could, just like I did with mine, just like our own parents, and everyone before them.’ He took a cigarette from my pack and lit it, coughing wetly as he exhaled. Then he reached over the kitchen table and squeezed my hand. His skin felt like sun-warmed leather. Outside it started to snow, fat white flakes dusting the streets and the window frames, blanketing the roofs of parked cars.
I wish Tony were still here. I could tell him all the things I’ve found out about Peter Liverly – about how he tried to sue the local papers for the stories they printed about him, the gilded language they used: ‘eccentric’, ‘unusual appearance’, ‘an awkward bachelor’. How he had stones thrown at his bungalow windows, how he started sleeping with a cricket bat beside him on the bed. His adult sons appeared on the local news, talking about his good work with the church, how Liverly had been a member of the Neighbourhood Watch for years and kept himself to himself.
‘Mud sticks, though, doesn’t it?’ the elder son said, speaking directly into the microphone, pale eyes almost colourless, just like his father’s. ‘Mud sticks. It’s ruined his life, it has. What’s he going to do now, in his seventies? I feel sorry for the woman whose kid ran off but what about all the other people suffering because of it – like my dad?’
I don’t check my mobile until late in the morning, the sun warm on my back. I’m hanging the washing in the back garden with the radio playing quietly through the kitchen window. The Siamese from next door is sitting on my flower bed enthusiastically washing his balls. I pull my phone out and see that there is a message from Frances, sent the previous night. I remember waking up thinking I’d dreamed the phone ringing.
I open the message cautiously, staring at the words on the screen: I know u said no more but going to the old well today. 3 p.m. F x
I hang up a bedsheet, clothes pegs clamped between my teeth. No more. I’ve had enough. I move further along the clothes line and see the cat has moved a little to the right in a patch of syrupy sunlight. He is sniffing the ground, tail in the air, quivering slightly. I pull up a towel from the basket and pin it to the line, humming softly along to the radio. When I look back the cat is digging in the flower bed with his front paws, scrabbling a small divot in the earth.
‘Hey!’
