‘Did she? Get clean, I mean?’
Tracey nodded again. ‘It weren’t pretty, but she did it. I wouldn’t have believed she had it in ’er, to be honest, but she was a determined little bleeder once she got something fixed in ’er head. She left here as clean as a whistle ’bout a month ago.’
‘But she never went home,’ I said. ‘I spoke to her mother yesterday. She hasn’t a clue where Niamh is.’
Tracey lowered her gaze. I couldn’t shift the feeling she was hiding something. I leaned forwards, my elbows on the table. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
She fidgeted in her chair and then shrugged. ‘Perhaps she started using again.’
‘But you don’t think so, do you? Where did she go?’
Tracey sighed and said, ‘She was going home, yeah. But she said she had some unfinished business to see to first.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘I dunno. She never told me, all right? She just said she needed to stay in Kent until she’d sorted it.’
I took a shaky breath. It was obvious what Niamh meant. She wanted her daughter back. The daughter she happily handed over three years ago. Only Immy wasn’t hers to take. She was mine.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Can you show me Niamh’s room?’ I asked, jumping to my feet.
Tracey took another cigarette from the packet and lit it, sucking so hard her cheeks hollowed. As she exhaled, she shook her head. ‘I’ve got someone coming any minute. You need to make yourself scarce.’
‘Just a quick look,’ I said, pulling another couple of tenners from my purse and pushing them into her hand. ‘Please?’
‘What’s the point? There’s nothing to see.’ She frowned. ‘Hang on a minute, you said your daughter’s missing. Is that why you’re here? You think Niamh’s got something to do with it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘But I have to make sure, do you see?’
Tracey took another long drag. ‘I suppose you can have a quick look,’ she said, shrugging. ‘But you’re wasting your time.’
I followed her upstairs, my eyes swivelling left and right. Damp washing hung limply from the bannisters and the floor was littered with old shoes, newspapers and crushed drink cans.
‘’Scuse the mess,’ Tracey said, kicking an empty wine bottle out of the way. ‘This was Niamh’s room.’
She pushed open a door, stepping aside to let me in. It was a tiny room dominated by a large window that looked onto the back garden, although calling the rectangle of weeds, rubble and broken fence panels a garden was an overstatement.
Apart from a single stained mattress on the floor, a solitary pair of fishnet tights and the remains of a KFC bargain bucket that was green with mould, the room was empty, and the air was fetid, as if it hadn’t been disturbed for weeks.
My shoulders drooped. There was nothing to suggest Immy had ever been here.
‘See?’ Tracey said. ‘You should’ve listened to me and saved yourself twenty quid.’
I stiffened at a rap on the door.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ she sighed, stubbing her cigarette out in the mouldy bargain bucket and yanking her bra strap up. ‘No rest for the wicked. You better go, love, else he’ll think he’s hit the jackpot and a threesome’s on the cards.’ She hooted with laughter and tramped back down the stairs, yelling, ‘All right, all right, I’m coming!’
I bowed my head as I hurried past Tracey’s caller. I didn’t want him to see my face. My skin crawled, and I had a sudden urge for a hot shower to rinse away the reek of cigarette smoke and desperation.
I breathed out with relief when the door slammed behind me. As I stood on the pavement waiting for a break in the traffic, any pity I’d once felt for Niamh gave way to a seething resentment.
How dare she think she could burst into our lives and steal Immy from under our noses? She may have been Immy’s biological mother, but Immy was four weeks old when she left, and she had no memory of her birth mother.
I was the one who combed the tangles out of her hair every morning, who read her bedtime stories, who knew she preferred Paw Patrol to Dora the Explorer. I was the one who made sure she cleaned her teeth properly every night, who paid her exorbitant nursery fees, who knew she was afraid of the dark. Not Niamh. Niamh relinquished all rights to Immy when she pocketed the ten grand I gave her so she could put everything that happened in Corfu behind her and make a fresh start.
I’d even asked Niamh if she wanted to be involved in Immy’s life - on Stuart’s insistence. But she was adamant a clean break was best for everyone. Immy was ours now, she said.
Seemed she hadn’t meant it. Because all this time she must have been thinking about the daughter she’d given up and planning how she was going to take her back.
I grasped my mobile, my fingers itching to phone DC Sam Bennett, to tell her I’d made a breakthrough, that I knew where Immy was. Correction. To tell her I knew who’d taken Immy, because, unfortunately, I didn’t have a clue where Niamh was hiding her.
I ran through the possibilities. They weren’t at the squat, that was for sure. Perhaps they were holed up on the family farm in Ireland. Perhaps Mrs O’Sullivan had been lying through her teeth when I’d spoken to her yesterday. A lioness protecting her cubs.
For a moment I considered jumping in the car, driving straight to Gatwick Airport and catching the first flight to Cork.
But that would be foolhardy. I didn’t know where the farm was. Niamh probably wasn’t even there. Going home to Ireland could have been a line Niamh fed Tracey, knowing the police would come knocking when we reported Immy missing.
No, I was better off at home waiting for news. And the sooner I
