57
Every couple of months, Roy Grace took his eight-year-old goddaughter, Jaye Somers, out for a Sunday treat. Her parents, Michael and Victoria, both police officers, had been some of his and Sandy's closest friends, and they had been hugely supportive in the difficult years following her disappearance. With their four children, aged two to eleven, they had become almost a second family to him.
Today he'd had to disappoint Jaye by explaining when he collected her that he could only spare a couple of hours, as he had to go back to work to try to help someone who was in trouble.
He never told Jaye in advance what the treat would be, so she always enjoyed the guessing game for the first few minutes of their car journey.
'I think we are going to see animals today!' Jaye said.
'Do you?'
'Yes.'
She was a pretty child, with long silvery blonde hair, a cherubic, happy face and an infectious laugh. Today she was smartly dressed, as usual, in a green frock with white lace trim and a tiny pair of pink trainers on her feet. Sometimes her expressions, and the things she said, could seem incredibly grown-up. There were moments when Grace felt he was out with a miniature adult, not a child.
'So what makes you think that?'
'Umm, let me see.' Jaye leaned forward and twiddled the dials on Grace's car radio, selected the CD and punched a number. The first track of a Blue album began to play. 'Do you like Blue?'
'Uh huh.'
'I like the Scissor Sisters.'
'Do you?'
'They're cool. Do you know them?'
Grace remembered that Glenn Branson was into them. 'Of course.'
'We're definitely going to see animals.'
'What sort of animals do you think we're going to see?'
She turned the music up, swaying her arms to the beat. 'Giraffes.'
'You want to see giraffes?'
'Giraffes don't dream much,' she informed him.
'Don't they? You talk to giraffes about their dreams?' |k 'We have a project in school about animals dreaming. Dogs J dream a lot. So do cats.'
'But not giraffes?'
'No.'
He grinned. 'OK, so how do you know that?'
'I just do.'
'How about llamas?'
She shrugged.
It was a fine late-spring morning, the sun bright and warm and dazzling through the windscreen, and Grace pulled his sunglasses out of the glove compartment. There was a hint, today at any rate, that the long spell of bad weather might be over. And Jaye was a sunny person, he enjoyed her company a lot. He normally forgot his troubles during the few precious hours he was with her.
'So what else have you been up to at school?'
'Stuff.'
'What kind of stuff?'
'School's boring at the moment.'
Grace drove extra carefully with Jaye on board, slowly heading out of Brighton into the countryside. 'Last time we went out you said you were really enjoying school.'
'The teachers are so stupid.'
'All of them?'
'Not Mrs Dean. She's nice.'
'What does she teach?'
'Giraffe dreams.' She burst into giggles.
Grace pulled up as the traffic queued for a roundabout. 'That's all she teaches?'
Jaye was quiet for a moment, then said suddenly, 'Mummy thinks you should get married again.'
Surprised, he said, 'Does she?'
Jaye nodded very definitely.
'And what do you think?'
