7. Romy
SEVEN
Romy
I could blame the wine for the flush on my chest and on my cheeks when Liv asked me about it later, only she was a detective and she knew me too well by now.
She was also a good enough detective that she didn’t look surprised at the very handsome man – which I thought should have capital letters – at my kitchen table.
Maybe it was an escape from what was actually going on for real in my life, but I’d found myself having short daydreams about Cassian Caddick throughout the day, when I should’ve been all consumed with the worry that was going on around Mia.
It was just a daydream, something fictional and exciting in a never going to happen kind of way to stop myself from being eaten up with Cara’s disappearance and nothing more, but if I said I didn’t have a crush on Cas, I’d be lying.
I had eyes for a start.
And a pulse, even though it’d been buried in a well of grief.
Liv came in through the front door and headed straight out the back into the garden to see the girls. She was immediately attacked by Heidi, who considered Liv to be a human jungle gym, which was entirely Liv’s fault as she’d encouraged Heidi to climb all over her since Heidi could crawl.
Mia stood there, watching the circus with an expression that was half longing and half fear. She’d been quieter still since we’d gotten home, none of the things we’d wanted in our hands. She missed her stuffed toys, the dog and cat particularly, and she’d mentioned she wanted her swimming costume because I’d said we could go swimming at the weekend with Heidi’s grandma. I was hoping the bags that Liv had dropped on the hallway floor were full of her things.
“She doesn’t look police-like,” Cassian said, frowning at Liv as she swung Heidi round in a circle. “Think she’d rather work in a school?”
“I think she likes arresting people too much. Look at Mia.”
Mia had frozen still, her eyes fixed on Liv and Heidi, her tiny frame standing too still.
“Do you want a turn, Mia?” Liv pretty much dumped my daughter on the floor, which was fine. Heidi was giggling, in a position that looked like a collapsed forward roll.
Mia shook her head, backing away.
Liv didn’t have her uniform on; she was long past that given she was now a detective sergeant rather than a normal copper, so it wasn’t the uniform that seemed to be freaking Mia out, but something was.
I headed outside, Cassian no longer figuring on my radar.
“Mia, what’s - ”
Mia unfroze and cannonballed towards me. I caught her and picked her up, the weight of her more like a just four-year-old rather than a child who’d turn six in another month. She buried her head on my shoulder and I felt tears dampen my skin.
Maybe this was the explosion from a build-up of things that had upturned her little life in the last few days. Maybe it was just the effect that Liv had on small kids that weren’t Heidi.
“What’s up, baby?” I cuddled her to me, pressing a kiss against her messy hair.
She didn’t answer, just holding me tighter. Heidi looked worried. Liv looked guilty. Cassian looked concerned.
There were possibly too many people here, too many eyes watching, so I carried her inside and up the stairs to the bedroom she was sharing with Heidi, sitting down on the beanbag in there with her still in my now aching arms.
“Mia, can you tell me what’s wrong?” I put some space between us so I could see her. She wasn’t crying anymore, but her eyes were closed, as if she was pretending she couldn’t see anything so she couldn’t be seen. A cat’s trick.
“Mia, I - ”
“I miss my mummy. I’m glad she’s not here though.” It was mumbled, I could just about make out what her words were.
“Why are you glad she’s not here?”
“Because the man isn’t here when she’s not.”
Oh lordy. This could be a whole can of worms that we were about to open. “Who’s the man, Mia? Can you remember anything about him?”
“He was Mummy’s friend. He brought her sweets.”
By sweets I could figure out that she meant drugs. I wasn’t surprised. “Did the man ever do anything to you?”
“Mummy locked me in my bedroom when he was there and told me to be very quiet so I didn’t bother him.” She still had her eyes closed.
“Did you ever see what he looked like?” My heart was thudding like horses hooves in a race.
“He was tall and had straw hair and he had a line here.” She pointed to her chin. “Mummy called him Logan.”
I stroked her back, hoping it had the same effect on her as it did on Heidi. “Did he ever touch you?”
She shook her head a lot. “He stared at me if he saw me and he did this.” She used scissor fingers to point at her eyes and then at me. “One of the stupid boys does it at school and I don’t like it.”
“I don’t either.” Because it was a threat. I’m watching you . That was what he was telling her.
There was a knock at the door, one that was probably badly timed because Mia’s silence filled the room.
Liv came in with Heidi, both of them looking sheepish. “Heidi wanted to make sure Mia was okay.”
My daughter, unflappable as ever, squashed herself onto the bean bag next to Mia and showed her a daisy bracelet that was tied around her wrist. “Do you want to make friendship bracelets?”
I inwardly cursed. Heidi making friendship bracelets meant that my vacuum would be spitting bits out for the next week, but it meant they’d be inside and safe and Mia would be occupied with something fun, at least Heidi found it fun.
Mia nodded, loosening her grip on me.
“Mummy, can we have a milkshake while we’re making friendship bracelets? I want to make one for Liv.” That was Heidi, forever pushing for whatever she could get.
My girl would go far.
“I’ll make you both a milkshake.” And I’d have another glass of wine, maybe consider ordering a takeout because cooking adult food wasn’t going to be a high priority tonight. Not a great way to start a week that’d been filled with good intentions, but tomorrow was a new day and all that jazz.
Liv followed me downstairs, carrying a cloud of thoughtfulness with her. I wasn’t sure whether her shift had ended or she was pulling a long day; it’d been a long time since we’d had a good catch up and I kind of felt that tonight would be a good time to rectify that.
I needed an adult to work through whatever it was that was happening, and there was a choice of two in my house. My good friend and the man I had a crush on.
“What’s going on with Mia apart from her mother’s missing and she’s been abandoned?” Liv didn’t mince her words as she sat at the kitchen table.
Cassian was still there, his glass almost empty. “Is Mia okay?”
“Mia’s not okay.” I sighed, a painfully long expulsion of air that hollowed out my lungs. Maybe I needed to do some meditation or yoga, something mindful.
Or I could drink wine.
“She told me about a man called Logan who has fair hair. He would come round to her house and Cara would lock Mia in her room, but Mia did see him sometimes. He made a threatening gesture to her.” I demonstrated it, pointing my fingers to Liv rather than Cassian. It didn’t seem appropriate to make the sign at my daughter’s headteacher. I had no issue doing it to a police detective though. “Mia was scared of him but she said he didn’t touch her.”
“This could be really helpful.” Liv opened the fridge and found the wine. “I’m off duty so I’m going to have a glass or two from your stash and sleep on your sofa, if that’s okay?”
I nodded, relieved. “You can’t get the boyfriend to end all boyfriends to pick you up?”
“I could but I’m not.” She glanced at Cassian. “I’d feel better if I stayed here tonight, because tomorrow we’re adding a few more locks and an alarm here.”
I started to add ice cream, milk and red fruits into the blender. The girls could have a milkshake but I’d be getting one of their five a day in there. “Why? What do you know?”
“No more than you do. We’re trying to get intelligence about what Cara was up to before she disappeared, who she was mixing with, where she was working. Uniforms will be going door to door to see if anyone saw her on Friday or Thursday night. A last known sighting will be helpful for that, and I think we’ll have to speak to Mia – we have a really good detective who kids like and they’ll open up to him – he looks like a children’s television presenter. Do you think there’s something else she’s not telling you?” Liv topped up everyone’s wine and put the now empty bottle next to the door to go into the recycling. “You have a lot of alcohol in.”
“Because people buy it for me and I don’t drink it.” Which was the truth. “And you haven’t been round for months.”
“I’d be round more if people would stop committing crimes.” She turned to Cassian. “How’s being the new headteacher of the finest primary school in Wales?”
He laughed, probably not sure how to take Liv. “Good so far. I take it you went there as a pupil?”
“I was expelled from there three days before I left to go to secondary school.” There was no remorse at all in her tone.
“What for? I think I might’ve heard about this – the only pupil to be permanently excluded in the last half a century,” Cassian said, grinning. “And now a police officer.”
Liv shrugged. “I found my way onto the school roof. The headmaster told me to get down and I refused because Joel McAllister was there and he was the reason I was up there in the first place.” She eyed me, full of mischief.
“Isn’t that Heidi’s dad, Romy?” Cassian’s words were quiet, as if he was unsure how to phrase my relationship with Joel. Dead husband didn’t sound right coming out of anyone’s mouth, ex-husband wasn’t right and he wasn’t my husband anymore, unfortunately. The Strait had seen to that.
Some days I felt like my world ended the day I found out he wasn’t coming home; some days I felt like I was drowning in guilt for still being able to smile. It was those days I remembered how Joel was and how he lived every day. He’d want me to do the same.
“That’s Heidi’s dad.” I shook my head. I’d heard this story countless times since Liv and I had been friends. “He always gets the blame for this.”
“It was his fault. I know he’s a hero and he ended up being a nice guy, but he was an arsehole at the age of eleven.” Liv bullied me away from the blender and poured the milkshake into the two large glasses I’d gotten out. “He dared me to get on the flat roof of a temporary classroom, one that we weren’t meant to go anywhere near, and stay there for ten minutes without falling through it.”
“Did you manage it?”
Liv grinned. “I managed twelve minutes before I fell through it. Tell me there’s still a discoloured patch in Classroom Three. I think there should be a plaque there to commemorate my incredible feat.”
“There’s still a patch there where the roof was fixed,” Cassian said. “No plaque though. The roof’s got spikes on it now so I suggest you don’t go climbing up there again.”
Liv shook her head. “Unlikely. I think my roof climbing days are over. I could see Heidi going up there when she’s older.” She side-eyed me. “Would not be surprising.”
“It’s a possibility.” She was spirited. “But not Mia.”
“Mia will be persuading her not to climb up there,” Cassian said. “She doesn’t like it when anyone gets told off or if anyone shouts. I saw her flinch in the playground today when one of the midday assistants was yelling about something that really didn’t matter.” He shook his head.
I figured he had some work to do there.
“Probably Mrs Marriott.” Liv held both milkshakes in her hands, which now looked like masterpieces, garnished with cream and strawberries and some chocolate flakes which were probably out of date, but I doubted it would cause anyone any issues. “She was hideous back then. I can’t think she’s mellowed.”
Cassian looked surprised, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Malevolent Marriott strikes again. That’d be a good idea for a kids’ book. Isn’t there a writer around here who could do it?”
“He writes crime.” I was talking to air, Liv now out of the door and heading up the stairs, leaving me alone with Cassian. “Have you met Gulliver?”
“I have,” he said, amused. “He’s on the football team with his brothers and he likes a dirty tackle. He nearly took my leg off yesterday.”
“Sounds like Gully. He’s good fun though.”
Cassian raised his eyebrows at me. “Yeah?”
I realised what he was implying. “Not like that. He’s a friend, that’s all. He isn’t my type.” I was rambling now. “I haven’t dated for years. So Gully is just a friend.” Shut up, Romy .
“Romy doesn’t date.” Liv thankfully re-entered the room. “She watches rom-coms and gets involved in the parent teacher association at school, usually smiling as she accepts the shittiest jobs. If you want to stay in my good books, make sure she gets a better role in the summer fair.” Liv sat back down and took a long swig of her rosé. “Mia update, she’s smiling and making friendship bracelets that they want to send to Taylor Swift. I know there’ll be meetings tomorrow with school, Cassian – how come you’re here, by the way? Are you trying to woo my friend because that’s great news if you are. I’ll get a duster ready for her.”
“Liv. With all the love, shut the eff up.” If she was closer to me, I’d have elbowed her.
“Okay, I miss-read the room. We have a team meeting at seven tomorrow. What do you know about Mia and Cara – I need all the tiniest details, even if you don’t think they’re useful.” She sat back and pulled a notepad and pen out of her pocket.
I glanced at Cassian, knowing my cheeks were stinging with embarrassed heat. “Cara was quiet when I saw her. We would meet up every few weeks to take the girls out together at one point, but I found it awkward to talk to her – you know when someone gives you one-word answers and doesn’t ask anything back? So I started suggesting I took Mia out with us and Cara could have some time to herself. There were a couple of times when I took Mia home and Cara wasn’t there or answering her phone, so Mia stayed with us for longer.”
“How was Mia when that happened?” Cassian asked, sipping his drink a lot slower than Liv who was almost polishing off the glass. I was struggling not to stare at his forearms, the corded muscle making them look powerful, his skin tanned and dusted with dark hair.
“She would be a bit sad, almost resigned sometimes, like this was what happened all the time. Heidi once asked me if Mia could stay all weekend because she didn’t want to go home – I said no, of course, which I felt bad about but it seemed wrong to indulge her. I know not every mum and daughter get along like I do with Heidi.” I was hoping that mine and Heidi’s relationship would last like this as she got older but I wasn’t going to hold my breath. She was headstrong like Joel had been, and just as adventurous as him. Spirited, as her grandmother described her.
“Cara had jobs doing a bit of cleaning and she did some delivery driving for take aways too. This is confidential, but at one point she had around fifteen thousand pounds in her account, which was withdrawn or moved around over the course of a week. It was flagged, but not investigated. Would either of you have any idea where that money was from?” Liv was in full police officer mode now.
Cassian leaned forward. “I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, and I’ve stayed out of the way of the gossip. I know my deputy had concerns about Mia – she was often tired, looked underweight and her clothes weren’t always the cleanest. The school staff makes sure she has breakfast and a good lunch in case food’s scarce at home. Cara didn’t always come to pick her up, but it isn’t that far from school to her house so they let that go. I think someone – probably Diane who’s the school admin – said that Cara had a lot of boyfriends, but that’s the limit of what I know so far.”
Liv gave a serious nod, watching him. “Why are you here, by the way?”
“I was walking back from the Puffin Inn and ended up in a circle. Mia and Heidi saw me and shouted me over. I’m still working out where everything is.” He’d almost finished his wine. “If I hear any gossip about Cara, I’ll pass it on.”
“Most of the gossip’s about you at the moment,” I said, regretting the words as soon as they came out.
Cassian smiled and shrugged. “Nothing I’m not used to. Is there anything else we need to do at school?”
Liv tapped her pen against her notepad. “You have strict safeguarding procedures in place already, so your perimeter gates are locked where you have them, visitors have to sign in, no one apart from staff or police checked visitors can walk around by themselves, so that’s all good. I’d take extra care on any school trips, don’t let Mia go home with anyone apart from Romy, and give staff that work closely with her the head’s up so they pay attention to any changes in her mood, or anything that she says that’s unusual. Given she’s said something today about this Logan, I wouldn’t be surprised if more things slip out. She might even talk to Heidi about it, so Romy, you might want to have a chat with Heidi about secrets and not keeping them with you.”
I’d already thought of that, my head still whirring at a hundred miles an hour. “Have you heard the name Logan before?”
Liv shrugged. “Yes, but it might not be the same one. There is a Logan who’s connected to Mia’s dad. We can get some photos of him and see if Mia recognises him. That’ll possibly happen tomorrow, Romy.” She turned to me, relaxing her shoulders. “I’m going off my gut – I have no evidence for what I’m about to suggest – so don’t panic. I’m worried that Cara’s gotten into something bad and she’s either hiding somewhere or something’s happened to her. From what my boss has said this afternoon, we’re going to be treating her disappearance as suspicious, although we’ll be trying to keep it out of the media. We don’t need their help and interference right now. Romy, you need to watch out for the media near your house. Say nothing to them. If they’re taking photos let me know and my super will tear them a new one. But I am worried that Mia staying here makes you a target.” She stretched, her relaxed pose all for show. “It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Cara’s up to her neck in something. Your house doesn’t get ransacked for nothing, and you don’t disappear without your daughter unless you’re up shit creek. Mia has seen this Logan and maybe other people involved. They might think she knows something they don’t want her to know, or they may see her as leverage with Cara. You see where I’m going with this?”
I nodded, wondering whether Cassian would authorise a term time holiday somewhere remote and secure. That wasn’t fair on the girls though, and this was just Liv’s gut feeling.
“Cara could’ve ransacked her own house, couldn’t she?” I said, needing a less radical theory. “She could’ve been looking for something before she took off.”
“You don’t think it’s weird that she told Mia she was leaving the key for her and then the key wasn’t there?” Cassian asked, his elbows on the table now, body leaning forward.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think her mental health was in the best place, and if she was using drugs then she might not have been thinking straight.”
“This is also a possibility. She could’ve had a breakdown, so we are planning on searching the area starting at dawn tomorrow. They’re checking the coasts and CCTV in the area, which will be fun.” Liv actually cracked a smile, so it wasn’t going to be as bad as she was making it sound, I guessed.
But then she lived for big cases.
“So you’re staying tonight because you’re worried about me here?”
“Pretty much. Roe Holland should be able to help you out with security here. He knows what’s going on as he’s doing some civilian work for us on this.” Liv turned her attention back to Cassian. “You might want to look at security in school. I’m not saying what you’ve got already isn’t good, I’m going to assume it is, but you’ll kick yourself if something happens and you realise there was more you could’ve done.”
He nodded, his dark eyes serious. There was no smile on his face and I’d noticed that he kept glancing over at me, his brief gazes cindering my skin. “I’ll ask Roe Holland to visit after school tomorrow then.” Cas stood up, all of his attention on me now.
My skin felt tight, any movement clunky, like I didn’t quite know how my body worked any more. I wanted to toy with my hair or fiddle with something, just needing something to do to distract myself from this man who made me remember that I was a woman still, not just a friend and a colleague and a mother.
And a widow.
I swallowed, remembering Joel, knowing what he’d tell me to do right now. He was fearless. Brave. He never let anything stop him from what he wanted to do. Some would’ve called him tenacious. I called him stupidly stubborn and single minded.
We’d talked once about what would happen if one of us died, one of those odd conversations couples have when they’ve just come out of the early days. He’d said he’d carry on living. I’d been far more romantic and told him he was it for me.
But I’m not ‘it’ if I’m dead, Romy. If I’m not here, you need to carry on living too. Don’t be like that mad woman in that book you like, Havisham or something. Don’t let your clocks stop.
They’d stopped at the time I’d been told he’d died, Liv breaking the news that they were calling off the search that’d gone on for twice as long as it should’ve because it was Joel. I’d lived, but it’d been almost a half-life. Survival with a baby, survival with a toddler. Survival as a single mum who missed her husband. Not feeling was easier than feeling, numbness was kind, which was why I hadn’t judged Cara when I knew she was taking whatever it was to make the pain go away, although I’d avoided alcohol and anything else apart from rom coms and books by authors I knew would remind me that happily ever afters still existed, even if mine had been drowned.
I hadn’t noticed a man to be as good looking as Cassian from before the day I was blinded by Joel.
I’d forgotten how it felt to have a crush, an infatuation, an interest beyond professional capacity, and I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure what the rules were anymore, or even if Cassian thought I existed beyond being a parent at his school.