Chapter 3
THREE
When they’d bought this house five years ago, it’d been the hall which had immediately sold it to her. The solid black and white tiled floor had that feeling of permanence and safety she’d craved after the terrible night of the fire. On the second viewing, they’d taken the children and Ben had been transfixed by the floor. Mollie had been more taken with the bedroom with a window seat that they’d told her was hers to decorate however she wished. Glancing around on the way in, though, it looked so very different to Erica now. It wasn’t home.
Andrew held out his hand for her to go through to the kitchen. ‘Do you want a drink while we wait for Mollie? Coffee?’
He was a good-looking man, she couldn’t deny that. In fact, he was better looking now than he’d been when they met. She was the one who’d encouraged him to go to a proper barber and suggested he wear his hair a little longer, who’d bought him fitted shirts and well-cut jeans instead of the baggy student clothes he was still wearing when they first met. It wasn’t just his clothes, though. Age suited him, too. It was so unfair. ‘Yes, I’ll have a coffee, thanks. What’s going on? Why does Mollie need me?’
The anxiety that’d prickled when she was talking to Lynn in the garden now ratcheted up a notch. All manner of terrifying possibilities flashed through her mind. Andrew was frustratingly evasive. ‘Let me make you a drink first.’
Clenching her hands into fists, she breathed through her need to immediately know what was going on. From experience, her husband did not deal well with being told what to do. As he turned towards the counter, she noticed a large new chrome coffee machine. It wasn’t like him to spend money on household appliances. ‘That looks a bit posh.’
In the past, he’d have laughed at her use of such a quintessentially English word; now he merely blushed as he turned to her. ‘Yeah, well. Thought I’d treat myself.’
Rubbing at his face, a slight stubble scratching against his fingers, he gave her that smile which had disarmed her from the first moment she met him. But all she could see was the pale white mark on his finger: he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. Reaching instinctively for her own, her stomach lurched. When had he taken it off?
Twirling the plain gold band around her finger, she kept her lips tightly pressed together. They’d always looked like a mismatched couple. His height and breadth compared to her five feet two and size four feet. His thick dark hair, her blonde waves. Perhaps that’s why the twins had always looked so different. But their differences had always been what made them fit together. His practicality and her soft skills. His discipline and her sense of adventure. Despite coming from very different families – and completely different countries – they’d been a good match. A happy couple. But now? They lived in separate homes with a child each and he was buying coffee machines and taking off his wedding ring. She feared it was really all over between them.
Feeling like a visitor in her former home, she perched on a stool by the breakfast bar. ‘Andrew. Can you just tell me what’s going on? What’s happening with Mollie? Even Lynn suggested that I need to check in with her.’
Steam hissed from the machine. Andrew reached for a cup from a selection stacked on a chrome stand – also new – before he turned around to face her. ‘I had to collect her from school on Friday. She’s been suspended for two days.’
Erica nearly fell from her seat. Suspended? Mollie? She hadn’t had so much as a detention the whole time she’d been at school. Top marks in all school reports for effort, attitude and behaviour: the archetypal perfect student. There must be some mistake. ‘That’s ludicrous. What possible reason could the school have for suspending her? And why didn’t you call me straight away? You waited two days to tell me? Not only am I Mollie’s mother, Andrew, but I could’ve done something. I used to work there. I know who to speak to. I could get to the bottom of what’s going on.’
Behind Andrew, the stupid machine gurgled and he turned to slot a cup underneath a chrome tap. Tweaked something. ‘Well, firstly, I didn’t call you because she asked me not to. She was mortified. Secondly, I’m not sure what you think you could do when you’re not even working there at the moment. And, lastly, the reason she was suspended was because she was caught stealing.’
The not-calling would have to be argued about later. Stealing? Mollie? The girl who’d made her drive back to the bakers because she’d discovered three Yum Yums in the paper bag and she’d only paid for two. ‘Did you ask them for proof? There must be some mistake.’
Andrew slid her coffee across the breakfast bar. He’d attempted something artistic with the foam. ‘That’s what I said, but apparently not. She was caught red-handed with the teacher’s purse in her hand.’
Erica choked on the scalding coffee she’d sipped too soon. ‘The teacher’s purse?’
Even though she still wouldn’t have believed it, she’d assumed the accusation of theft would be something belonging to the school. A book. Or a set of pens. Before Easter, when she’d been teaching there, there’d been a spate of kids stealing the remote controls for the classroom projectors which could completely sabotage the next lesson.
Andrew sighed, leaning against the counter with his coffee in his hand, shaking his head. ‘You can imagine how I felt having to face being told that about my own daughter. To make it worse, the call came to me at work and I had to have the meeting with the deputy head wearing my uniform.’
An age-old irritation dug its fingers into Erica. Was he more worried about how this looked for him as a Detective Inspector than he was about their daughter? That felt unpleasantly familiar. ‘I can’t believe any of this. Are they sure it was her? Was she doing it for a dare or something?’
No matter how she turned this around in her head, it didn’t make sense. She wasn’t one of those parents who thought her child could never do wrong, but Mollie? Stealing from a teacher? Really?
Andrew shrugged. ‘Definitely her. Like I said, she was caught red-handed. It was break time. Her English teacher left the room and, when she came back in, Mollie had taken her purse out of her handbag and was taking cash from it.’
This made even less sense. Mollie’s English teacher – Miss Martin – was her favourite. Mollie adored her. Erica felt sick. This was not the way her daughter had ever behaved. ‘I can’t believe the school just suspended her. Did they not try and find out why she was doing it? They know that she’s a good kid. A really good kid.’
Her throat was tight with the injustice of it. Generally, the behaviour at Mollie’s school was good, but there were still kids who were in trouble all the time. And didn’t she know better than anyone where that could lead?
She shuddered and pushed that thought from her mind. Mollie wasn’t one of them. Her heart ached picturing her poor girl in the head’s office being told that she was being excluded from school for two days. She could only imagine how devastated she would feel. This didn’t happen to kids like her.
Andrew frowned. ‘That’s what I spent the whole of last night doing. Trying to find out why she was taking money. But she won’t tell me. She won’t say a thing.’
She couldn’t bite her tongue a second time. ‘And yet you still didn’t think to call me?’
He raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘I interview suspects for a living, Erica. If I can’t get her to tell me, I don’t fancy your chances much. Why would she be any different with you?’
Erica took another sip of the bitter coffee in an attempt to swallow down the desire to yell ‘because I’m her mother’ at him. Arguing with Andrew wasn’t going to help this situation one bit. Plus, she didn’t want to give him the opportunity to remind her that Mollie hadn’t wanted to see her for over a week. It was painful enough that her daughter was pushing her away; she didn’t need to hear it from him too. Instead, she turned the tables. ‘Ben’s fine, by the way.’
The clench in his jaw showed she’d hit the target. ‘I know that. I saw him on Wednesday, didn’t I? And we both know if he’d as much as broken a fingernail you wouldn’t be here to see Mollie.’
That stung. Is this what they’d come to, taking pot-shots at each other? This wasn’t the right time for them to air their grievances. All she wanted was to see Mollie and hear her side of the story.
From the room above, as if in answer, the mournful strains of Mollie’s saxophone scales bled through the ceiling. Andrew strode into the hall and shouted upwards. ‘Mollie! Your mum’s here. Come down now, please!’
Instantly, the music stopped and Andrew returned to the kitchen. Something else occurred to Erica. ‘What are we going to do about her being off school? She can’t be on her own all day for two days running.’
Andrew shrugged. ‘She’s thirteen. She’ll be fine. And I can ask Lynn to keep an ear out for her.’
Ordinarily, Mollie was more than capable of looking after herself – she let herself in from school every day and was alone until Andrew got home – but present circumstances made Erica uneasy. ‘I can’t come back here tomorrow because I’ve already promised to open up the shop. But I’m worried about her spending so much time without one of us here. We don’t know what’s going on with her. I’m scared that…’
Unsure what she was scared about, she left the sentence hanging. Andrew shook his head. ‘You might have made yourself the expert in our son, Erica, but I’m the one who’s been looking after Mollie for the last three months. You don’t get to be the expert in her, too. She’ll be fine.’
He couldn’t have taken her breath more if he’d slapped her in the face. They waited in silence until there was a creak on the stairs. Leaving her coffee cup on the counter, Erica slid from the stool and waited for her daughter to come down.
She took a deep breath to prevent herself from jumping on Mollie the minute she appeared, desperate to know what was going on. Why would Mollie have stolen money when she could’ve asked them for it? What did she need money for that she couldn’t tell them? And in what possible world had her kind, conscientious and law-abiding child been caught stealing from her favourite teacher at school?