Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Children were flooding out of the doors of the building as she left. A sea of smiles and shouts and girls with linked arms and boys kicking footballs. An hour for lunch to decompress before going back to their classrooms.
How different would their lives have been if Benjamin had been one of these boys? If her day had consisted of just dropping both children off together in the morning, feeling confident that they would have a good – or at least satisfactory – day? Having been a teacher all her life, that’s what she’d assumed school would be for her kids. Ordinary. When she’d found out they were expecting twins, she’d actually congratulated herself that school logistics would be a walk in the park.
She’d never forget the look on Andrew’s face when he discovered she was carrying twins. Absolute shock, his mouth a perfectly round circle of disbelief, followed by a smile that spread across his face like jelly.
‘Twins? Oh my…that’s amazing. It’s amazing, right?’
He’d looked at her for confirmation that she was just as pleased as he was before reaching across her gel-covered stomach to kiss her. She had no idea what the sonographer thought of that. But Erica hadn’t been able to stop smiling either. ‘Yes. It’s absolutely terrifying, but it’s amazing.’
When they discovered in a later scan that not only was it twins, but that they were expecting one of each, he’d been even more ecstatic. By then, Erica was getting heavier and more tired, so she was less ebullient, but it was really exciting. If only she’d known then how different her two babies’ lives would be.
‘Erica?’
She turned in the direction of a soft voice to see Mollie’s best friend, Amelia. ‘Hi. How are you?’
Amelia shuffled from one foot to the other, clearly embarrassed to be talking to an adult in the middle of the courtyard. ‘I’m okay. How’s Mollie? I was worried when I heard about…you know.’
Maybe she didn’t want to mention the suspension, but Erica was surprised at the question. ‘Haven’t you spoken to her?’
Amelia shook her head. ‘She won’t answer my messages.’
Another layer of anxiety wrapped itself across Erica’s shoulders. Mollie was addicted to that phone. Surely she would want to speak to her friend? Although there might be a reasonable explanation. ‘Maybe her dad took her phone. I’m not sure.’
Amelia looked relieved at the possibility. ‘Oh, that makes sense. Can you say hi to her for me? I’ve got to go now. I need to see my food tech teacher before the next lesson because I’ve forgotten my ingredients.’
‘Of course. She’ll be back tomorrow and I’m sure she’ll be really pleased to see you.’
Amelia didn’t look convinced of that, but she gave a little wave and a small smile as she left. Erica wanted to ask her what she knew, or suspected, about the money Mollie had taken. But she didn’t want to fuel gossip by talking to her about it in front of all these other students. For a start, Mollie would be mortified and it was also probably a child protection issue to have an adult grilling one of the students on school premises. She wasn’t a teacher here at the moment.
Before pulling out of the car park, she called Andrew with an update. No answer. Why wasn’t he waiting for her call? Then she tried Mollie. Same thing. Were they in the middle of something?
Across the road, an older woman was pushing a stroller with a young child in it. She must be the grandmother. Erica watched as she smiled and chatted to the child who was wriggling and laughing. Envy squeezed at her. How much easier might her life have been if she had a bigger support network here. If she had family. It was her choice to move over to the UK all those years ago and the freedom of being away from home had been intoxicating to begin with. Her American accent had ensured that it was easy to spark up a conversation: people were always interested in where you were from and why you were here. And then she’d met Andrew and decided to stay.
But she hadn’t reckoned on how isolating it would be to have twins with no family around to help out. Andrew’s mother was elderly and lived two hours away with his sister. His father – also a police officer – had passed away before the children were born and, in the sixteen years she’d lived in the UK, Erica’s parents had never been to visit.
The main reason that she and Andrew had decided on such a small wedding – his family, some of their friends, a registry office and then fish and chips at a local restaurant – was that her parents had decided not to come. Her father was a flat refusal; her mother had mentioned something about throwing them a party ‘when you’re back home’. It didn’t seem to matter how many times she’d said that England was her home now. Erica had been grateful that her brother, Joe, had made the trip, but the poor guy had had to field questions from everyone as to why their parents hadn’t come.
In a slightly freakish coincidence, her mother chose that moment to call again. Regardless of Erica’s greeting, and the caller display, she started the telephone conversation as she always did. ‘Hi, Erica, it’s only me. Mom.’
Waiting for Andrew to call her back, Erica wanted to leave her line open. ‘Hi, Mom. I’m kind of in the middle of something right now. Can I call you later?’
There was a dramatic sigh at the other end. ‘You’re always in the middle of something. What am I supposed to do if I need to speak to you?’
Maybe the same thing as I had to do when I needed you , she wanted to say.
As soon as she’d had the first scan, and found out that she was expecting twins, she’d called her mom. Even though she’d sounded pleased and excited for her, as soon as Erica had asked about her parents coming to visit near the time of the birth, the hesitance was back in her voice. ‘Oh, honey. It’s such a long flight and you know that travelling is tricky for your father these days.’
Under normal circumstances this would’ve been irritating; pregnancy hormones made it likely that she’d burst into tears with disappointment. Erica had tried to not let her mother hear that. ‘You could come on your own if Dad can’t make it?’
In fact, that would’ve been preferable. Without her father there, her mom could’ve helped out, shown her the ropes of having a baby, rather than just sat on the sidelines telling her that she was doing it wrong, which had always been her father’s standard position for any of them.
Her mom’s voice had taken on that conciliatory tone she’d heard so many times before. ‘Well, we’ll see how it goes, shall we?’
Immediately she’d known that that’d meant no . That day, it was like a door shut in her heart. She’d managed to make her peace with them not attending her wedding. But if her parents couldn’t come when she was having a baby – having two babies – then she’d needed to face facts. Other than her brother – who had moved to the other side of the States by that time and was understandably busy with his own wife and kids – Andrew and the children were her only family now.
Despite all of their history, she still felt guilty when her mother called. Even more so since her father had passed away. ‘What is it you need, Mom?’
The deep sigh at the other end of the line made her grip the phone tightly in frustration. ‘Your cousin Ruth tells me that you’re not coming home for her wedding.’
She’d been expecting this call. ‘I can’t, Mom. I have the children.’
‘Bring the children with you. I’d love to see them. It’s been years, Erica.’
It’d been twelve years. The only time her mother had seen the twins was when they were fourteen months old and she and Andrew had endured a transatlantic flight with them only to be treated like an irritation in a house that was governed by her father’s preference for order and silence.
‘The children are in school and Ben won’t be able to cope with the flight. You could come here if you want to see them?’
By this point, it was practically a rhetorical question. Any hopes she’d had that, after her father passed away, her mom would make the trip to see them had quickly been quashed. As it was today. ‘You can’t expect me to travel all that way on my own.’
She bit her lip to prevent herself from saying that her mom had been more than capable of flying across the country to stay with her brother, because her mom sounded upset and she wasn’t cruel. ‘It’s just not possible for me to come right now. The children need me. I’m sorry.’
Her mom sniffed at the other end of the line. ‘I’m sorry, too. Since your father passed, I need support. When he left you that money, I thought you’d use some of it to come home.’
The emotional blackmail was so obvious it almost had subtitles. The money her father had left her in his will had been a welcome surprise. Without it, they’d never have been able to afford the fees at Ben’s school. For a while, she’d carried the guilt of not returning home for his funeral. But Ben hadn’t been on a plane since they’d made a trip to Spain when the twins were five. It’d been disastrous. Ben’s ears had hurt him the whole way there. He’d moaned and kicked his legs and the looks – and comments – from other passengers had been excruciating. No, there was no way she could fly back to the US with the twins and no way she was leaving Ben while she flew there alone. Just as she wouldn’t now. ‘Can’t you call Joe?’
‘Your brother is very busy. You know how demanding his job is. He works for the government, Erica. He can’t just drop everything.’
She definitely didn’t have the energy for the Joe PR Tour. It was a good job that he was such an easygoing nice guy, or her mother’s obvious preference would’ve made her hate him. Thankfully, her phone beeped to rescue her. ‘Mom, I have another call coming in and it might be Mollie. I’ll call you later on, okay?’
The incoming call was Andrew and he sounded distracted. ‘How did you get on at the school? What did Celeste have to say?’
‘Not much. They’re just as perplexed as we are. Up until the theft, there was no indication that she was struggling or unhappy and they’ve not picked up on any rumours from the students of anything going on.’
That was often the best way to find out what was happening. Teachers who had good relationships with their classes were often privy to information that was doing the rounds. Sometimes students would talk about it in your classroom in the hope that you would overhear and ensure matters were taken in hand without them having to snitch and tell you about it directly.
‘What do we do now, then? Just keep her grounded until she tells us what’s happening or why she did it?’
That sounded draconian and counterproductive. Their daughter was as stubborn as a mule. ‘We need to sit down with her together. We’ve only got this afternoon and evening because she’s back at school tomorrow and I want to get to the bottom of this before we have the meeting with her teacher in the morning.’
She was dreading sitting in the back-to-school meeting looking like a clueless parent who had no idea what was going on in her daughter’s life. Even if she actually was a clueless parent who had no idea what was going on in her daughter’s life.
‘Actually, I’ve had to pop into work.’
‘What? You said you were staying home with her?’
‘I know. But I’m a Detective Inspector, Erica. Something important came up and I had to come in. I can’t just drop everything right this minute. I’ll speak to Mollie tonight.’
His comments set her teeth on edge like a dried-out marker on a whiteboard. She knew – oh, she knew – that he had an important job. She was the one who’d had to give up all hopes of promotion in her own career to fit her life around the children, around Ben. Andrew’s progression through the ranks had continued, uninterrupted by appointments with doctors and teachers and specialists. It was an effort not to weigh down her words with irritation. ‘I think we should do it together.’
‘Look, I need to go, Erica. When I get home, I’ll call you.’ He coughed. ‘Did Celeste mention anything else?’
There was something behind this question that she couldn’t grasp. ‘Like what?’
‘Nothing. Just making sure that I’m up to speed on everything. And, seriously, if you need me to talk to Mollie on my own tonight, it’s fine. I know how difficult it is for you to drop everything.’
Anyone else might think he was being thoughtful, but there was no mistaking his tone. ‘I’ll be there later.’
He’d gone before she’d had a chance to ask whether he’d heard from Mollie in the last hour and whether she had her phone. She tried her one more time before throwing her own phone onto the passenger seat, pulling out of the car park and heading for the motorway.
She’d pick up Ben from school, then go straight to the house to see her daughter. If she wouldn’t open up, Erica would have to take her phone and see what was on it. Call her friends. Do whatever it took to get to the bottom of all of this.