Chapter 39
A blast of music emanated from the living room.
It was gone twelve thirty. Time for Ben’s lunch.
She was flying solo again after the Easter weekend, the school holidays having started.
Will had a pretrial hearing at the Old Bailey, and Andy, Ben’s dad, was also working.
But once again, Sarah reminded herself how different things had been before she’d gone freelance, before she’d got together with Will, and before Andy had come back to London from Australia and agreed to be part of Ben’s life.
People often asked her how she managed it all, but, like everyone with caring responsibilities, she coped because she had to.
And there was always someone whose life was harder.
She remembered talking to the single mother of a child with Down’s syndrome who had gone to Ben’s after-school club and who rarely slept for more than four hours.
Night after night, as the poor woman finally fell into bed at midnight, she had done so knowing that she would be woken again at four.
It sounded like torture. The child’s father had left her to cope on her own, and good respite care was hard to find, Sarah knew.
Even if you could get the funding, there weren’t enough care companies or carers with space for all the children and young people who needed their services, especially since the pandemic, when they had all abruptly stopped running, and many hadn’t started up again.
Meanwhile, these tired parents were holding down jobs while fighting for their child’s education, as well as cooking, cleaning, bathing, dressing and feeding, staying awake, keeping on going.
She buttered bread and chopped up chunks of cheese and cucumber.
Ben could feed himself food like this, but he had yet to fully understand that nobody was going to whip it away from him if he took his time, so you had to watch that he didn’t stuff the whole lot into his mouth in one go.
If left alone, he would fill his cheeks and keep on going until he looked like a hamster, a thought that made Sarah smile but also didn’t, because on the rare occasion he had managed to do that without her getting to him quickly, she had been petrified he would choke.
She allowed Ben to have his iPad playing and sat next to him while he ate, then washed his hands and sat him at his computer.
She would have to take him out soon. They wouldn’t be able to get out of the car – it required two adults for Ben to be managed safely outdoors – but he enjoyed going for a drive, as long as he had his ever-present iPad on his lap, blasting out ‘Five Little Monkeys’.
Andy complained about the permanent noise that came hand in hand with Ben, but as long as Sarah wasn’t trying to read at the same time, it didn’t bother her.
And Ben was happy; that was the main thing.
Back in the kitchen, she had begun to clear up Ben’s lunch things and make herself a sandwich when a notification sounded on her phone.
She stopped what she was doing and sat down at the table, pulling her laptop towards her and taking a deep breath of anticipation as she saw that it was from the police, and that there was a statement attached.
It was from Louise Coulter, the burglary victim in Joe’s case.
At first glance, it seemed familiar, and as she began to read it, Sarah assumed the police had sent the same one she already had.
But then she saw the date at the top: it had been made on 18 March 2003, six weeks before Christy had been raped and murdered.
It was the statement she had asked for numerous times and been refused. The one from the burglary file.