Page 70

11.05
Bryan Gow gets to Heathside before we do and is standing by his car reading the paper when we pull up next to him in the visitors’ bay.
‘Morning,’ he says. ‘Looks like another scorcher.’
Quinn and I get out of his air-conditioned car and there’s a moment when the temperature hits and I’m back on that flight to the Grenadines six years ago and the moment the stewardess opened the doors into the impossible light and heat of a Caribbean afternoon. I still remember kicking myself for not packing a T-shirt in my hand luggage like the smart guys in the room, and going down the steps to the tarmac with my UK-winter jacket under one arm and Lily sleeping cradled against the other –
‘Looks like the legal contingent beat us to it,’ says Gow amiably, nodding towards a cluster of dark-suited serious types with briefcases heading towards the gate.
‘Well, it’s an outing. And it beats another bloody Zoom call.’
‘Racks up more fees too,’ says Gow, bending to retrieve his own case. I’m tempted to ask if he’s going for pot or kettle on that one, but I don’t, because it would be churlish and – as he’d be the first to point out – there’ll be things he’ll pick up in the room that he’d never see on a screen.
‘So,’ he says, ‘are we ready?’
***
Somer pulls up at the Griffin School just past eleven thirty and parks her car. She hasn’t been back to Oxford in nearly four years and she’s grateful they’re doing this here, not in town:she’s not sure she’s ready for a full-on St Aldate’s reunion quite yet. She reaches over to her bag, and the material she printed out from what Baxter sent over, which included some videos of Daisy and her friends the school gave them in 2016, which she doesn’t remember seeing before. She takes one final look at the girls’ photos then gets out and locks the car. The impossibly green sports grounds stretch all the way down to the river and she wonders what it would have been like to go to a school like this, rather than a comprehensive with too many kids and too little ambition. These playing fields must be heaving in summer term, but for now the only signs of life are a couple of passers-by on their way to the Cherwell Boathouse and a gaggle of Canada geese keeping a careful distance from a huge red kite that lifts heavily into the air when Somer tries to get a better look.
The school is a maze of add-ons and outbuildings and she’s beginning to lose her bearings when a door pushes open and a woman with blonde hair smiles out at her.
‘Miss Somer, is it? I’m Emily White, one of the school parents. I was here for a PTA meeting and offered to help out. We’re on the first floor.’
It’s taken a while for Somer to get used to losing her ‘DC’, and without it she’s back in the interminable Miss/Ms dilemma. And it won’t be solved by getting married, either – she has no intention of changing her name.
There are windows open all the way up the stairs, but these buildings weren’t constructed with air-conditioning in mind and by the time she gets to the top landing she’s sweating, even in a cotton dress.
‘Just along here,’ says Emily. ‘The girls are there already. I’ve parked the parents in the staffroom for now. They decided it would be less stressful for the girls if you interviewed them all together. Oh, and your colleague is here too, DC Baxter.’
Somer’s about to demur, he’s not really her colleague – but then stops. This is a professional assignment, she’s being paid, so it’s as good a word as any.
She’s surprised to see him looking so well – indeed, from the back she might not even have recognized him at all.
‘Wow,’ she says as he comes forward for a handshake that turns into a hug. ‘You look great.’
He grins. ‘Turns out the wife was right: all I needed was willpower. And Diet Coke. Though that’s the next on the list to go. Aspartame and all that. Anyway, how’s you? You look well. Quite the tan.’
‘Comes from living by the sea,’ she smiles. ‘And in any case, who needs to go abroad with weather like this?’
‘You got the case notes I sent?’
‘Yes, thank you, very helpful. I see Harrison’s brought Fawley back for this one. Is he OK with that?’
Baxter considers. ‘Seems to be. I’m not sure he had a lot of choice, to be honest. Anyway, can I get you anything before we start? Tea? Coffee?’
Emily is hovering expectantly. ‘The staffroom has a Nespresso machine, so it will at least be drinkable.’
Somer smiles. ‘No, thanks. Water will be fine.’
‘In that case,’ says Baxter, ‘we’re just through here.’
The images from the police file are still fresh in her head: Portia with her long thick blonde plait and scatter of freckles; Megan Webster, straight brown hair, glasses, shorter and solider than the others and maybe a little downcast; and Millie, lighter blonde like Daisy, and similar enough in enough other ways to be the one she chose to pass as her at the party. And it worked: everyone was fooled, even the police. At least to start with: it took a sharp-eyed civilian support officer to compare the photos collected from the guests and work out that the girl they were looking at wasn’t Daisy at all.
The three sitting on the window seat now are almost as unrecognizable as Baxter. Somer doesn’t need reminding how quickly teenagers change – every time Giles’s daughters come over it’s like a full factory reset. And this is the same. No uniform, of course, since it’s the summer vac, just shorts,miniskirts, flip-flops and the sort of crop tops that only sixteen-year-olds can get away with. It has to be Portia with the long hair but there’s no plait now, just waves of soft corkscrew curls and designer sunglasses wedged on the top of her head. Megan’s parents must have invested in contact lenses because her glasses have gone and she looks almost lanky now, sitting sideways on the cushions, her feet in Millie’s lap. She’s still the slightest of the three, frowning at her phone, a plastic cup of iced coffee with a straw in the other hand, Portia’s shoulder against hers. At first sight they look like three ragdolls, dropped there anyhow, but Somer knows different: the casual but deliberate chain of touching hands and limbs is as orchestrated as a Pietà. She gets the message loud and clear:We don’t want to be here and we trust each other more than we do you.
A woman comes forward to greet Somer from the far side and introduces herself as the school counsellor. So, with Baxter as well, the small room is a full house.
Somer pulls up a chair. Close enough to the girls, but not so much as to impinge on their space.