Finally, fifteen minutes after they arrive, DI Currie appears.
‘Hi, Mrs Fours,’ she says. ‘Thank you so much for coming in. And you are Josh?’
Josh nods and shakes her hand.
‘Follow me this way, if you would. I think I’ve managed to get us an interview room, fingers crossed; we’re crazy busy in here today for some reason.’
They follow her through a corridor to a door. She knocks and someone answers. ‘This is my partner DI Jack Henry. We’ve been working together on the Saffyre Maddox case. Please, take a seat. Coffee? Tea?’
Someone goes to get them water and then DI Currie smiles at them each in turn and says, ‘So, Josh. Your mum says you might have some information about the whereabouts of Saffyre Maddox.’
Cate looks at Josh. He shakes his head, then nods. He says, ‘I don’t know where she is. I just know what happened. That’s all.’
‘What happened?’
‘Yeah. On Valentine’s night. And I know it was nothing to do with that guy over the road. I know that. But I don’t know where she is. I don’t know where Saffyre is.’
Cate sees the two detectives exchange a look. DI Currie turns and smiles kindly at Josh. ‘So, were you there? On Valentine’s night?’
Cate catches her breath because Josh has already told her this and she knows what is coming and it will be worse, she thinks, the second time round.
He’d come to her this morning, in her room. He’d perched on the end of her bed and said, ‘I have to tell you something. Something really bad.’
She’d dropped the facecloth she’d just squeezed out to wash her face with and sat down next to him on the bed.
‘Tell me,’ she’d said.
And then he’d told her.
And her world had fallen into shreds.
DI Currie continues: ‘And what did you see happen?’
Josh looks up at her. ‘I didn’t just see it,’ he says. ‘I was part of it. Me and Saffyre. We were trying to stop something happening. And it all went wrong. And then she just ran. She ran away. And I don’t know where she went. And she won’t reply to my messages and I’m scared something bad’s happened to her. I’m so scared.’
DI Currie inhales slowly. She smiles that slightly wooden smile again and she says, ‘OK, Josh, I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. I think it might be best if you start from the very beginning. From when you first met Saffyre. How you knew her. That kind of thing.’
Josh throws Cate a quick look and places his hands carefully on top of the table. ‘She was sleeping in the building plot. Across the way. I used to go in there sometimes. Just for some privacy. For some space. You know. And there was a fox.’
‘A fox?’
‘Yeah. A semi-tame fox. I used to like to sit with it. And then one night I went in there to see the fox and she was there. Saffyre. And she told me she was a former patient of my dad’s.’
‘Did she tell you why she was there?’
Josh looks at Cate. She squeezes his hand encouragingly.
‘She was there because she’d been watching my dad. Watching my family. I don’t really know why. And I think she had issues. Like, claustrophobia, or something? She couldn’t sleep in her own bed. So she slept outdoors, under the stars.’
‘And why the fascination with your father, do you think?’
Cate squeezes his hand once more.
‘I think, at first, it was because she felt abandoned by him? She was in his care for, like, three years or something? From when she was a child? And then she felt like he let her go before he’d fixed her. And she wasn’t ready to let go. So she kind of followed him about a bit, and watched him. Wanted to still be part of his life. And then, while she was watching him, she worked out that he was …’ Josh gulps. ‘He was having an affair.’
Cate feels the encouraging smile fix hard on her face.
She remembers the sickening thump of it to her chest when Josh had told her earlier this morning. Followed rapidly by the sickening draining-away feeling of the inevitability of it. Of course Roan was having an affair. Roan had probably always been having an affair. For all three decades of their lives together. A continuous succession of interleaving affairs from Marie right through to Alicia. Of course, she’d thought. Of course.