He flattens his collar down against the loop of his tie and straightens it in the mirror. It had thrilled her at first, the sight of Shaun in a suit and tie; the flecks of grey in his chest hair; the smart leather shoes; small people calling him Daddy. She’d go for drinks with her friends and say, ‘It’s so nice to finally be with a grown-up, you know, a real man.’ And they’d nod enthusiastically and tell her how lucky she was. But now that reassuring maturity has started to solidify into something else; into a kind of rigidness. The tie seems to sit straighter and tighter. His jawline is harder. His hugs are briefer, almost abrupt.
She approaches him and kisses him on the cheek. He looks at her in surprise.
‘We’ll have a lovely weekend,’ she says. ‘With the kids. Yes?’
‘I hope so,’ he says, ‘I really hope so.’
Jacinta Croft, the previous head teacher at Maypole House, had been easy to find. She’s now the head of a large private girls’ school in Pimlico. Her face smiled out at Sophie from the screen of her laptop, at the top of a press release about her new position. An ageless blonde in a cream blouse with a gold chain around her neck.
Sophie leaves her hair appointment at midday, takes the train from Deptford to London Bridge and then gets on the Tube.
The warm thrum of the London Underground envelops her, the familiar smell of oiled metal and recycled breath, the copies ofMetrostrewn over the seats, the gentle rocking back and forth. She closes her eyes and breathes it in.
At Pimlico she follows the directions on Google Maps to Jacinta’s school. It’s housed in a Jacobean building with curved mirror-image steps that meet up at the front door.
She hasn’t written to Jacinta. She knows that an email would have gone through an assistant or secretary and she’d have received a polite response suggesting that it might be best to leave the case in the hands of the police. Instead, she rings the bell and tells the young woman on the desk inside that she wants to pick up a prospectus.
Inside she engages the young woman in a very detailed conversation about her stepdaughter, Pixie, who’s coming to London next month from New York to live with her and her father. Pixie is very bright, very creative, excellent at languages, wants to be a lawyer. She asks the young woman lots of questions about the school and then she asks her about the new head teacher and the young woman’s face lights up and she says that Jacinta is an incredible woman, she’s totally transformed the place, all the girls love her, she’s inspiring and nurturing and Sophie says, ‘Gosh, she sounds amazing. I don’t suppose there’s any chance I could meet her, is there?’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘No, I’m afraid not. She’s in meetings all afternoon.’
‘I understand. My brother’s a head teacher, too, at a school out in Upfield Common. He’s always so busy.’
‘Upfield Common?’ says the young woman.
‘Yes. Surrey Hills. Do you know it?’
‘Well, no, not really, but I’m pretty sure that’s where Jacinta used to be, before she came here. What’s the name of the school?’
‘It’s called Maypole House. I think.’
The young woman claps her hands together and says, ‘Yes! Maypole House. That’s where she used to teach. Well, what a coincidence. And you said your brother works there?’
‘Yes, he just started there. Wow, well, that really is a coincidence.’
Sophie has no idea where she is going with her subterfuge, but at the very moment that her unplanned narrative starts to unravel in her head, the young woman glances keenly over her shoulder, gets halfway to her feet and calls out, ‘Oh! Jacinta!’
Sophie turns and sees a tiny woman striding across the entrance hall behind her in a black polo-neck jumper and red tartan trousers. Her blond hair is tied into a sculpted bunch at the base of her neck and she’s wearing incredibly high heels, in an obvious attempt to add height to her build. She smiles questioningly at the woman behind the desk. ‘Alice!’ she says. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Sorry, I can see you’re busy, but this lady was in asking for a prospectus for her stepdaughter and we were chatting and it turns out that her brother is the head teacher at your old place.’
Jacinta’s eyes narrow and she glances curiously at Sophie. She touches the chain around her neck and says, ‘Old place …? Sorry, what was your name? I’m afraid I didn’t catch it.’
‘Susie,’ Sophie replies hastily. ‘Susie Beets.’
‘Jacinta Croft.’ She offers her a tiny porcelain hand. ‘Lovely to meet you, Susie. And your brother’s at Maypole House, you say?’
‘Yes, he just started this term, but oh my goodness, he’s gone in at the deep end. Only a couple of days into term and the police are already all over the school, apparently.’
She watches Jacinta’s reaction closely and sees her eyelids twitch, a muscle spasm slightly under her cheekbone. ‘Really,’ she says, guiding Sophie gently away from the desk and into an alcove lined with wooden panels carved with the names of former head girls.
‘Yes,’ Sophie continues disingenuously. ‘Apparently, some children went missing near the school last year and now it looks like they’ve found some new evidence, in the grounds. I mean, actually, if you were there last year, maybe you know about it?’
She drops this last humdinger of a question with wide eyes. She is channelling Susie Beets so entirely that there is barely an iota of Sophie left.
Jacinta’s small-boned face twitches again. ‘The teenage couple, you mean?’
‘Yes,’ Sophie replies. ‘I think that’s right. My brother didn’t really tell me that much.’