Sophie passes the phone to Noah. He grabs it and stares at the girl.
‘Looks sad,’ says Noah, ‘like sad person.’
‘Yes. Probably,’ says Kim. ‘She probably is.’
A moment later they are outside the tiny primary school, which sits down a small lane around the back of the Swan & Ducks. Small children in grey and blue swarm past and into the gates and Sophie feels her senses twitch with echoes of her own time as a classroom assistant. Opposite the main gates is a small prefab building surrounded by its own picket fence. This is the nursery. They see Noah through the door into the care of a young girl with a bright smile and then they turn to each other.
‘Shall we get a coffee?’ asks Kim. ‘At the Ducks?’
‘Sure.’
Once seated they watch the video together in its entirety.
‘Well,’ says Kim. ‘I can’t see how this could not be her. Can you send me the link? So I can send it to the detective in charge of the case?’
‘Sure, let me have your number.’
She sends the link to Kim via WhatsApp and they wait for it to land in her inbox before putting down their phones.
‘So, you’re interested in the case then?’ says Kim, turning her coffee cup round and round in her saucer.
‘Well, yeah. I mean, from the minute I saw that sign that said “Dig Here”, my curiosity was piqued. I don’t mean to soundmercenary, but I write detective novels, so I’m kind of hard-wired to pick up on things like that. You know? And then when Kerryanne told me about people going missing—’
‘Kerryanne? Kerryanne Mulligan?’
‘Yes.’ She pauses, realising that she’s just betrayed Kerryanne’s confidence. ‘It was probably a little indiscreet of her, but when I mentioned I wrote detective novels, she said that there’d been a couple of police searches in those woods last summer. So I wondered if the sign I’d seen near the woods had anything to do with … with Tallulah. And then, well, you know the rest. But there is one thing … an odd thing.’
Kim glances at her and stops turning her cup.
‘You know that strange implement they found? In the flower bed? Outside the accommodation block?’
Kim nods.
‘I mean, I could be wrong, but the cardboard sign – it doesn’t look to me as if Kerryanne’s daughter would have been able to see it from the edge of her own terrace. I can’t help thinking that she was in somebody else’s room when she saw it.’
‘Like who?’
‘Like Liam Bailey? Maybe?’ She shows her the photo of Liam and Lexie in the garden at the Ducks. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘They’re friends. I didn’t realise. So maybe she was in his apartment, not hers, when she saw it. I just think …’ She pauses, because really, she doesn’t know what she thinks. ‘I just thought maybe, if you were talking to the detective, maybe you could mention it to him? Just in case they haven’t thought of it themselves. Which I’m sure they have. I mean, they must have.’
Kim nods again. Then she says, ‘Why is someone doing this to me?’
Sophie flinches at the rawness of her voice.
‘Why is someone not telling me what they know? Why are they being so cruel? And this girl, this Mimi. She’s obviously been talking to someone in the village. It’s the only way she could possibly have known about what’s been happening here. So it must be the person who’s been leaving the clues. And it doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t make any sense that half the people who were there that night have disappeared into thin air and the other half are still here and for some unknown reason are leading us all up the fucking garden path.’
Her voice has grown louder and the woman behind the bar looks across at them. ‘You OK, Kim?’ she calls.
Kim nods and sighs. ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’ She takes her phone and puts it into her handbag. ‘I’ll talk to Dom about the video. See what else he’s got to tell me.’
‘Dom?’
‘The detective.’
‘Ah.’ Sophie smiles. ‘The real detective.’
Kim smiles too. ‘Yeah. The real detective.’ Then she says, ‘And I’m sorry, I don’t really read. In fact I haven’t read a book since I was about nineteen. Since before Tallulah was born. Otherwise I’d ask what your books are called. But I wouldn’t have heard of them anyway.’
Sophie thinks briefly of telling Kim about the passage in her own book that someone seems to be copy-catting, the book that Liam Bailey brought into her home yesterday, tap-tapping itsspine against the palm of his hand in a way that now feels vaguely sinister, but she decides against it. The revelation will take away from her impartiality, the impartiality, she feels, that is key to Kim trusting her.