The light was dappled on the path and Janet walked quickly. She remembered rightly that the main route followed close to the outskirts of the grounds with several smaller paths leading from it to the centre, like the spokes of a wheel. Occasionally there were benches made of fake wood which were flame and vandal resistant. She met a man with a spaniel and showed him Elise’s photo. He shook his head, ‘Sorry.’
Once she had made a full circle she took the next path into the middle. As she drew closer she could see the tall rushes that edged the pond, obscuring a clear view across. The water was an opaque grey-green, sickly looking, grease on the surface. Ducks and ducklings paddled in the shallows.
Janet went left, her eyes burning, fists and jaw clenched. Would she be here now, her daughter lost, if Vivien hadn’t been so cruel?
She rounded the curve of the shore and her legs went weak. Elise was there, on a bench, perfectly still, her face in profile, gazing at the water.
Janet fought the temptation to cry out, to run, and made her way to the bench.
Elise glanced up at her. She looked exhausted, pale, her eyes rimmed with shadows. She scowled at the light.
‘We were worried about you.’ Janet sat down.
‘Sorry,’ Elise said.
There was silence, broken only by the occasional squabbling of the ducks and the alarm call of a blackbird somewhere in the trees.
Janet’s head was full of recriminations: why weren’t you answering your phone, Elise, how could you just disappear, have you any idea what that might do to us? But she kept her counsel. Elise had already had one deranged mother badmouthing her.
Janet steadied her breathing, waiting for her body to recognize that the immediate trauma was over, to shift into a lower gear. She texted Ade. All OK back soon. Tell T and D.
‘We used to come here last summer,’ Elise said, ‘after school sometimes.’
I didn’t know. Did Ade? Was that how he knew to look here? Something else I missed because of work?
Janet watched the water, the dimples made by insects, the patterns cast by the bulrushes. Her daughter was here, safe. She could hear her, each breath, see the way she absentmindedly threaded her fingers together. But Vivien… who would never again share a moment sitting side by side with Olivia, whose life would never be complete… Janet looked up. The sky was blank, a suffocating white.
‘Oh, Mum,’ said Elise, still staring out across the water.
‘I know,’ Janet said, ‘I know.’