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“Okay,” I said. It was a lie, but he didn’t need to know the truth. “Thanks. Can I… should I help myself?”
“Yes! Please. Sorry, it’ll calm down in a sec. This is peak pre-school madness, but we’ll be out the door in a few minutes. You’re coffee in the mornings, aren’t you? You know where it is.”
He nodded at the tall larder cupboard in the corner. Glancing up at the clock, I saw it was ten past eight. Later than I’d thought.
As I spooned out coffee into the pot, I heard the sound of pounding footsteps on the stairs and Millie, the older twin, burst into the kitchen sobbing.
“Daddy! Kitty got toothpaste on my top!”
“Okay, okay, calm down, it’s not the end of the world.” Her father lifted her up onto his knee, dabbing with a kitchen towel until the stain was just a pale shadow against the royal blue. “Good as new.”
“But I can still see it!”
“You’ll be fine, sweetie. Right, shoes on. Where’s Kitty?”
“Here!” Kitty clattered into the kitchen, shoes already on, hair plaited, evidently determined to expunge the toothpaste accusation by being the perfect schoolchild. She looked at me without any surprise at seeing her aunt, gray faced and bleary eyed at the kitchen counter. “Hello, Auntie Jack! I did my shoes myself.”
“They’re on the wrong feet, pickle,” Roland said patiently, kneeling down to help Kitty swap over her red buckled shoes. At the sight of the shoes, my heart contracted. They were so little—each one small enough to fit in Roland’s palm. Kitty stood, staring down intently as Roland refastened her straps, as if to check that he was doing it correctly. Then he straightened.
“Right. All set? Book bags?”
“Yes,” the twins chorused.
“Water bottles?”
Kitty didn’t have hers, and there was a moment of panicked hunt, this time with Kitty on the verge of tears before Helena came running down the stairs with it in her hand.
“Got it! It had rolled under the bed. Right, go, go! You’ll be late!”
There was a chorus of “Bye, Mummy; bye, Auntie Jack,” and another brief threat of tears from Kitty, who had apparently thought Hel was walking them to school… and then the door closed behind them, and Hel let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank Christ. God, I love having kids, but if there’s one thing I won’t miss, it’s the school run. How are you?”
“Okay,” I said, though it wasn’t really true, and Hel knew it. “Listen, do you have a spare phone knocking around anywhere? The police have mine, and I really need to…” I stopped. What I really needed to do was start telling people what had happened to Gabe. At the very least I needed to put an out-of-office on the Crossways Security email address. We had clients lined up, a job booked in for next week. Arden Alliance would be expecting their report. And that was without even thinking about Gabe’s friends and family, who would be starting to wonder why he wasn’t reading the family WhatsApp group messages or returning emails.
“Sure,” Hel said quickly, seeing my chin start to quiver. “You can have my old phone, the one the girls play with. It’s perfectly functional. I think Rols might even have a spare SIM somewhere. He got a free one when he got his phone.”
“That would be amazing,” I said gratefully. “Even if there’s no SIM, if I can use your Wi-Fi…”
“Hang on,” Hel said. “I’ll be back.”
She left, and I heard the sound of her feet heading upstairs to the living room, and the noise of doors opening and closing as she rummaged through the girls’ toy box and then Roland’s office, which was off the back of the living room. Then her feet on the stairs again.
“Sorry about the stickers.” The Motorola she held out wasn’t that old—it was the same model as my last one, in fact—but the case was plastered with My Little Pony unicorn stickers. “And I might… hang on, there’s something a bit gross on the screen.” She was scrubbing at it with a baby wipe. “I think it’s jam. Here you go. The pin is 1234, but it’s logged into my Gmail so feel free to do a hard reset. I assume you don’t want to see my messages.”
“Are you sure? Won’t the girls be annoyed if I wipe all their games?”
“Probably, but it’ll be good for the little square eyes. They’ve still got the iPad so I’m sure they’ll cope. And I found this in Roland’s desk.” She was holding a small cardboard folder, and now she opened it up and pulled out a SIM card, snapping it out of its plastic surround. “God, why do they make these things so tiny? I preferred it when they were a size you could actually see with the naked eye.”
I didn’t answer, I was too busy googling how to reset Motorola Play. I was halfway through the steps when Hel’s own phone rang, and she stepped over to the window to answer it.
“Hello? Yes, that’s me. Oh… oh, sure. Hang on. She’s right here.” She put her hand over the receiver and said in a low voice, “It’s for you. The police.”
My stomach swooped. I took the phone from Hel’s hand.
“Hi, Jack speaking.”
“Jack, hi.” It was DS Malik. “Sorry to disturb you so early, but are you free today? Could you come into the station?”
