When she got out of the station, she had to use the street map to find her way and even that wasn’t simple. She rotated the map again and again to find which exit she had come out of. Even so, she walked in the wrong direction and had to look at the map again and orientate herself by seeing where
Peel Way joined Clarence Avenue. She had to walk back past the station and then through a series of residential streets until she reached Ledbury Close. Number eight was a pebble-dashed detached house, indistinguishable from its neighbours, except that it was somehow more cared for – there was more precise attention to detail. Frieda noticed the new windows, the frames freshly painted in glossy white. On each side of the front door a purple ceramic pot contained a miniature bush, trimmed into a spiral. They were so neat, they looked as if they had been done with scissors.
Frieda pressed the doorbell. It didn’t seem to make a sound, so she pressed it again and still heard nothing. She stood there, feeling irritated and uncertain. Either no one was in or the doorbell was broken and she was standing there pointlessly, or it wasn’t broken and she was annoying someone even before she had met them. She wondered whether she should ring the bell again and possibly make the situation worse or bang on the door with her fist and make it worse still or just keep waiting and hope for the best. And she wondered why she was even worrying about something like that. Then she heard a sound from somewhere inside and saw a blurred shape through the frosted glass of the door. It opened, revealing a large man, not fat but big so that he seemed to fill the doorway. He was almost completely bald with messy grey hair around the fringes of his head. His face was flushed with the red of someone who spent time outside and he was dressed in bulky grey work trousers, a blue and white checked shirt and heavy dark leather boots that were yellow with dried mud.
‘I wasn’t sure if the bell was working,’ said Frieda.
‘Everyone says that,’ said the man, his face crinkling around the eyes. ‘It rings at the back of the house. I have it like that because I spend a lot of time in the garden. I’ve
been out there all morning.’ He gestured up at the blue sky. ‘On a day like this.’ He looked at Frieda questioningly.
‘Are you Lawrence Dawes?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘My name is Frieda Klein. I’m here because …’ What was she going to say? ‘I’m here because I’m trying to find your daughter, Lila.’
Dawes’s smile faded. He suddenly seemed older and more frail.
‘Lila? You’re looking for my Lila?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know where she is,’ he said. ‘I lost touch with her.’
He raised his hands helplessly. Frieda saw his fingernails, dirty from the garden. Was that it? Had she come all the way to Croydon just for that?
‘Can I talk to you about her?’
‘What for?’
‘I met someone who used to know her,’ said Frieda. ‘An old friend of hers called Agnes Flint.’
Dawes nodded slowly. ‘I remember Agnes. Lila used to go around with this little gang of girls. She was one of them. Before things went wrong.’
‘Can I come in?’ said Frieda.
Dawes seemed to be thinking it over, then gave a shrug. ‘Come through to the garden. I was just about to have some tea.’
He led Frieda through the house. It was clearly the home of a man – a very organized man – living alone. Through a door she saw a large flat-screen TV and rows of DVDs on shelves. There was a computer. Underfoot was a thick cream-coloured carpet, so that all the sounds were muffled.
Five minutes later they were standing on the back lawn, holding mugs of tea. The garden was much larger than Frieda
had expected, going back thirty, maybe forty, metres from the house. There was a neat lawn with a curved gravel path snaking through it. There were bushes and flowerbeds and little flashes of colour: crocuses, primroses, early tulips. The far end of the garden was wilder and beyond it was a large, high wall.
‘I’ve been trying to tidy things up,’ said Dawes. ‘After the winter.’
‘It seems pretty tidy to me,’ said Frieda.
‘It’s a constant struggle. Look over there.’ He pointed to the garden next door. It was full of long grass, brambles, a ragged rhododendron, a couple of ancient fruit trees. ‘It’s some kind of council house. There’ll be a family of Iraqis or Somalians. Nice enough people. Keep themselves to themselves. But they stay a few months and move on. A garden like this takes years. Do you hear anything?’
Frieda moved her head. ‘Like what?’
‘Follow me.’
Dawes walked along the path away from the house. Now Frieda could hear a sound, a low murmuring that she couldn’t make out, like a muttered conversation in another room. At the end of the garden, there was a fence and Frieda stood next to Dawes and looked over it. With an improbability that almost made her laugh, she saw that there was dip on the other side and in the dip a small stream trickled along the end of the garden with a path on the other side, then the high wall she had already seen. She saw Dawes smiling at her surprise.
‘It makes me think of the children,’ he said. ‘When they were small, we used to make little paper boats and put them on the stream and watch them float away. I used to tell them that in three hours’ time, those boats would reach the Thames and then, if the tide was right, they’d float out to sea.’
‘What is it?’ asked Frieda.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’m from north London. Most of our rivers were buried long ago.’
‘It’s the Wandle,’ said Dawes. ‘You must know the Wandle.’
‘I know the name.’
‘It rises a mile or so back. From here it goes past old factories and rubbish dumps and under roads. I used to walk along the path beside it, years ago. The water was foamy and yellow and it stank back then. But we’re all right here. I used to let the children paddle in it. That’s the problem with a river, isn’t it? You’re at the mercy of everybody who’s upstream from you. Whatever they do to their river, they do to your river. What people do downstream doesn’t matter.’
‘Except to the people
further
downstream,’ said Frieda.
‘That’s not my problem,’ said Dawes, and sipped his tea. ‘But I’ve always liked the idea of living by a river. You never know what’s going to float by. I can see you like it too.’
‘I do,’ Frieda admitted.
‘So what do you do, when you’re not looking for lost girls?’
‘I’m a psychotherapist.’
‘Is it your day off?’
‘In a way.’ They turned and walked back down the garden. ‘What do you do?’
‘I do this,’ said Dawes. ‘I do my garden. I do up the house. I do things with my hands. I find it restful.’
‘What did you do before that?’
He gave a slow smile. ‘I was the opposite, the complete opposite. I was a salesman for a company selling photocopiers. I spent my life on the road.’ He gestured to Frieda to sit down on a wrought-iron bench. He sat on a chair close by. ‘You know, there’s an expression I never understood. When
people say something’s boring, they say, “It’s like watching grass grow.” Or “It’s like watching paint dry.” That’s exactly what I enjoy. Watching my grass grow.’
‘I’m really here,’ said Frieda, ‘because I’d like to find your daughter.’
Dawes put his mug down very carefully on the grass next to his foot. When he turned to Frieda, it was with a new intensity. ‘I’d like to find her as well,’ he said.
‘When did you last see her?’
There was a long pause.
‘Do you have children?’
‘No.’
‘It was all I wanted. All of that driving around, all that work, doing things I hated – what I wanted was to be a father and I was a father. I had a lovely wife and I had the two boys and then there was Lila. I loved the boys, kicking a ball with them, taking them fishing, everything you’re supposed to do. But when I saw Lila, the moment she was born, I thought, You’re my little …’ He stopped and sniffed, and Frieda saw that his eyes were glistening. He coughed. ‘She was the loveliest little girl, smart, funny, beautiful. And then, well, why do things happen? Her mum, my wife, she got ill and was ill for years and then she died. Lila was thirteen. Suddenly I couldn’t get through to her. I’d thought we had a special bond and then it was like I was talking a foreign language. Her friends changed, she started going out more and more and then staying away from home. I should have done more but I was away so much.’
‘What about her brothers?’
‘They’d left by then. Ricky’s in the army. Steve lives in Canada.’
‘So what happened?’
Dawes spread his hands helplessly. ‘I got it wrong,’ he said.
‘Whatever I did, it wasn’t enough or it wasn’t what she needed. When I tried to put my foot down, it just drove her away. If I tried to be nice, it felt like it was too late. The more I wanted her to be there, the more she rejected me. I was just her boring old dad. When she was seventeen, she was mainly living with friends. I’d see her every few days, then every few weeks. She treated me a bit like a stranger. Then I didn’t see her at all. I tried to find her, but I couldn’t. After a while, I stopped trying, although I never stopped thinking of her, missing her. My girl.’
‘Do you know how she was supporting herself?’
Frieda saw his jaw flexing. His face had gone white.
‘She was having problems. I think there may have been drugs. She hadn’t been eating properly. Not for years.’
‘These friends. Do you know their names?’
Dawes shook his head. ‘I used to know her friends when they were younger. Like Agnes, the one you’ve met. They were lovely the way girls are together, laughing, going shopping, thinking they’re more grown-up than they are. But she dropped them, took up with a new crowd. She never brought them back, never introduced me to them.’
‘When she moved out for good, have you any idea where she lived?’
He shook his head again. ‘It was somewhere in the area,’ he said. ‘But then I think she must have moved away.’
‘Did you report her missing?’
‘She was almost eighteen. One time I got so worried, I went to the police station. But when I mentioned her age, the policeman at the desk wouldn’t even write a report.’
‘When was this? I mean, the last time you saw her?’
He knitted his brow.
‘Oh, God,’ he said at last. ‘It’s more than a year now. It was November of the year before last. I can’t believe it. But that’s
one of the things I think about when I’m working out here. That she’ll walk through the door, the way she used to.’
Frieda sat for a moment, thinking.
‘Are you all right?’ Dawes asked.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Maybe it takes one to know one, but you look tired and pale.’
‘You don’t know what I normally look like.’
‘You said it’s your day off. Is that right?’
‘Yes. Basically.’
‘You’re an analyst. You talk to people.’
Frieda stood up, ready to go. ‘That’s right,’ she said.
Dawes stood up as well. ‘I should have found someone like you for Lila,’ he said. ‘It’s not really my way. I’m not good at talking to people. What I do instead is to work at something, fix something. But you’re easy to talk to.’ He looked around awkwardly. ‘Are you going to search for Lila?’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘If you hear anything, you’ll let me know?’
On the way out, Dawes found a piece of paper, wrote his phone number on it and gave it to Frieda. As she took it, an idea occurred to her.
‘Did she ever cut your hair?’ she asked.
He touched his bald pate. ‘I’ve never had much to cut.’
‘Or you hers?’
‘No. She had beautiful hair. She was proud of it.’ He forced a smile. ‘She’d never have let me anywhere near it. Why do you ask that?’
‘Something Agnes said.’
Back on the street, Frieda looked at the map and set off, not back to the station she’d come from but the next one along. It was a couple of miles. That would be all right. She needed
the walk and she felt more alive now, alert to her surroundings in this part of the city she’d never seen. She found herself walking along a two-lane road, lorries rumbling by. On both sides there were housing estates, the sort that had been quickly knocked up after the war and now were crumbling. Some of the flats were boarded up, others had washing hanging from their little terraces. It didn’t feel like a place for walking, but then she turned into a street of little Victorian terraced houses and it suddenly became quiet. Still she felt uncomfortable, miles from home.
As she approached the station, she passed a phone box and stopped. There wasn’t even a phone in it. It had been ripped away. Then she looked more closely. On the glass walls there were dozens of little stickers: young model, language teacher, very strict teacher, escorts
de luxe
. Frieda took a notebook from her bag and wrote down the phone numbers. It took several minutes, and two teenage boys walking past giggled and shouted something but she pretended not to hear.
Back in her house, she made a phone call.
‘Agnes?’
‘Yes?’
‘Frieda Klein.’
‘Oh – did you find anything?’
‘I didn’t find Lila, if that’s what you mean. She seems to have vanished. Her father can’t find her. It’s not good news, but I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Yes. Yes, I do. Thank you.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m going to the police to report her missing. I should have done it months ago.’
‘It probably won’t do any good,’ Frieda said softly. ‘She’s an adult.’
‘I have to do something. I can’t just let it go.’
‘I understand that.’
‘I’ll do it at once. Though now that I’ve waited all these years, I don’t know what difference an hour will make.’
Jim Fearby was nearly three-fifths of the way through his list. There were twenty-three names on it, obtained from local newspapers and missing-person websites. Three he had already put a tick by; one he had put a query by; others he had crossed out. He had nine families left to visit – nine mothers who would look at him with stricken faces, haunted eyes. Nine more stories of missing and nine more sets of photos for him to add to the collection of young women’s faces he had tacked up on his cork board in his study.