shoulders are heaving in sobs.
‘Patsie?’
The girl looks round and stares at me, pushing her hair away from her face. Her eyes are red.
‘This is Detective Inspector Fawley,’ says Yasmin, touching her gently on the shoulder. ‘He’s the policeman looking for Sasha.’
The girl’s eyes widen and Yasmin gives her an encouraging squeeze. ‘He just wants to ask you some questions, love. It’s nothing to be scared about.’
I pull out a chair and sit down. Make myself smaller. Less intimidating. ‘I’m sure you understand, Patsie. We need all the information we can get, right now.’
Patsie glances up at Yasmin, who gives her a reassuring nod.
‘OK,’ she says, sniffing and wiping her nose.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ says Yasmin.
* * *
Somer sits forward a little on the chair. ‘Has there been anything worrying Sasha lately, Mrs Blake? Has anything unusual happened you can think of?’
She wants to ask if they’ve noticed anyone hanging around – if Sasha might have thought she was being stalked – but the woman is spooked enough already without hearing that.
‘She’s been fine,’ Fiona says quickly. ‘Happy. Busy. Everything’s been completely and totally normal. And if there had been anything worrying her she’d have told me. She tells me everything – there’s just her and me. We’re really close.’
Somer wonders if any teenage girl ever tells her mother absolutely everything. But perhaps that’s just her own experience talking. And the photos spread out on the table tell their own tale.
‘There’s no one you can think of she might have gone to see – grandparents perhaps?’
Fiona shakes her head. ‘My parents are in Portugal and Jonathan’s mother lives in Huddersfield. I can’t see Sasha going there. She doesn’t even like her.’
Somer hesitates. ‘What about a boyfriend?’
Fiona shakes her head. ‘No. I mean, there are boys she likes, of course. At school. But she’s only fifteen. You know what girls are like at that age. They giggle a lot but it’s no more than that.’
‘I see. And she’d definitely tell you? If there was someone?’
Fiona shoots her a look. ‘I just told you. She doesn’t keep secrets from me. She’s not that type of girl.’
* * *
Adam Fawley
4 April 2018
13.56
‘Yeah, she’s deffo had boyfriends,’ says Patsie. There’s a mug of tea on the table in front of her but she’s barely touched it. She has her hands in her lap, and she must be fiddling about with something because I can sense the movement.
‘Is she seeing anyone at the moment?’
‘I think so. But I don’t know his name. Me and Iz – we thought he might be older than her.’
‘What makes you say that?’
She’s still staring at her lap. ‘Just that she was, like, really cagey about him.’
‘Do you know where this boy lives? What he looks like?’
She shakes her head. It’s like drawing teeth. Yasmin catches my eye and shrugs silently as if to say Teenagers – what did you expect?
‘And she’s definitely had boyfriends before?’
Patsie looks up. ‘But she didn’t tell her mum because she thought she’d be angry. You know – that she’s had sex. She thinks Sash’s still,’ she blushes a little and avoids my eye, ‘you know, a virgin.’
‘OK, let’s leave that for now. Let’s go back to last night. You said you went to Summertown to have a pizza and then Leah walked home down the Banbury Road and the rest of you got the bus back towards Headington together?’
A nod.
‘What time was that?’
‘Nine forty-five? I don’t really remember.’
‘Then you got off first, and Sasha and Isabel stayed on the bus.’
Another nod.
‘And that was about 10.00 p.m.?’
‘Round then, yeah.’
‘And Sasha would have got off on Cherwell Drive.’
‘Right.’
‘But you don’t know where she was planning to go when she got off the bus?’
She shrugs. ‘Up to her house? I mean, where else would she go?’
That, of course, is the whole point of asking. But there’s no use getting tetchy with this girl.
‘Does Sasha have any other friends who live near that bus stop, Patsie? Someone she could have gone to see after she got off the bus?’
A slow shake of the head. ‘I don’t think so. Nobody we like, anyway.’
‘So you can’t think of anywhere she’d have gone, apart from straight home?’
Another shake of the head. She glances up at me briefly, almost shyly, and then stares at her lap again. It occurs to me – as it should have before – that she’s been texting on her phone this whole time.
Time for a different tack. ‘Do you know anything about Sasha’s dad?’
She looks up for real