to think of the words. But there are none. Of course there aren’t. I had known the police were trying to find Kathryn but I’d somehow convinced myself that she was lying low, keeping her head down until the danger had passed. Hiding, perhaps, or maybe still running. But not this.
‘I’m so sorry, Angela,’ I say quietly. ‘I didn’t know. The police didn’t tell me.’
She swallows hard, suddenly looking older and frailer than before.
‘Three days we hadn’t heard from her. Three days since . . . she got on that train. You keep on hoping, you know? Even though your mother’s instinct tells you everything is wrong. I had a text from her on Tuesday night saying she wanted some time to herself, she was going to go off to our weekend house in Norfolk for a few days and not to worry if she was out of contact. But I knew it wasn’t right, it didn’t sound like her at all. She was always on her phone. I knew straight away that something terrible had happened. I knew.’
‘Someone else sent that message?’
She nods, finding a fresh tissue in her pocket and wiping her nose and eyes. ‘Whoever did this was trying to cover their tracks, the police think. The post-mortem said she was probably already . . . she had already passed away by then.’
I reach out and cover her hand with mine, her skin papery and cold under my palm.
‘I don’t know what to say, Angela. I’m just so, so sorry for your loss. I only spent a little time with your daughter but she was a lovely young woman. She wanted to protect Mia.’
‘The detective inspector came to tell us last night that they’d found a body in the woods near Seer Green. I had to go in today to do the identification.’ She indicates her husband, still sitting wordlessly in the shadows across the room. ‘We both went, but Gerald couldn’t do the formal bit. I did it.’
I try to make sense of her words, trying to stitch together fragments of a larger canvas. An image returns to me, of Leon Markovitz on the train, looming over me, only moments after Kathryn had got off. She separated herself from Mia because she knew danger was close by. Perhaps she didn’t know who, exactly, but she drew that danger away from the baby all the same. Sacrificed herself. Did Markovitz turn back and go after her again after losing me in the station?
‘I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.’
She pulls the tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan again, wiping her eyes. ‘Do you have children of your own, Ellen?’
‘Always wanted them, but it never quite happened for me and my ex.’
‘I was a late starter, an older mother, nearly forty when I had mine. Always wanted girls. I was lucky, blessed with my two.’ She shakes her head slowly, not seeming to see me. ‘All the things you worry about when they’re little, when they’re growing up, all the hazards and dangers you learn to be aware of, cot death and meningitis rash and choking on food, steep stairs and open windows. Then it’s cars on the street and open water and talking to strangers and a million other things. By the time they’re adults you fool yourself that the worst dangers are over, that you’ve got past it, you’ve succeeded in navigating all those hazards and you can let them get on with it. But really it’s harder than when they were little, because you can’t protect them anymore. You can’t hold them close and shield them like you used to, and the danger’s still out there. It’s just changed.’
A sound cuts the air between us. A little moan, a tiny grunt of a baby turning, shifting in her sleep, and for a second I think I’ve imagined it. Mia. But then Angela stands and walks to a bookcase by the door, turns up the volume on a white plastic baby monitor and listens for a second. The sound fades away and Angela sits back down in her armchair, bringing the monitor with her.
‘Mia?’ I say, a glow in my chest.
She nods, looking at her watch. ‘She’s due a feed soon. She’s a hungry little monkey.’
I wait for a beat to pass before speaking again.
‘Angela, I met someone who said Mia was still in danger,’ I say slowly. ‘But I think he was trying to trick me, to get me to convince you