“Sadly, yes—I wasn’t just saving face before. I really do need to get back.” She was about to head out of the room, but then something occurred to her. “What about tonight? I could probably get my mother to babysit Adam. We could grab a drink or something?”
Her mother to babysit. Not a husband or partner. I supposed I’d been assuming she was single, and I wasn’t sure now whether the confirmation was deliberate or accidental. Regardless, I very much wanted to say yes. Jesus, how astonishing would it be to go out for a drink with a woman? I couldn’t remember the last time. But even more than that, I realized that I very much wanted to go for a drink with her. That I’d spent the morning feeling hurt and foolish for a fairly obvious reason.
But, of course, it wasn’t possible.
“I’d probably struggle with a babysitter,” I said.
“Right. I get you. Hang on a second.” She reached into her coat and produced a card. “I realized you hadn’t got my details. All my contact stuff is on there. If you want it, I mean.”
Yes, I wanted it.
“Thanks.” I took the card. “I’ve not got one of my own.”
“Duh. Just text me so I’ve got your number.”
“Obviously. Duh indeed.”
She paused at the front door.
“How’s Jake today?”
“Miraculously well,” I said. “I really have no idea how.”
“I do. Like I said, you’re too hard on yourself.”
And then she headed off down the path. I watched her go for a moment, then looked down at the card in my hand. Thinking. It was the second card I’d received today, and both were complicated in their different ways. But, God, a drink out with Karen would be good. It felt like something people did, and that it should really be possible for me to do it as well.
Once I was back in the living room, I took out my phone and thought about the situation a whole lot more. Hesitating. Unsure.
Just text me so I’ve got your number.
In the end, it wasn’t the first message I sent.
Forty-four
Back at the department, the operations room was alive with activity. While most of the officers were continuing with their existing actions, a small number were now focused on the key task of tracking down Frank Carter’s son, Francis, and that knowledge had galvanized everyone. The renewed energy in the room was tangible. After two months of moving in circles and following fruitless leads, it felt like a new path had opened up for them.
Not that it would necessarily go anywhere, Amanda reminded herself. It was always best not to get your hopes up.
But always so hard not to.
“No,” Pete said.
He added another sheet of paper to the pile on the desk between them.
“No,” she replied, adding one of her own.
After Frank Carter’s trial and conviction, Francis and his mother had moved away, and because of the infamy of the case, they had been given new identities—an opportunity to begin fresh lives, without the shadow of the monster they had lived with hanging over them. Jane Carter had become Jane Parker; Francis had become David. After that, the pair of them had effectively disappeared. They were common, anonymous names, which was presumably one reason why they had been chosen. The task facing Amanda and Pete now was to find the correct David Parker out of the thousands living in the country.
Next sheet. This David Parker was forty-five years old. The one they were looking for would be twenty-seven.
“No,” she said.
And so it went.
They worked through the names mostly in silence. Pete was intent on the pages before him, and she presumed that his focus was a way of distracting himself. The conversation he’d had with Frank Carter must have shaken him as much as all the others, but there was an added tension now. Pete had met Carter’s son when Francis was a child. He had effectively saved the boy. Knowing Pete as she was beginning to, it was easy to imagine what was going through his head right now. He would be asking hard questions of himself. What if Pete’s actions back then had planted a seed that had grown into this fresh horror? What if, despite his best intentions, this was all somehow his fault?
“We can’t be sure that Francis is involved,” she said.
“No.”
Pete added another sheet of paper to the pile.
Amanda sighed to herself, frustrated by the knowledge that nothing she could say right now was going