LAST RITES

I started to trawl through the Google hits once I'd read the newspaper articles, to find out more about Sarah, and it only took a few pages to start to build up a picture of her life. Sarah was listed on Friends Reunited, a jokey entry, saying how she had left school but then gone back, alongside her graduation picture, showing Sarah with a proud smile, her face dotted by freckles, her parents alongside. On other websites, I found news from her workplace, a state school on the edge of Blackley, not often a first choice when the applications went in. A school play. Ofsted reports. A charity event.

I browsed Facebook for her, it was always good for a quote, and wasn't surprised when I found her. I couldn't access her page, though; Sarah would have to accept my ‘friend request’ for me to be able to do that. I sent a request anyway, it only took one click, and then I turned to look at Bobby. He had found the play dough made by Laura a couple of days before, just salt dough laced with food colouring. He was cutting into it with a plastic knife, his tongue darting onto his lip with concentration.

‘What have you got there?’ I asked.

He looked up, distracted from his game, and then he beamed at me, the dimples he'd inherited from Laura flickering in his cheeks. ‘I've made you a pizza,’ he said, and held up a lump of green dough criss-crossed with lines.

I found myself smiling back at him, but I felt a kick of guilt as well. He shouldn't be making things for me. He should be making it for his father. What was I doing, making him live up here, so far from everyone close to him?

‘That looks great,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to eat it now?’

Bobby smiled proudly and brought over the lump of dough and placed it on the table in front of me. I sat him on my knee and tickled him, enjoyed his squirming and his giggling.

‘When's Mummy back?’ he asked between laughs.

‘I don't know. Soon.’

‘Do you like your pizza?’

I mimicked some lip-smacking sounds. ‘The best one I've ever had.’

When he looked pleased with himself, I asked him if he could make me a cake. Bobby hopped off my knee and went back to his place on the floor.

I was about to pick up my papers when I heard a car crunch onto the gravel outside the front door. Bobby looked up and then ran to it. As he looked outside, he shouted, ‘Mummy's here.’

I felt some of his excitement; I always did when Laura came home. While we hadn't been getting on recently, as soon as I heard the car I wanted to see her smile, wanted to feel that sense of excitement of us all being together. Her dimples, the hint of red to her brunette, the colour of the London Irish. And those private moments always came to me, of the Laura that only I knew: the feel of her skin under my hand, the way she kissed, soft and slow, those breathless whispers.

But when Laura strode into the house I sensed the darkness of her mood. She threw her bag onto the table and smiled a hello, but it was perfunctory and brief. Bobby ran to her and wrapped his arms around her waist. Laura kissed him on the top of his head, then gently peeled his arms from her and marched towards the kitchen.

‘Everything okay?’ I asked.

‘Why shouldn't it be?’ came the shout back, but I could hear the frustration in her voice.

I joined her in the kitchen and found her browsing the wine we stored in a rack by the fridge.

‘It must have been a bad day,’ I said.

Laura picked out an Australian white, selected on price, not reputation, and put it in the freezer to cool.

‘Sometimes alcohol is the answer,’ she said.

‘What's wrong?’ I asked.

Laura folded her arms and looked down. I didn't think she was going to say anything, but then she blurted out, ‘I went to the murder team and told them what you were doing.’

‘And how did it go?’

She looked up at me and scoffed. ‘Oh, just fine, once they'd stopped laughing at me.’

‘Why would they laugh?’

‘Because they're pricks,’ Laura snarled. ‘I'm just the skirt who spends her life processing other people's arrests. They put them in a cell and go home, and then leave me to sort out the mess. I'm the one who works late when we need more evidence, not the person who brought them in.’

‘It's not for much longer,’ I said, cajoling. ‘The Court Welfare Officer is coming round the day after tomorrow, you know that, and then the hearing is after that. Once we have it formalised that Bobby stays with us, you can go back to a normal police job.’

‘I want my career to amount to something, Jack, but it seems like I'm the only one making sacrifices,’ she said, her voice getting angrier. ‘Geoff's job hasn't changed, and he doesn't have the day-to-day stuff like I do.’

‘Like we do,’ I corrected her. ‘It's both of us, not just you.’

Laura stopped for a moment, and then she sighed. She stepped forward and put her arms around me. She put her head into my chest, and as I kissed her hair I could smell the cells, the scent of stale bodies and stress. I put my hands on her cheeks and lifted her head up. There were tears brimming onto her lashes.

‘Just be patient,’ I said softly. ‘We're nearly there.’

She wiped her eyes. ‘Sometimes I just wonder at how much I want it, how there must be an easier way to live my life.’

‘What, go back to London?’ I queried, and then regretted voicing it, putting it out there for discussion. I felt my throat go dry as soon as the words came out.

‘Would you want me to?’ she asked.

I pulled her closer, put her head tight into my chest. ‘You'll need to improve your interview technique if you're going to get on,’ I whispered, ‘because you can't ask stupid questions like that.’

We stayed like that for a few minutes. When Laura pulled away from me, wiping her eyes, she asked, ‘How was your day? Is the story getting any better?’

‘It's getting interesting,’ I replied. ‘I spoke to Katie again, Sarah's lodger.’

Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘You're getting keen. She'll think you're a stalker. Good looking, I presume.’

I shrugged noncommittally There was no answer that would be the right one.

Laura turned away, about to go back to Bobby, when I said, ‘Can I ask you something about the Sarah Goode case?’

Laura stopped, and then turned back slowly. ‘Probably pointless. If I know the answer, I won't tell you anyway.’

‘Nothing about letters sent by Sarah Goode, after she went missing?’ I queried.

Laura paused at that. ‘What kind of letters?’

‘Are there different types?’ I said. ‘Just normal letters. I've been looking at the newspapers and there is no mention of them, but Katie mentioned them.’

‘What if they are so significant that the rest of the press have agreed not to say anything about them?’

‘That's what Katie said to me,’ I said, ‘and that's why I'm interested.’

Before Laura could respond I heard a ping from my laptop. It was an email arriving. I walked through, expecting an offer of fake Viagra, but what I saw made me gasp.

Laura must have heard my reaction. ‘What is it?’

‘It's Sarah Goode,’ I said. ‘I guessed she would be on Facebook, and I found her. I sent a friend request, just so I could write up that there was no response.’