From the Cradle by Mark Edwards, Louise Voss Read Free Book Online Page A

evening, Helen? I know we talked about it at the house, but we need to get it down on record. Have a particular think about whether anything unusual happened – if you’ve spotted anyone hanging around, or coming to the house . . .’
    Helen wiped her face and took a deep breath. She recounted the events of the evening, although had to stop several times to compose herself. The thought of her and Sean enjoying wine, celebrating, kissing and laughing, while Frankie was . . . Frankie was . . .
    Nobody knew where Frankie was.
    ‘What did Alice say when you got in?’ Patrick asked her casually, and she felt irritated.
    ‘As I told you already, she was fast asleep. We had to chuck water at her to wake her up, she was so out of it.’ Seeing DI Lennon’s eyebrows ascend, she began to gabble. ‘But she’s very tired at the moment, she’s just finishing her GCSEs and she had a dance class today too, so she was bound to be tired. Plus, we were about an hour later than we’d said we’d be.’ Helen looked away.
    ‘Oh? How come?’
    Helen’s lip trembled. ‘We were celebrating. Sean said he was ready for us to have another baby, and I was so happy – it’s what I’ve wanted for ages.’
    DI Lennon smiled, but with his lips pressed together so it looked more like a grimace than a congratulatory expression.
    ‘How long have you been married?’
    Helen sat harder on her diamond, remembering Sean sliding it onto her fourth finger on that white hot beach in the Seychelles, a strange, tender, fierce look in his dark green eyes. ‘Four and a half years. I was three months pregnant with Frankie. But we always wanted to get married anyway. We’d been together for two years before that. You know I’m not Alice’s mother? Sean was married before.’
    ‘I didn’t know. She looks like you. So, Alice was how old . . . ?’
    ‘Ten, when we married. She was a flower girl at our wedding. Eight, when we met.’
    ‘Awkward age for a girl to accept her dad wanting to marry someone other than her mother,’ Lennon said casually. ‘Is she close to her own mother, Sean’s first wife – assuming they were married?’
    Helen wanted to scream at him: ‘ How is this relevant? Just FIND FRANKIE!’ She bit her lip. ‘Sean’s first wife died in a car crash when Alice was three.’
    Lennon wrote something in his notebook. ‘Did Sean date other women before you met him?’
    Helen shrugged. Tears sprang into her eyes again – with every question he asked, Frankie could be quarter of a mile further away from her. ‘I know you need to ask these questions, DI Lennon, but can’t they wait till tomorrow? Surely the most important thing for now is to be out on the streets trying to find Frankie?’
    Lennon patted her hand, but without condescension. ‘I can see how you think that, Helen, but please know that we have a lot of bodies out doing just that, plus more officers scouring CCTV footage from around your house. My job is to build up a picture of your lives together, and I assure you that it’s just as important.’
    He handed her a tissue and she blew her nose.
    ‘Sean had a couple of girlfriends, I think. He did a bit of internet dating. But when Alice was about six she started to object to him going out and leaving her with babysitters. So he didn’t see anyone for a couple of years, then he met me. We met at Alice’s school summer fair. I was there with my friend Samantha whose daughter Celia is my god-daughter. They’d roped me into helping her on the face-painting stall. Sean and Alice came along and we got chatting when I was painting Alice as a tiger. He checked that I wasn’t married, then asked me out for a drink.’
    Helen remembered that first look at Alice’s pretty little face then, back when it had been a blank canvas, no tiger whiskers or stripes of hidden resentment and secret fury. How she’d been so attracted to this sexy dad that she could barely paint the orange marks on Alice’s cheeks in