The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney Read Free Book Online Page A

“good” china for guests, while he used the everyday stuff, even when we were there, but I am sure it was a special set reserved for “others.” He wouldn’t put a fork she had touched into his mouth. It just wasn’t done. Dad and he had a lot of arguments, but we were still young when his dad died, and I could never ask him about it. Tata was always nice to us boys, but then children can’t be unclean. We were innocent and in a state of Gypsy grace; dirty, yes, but not unclean—not mokady .
    We don’t have a lot to go on. First we run the obvious searches: DVLC, electoral rolls, utilities, land registry. The name Rose Wood or Rose Jankodoesn’t appear anywhere. I would have been surprised if it had. Even now, few Gypsies have passports or appear on electoral rolls. And if Rose has changed her name, we’re not going to find a thing there, anyway. With a missing person, there is a set of procedures to follow. You check the official records—dull, time-consuming work. You run “hookers” in the papers— small ads asking for the missing person to get in touch to find out something to their advantage, or to collect an inheritance. When you don’t know what area someone lives in, that’s a very big net to catch a small fish— and not everyone reads the small ads—but still, you never know. And, of course, you talk to the people who knew them, starting with immediate family and widening out in ever-increasing circles—school friends, work colleagues, acquaintances, hairdressers, doctors, dentists, local shopkeepers, paper boy . . . Only with Rose, there doesn’t seem to be a set of increasing circles; there is just one. No school friends, because she barely went to school; no colleagues, because she never worked. There is only family, and that so long ago: a small, tight, closed world from which a good girl does not stray.
    At 7:30 the next evening I trudge up the drive to Hen’s house. Thanks to Madeleine’s money, they live in a vast detached house in a leafy neighborhood. Even though it’s much closer to central London than I am, I feel like I’ve come to the country. When I ring the doorbell, Madeleine answers and pecks me on the cheek. I’ve always had the feeling that Hen’s aristocratic wife doesn’t really like me. One look from those pale blue eyes, and I feel like I should be coming in through the tradesmen’s entrance.
    “Ray . . . How lovely to see you. It’s been too long.”
    I hold a bottle of wine up in front of me. It’s probably the wrong kind, but this is one thing, over the years, I have stopped worrying about.
    “Oh, lovely. Thank you. We promised Charlie you’d read him a story. Would you mind?”
    I don’t mind. Charlie is their youngest child and my godson. I can’t imagine how Hen managed to talk Madeleine into that one; perhaps he has a file of incriminating photographs stashed in a vault.
    Charlie is in the kitchen, hanging on to Hen’s leg and dragging his security blanket, which he sucks, wrapped around one thumb. He has his father’s floppy pale hair and diffident approach to life. I put the bottle of wine in the fridge. Blu-tacked to the fridge door is a typed list of the skills that Charlie needs to work on to bring him up to scratch. I read it with interest: “Speech—do not give him anything until he has named it properly. He must eat only without his blanket—do not give in! Hand-eye coordination—throwing and catching soft apple or blue ball. Numbers— get him to repeat them every day . . .” The list is laminated. Charlie peers at me with watery green eyes, a tinge of resentment in them: he knows I get to walk away from the list at the end of the evening, but he’s in it for life. He drags me upstairs to read a story—about a big wolf who scares people without meaning to. But Charlie is more interested in telling me that there was a big storm, and it made him wet his bed.
    “When was that, Charlie?”
    “When I was young.”
    Charlie is four years