The Winter Foundlings by Kate Rhodes Read Free Book Online Page B

must fall asleep to a lullaby of night buses grinding south from Holloway. Freezing winds had flayed paint from the front doors, splintering the exposed wood. I followed Burns across a layer of ice. The snow had refrozen so many times we’d have been safer on skates. It was easy to tell which of the ground-floor flats belonged to the Williams family from the press camping outside. Photographers stood in gaggles, long-lens cameras dangling from their necks. In addition to their ordeal, the family would have to run the media gauntlet every time they went outside.
    Burns marched through the crowd without responding to the reporters’ barrage of questions. The flat was on the ground floor, and there was a mat by the entrance with the word ‘Welcome’ woven across it in bright red. He squared his shoulders when he rang the doorbell, composing himself like a method actor. Half a dozen cameras clicked in unison the moment Ella’s grandfather opened the door. His skin was the colour of parchment, grey hair arranged in an untidy quiff, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Two facts about his flat were inescapable as soon as we stepped inside: someone had conducted a colour experiment on every wall, and there was a fug of smoke lingering in every room. The atmosphere contained more carbon than oxygen, windows sealed against the cold.
    Mr Williams led us along the fuchsia pink hall into the living room. His teenaged granddaughter was slumped on the settee, chestnut curls scraped back from her face. Her resemblance to Ella was striking. She had the same freckled complexion, eyes hidden behind round-framed glasses. Her eyes were so glazed she didn’t seem to notice that two strangers had walked into the room. I noticed a Christmas tree standing in a bucket in the corner, still wrapped in plastic netting. The girl’s eyes met mine for a second then slid away.
    ‘Suzanne won’t say much,’ the old man said. ‘The doctor gave her tranquillisers.’
    I wondered how much Valium she’d swallowed. She was still in her dressing gown, struggling to stay awake. The lime green wall behind her seemed ridiculously cheerful, but the rest of the room was chaotic, with magazines and copies of the Racing Times piled on every surface. A mound of ironing on the table formed a haystack of crumpled T-shirts and jeans.
    ‘Is there any news?’ Mr Williams’s eyes fixed on Burns.
    It was the first time I’d seen him look hopeful. The prospect of his grandchild coming home had forced him out of bed that morning, and dragged him through the motions of a normal day, while Suzanne came apart at the seams. His face grew bleak again when Burns admitted there was no new information. The emotional roller-coaster he’d been riding since Friday was unimaginable.
    ‘Could I see Ella’s room please, Mr Williams?’ I asked.
    He stared back at me, and I could tell what he was thinking. Why should he let yet another official poke through the girl’s belongings? But eventually he led me along the hall, and it was a relief to escape into cleaner air.
    I’d been expecting another outlandish colour scheme, and clothes scattered across the floor, but Ella Williams’s bedroom was immaculate. The walls were painted cream, with drawings neatly tacked to a pin-board. There was a desk in the corner, piled with school books, and a Philip Pullman novel on the bedside table. It looked like an adult’s room with miniaturised furniture. I stood by Ella’s desk and leafed through one of her schoolbooks. The pages were littered with ticks and gold stars, and her drawings were equally impressive. One showed a giant tree, taller than the skyscrapers around it, almost touching the clouds. The tree was incredibly lifelike, each leaf picked out in different shades of green, the gnarled trunk fractured with age. Very few ten-year-olds could have conjured up anything so beautiful.
    When I got back to the lounge, Burns was dispensing comfort as usual, Suzanne crying quietly