Page 20 of The Housewarming

His grin bright and tender, he gave it back.I love him– I can remember that thought washing over me in a hard-rolling wave.I love these two people more than anyone else in this world.

I don’t share this with DI Farnham. I don’t tell her how, as he stood to fasten the chin strap of his silver bike helmet, I noticed the paler strip of stubble at the bottom of his sideburns where he’s growing them a little longer. I don’t tell her that I thought about how, in a couple of months, he would grow a moustache for Movember and how that would be a source of great amusement for us both. Zapata or goatee? Curled with oil like a Victorian or boxed like Hitler? I don’t tell her that I’m thinking now that these are questions we will never ask. Jokes we will never share.

‘And then he went,’ is what I tell this grave, unflinching woman, now, in my kitchen. A last wave and he clipped his feet into the cleats and pushed out towards Thameside Lane. The muscles on his calves flexed and relaxed as he powered the bike forward. I watched him: the wide reach of his shoulders, one dipping, then the other, in his tight red cycling top. I watched him cross over to Kevin, on the opposite corner, who was armed with two empty orange bags for life – an early supermarket run, no doubt, beating the crowds.

‘Kevin saw us,’ I say to DI Farnham. ‘I don’t know his surname but he lives just across the street so you can check with him. Matt stopped for a quick chat. He’s like that. He always gives people the time of day.’

DI Farnham almost smiles. ‘And then you took your daughter home?’

‘Well, I looked down and she was sort of painting blood onto the paving stone with her fingers, mucky pup. That’s why there was more blood on the corner. She’ll be a surgeon one day…’ My eyes fill.

‘I know this is difficult, Mrs Atkins, but we’re building up as clear a picture as we can. You say your husband went to work. What time was that?’

‘It was around quarter to eight.’

‘And you went home at that point?’

‘Yes. I took her home and cleaned her hands and knees. She was delighted because she was bleeding enough for a plaster. She loves plasters. And then I went upstairs for my phone.’

‘And what time was that?’

‘When I went upstairs? I’d say it was a little before eight. Five to, something like that.’

‘So she could have left at that time?’

I shake my head. ‘No, she was settled. She had her toy and I’d told her to wait. The earliest she would have become restless would have been five past, ten past. And I would have heard her shouting. She would have shouted for me.’ Why didn’t she? I wonder, the question chilling my blood. Why didn’t she shout for me?

‘And you came down at quarter past?’

‘Around then, yes. And she was gone.’

There is a pause, which DI Farnham eventually fills. ‘So you said you left the clasp undone earlier, when you walked out with your husband. Do you often leave the clasp undone when your daughter’s in the buggy, Mrs Atkins?’ Her tone is not suspicious. Her face is open. Her eyes are on mine.

But still.

I make myself lock eyes with her. ‘Not often, no. But if I know she’s only going to be in there a few minutes, sometimes I might not clip her in. She’s never thrown herself out of it before, but she had one on her this morning, as my mum would say. She’s two. Two-year-olds can be very… stroppy, I suppose. And Abi’s determined, you know? We always say it’ll get her somewhere in life.’ I sound defensive, I know I do. I start to cry. ‘I didn’t shout at her, but I… I told her off. And I know she was clipped in when we got home because I put her in there to bathe her knees and dress them and I didn’t want her falling out again, only I didn’t realise she knew how to unclip the clasp and I didn’t realise the front door hadn’t closed properly.’

‘Try not to upset yourself, Mrs Atkins. We’re doing everything we can. We’ve taken prints from the buggy, so we’ll need yours and your husband’s but only so we can eliminate those, plus anyone else you think might have touched it in the last twenty-four hours. I just needed to clarify how the blood came to be on the pavement. It’s so we can focus the investigation in the right way, all right?’

A short silence settles upon us.

‘And you say you called your husband around half past eight, quarter to nine?’

I nod.

‘He works in Chiswick,’ she adds. ‘That’s what, half an hour’s cycle? But he wasn’t yet at Richmond.’

I don’t like her tone. I don’t like it at all.

‘He got a puncture,’ I say, meeting her eye. ‘It must have been a tricky one to fix.’

After a moment too long for comfort, the detective asks me if I know anyone who owns a green or possibly dark grey BMW sports utility vehicle.

I shake my head. ‘I don’t think so, why?’

‘We have two witnesses who said they saw a vehicle of that description driving too fast down Thameside Lane at approximately quarter past eight. That might be a little early.’

I sit bolt upright. ‘No, she could have been outside by then. The car might have come from our road?’

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