The Girls on the Shore

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  Detective Inspector Matthew Venn walked along the track from his house, and onto the beach. The tide was low and the sand seemed to stretch almost to the opposite bank of the estuary.

  From his kitchen window, he’d seen two young girls standing in the middle distance. They were holding hands and had their backs to him, staring, it seemed, towards Instow or Appledore. This was where the two North Devon rivers met and the towns stood, oddly majestic in the early morning light, marking the Torridge entrance on the opposite shore. The River Taw ran just below his house.

  This wasn’t a tourist beach, and it wasn’t the time of year for children to be playing. It was January. Cold and clear, a different sort of day for this coast where the westerly winds usually blew rain and cloud. He’d woken to a grass frost, ice on the puddles on the drive, a bright orange sun when at last it rose behind the house.

  Matthew had met few children. His sergeant, Jen Rafferty, had a boy and a girl, but they were almost grown up and he only knew of them second hand. These girls looked younger and this was a school day. Matthew’s husband, Jonathan, had already left for work, but Matthew had time owing and the police station was going through a quiet phase, so he’d taken the morning off.

  The children weren’t dressed for the beach. Both wore plaid skirts, old-fashioned, long grey socks, blazers and patent leather shoes. A school uniform that he didn’t recognize. He imagined that their knees would be red with the cold, that the salt damp of the shore would be seeping through the soles of the shoes. He looked all the way along the beach, but saw no adults. Surrounded by all the space, the clear sky and the light reflecting from the wet sand, they could have been sculptures. Representing isolation or loneliness. Or mutual support.

  He’d pulled on wellington boots before setting out. His work shoes were of good quality and he didn’t want to ruin them. The boots made sucking and splashing noises as he crossed the pools left by the tide, but the girls didn’t turn to see who was coming. As he got closer, he saw that each had her hair plaited in one long braid down her back. When he was ten metres away, the children did turn and they stared at him. Their knees were red, their eyes watery with the cold, and wary. They seemed a little older than he’d first thought. One could be a teenager, almost on the brink of womanhood, but stranded in childhood by the uniform and the hairstyle.

  ‘Hello.’ he said. He wished Jonathan were here. Jonathan ran clubs for kids in the arts centre he managed. Drama workshops and pottery sessions. The Woodyard hired out rooms for birthday parties and Jonathan often played the jovial uncle, dressing up as Santa at Christmas. He would know how best to deal with this pair. Though it seemed to Matthew that these girls needed more than a jovial uncle now that they were, somehow, lost. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Is it private?’ The older girl asked the question. No accent, but that didn’t mean they weren’t local. Lots of members of the educated middle-classes had moved to North Devon in search of the good life, and there were many of the home-grown variety too. ‘Shouldn’t we be here?’

  ‘No, it’s not private.’ He found her stare disconcerting. ‘You have every right to be here.’ A pause. ‘Why are you on your own? Where are your parents?’

  The girls looked at each other.

  ‘We don’t know,’ the younger child said. He thought she seemed on the verge of tears and he couldn’t bear the thought of her crying. ‘And there’s only our mother at home now.’

  ‘Daddy’s working away.’ The older child’s voice was firm, reproving.

  He hesitated for a moment. He was reluctant to ask two young girls to come with him when he was on his own, but he could hardly leave them here. He looked at his phone. No reception.

  ‘Why don’t we go indoors? That’s my house over there,’ he said, pointing. ‘It’ll be warmer there and we can find out what’s happened to them.’

  ‘You’re a stranger. We know not to go anywhere with strangers.’

  ‘Quite right. But I happen to be a stranger who’s a police officer.’ He fished in his jacket pocket for a warrant card and was relieved when he found it. He didn’t have much use for it these days, now that he spent most of his time stuck behind a desk.

  He showed it to the older girl. She took it in her hand and studied it carefully.

  ‘Let’s get you warmed up. I could make some hot chocolate.’

  There was a moment’s hesitation and then they nodded in tandem.

  * * *

  Inside the house, the two girls thawed out, literally and metaphorically. Their names were Olivia and Imogen Sellers, and they were thirteen and nine respectively. They lived in the smartest street in Barnstaple. Their mother was called Elizabeth. There was no mention of their father. They sat at the kitchen table, with mugs of hot chocolate in front of them. Even the elder girl had a faint, milky moustache after drinking a little.

  ‘So, tell me how you came to be on the beach this morning?’

  Olivia took a time to answer, but it was already clear that she would be the one to tell the story.

  ‘We were on our way to school.’

  ‘Which school?’

  ‘Brookes. It’s private. For girls. Mummy said we’d do better at a girls’ school.’ A pause. ‘She said we’re very lucky to be there.’

  ‘And where is the school?’ Matthew had never heard of it, but then why should he have done? Jen Rafferty’s kids went to the local comp; she would have considered a private school a betrayal of all she believed in.

  Imogen stared at him with astonishment. It seemed that the school was the centre of her world.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you were on your way to school …’ He’d be able to find the place soon enough.

  ‘Mummy had a phone call.’ Olivia said, before adding quickly, ‘She pulled into the side of the road to take it. She’d never drive while she was using her mobile.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘Then she drove us here to the beach. She left us in the car and said she’d only be five minutes. But she was gone ages, so we went down onto the sand to look for her. In case anything had happened to her.’

  From the tone of the girl’s voice, Matthew thought perhaps things had happened to mummy in the past.

  ‘Perhaps we should look for the car then,’ he said. ‘In case she’s back there and waiting for you.’

  ‘We did try,’ Olivia said, ‘but we couldn’t find it so we came back to the beach.’

  ‘Mummy loves the beach.’ Imogen looked up at him. The chocolate moustache gave the younger girl the look of an animal with fur or whiskers. A dormouse with big grey eyes. ‘We thought she’d be there.’

  ‘Do either of you have a mobile?’ Matthew was torn. He wasn’t sure whether he should leave the girls here on their own, but he didn’t want to take them out into the cold again. The red knees and the eyes streaming in the icy air had deeply affected him. Besides, he was a detective, and in his work,
he came across dreadful sights. The previous spring there’d been a body here on Crow Point, where the rivers met the sea.

  The girls shook their heads. ‘Mummy doesn’t approve of screens at school.’

  He came to a decision. ‘Why don’t you stay here? No point everyone getting cold. I’ll have a quick look and come back to let you know what’s going on.’ He looked at them. They were serious. Anxious, but perhaps not anxious enough. Maybe it wasn’t unusual for mummy suddenly to disappear.

  This time they nodded their agreement.

  ‘Can you describe your mother’s car?’

  Again, it was Olivia who answered. ‘It’s a black Golf.’

  ‘Daddy took the Lexus,’ Imogen said.

  Olivia shot her a look of warning. Matthew thought this family was full of secrets.

  * * *

  Outside, the sun was stronger, but it felt no warmer. He found the car quite quickly, hidden in one of the more obscure parking spots, surrounded by dunes. He could see how the girls might have missed it. They had left the doors unlocked when they’d gone out looking for their mother and he looked inside. No sign of the missing Elizabeth Sellers.

  Matthew took out his mobile and hit a number. ‘Jen, can you do me a favour please? Come to my house. There are two girls in the kitchen. I found them on the beach and their mother’s gone missing. Sit with them. Find out a bit more about them. The family name is Sellers and they’re Olivia and Imogen. I don’t really want to be alone with them if I can’t find the woman.’

  ‘Course boss.’ The Scouse accent was reassuring. He’d been discomforted by the girls, with their hair pulled tight back from their faces and their watchful eyes. Jen would know the best way to talk to them.

  ‘And see if you can track down their father. Apparently, he’s working away at the moment, but I don’t know what sort of business he’s in.’

  ‘Sure.’

  He could tell that she was already moving and heard a door slam shut before the line went dead.

  Inside, the car seemed spotless, rubbish-free. It was hard to believe that a real family, real children had ever been inside. Matthew liked order, had inherited an obsession with cleanliness from his evangelical mother, but even his car had an occasional sweet wrapper on the floor, or a used parking ticket on the dashboard. He leant in and felt under the seats. Right at the back, under the driver’s seat, there was a half-bottle of vodka. Empty.

  He had a picture of the woman, sitting in her car on the grand drive in the smart street, drinking herself into oblivion while the girls were in the house doing their homework. He assumed that the expensive school, which they considered themselves lucky to attend, would give their pupils a lot of homework.

  If the mother were ill, an alcoholic, that might explain her daughters’ watchful eyes, their wariness. The girls would be used to making excuses for her. She would have made them complicit. Perhaps the father had run away, unable to cope. But it wouldn’t explain the phone call that had caused Elizabeth to pull into the side of the road, the diversion to Braunton Great Marsh and the beach with the girls still in the car. Something urgent must have brought her here.

  He climbed the shingle bank and walked along the beach away from the house and towards Crow Point. He saw the woman almost immediately, sitting on the dry sand, her back to the dune. The girls had been searching in quite the wrong direction. Because this must be Elizabeth Sellers. Who else could it be? He hadn’t seen her when he was standing with the girls because of the curve of the shore. She was wearing a long down coat with the hood up. She was alone. If she’d been summoned to a meeting on the shore it was over.

  The way that the woman sat gave the impression that she was listless and disheartened. Had she been brought here by her husband? Had she learned in some cold, bitter exchange that her marriage was finally over?

  Matthew’s work was all about what if? He was always playing out different scenarios in his mind. Jonathan said that was why he was such a good detective; he had imagination, creativity. Matthew pictured a stand-off between two adults, raised voices and tears, the father driving off in his expensive car, leaving the mother to come to terms with a new and lonely life.

  As he got closer, Matthew suspected that Elizabeth had been drinking, all thoughts of her daughters forgotten. She seemed slumped against the sandbank. He imagined her drowning in self-pity and vodka, and he felt a flash of anger. These moments of fury came to him occasionally, unbidden as strikes of lightning. He was always ashamed of his lack of control once they’d passed, but he thought now that the Sellers girls, with their politeness and old-fashioned uniforms, deserved better.

  ‘Mrs Sellers?’

  There was no reaction. No sign of life at all. And then another picture came into his head. A body on a beach. A man in cheap jeans and a denim jacket, a tattoo of an albatross on his neck. The first murder case he’d investigated had begun not far from here.

  He began processing this as an unexplained death and sorting his response: he would need a medic, and to contact his colleagues. Although this was more likely to be suicide, they’d need to be sure.

  At that point the woman turned her head. The movement and her voice, pleasant and deep, startled him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I found your daughters on the beach. They’re in my house. They’re a little anxious, but quite safe.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Poor things. I’ve been sitting here much longer than I realized.’ She didn’t sound drunk to him, but he knew that alcoholics could be magnificent actors. She started to scramble to her feet. He held out a hand to help her up. Now he was very close to her, but he couldn’t smell drink on her breath or her clothes.

  ‘Is anything wrong? The girls said you were driving them to school, when you got a call.’

  ‘Did they?’ She looked up at him. Her hood had fallen away from her face. Her skin was very pale and smooth, her mouth a little too wide, her blond hair short and expertly cut. ‘No nothing wrong. Not really. I was feeling under the weather and needed some fresh air.’

  ‘I’m a police officer. It’s in my nature to be suspicious. To ask awkward questions.’

  She said nothing and swept loose sand from her coat with her hands. The sunlight caught the grains and made them sparkle like gold dust.

  He continued. ‘The girls will be very late for school.’

  ‘Yes.’ She gave him a little smile. ‘I suppose they will. I should go and collect them, get them on their way.’

  He wasn’t sure what else to say. Perhaps he was making a drama out of a rather trivial domestic incident. He had no proof that a crime had been committed, or that the children were in any kind of danger. Elizabeth set off along the beach, walking very quickly. He was about to say that it might be easier if they cut across the bank and walked along the track, but she’d already turned the corner of the point and they could see the white house ahead of them.

  ‘That’s my house,’ he said. ‘That’s where they are.’

  ‘It was very kind of you to take them in.’ She spoke as if this was a final comment and there was nothing more to say. He supposed that when they got to the house, she would call the children to her, and they would obey immediately and follow her out to her car. They would drive away and he would have no reason to be involved again.

  The thought made him feel sick, panicky. He could call social services and explain his unease, but emergency social workers had many cases of neglect and cruelty to investigate. Would they really see this as a safeguarding issue? A mother had felt unwell, left her children in the car while she went for a walk and got some air. Perhaps that would be considered a more responsible thing to do than to continue driving. He thought he would contact the school later and see if they had any concerns. He could do that, at least.

  * * *

  Approaching the house, he saw Jen’s car in the drive and immediately relaxed a little. Jen didn’t suffer from flights of fancy. Through the long window, he saw the three of them in the kitchen.
Olivia was reading a book, frowning with concentration, and Imogen was drawing. They were ignoring Jen, who seemed to be trying to engage with the younger girl, standing behind her looking down at the picture. But she might not have been there, so absorbed were the girls in what they were doing.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Elizabeth’s voice was sharp, almost imperious.

  ‘A colleague. I asked her to look after your daughters while I came to find you.’

  The woman nodded, almost relieved it seemed.

  ‘Thanks so much for all your trouble. We can leave you in peace now.’

  ‘Why don’t you come in for a coffee?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That’s very kind, but I really should get them to school.’

  Jen had seen them approaching the house and came to the door to meet them.

  Elizabeth Sellers shouted across her to her daughters inside the kitchen. ‘Come along girls. Time to go! Please thank the lady for looking after you.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Jen said. She blocked the doorway with her body. The girls, who were starting to pack up, looked confused. Jen turned back to them. ‘I bet you’re a bit peckish. I happen to know that the blue tin on the bench there is where Matthew keeps his biscuits. Why don’t you help yourselves? Finish that drawing, Imogen. It’s brilliant. I just want a quick chat with your mum.’

  The girls sat, frozen. Imogen looked at her mother for permission, expecting, it seemed, to be denied the treat. But Elizabeth nodded.

  Jen had taken her coat from a kitchen chair and pulled it on over her jeans and sweater. ‘It’s a bit parky outside, but I could do with some good clean air. We’ll sit here, shall we? We don’t want the girls ear-wigging.’ She was acting as if she owned the place, leading them to garden chairs placed around a white wrought-iron table. The trees to the side of the house were bare and it felt as if they were surrounded by space and light. Exposed. In the summer Matthew and Jonathan sat here after work, with a glass of wine, looking at the sunset. Now the seat was icy through his clothes and his breath came in clouds.