In the Woods полностью

This, apparently, was where the trouble had started: unsurprisingly, they had all four been up talking and giggling most of the night. "Now they're lovely girls, Officers, I'm not saying that, but sometimes the young people don't realize how much of a strain they can put on us old folks, isn't that right?" Vera tittered frantically and nudged the middle kid, who squirmed further away on the sofa. "I had to go in to them half a dozen times to tell them to be quiet-I can't bear noise, you know. It must have been half past two in the morning, can you imagine, before they finally went off to sleep. And by that time, of course, my nerves were in such a state that I couldn't settle at all, I had to get up and make myself a cup of tea. I didn't get a wink of sleep. I was shattered the next morning. And then when Margaret rang, sure, we were all going frantic, weren't we, girls? But I never imagined…sure, I thought she was only…" She pressed a thin, twitching hand over her mouth.

"Let's go back to the night before," Cassie said to the oldest kid. "What did you and your cousins talk about?"

The kid-Valerie, I think-rolled her eyes and pulled up her lip to show what a stupid question this was. "Stuff."

"Did you talk about Katy at all?"

"I don't know. Yeah, I guess. Rosalind was saying how brilliant it was that she was going to ballet school. I don't see what's so great about it."

"What about your aunt and uncle? Did you mention them?"

"Yeah. Rosalind was saying they're horrible to her. They never let her do anything."

Vera gave a breathless little hoot. "Oh, now, Valerie, don't be saying that! Sure, Officers, Margaret and Jonathan would do anything for those girls, they've themselves worn out-"

"Oh, yeah, sure. I guess that's why Rosalind ran away, because they were too nice to her."

Cassie and I both started to jump on this at once, but Vera got there first. "Valerie! What did I tell you? We don't talk about that. It was all a misunderstanding, only. Rosalind was a very bold girl to be worrying her poor parents like that, but it's all forgiven and forgotten…"

We waited for her to run down. "Why did Rosalind run away?" I asked Valerie.

She twitched one shoulder. "She was sick of her dad bossing her around. I think maybe he hit her or something."

"Valerie! Now, Officers, I don't know where she's getting this. Jonathan would never lay a finger on those children, so he wouldn't. Rosalind's a sensitive girl; she had an argument with her daddy, and he didn't realize how upset she was…"

Valerie sat back and stared at me, a smug smile creeping through the professional boredom. The middle kid wiped her nose on her sleeve and examined the result with interest.

"When was this?" Cassie asked.

"Ah, I wouldn't remember. A long time ago-last year, I think it was-"

"May," said Valerie. "This May."

"How long was she gone?"

"Like three days. The police came and everything."

"And where had she been, do you know?"

"She went off somewhere with a fella," Valerie said, smirking.

"She did not," Vera snapped shrilly. "She was only saying that to frighten her poor mother, God forgive her. She was staying with that friend of hers from school-what's her name, Karen. She came home after the weekend and no harm done."

"Whatever," Valerie said, doing the one-shouldered shrug again.

"Want my tea," the toddler stated firmly. I had been right: it had a voice like a bassoon.

This, in all probability, explained something I had been meaning to check out: why Missing Persons had been so quick to assume that Katy was a runaway. Twelve is borderline, and normally they would have given her the benefit of the doubt, started the search and the media fireworks immediately rather than waiting the twenty-four hours. But running away tends to spread through families, the younger children getting the idea from the older. When Missing Persons ran the Devlins' address through their system, they would have come up with Rosalind's escapade and assumed that Katy had done the same thing, had a spat with her parents and stormed off to a friend's house; that she, like Rosalind, would be back as soon as she calmed down, and no harm done.

I was, callously, very glad that Vera had been up all Monday night. Though it was almost too horrible to admit, I had had moments of worry about both Jessica and Rosalind. Jessica didn't look very strong, but she definitely did look unbalanced, and the cliché about insanity lending strength has some basis in fact, and she could hardly have failed to be jealous of all the adulation Katy was getting. Rosalind was highly strung and fiercely protective of Jessica, and if Katy's success had been sending Jessica further and further into her daze…I knew Cassie had been thinking the same things, but she hadn't mentioned them either, and for some reason this had been getting on my nerves.