Silent Playgrounds. Danuta Reah

just … She packed her bags that same day. Wouldn’t speak to me.’ He looked at the two officers, trying to gauge their understanding. ‘She just left. I tried to contact her at the college, but they said she’d never enrolled. Didn’t even come to her own mother’s funeral.’ His voice was bewildered.

      The search for Lucy the day before had identified witnesses who remembered seeing Emma in the park, round about the time Jane Fielding said that she and Lucy had left. A woman walking back from delivering her daughter to school saw Emma and Lucy in the playground near the gate, and had wondered why Lucy wasn’t at school. There was a dog walker who remembered a young woman answering Emma’s description on the path to Shepherd Wheel, walking fast: ‘I noticed her because she looked a bit anxious.’ She had been alone. He was quite certain she had had no child with her. So what had happened to Lucy? McCarthy hoped the key would lie in the interview that the child protection team had recorded the evening before, shortly after a tired but otherwise unharmed Lucy had turned up in the woods half a mile above Shepherd Wheel.

      But Lucy’s story was confusing and inconclusive. She was very young – just six – and fantasized and wove the things that happened to her into stories and daydreams. The child protection officer, Alicia Hamilton, was able to clarify some of the more puzzling aspects of her story. ‘It could be something or nothing,’ she had said as she discussed the tape of Lucy’s interview with the team, ‘but it seems that Emma invented this game of chasing the monsters. But there’s a bit more to it than that.’ Then Emma went to chase the monsters and I went to the swings. Well, she did but I ran away.

      ‘That bit’s interesting.’ Hamilton had stopped the tape. ‘It takes a while to sort out – you’ll see in a minute – but it looks as though Emma had a bit of a scam going. According to Lucy, Emma would go and chase off the monsters, and Lucy would stay in the playground. Then, as long as she was good, Emma would get her an ice cream.’ Lucy’s story was clear to this point, even to the point of knowing that whatever Emma was doing, it was dangerous.

       I told her. One time, two times, three times. Then they get you.

      But later on in the tape, the child’s fantasies became impenetrable.

       Why did you go into the woods, Lucy?

       Because the monsters. Because the Ash Man …

       Tell me about the Ash Man, Lucy.

       He’s Tamby’s friend. Only not really. Tamby’s my friend.

       Who’s Tamby, Lucy?

       He’s my friend.

       What about the Ash Man?

       The Ash Man … the Ash Man is Emma’s friend.

       Tell me about him.

       I said. He’s Emma’s friend. And Tamby is, too.

      ‘Her mother says that these are characters in her stories. “Tamby” is someone she pretends to play with in the garden and in the park. This “Ash Man” is some kind of giant or ogre …’ McCarthy felt his head begin to ache. Hamilton went on. ‘It isn’t all fantasy. There was someone – someone must have taken her up to the Forge Dam playground. It’s too far for a little thing like that to walk to by herself. And someone gave her money to buy ice cream. But who it was, Lucy can’t – or won’t – tell us.’

      Suzanne waited until she heard the engine of Joel’s bike, the roar of subdued power from a machine far too expensive for someone who claimed he couldn’t afford to support his child, so that she was sure he had left. She slipped across the yard and knocked on Jane’s door, pushing it open as she did so. Jane was at the kitchen table, a mug in her hands, staring into space. Her sketch pad was in front of her. She stood up when Suzanne came in and gave her a quick hug. ‘I heard,’ she said by way of greeting. ‘You were the one who found her.’

      Suzanne returned her hug. ‘How is she? Is she all right?’

      Jane nodded, sitting down at the table again. ‘Yes. She’s a bit quiet, but she’s coming round. The police took me straight across to this place where they interview children.’ Jane reached across for the teapot and poured Suzanne a cup of pale tea. The smell of camomile drifted into the room.

      ‘What happened? Did anyone … ?’ Jane’s serene manner could be deceptive, Suzanne knew.

      ‘Emma just left her, just like that, and she wandered off by herself.’ Her normally gentle face was hard. ‘Apparently Emma made a habit of dumping Lucy and going off. Bribing her to stick around. And Lucy wouldn’t, not with a hospital appointment looming. The police think that someone was with her in the playground, but Lucy says not. She said she was hiding from the monsters. But she always does these days. And she said that Tamby helped her, and there was something about the Ash Man.’ Suzanne recognized the names from the times she sat with Lucy and listened to her stories. ‘I talked to her last night, and again this morning. I think she was on her own. She knows the way to Forge Dam. We’ve walked up there together often enough. I go cold when I think of her walking through those woods. And the roads.’ Her hands tightened round her cup, then she looked at Suzanne. ‘I feel so awful. I can’t believe I just let Emma …’

      Suzanne knew all about guilt. ‘You thought you knew her. We both did.’

      Jane wasn’t prepared to let herself off the hook. ‘I knew Sophie,’ she said. Suzanne waited, and after a moment, Jane went on. ‘Whoever … did it must have got Emma after she left Lucy, thank God. I don’t think she saw anything. Joel said I shouldn’t have let them interview her, but …’ Jane gave her a cautionary look as they heard footsteps on the stairs. She began leafing through her sketch book. ‘I did some drawings while I was waiting,’ she said.

      Lucy came in, carrying the peacock feather, a present from Sophie that was one of her treasures. ‘Hello, Lucy,’ Suzanne said, then, unable to help herself, gave the little girl a hug.

      Lucy wriggled impatiently. ‘I’m busy,’ she said.

      ‘I know, I’m sorry, Lucy. What are you doing?’

      Lucy compressed her lips, then relented. ‘I’m playing. Tamby’s chasing the monsters.’ She looked at the two women. ‘I didn’t talk to the real police. I told Alicia about the monsters.’

      ‘The child protection officer,’ Jane said. ‘The one who interviewed her.’

      Suzanne felt cold. ‘I know.’ We want to help the lad.

      ‘I’m going in the garden now,’ Lucy said.

      Jane watched her as she went out into the back yard, the feather held carefully in one hand as she negotiated the step. ‘Still the monsters,’ she said. Suzanne kept her mind carefully focused on Jane as she leafed through her sketch book until she came to the page she wanted. ‘I finally got it right,’ she said. ‘I did these yesterday while I was waiting for them to interview Lucy.’

      Suzanne looked at the familiar scene: the terraced houses; the wheelie bins at the entrances; the tiny front gardens, narrow strips separating the houses from the road, some cared for and blooming, some overgrown with shrubs, weeds and discarded rubbish. It was the scene she saw every day from her bedroom window, made oddly new by Jane’s pencil. The drawings caught the contrasts of light and shade, the places where the sun shone brilliantly, the places where the shadows were black and impenetrable. There was something about the drawings that made Suzanne feel uneasy. She looked more closely. There was a suggestion of something – something larger than human, something menacing – lurking in the shadows of an entrance. A hand, oversized with long nails, reached out from under the lid of a wheelie bin. An eye – an avian eye? – watched with keen intent from behind a curtain. The curtain was held back by a claw. Suzanne realized that everywhere she looked, strange things looked back, half hidden, almost completely hidden, but there. Among and around them walked people, happy, smiling, oblivious. She looked at Jane.

      Jane was still looking at the drawings. ‘Monsters,’