… ‘Is Mummy going to be there?’ she asks eagerly.
‘No, darling, your mummy won’t be there.’
Disappointed, Helen sits back in her seat. She frowns. Aggie has never called her ‘darling’ before, and somehow this frightens her though she doesn’t know why.
At the police station Helen and Aggie are taken down a long corridor, past many closed doors with letters on them. People’s offices, Aggie explains. Finally they’re led into a room with a large window looking into another room, which is empty. A man and a woman are waiting for them. The man has light-coloured hair and wears a blue suit, and the lady is dressed in a baggy green jumper and red trousers. Fascinated, Helen stares at the lady’s trousers. They’re not the sort of clothes Mummy would wear, and from the horrified look on Aggie’s face when she sees the lady, she’s sure Aggie is thinking the same.
‘I didn’t know the handover was today,’ Aggie says and puts her hand on Helen’s shoulder, where she leaves it. Helen shifts uncomfortably; Aggie’s never done that before either.
The lady nods. ‘Your daughter Letitia called me. I told her this isn’t how we normally do things, but she insisted. Said you’d prefer it to be dealt with quickly. It’s not a problem, I hope. We don’t really want a scene in front of—’ She stops and bites her lip when she sees Helen staring at her.
The man looks at Helen too, then at Aggie, and his expression isn’t kind.
Aggie’s voice is small when she says, ‘The child is ill. Neither of my daughters are willing to take the responsibility, and I … well, I’m too old.’ She turns away, fiddling with the clasp of her handbag as if she can’t open it.
Helen has a feeling Aggie is upset about something, but she has no time to think about it because the man kneels down in front of her, smiling. Involuntarily she takes a step back. When grown-ups kneel down like that and smile in a certain way, it’s because they’ve got something to say that you don’t want to hear.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘My name’s Barry. I’m a detective. Do you know what a detective is?’
Helen shakes her head. Why isn’t Mummy here?
‘A detective is a policeman who doesn’t have a uniform on, and who has to ask people questions when something bad has happened. He has to ask people if they saw anything, or anybody. Do you understand what I mean?’
Helen stares at him, unblinkingly. Her tummy feels hard, like there is a big lump inside it.
‘Did you see anyone that day you were with your mum in the car?’
‘I saw a lady.’
‘If you saw her again, would you be able to point at her and say “that’s her”?’
Helen nods. ‘She’s a vampire,’ she says and waits for the grown-ups to laugh and say there are no vampires, they don’t exist, but no one does.
‘I see.’ The man looks at her closely for a while then takes a tube of Smarties out of his jacket pocket and hands it to her. ‘Tell you what,’ he says, ‘why don’t you have some Smarties while you think about this vampire, because in a minute that door in there’—he points to a door which is inside the room behind the window—‘will open, and some people will come in, and maybe you can tell me if that vampire lady is one of them. Yeah?’
Helen hesitates. She loves Smarties, they’re her favourite, but Mummy says she can only have sweets on Saturdays, and she’s not sure it’s Saturday. Plus she’s not allowed to accept sweets from strangers. But she doesn’t want to disappoint him, so she nods and smiles in the way she knows is expected of her. Where is Mummy?
‘Good girl.’ He gets up and asks over her head, ‘Does she know?’
‘No,’ says Aggie quietly. He doesn’t look pleased, and neither does the lady with the red trousers. ‘There were fears it would bring on another seizure.’
Helen knows they’re talking about her, but she ignores them and concentrates on her Smarties. She pours them out into her hand and picks the blue ones first. She likes them the best, even though they’re full of nasty colouring, and she hurries up and eats them, just in case someone tries to get them off her.
When she’s finished, the man takes her over to the window.
‘Are you ready?’
Helen nods.
‘Remember to tell me if you see anyone you know.’
He presses a button, and the door opens at the back of the room. Some women walk in, each carrying a piece of paper with a number on it. Helen knows them, because she can count to twenty, but she’s more interested in the women’s faces, and even before they’re standing still and looking at the window, she sees one she recognises.