Phantom Marriage

The sergeant on the other end of the line was patient and helpful. ‘Just take your time, madam,’ he urged her when she broke down in the middle of describing Mandy’s pink dungarees. ‘I’ll send a W.P.C. round to talk to you, but meanwhile we’ll get some patrols searching for them. You just sit tight.’

The woman police constable was about Tara’s own age, pleasant and yet slightly distant. Tara had to go over every detail of the children’s clothing and the events of the morning yet again for her while she wrote it down.

‘Do you often leave the twins on their own?’ she was asked at one point, and the question drove the blood from her face. What was the woman trying to imply? That the twins were latchkey ‘orphans’, whose mother didn’t care one way or the other?

‘Never,’ Tara told her huskily. ‘I was gone twenty minutes… twenty minutes…’

Seeing the real agony in her eyes, the policewoman tactfully refrained from pointing out how many other parents had said something similar and had lived to regret those very few minutes.

‘Have you any idea what might have happened to them?’

Tara took a deep breath.

‘I think they’ve probably run away,’ she said huskily. ‘We had words—last night. I was going to take them out for the day today for a treat.’ Tears welled in her eyes and overflowed. There were other questions—questions that horrified and appalled her, hinting at child battering and worse, but while one part of her mind was outraged, Tara recognised that such questions were a necessary part of the procedure.

Janice too was questioned. She was in tears now as well, and Tara was asked if there was anyone she wanted with her—a boy-friend perhaps, the policewoman suggested.

Tara shook her head. ‘I don’t have one,’ she told her.

‘What about Chas?’ Janice suggested. ‘You need someone with you.’

Tara explained to the policewoman who Chas was, and as though somehow she were divorced from the proceedings Tara registered the fact that the girl was putting in a radio request for Chas to be contacted, her own voice saying inanely, ‘Please don’t bother him,?

?? over and over again, echoing in her ears like some vague recording.

The long day wore on. Chas arrived, full of concern and shock, Nina with him. The policewoman disappeared and reappeared a little later, her manner much more warm and comforting, and Tara suspected that she had been doing a little discreet digging in the social service records, making sure that neither Tara nor the twins had any record of past incidents.

‘Don’t worry,’ she was assured over and over again, ‘they’ll be found.’ But would they? London was such a vast place, the twins so terribly vulnerable. All the evils that could befall two young children filled her mind in crashing waves, terror after terror blanking out the sympathy of everyone with her. At one point, unable to stand the inactivity any longer, she begged to be allowed to go put with the patrols, but was gently refused.

‘It’s better if you stay here,’ she was told. ‘When we find them the first person they’re going to want is you.’

She heard, but didn’t accept. She was the last person they wanted, otherwise they would never have run away.

‘Their father is dead, is that right?’ The policewoman was asking her the question and just for a moment Tara longed to tell the truth and have James at her side to face this terrible ordeal with her, but sanity prevailed and she nodded her head quickly, averting her face, not wanting anyone to guess that she was lying.

‘And they’ve no relatives they could go to who live locally?’

She had answered all these questions already, but sensing that merely the automatic response of replying would occupy and free from pain some tiny part of her brain, Tara slowly responded.

Afternoon dragged into evening. The police left. They would keep her informed, she was told. Chas took Nina home, but then returned, insisting on making a light omelette which Tara couldn’t touch.

‘There’s honestly no need for you to stay with me—I’ll be pefectly all right,’ she insisted to Chas for the umpteenth time, but he overruled her objections, coming towards her and taking her in his arms.

‘For God’s sake try and let go a little, love,’ he said softly. ‘This isn’t the time to preserve that stiff upper lip act you’re so good at. What are friends for, after all?’

She started to cry, and he produced a large handkerchief, pushing the tangled hair out of her eyes. They heard footsteps in the hall, and Chas smiled down at her.

‘Sounds like the police are back,’ he told her. ‘Let’s hope they have some good news.’

That he suspected they wouldn’t have was apparent to Tara in the way in which he kept his arm round her, holding her against him as though he feared she would break into a thousand fragile pieces.

The door opened and she heard herself repeating the prayer she had been saying all day long. ‘Please God, let them be safe. Please, please, God!’

The footsteps stopped and she lifted her heady confusion and disbelief mirrored in her eyes as they met James’s contemptuously bitter ones.

‘My God!’ he whispered savagely. ‘Even now with your children missing you haven’t a thought in your head but your own physical satisfaction!’

Tara ignored the latter part of his statement, concentrating on his initial words, her croaked, ‘How do you know about the twins?’ drawing a grim darkening of his eyes, his mouth sour as he told her brutally,