Read Online What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan - Free Book Online Page B

breath, him taking one of his first.
    I had to detail the years of Ben’s childhood for Clemo, and talk about my relationship with my sister, and with John’s family. It was painful to speak about John’s mother, Ruth, my beloved Ruth, who’d become a surrogate parent to me after my marriage, and who now lived in a nursing home, her brain slowly succumbing to the ravages of dementia.
    I also had to talk about the breakup of my marriage, how I never saw it coming, how Ben and I had coped since then. I didn’t want to relate these things to strangers, but I had no choice. I steeled myself, tried to trust in the process.
    The pace of Clemo’s questions slowed as we got nearer to the present day. He asked in detail about Ben’s experiences at school. I told him they were happy ones; that Ben loved school, and loved his teacher. She’d been very supportive when John and I had been going through the separation and divorce.
    Clemo wanted to know how often Ben had visited his dad lately, or any other friends or family. He wanted to know what our custody arrangements were. He wanted details of all the activities that Ben did in and out of school. I had to describe everything we’d done the previous week and then we were talking about Saturday, and then Sunday morning, and what we’d done in the hours we spent together before we went to the woods.
    “Did you have lunch before you went out to the woods?” Clemo asked. There was a sort of apology in his voice.
    “Is this in case you find his body?”
    “It doesn’t mean that I think we’re going to find a body. It’s a question I have to ask.”
    “Ben ate a ham sandwich, banana, yogurt, and two Bourbon biscuits in the car on the way to the woods.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Do you need to know what I ate?”
    “No. That won’t be necessary.”
    Zhang handed me a box of tissues.
    We also compiled a list of the people whom I’d seen in the woods: the crowd in the parking lot, including Peter and Finn and the other young soccer players and their families, the group of fantasy reenactors, the cyclist, and the old lady who’d helped me when I first lost Ben. I also remembered a man whom Ben and I had passed early on in our walk. He was carrying a dog lead, though we didn’t see his dog. It was frustratingly hard to recall what he was wearing, or even what he looked like, and I became upset with myself.
    I promised that if I thought of anything or anybody else I would let the police know. They asked permission to look through my phone records, to search my home, and especially Ben’s bedroom. I said yes to it all. I would have agreed to anything if I’d thought it would help.
    “Do you have a photograph of Ben? One that we can release to the public and press?”
    I gave him the picture that I kept in my wallet. It was a recent school photograph, not even dog-eared yet, as I’d only got it the week before. I looked at my son’s face: serious, and sweet, beautiful and vulnerable. His father’s eyes and dark sandy hair, his perfect skin, scattered lightly with freckles across the nose. I could hardly bear to hand it over.
    Clemo took the photograph from me gently. “Thank you,” he said, and then, “Ms. Jenner, I will find Ben. I will do everything in my power to find him.”
    I looked at him. I searched those eyes for signs of his commitment, for confirmation that he understood what was at stake, wanting him to mean what he said, wanting him to be on my side, wanting to believe that he could find Ben.
    “Do you promise?” I said. I reached for his hand, gripped it, startling both of us.
    “I promise,” he said. He extricated his fingers from mine carefully, as if he didn’t want to hurt me. I believed him.
    When he’d gone DC Zhang said, “You’re in good hands. DI Clemo is a great detective. He’s one of our best. He’s like a dog with a bone. Once he gets stuck into a case he won’t give up.”
    She was trying to reassure me but I was thinking of only