Free Backlash by Sally Spencer

ex-directory?’
    â€˜I tried that, but it didn’t work. Because though the foul-mouthed scum who rang me are so lazy that they’ve never done a decent day’s work in their lives, they somehow summoned up the energy to track down my new number, and, in the end, I simply had the phone taken out.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But you’re not here to listen to me recount amusing anecdotes of my life in the sewer – you want to ask me about Elaine.’
    â€˜You don’t seem very concerned about the fact she’s gone missing,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Is that because you don’t think there’s anything to worry about ?’
    Mary Philips shook her head vigorously. ‘No, it’s not that at all. In my line of business, you learn to discipline yourself not to worry about something bad happening until you know – for a fact – that it has. It’s the only way to survive. So in answer to your implied question – which may actually have been a veiled criticism – yes, despite myself, I am concerned. But I’m not going to show it – even to a thoroughly nice young woman like you.’ She paused again. ‘Would you like something stronger to drink now?’
    â€˜No, thank you.’
    Mary Philips shrugged her shoulders. ‘Always worth a try,’ she said, philosophically. ‘I expect you’ve already been to see my mother.’
    â€˜I have.’
    â€˜And did she tell you that there was really no problem at all, because Tom would find Elaine?’
    â€˜Yes, she did.’
    Mary Philips laughed. ‘And so he would – if he were allowed to. But I’m a little bit more worldly than Mother – and I know he’d never be let within a mile of the case.’
    â€˜You sound like a big fan of his,’ Paniatowski said.
    â€˜Let me tell you about my sister,’ Mary Philips suggested. ‘Elaine’s twenty-odd years younger than me – which, if you think about it, makes her almost twenty years younger than Tom. She was only eight when our father died, and it hit her very hard. She was like most kids – she thought the world centred on her – so if anything went wrong, it had to be her fault.’
    Paniatowski knew what she meant. As a child herself, constantly on the run with her mother in war-torn Europe, she’d often had the feeling that if she’d been just a little bit better, none of this would have happened.
    â€˜So Elaine clung to the one certainty she had left,’ Mary continued. ‘She tried to be exactly like Mother, but that didn’t work, of course, because she was still a kid and Mother was already in her forties.’
    â€˜Did she get picked on in school?’
    â€˜She most certainly did. And there was nothing that even a bossy busybody like me could do about it. When she left school, she went to work for our uncle, and she’d probably have been working for him still, if she hadn’t met Tom.’
    And now we come to the point that still puzzles me, Paniatowski thought. Just what did Kershaw see in her – and just what did she see in him?
    â€˜You’re speculating about how the relationship ever got off the ground,’ Mary Philips said.
    â€˜I am,’ Paniatowski admitted.
    â€˜We’ll probably never have a completely accurate answer to that, because if we don’t really know our own partners – or even ourselves – how can we ever really know anybody ?’ Mary Philips said. ‘But I’ll make a stab at answering, if you want me to.’
    â€˜I want you to.’
    â€˜Tom, to do him credit, must have caught a glimpse of something none of the rest of us saw – the real Elaine, the one that froze when Father died.’
    â€˜And Elaine?’
    â€˜I think it was that she sensed he really wanted her. I’m not talking here about just loving her, you understand – she got plenty of love from