The Ice Cream Parlour: Part 8

Eventually the frenzy and fear the Coxon girls' disappearance generated began to abate. Normality began its gentle infiltration, gradually, softly, stealthily like the first lightening of nights after the winter solstice. Children began to play outside in the back streets again. They came swooping on bicycles down the colliery banks like birds of prey, shrieking with excitement at their newly found freedom. Tony opened the ice cream parlour again. It gave him something to do. The people of the colliery rallied around to show their support. Cichella’s was packed. It was as if the community believed its gesture of love and loyalty would be enough to change the bleakness of reality: that they could collectively will the girls home. Of course, the atmosphere of the shop was heavy and joyless and as weeks turned into months, Cichella’s began to quieten again. No one wanted to live in a state of perpetual sadness. People moved on. They had to.

Inspector Winter did not move on. He would not let go. The case of the missing girls would stay with him for the rest of his life. After another fruitless day, he would return to his small terraced house in the neighbouring town. He could not rest. He could not settle. The responsibility of finding the girls was a burden that was smothering him. He was an unmarried man. His work was his life. As he brooded alone in the firelight, he would obsessively run through his notebooks about the case. He had missed something. He must have. The answer would be there, eluding him. He just couldn’t see it. He needed to see it.

He visited the ice cream parlour regularly. He wanted the family to know that the girls were still important to him, to the police. But the truth was, he had already been allocated other cases. The feeling amongst his colleagues, although unspoken, was there was nothing more to be done. 

‘Nothing stays hidden forever. All we can do is wait for the bodies to be found,’ his Superintendent had said, as he handed him details of an armed robbery at an off licence. ‘We have other fish to fry.’

On one of his last visits to the Cichella’s, he had sat with John and Stella in their flat and updated them on recent investigations and developments.

‘The red car I mentioned last week, the one that was seen speeding through the village. Well, it was stolen. We found it abandoned in a field. There was no evidence that the girls had been in it. Probably just daft lads out for kicks. We’ve tracked down and interviewed all local criminals and there is nothing there either. Everyone checked out.’ He knew he was sharing too much, telling them too much, it was anything but professional, but he just couldn’t stop the words. They came spilling out of his mouth like coins from a slot machine. 

John had sat and nodded at Inspector Winter’s words. When he had finished speaking, he ran his hands through his hair and quietly said, ‘Thank you, Inspector.’ 

Stella never usually spoke during his visits, he wasn’t even sure she took in what he was saying. This day, as he was preparing to leave, she spoke and her voice was unexpectedly clear and strong, ‘Inspector, you come here every week, yet you never have anything to tell us. Every you come, I think you have found our girls. I think that this is all over. But all you do is tell us about the ways you have failed us. Please don’t come back here again unless you have our daughters.’

As Inspector Winter drove back to the station, he looked in the rear-view mirror and observed that he was weeping.

Stella had become wraithlike. She rarely ate and never bothered dress. She would drift around the flat in her white cotton nightie, her hair loose and unbrushed, the darkness of her pubic hair and nipples visible through the gossamer fabric. She reminded John of Ophelia, ravaged by grief and madness. Occasionally she had wandered into the ice cream parlour that way, barefoot and primitive. John simply led her back upstairs and gave her the tablets that soothed her into a deep, pillowy slumber. 

She’d taken to sleeping in the girls’ room every night. At first, she would wait until John was asleep and silently steal into their room which was painted sunflower yellow and jumbled with their toys and books. Nothing had been moved since that awful night. A single red plimsoll lay in the middle of the floor, a book about ponies lay open on the nightstand. Its bookmark was a postcard bought on a day trip to Scarborough. The room was a living thing to Stella. When she put her hand to the wall, she was sure she could feel its heart beating. After a night spent there, she would try to sneak back to her own bed so John would not suspect she had gone. John knew what she was doing, but couldn’t find the words to talk to her about it. She was turning away from him. He did not know how to stop it from happening. He did not know if he even had the energy to try.

One morning, John was made tea. ‘We’ve no milk,’ he said. ‘I’ll go downstairs to get some.’ He hadn’t expected Stella to reply. She spoke so rarely these days. Nor did she cry or rage even. She was numbed with the silvery stillness of a lake frozen in winter. That morning, she sat at the kitchen table staring blankly across the road where children were hurrying to school. They were pushing themselves forward into the raw wind. Their hoods were up and they were swathed in brightly coloured scarves and thick woollen coats. They looked plump and ruddy, wrapped against the cold. Snow was coming, last night’s forecast had said. The first of the winter. Winter. It was now winter.

John picked up the keys to the flat and moved towards the door. Stella’s voice stopped him in his tracks. ‘Milk?’ she said, ‘Milk,’ she repeated the word, turning it over in her mouth as if she were learning a new language. ‘Remember the days when we had the luxury of worrying about everyday things like milk? When running out of milk might have been the worst thing that could have happened for a whole week, a whole month even? Where did those days go? We were so lucky and we didn’t even know it. We had everything and we didn’t even see it.’

She stood up and walked silently past John into the girls’ bedroom, closing the door behind her.