"There's no answer round the back, either." Kirsty called, appearing through the gate at the side of the house. "It doesn't look like there's anyone in."
"That's weird… she said she was coming straight home…"
"People do lie, Ellie." The blonde reminded her.
She shrugged. "Yeah, I know… especially when they've got stuff to hide." She moved to look through the living room window again. "Hang on… Kirst… Toby's in there."
"What?"
"There, look…" She pointed through the window to where the small boy was sitting in the hallway clutching several of the animals he'd been piling on her lap earlier that day. "Try round the back again."
As Kirsty retreated back through the gate, Ellie tried calling through the letter box. Toby shook his head as she asked him to try and open the door. Sighing, she moved back to the outside of the living room and looked at the windows carefully. Seeing that the handle on one of the small, top windows was up, she ran her fingers along the edge. She prised it open enough that, as she balanced precariously on the window sill she could just about reach the handle of the larger window below. Awkwardly she moved the handle, before dropping onto the ground and prising it open. Climbing through, she hurried into the hallway and scooped Toby up, before unlocking the French doors and letting Kirsty in.
"How did you do that?" The blonde demanded, frowning slightly.
"Secrets of a misspent youth." Ellie told her with a grin. "I had to know how to get in again after sneaking out."
"Didn't Hannah know?"
The red-head laughed, leading the way back into the living room. "Course she did; nothing much gets past her. I think she figured that as long as I could get back in at least I was safe. Besides, she's young enough to remember what being a teenager's about."
Kirsty shook her head, smirking. "Right… you stay down here with the kid and I'll check upstairs."
Nodding, Ellie sat on the floor with Toby and smiled as he immediately began piling his stuffed animals onto her lap, no doubt remembering the toy avalanche that morning. A couple of moments passed and she heard Kirsty moving around upstairs. Then the blonde shouted down for her to call an ambulance and Ellie stood quickly, rushing to the foot of the stairs. Toby laughed from the living room as his toys spilled all over the floor.
"What?"
"She's slit her wrists."
"Sierra Oscar from 298; ambulance required to 42, Shipley Avenue. Thirty-two-year-old female needing urgent assistance." Ellie said into her radio quickly, glancing at the little boy happily playing on the floor before closing the living room door and running up the stairs. "Shit…"
She grabbed a towel from the side and wrapped it firmly round Alice's left wrist, copying Kirsty's tight grip in an attempt to stem the blood loss. Taking the other wrist from the blonde's hand, she watched as Kirsty checked the woman's pulse and started administering CPR. For a couple of minutes they sat in silence, trying to keep her alive.
"Keep at it." Ellie muttered, hearing a loud banging on the front door and rushing to let the paramedics in. Grace and Stevie were behind them. "She's slit her wrists in the bathroom."
"Why would she do that?" Stevie murmured, her question rhetorical.
Ellie shrugged. "I better go and check Toby is OK. Oh… and Alice has older children too; they're at school. No idea which schools or names or ages or anything, sorry Sarge."
"Get onto it then, Ellie." Stevie told her. "Find photos or anything that can help us find them."
Nodding, the red-head went into the living room and picked up the family photograph that was sitting on the shelf above the television. She looked at it for a moment, before perching on the sofa and pulling Toby onto her knee.
"Who's this?" She asked, pointing to the image of the little boy.
"Me!" He obliged with a smile.
"And…" She moved her finger to point to his mother.
"Mummy… Nathan… Lara… Claire…" He said the names of the other children in the photo as she pointed to them.
Ellie smiled and tickled him. "Where are your brother and sisters?"
"At school." He told her, obviously getting bored and sliding off her lap to carry on his game.
"Which school, d'you know?"
He shrugged. "Nathan goes to big school."
"D'you know what it's called, sweetheart?" Ellie pressed.
When he shook his head, not glancing up from his toy cars, she told him to stay there before heading up the stairs. Skirting past the paramedics and other officers, she poked her head into a bedroom. The walls were pink and she guessed that it must belong to Toby's sisters. Inside, she went straight to the wardrobe, pushing the clothes to one end of the rail until she found a school jumper. Reading the name of the school on it, she looked around for any other information that might help. Her eyes fell on a birthday card on the windowsill and she opened it. It was addressed to Claire from Granddad. On the bedside table in the corner, she also found Lara's diary with her age written inside the cover.
Holding the jumper tightly in her hand, she moved further along the corridor, bypassing Alice's room and heading through the third door along.
It took longer to find anything to identify which school Nathan might go to. Finally Ellie found an envelope pushed between two books and pulled the paper inside it out carefully. She frowned as she realised it was a letter about a school trip, wondering why it had been hidden. The letter did, however, have the school's name written at the top.
"Sarge?" Ellie called quietly, watching the paramedics carrying Alice down the stairs. "Her other children are Nathan aged eleven or twelve, Lara aged eight and Claire aged six. Nathan goes to Dean's Gate Comp and the girls go to Elcott Primary."
"You found all that out from a jumper?" Kirsty asked, leaning against the bathroom doorframe and raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah…" The younger woman replied, shrugging. Then she grinned. "Course not. There was a sixth birthday card written to Claire and Lara's diary said her age in it. I found a letter about a year 7 school trip in Nathan's room, so I guessed that he must be eleven or twelve."
"You'll be in CID in no time with detection skills like that." Stevie told her with a wink. "Right, we'll go with the ambulance to St Hugh's. You two go and collect her kids; don't tell them what's happened. Keep them calm and take them to the station." As they nodded and started down the stairs, she called after them. "Oh and see if they can tell you anything about Darren Miles."
"Have you tracked him down yet?"
"Not yet, but we're working on it."
After collecting the three older children from school, the two PCs settled them in the soft interview room and Kirsty went off to fetch drinks and snacks before they asked them anything about Miles. Nathan was smart enough to realise that they weren't being told the full story. Ellie watched him carefully and, from the way he acted around his younger siblings, she could tell that he was used to looking after them.
"Where's Mum?" He asked, lowering his voice so that his sisters wouldn't hear. "I know something's happened. Is she dead?"
"Why would you think that?" Ellie asked, surprised by the casual tone he used to ask the question.
Nathan shrugged. "She tried to kill herself before."
"When was that, sweetheart?"
"Last year…"
"Well she's not dead. She's in St Hugh's hospital and they're looking after her." She told him firmly. "Listen… do you know someone called Darren Miles?"
"Dad? Yeah." The boy replied with a frown. "What's he got to do with this?"
"Does your Dad live with you?"
"No… he lives at the other end of the Estate with his girlfriend, Selina."
Ellie glanced up as Kirsty entered the room. "When did you last see your Dad? Do him and your Mum get on?"
"What's all this about?" He demanded, furrowing his eyebrows suspiciously. "You said Mum tried to kill herself."
"No, I said she wasn't dead." The red-head reminded him.
"So she didn't try to kill herself. Is that why you're asking about Dad? Did he hurt her?"
Putting an arm around his shoulders and giving him a reassuring squeeze she shrugged. "Do him and your Mum argue a lot? D'you think he would hurt her?"
"He said… Mum said he told her he was gonna take us away. She couldn't survive without us. I don't want to live with Dad… Mum needs me. She can't cope on her own."
Sensing that Nathan was getting agitated, Ellie gave him a hug. "Don't worry about your Mum. She's in the best place at the moment." She promised. Glancing at the book on his lap, she smiled and picked it up. "My little brother's reading this. He tried to explain the story to me, but I didn't really get it."
"How old is he?" Nathan asked, looking at her with interest.
"He was eleven a couple of days ago. You're eleven, too, aren't you?"
He nodded. "How did you not understand the plot? It's really simple."
"I guess you boys are clever than me." She replied with a shrug, listening as he launched into an explanation of the book in his hands.
