by Tess Stimson
A compass rose. Why is that so familiar?
Pitt’s expression sharpens. ‘Alex? You’ve seen this before?’
My mouth is dry. I feel as if I’m falling.
A compass rose. I remember where I saw it.
‘I know who that is,’ I say.
two years missing
chapter 33
alex
The meeting is held in a classroom at a small primary school in Tooting Bec, two minutes’ walk from the Tube station. I’m half an hour early, so I stop for a coffee to kill time. Edie, the woman who runs the café, brings me my usual: American, black, no sugar. She sets it down in front of me without a word. She knows what day it is.
A little before seven p.m., I leave the café and head to the school. I never got the chance to be a school mum myself, but it smells exactly as I remember from my own school days: boiled carrots, floor polish, erasers and marker pens. No one seems to have considered the irony of holding the meetings here, in a primary school.
The caretaker lets me in and I make my way upstairs to the Year 2 classroom. The corridor is painted a bright, cheery yellow and an illustrated alphabet is tacked to the walls at the height of a five-year-old: Harry Hat Man. Munching Mike. Quarrelsome Queen. On either side of the classroom door are a row of coat pegs and I scan the names taped beneath them, looking for Lottie’s. George, Taylor, Ava, Muhammad, Oscar. Lottie’s should be third from the end, but I don’t see it. And then I remember it’s October, and a new school year has started since I was last here, with a new intake of Year 2 pupils. Lottie has moved up to Year 3 and a little boy called Noah now has her peg.
It’s stupid, of course. It’s not my Lottie. But there was something oddly comforting about seeing her name there, as if, in some parallel world just out of reach, my daughter was going to school, hanging up her coat on a peg with her name on it, making snowmen out of cotton wool, learning to read.
Inside the classroom, the tables have been pushed to the side to create space for a circle of chairs in the centre. The first time I came here, not long after I returned to England, the group was using the classroom chairs, designed for six-year-olds. It took a minor mutiny to obtain the full-size chairs that are now brought in from the school auditorium when the group meets each month.
It’s been a while since I came to a meeting, but I recognise all but one of the faces. Our group leader, Ray, is setting out thick china cups and saucers on a table beneath the window. I know from experience the tea will be weak, the coffee undrinkable. But Ray was a pastry chef in a former life and his chocolate eclairs and puff pastry elephant ears melt in your mouth.
I help myself to a couple of palmiers, and take my seat in the centre of three vacant chairs, so that there’s no one immediately on either side of me. I never used to be claustrophobic; until Lottie was stolen, I wasn’t afraid of anything. Now, the list runs off the page. Crowds, open spaces, flying, the dark. It makes no sense: the worst has already happened, so I should have nothing left to fear. It’s down to grief, Mum says. It attacks you in the most unpredictable ways.
The newbie to my left is clutching her cup and saucer as if they’re the only thing tethering her here.
I smile. ‘You really should try one of these,’ I say, taking a bite of my palmier.
‘I’m not really hungry.’
Before Lottie, empathy wasn’t my strong suit. Now, I make the effort. ‘My name’s Alex,’ I say.
‘Molly.’
‘How long has it been?’ I ask.
‘Thirteen days. You?’
‘Two years.’
She blanches. Ray’s seven-year-old son, Evan, had been missing six years when I first came to group. I remember wondering how he could have survived that long: six Christmases without his son, six birthdays, six anniversaries of the last night he tucked his son into bed. But I know now you learn to exist in the spaces around your grief. You keep on living, whether you want to or not.
‘Is it your son or daughter?’ I ask Molly.
‘My daughter,’ she says. ‘She’s sixteen. They say she’s a runaway, but you know, don’t you?’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Mallory,’ she says. ‘What about you?’
‘A little girl. Lottie. She’ll be six in February.’
I see the sudden recognition in her eyes as she kicks herself for not having realised who I was before. She drops her gaze to the cup and saucer in her lap, and I know she wishes now she hadn’t come. I’m an A-lister in this bleak new world of missing children and grieving parents: Lottie Martini’s mother. If she’s part of a group that includes me, it means her nightmare is real.
When I finally returned to England twenty-one months ago, I thought being home would make me feel less alone. But I quickly realised the opposite was true. I was living in a foreign country where no one spoke my language. The same mothers who’d once invited me on playdates and made me their pet pity project in the wake of Luca’s death – the poor widow, in need of friends – now crossed the road to avoid me. I was a living reminder of their worst fear.
Even my bond with Zealy has become strained. She’s on the board of the Foundation, of course, and her fundraising efforts have been heroic, but at the end of the day she still has a life, whereas I’m suspended in limbo. Finding Lottie is the only thing that matters to me, other than work, and even though Zealy has never said anything, she must miss the friend I used to be: the woman who’d take her out to lunch to commiserate after a bad date and text instantly if Sweaty Betty had a sale. These days, we hardly see each other any more and, when we do, we have pitifully little in common.
I joined a support group for the parents of missing children because I was desperate to be around people who knew what it was like, but it took me a full year to accept I was one of them. First you have to admit you have a problem.
Ray waits a few minutes for any last stragglers and then shuts the classroom door. We introduce ourselves, giving our names and that of our missing child. Some people add a few details – Andrew would be thirteen now, April used to love Frozen – while others barely look up. Ray doesn’t really belong here any more: his son’s body was found a few months after I started coming to meetings, at the bottom of a well half a mile from his mother’s house. But the little boy’s killer has never been found and Ray doesn’t need to explain why he still comes to group.
‘Do you want to start today, Alex?’ he says.
I glance around the classroom at the dozen or so people here. So much misery; so many lives put on hold.
‘It’s the anniversary today,’ I say. ‘Two years since Lottie was taken. Last year, for the first anniversary, I went back to Florida to launch a new appeal. The police there did a reconstruction, which got a lot of coverage. Quite a few of you probably saw it on TV.’
Nods and murmurs of affirmation around the room.
‘We had a lot of calls to the hotline. There was a strong lead in South Africa, but it was another dead end.’ My voice is flat. ‘They’re always dead ends.’
South Africa. Morocco. New Zealand, Belgium, Mexico, Honduras. Every lead, no matter how slim, has to be followed up. For the first year after Lottie went missing, I travelled the globe meeting prime ministers and foreign secretaries, powerful figures who, with the eyes of the world upon them, promised to leave no stone unturned in the effort to bring my daughter home. And I’m no closer to finding Lottie now than I was the day she disappeared.
On my good days, I imagine she’s dead. Everyone has their own mechanisms for self-protection and, for me, this is better than the alternative. The awful images that scroll through my mind in my bleakest hours, of Lottie held in some dark place, passed around some unspeakable child sex ring, no sane human being would want in their head. Better dead than that.
For me, hope is now the enemy. People mean well when they tell me stories about children found alive after years, even decades, in captivity, and insist I mustn’t lose faith. But all I can think about is what those
children suffered before they were found. The rapes. The beatings.
How can I hope for that? It’s selfish of me to want Lottie to survive at any cost. I’ll never stop looking for her, but when I pray now, it’s a plea to a God I no longer believe in that she didn’t suffer, and that her death was quick. That her body will be found, so that she – so that we – can rest in peace.
I no longer rush thousands of miles across continents at every report of a blonde child in a gas station on the outskirts of Cairo. I’ve learned the hard way to let Simon Green and the rest of his investigative team do their job. I can’t help Lottie, but there are other children whose lives my skill and talent can save.
So, ten months ago, I returned to work. This year, I’ve treated the second anniversary as just another day. I’ve put my phone on silent and ignored the missed calls from Mum. I appeared in court this morning and fought for my client, a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy who the Home Office insisted was eighteen and therefore subject to deportation to a country that will probably kill him, and I won. For me, this is a day like every other: filled with guilt and grief and the endless agony of not knowing.
And, like every other day, I will survive it.
At the end of the meeting, we stack the chairs and Molly helps me carry them back to the auditorium. ‘Do you come to a meeting every month?’ she asks.
‘Not always. But usually.’
‘Does it help?’
‘Not exactly. But at least here, no one expects you to move on.’ I look her in the eye. ‘You need to know this, Molly. I wish someone had told me. What we’re living with isn’t like bereavement. There’s no closure, so we’re stuck in our grief mid-cycle. Time doesn’t heal for people like us. Our pain compounds, like interest.’
‘Do you ever want to … give up?’
‘Every day.’
Molly twists and tugs a hank of her hair. This isn’t the first time: her scalp is scabbed where she’s ripped her hair out at the roots. People don’t realise how physical grief can be.
‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ she says.
I nod. I know what it will be.
‘Do you think he did it?’ she asks. ‘Your friend? The one with the tattoo?’
chapter 34
quinn
Quinn loiters in the corridor outside the classroom, waiting for the meeting to start before going in. She doesn’t want to attract attention, although it’s difficult to fly under the radar when you sport a black – and diamanté, thank you, Marnie – eye patch. She waits until a woman telling her story in the centre of the circle breaks down into noisy sobs and, under cover of the distraction, slips into a chair at the back of the room.
She checks her phone surreptitiously as she sits down. Nothing yet.
The sobbing woman subsides into gentle weeping and the man sitting next to her puts his arm around her and helplessly pats her back. Another woman in the circle, younger, thinner, takes over, her voice so quiet it’s hard to hear.
Quinn wonders impatiently how long this is going to go on. She’s on a deadline here. As far as she’s concerned, group therapy is right up there with all the other woo-woo bullshit like crystal healing and sound baths. If you’re starving and you go and sit in a room with other people who’re also starving and talk about how hungry you all are, it doesn’t make you want to chew your own shoe leather any less.
She shifts uncomfortably. It’s like these chairs are made for six-year-olds. She’s had trouble with her spine ever since the IED, and without the cushion of at least half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, she’s in a fair degree of pain.
Her phone vibrates, and her pulse quickens, but it’s just a routine news alert from the Associated Press: Family marks second anniversary of Lottie Martini’s disappearance.
Quinn doesn’t get the big obsession with anniversaries and milestones, particularly negative ones like this. She’s never even bothered to celebrate her birthday, taking her lead from her parents, who managed to forget both her seventh and eighth, at which point she stopped trying to remember it, too.
She scrolls through the AP story. They’re playing it safe, keeping their coverage neutral. Friends and neighbors say prayers as the Lottie Foundation refreshes the public’s memory with new appeals and a documentary, blah, blah.
Probably smart, all things considered. The public mood towards Alexa Martini rapidly swung back in her favour after the Florida police officially named the tattooed man from the video as their main suspect. Alexa still has her haters, but most people are cautiously sympathetic these days, viewing her as an inadequate, rather than wicked, parent. With the main suspect on the run, and the child still missing, the story has largely fallen off the front pages.
Quinn knows she should just let it go, too. INN’s editor made it crystal clear she’s not to go anywhere near Alexa Martini. But she can’t leave it alone. She’s like one of those grizzled cops, obsessing over the one case they never managed to solve.
She might not have wanted the story when she was first saddled with it, but being pulled off it has driven her crazy. She was stuck in Syria when news of the video broke and had to watch one of the kids from the Washington Bureau churn out uncritical regurgitations of police press releases, instead of investigating the real story.
Even if the man with the compass tattoo is guilty – a big if, since no one can prove if the child in the video is Lottie – it still doesn’t make Alexa Martini innocent. The man was her friend. They could be working together. Why has no one ever dug into that?
Because everyone wanted to close the case, that’s why. Far easier for all concerned to pin the blame on a man whose guilt is unlikely to be tested in court. The police were happy, because they could check the box marked solved, even if they hadn’t actually caught their man. The mayor of St Pete was very happy, because the kidnapper was British, not local. And the social media mob was happy, because their poster girl for working mothers was exonerated. Everyone wins. Except Lottie, of course, but no one seriously thought the poor kid was still alive, anyway.
Yet Quinn just can’t stop picking the scab.
You’re letting your ego get in the way, Marnie said, after months of listening to her conspiracy theories. This isn’t about finding out what happened to Lottie; it’s about you being taken off the story. If you’re so keen to know where she is, why don’t you quit bitching and do something about it?
So she got herself transferred back to London, where she had access to the right sources, and pursued the Martini story in her own time.
She’s cashed in every favour she’s ever had with her contacts, legit and otherwise. Her diplomatic sources have a pretty good idea the man’s in Dubai, though they haven’t been able to find him. Even if she tracks him down, there’s no extradition treaty with the UAE. But she has to talk to him. She has to know.
She’s rewatched her interview with Alexa Martini so many times now, she’s memorised it: each frame of footage, every micro-expression that flits across the woman’s face. And she’s still not sure if she’s lying.
Quinn is so engrossed in her phone, she’s startled when she’s addressed by name. She glances up to find everyone in the room looking at her.
‘Quinn? Would you like to share?’ asks Leo, who’s leading group this week.
Crap.
‘I’m not really feeling it today,’ Quinn says.
‘Six months,’ her sponsor says. ‘It’s an achievement, Quinn. Take a moment to feel proud of yourself.’
Six months of sobriety. There’s only one way she wants to celebrate, but that would defeat the object of being here.
She goes up to collect her chip, feeling like a fraud as she returns to her seat. Unlike everyone else here, she has no intention of staying sober. She misses her old friend Jack too much. But she’s going to stay clean long enough to solve the mystery of what happened to Lottie Martini, or fucking die in the attempt.
As Leo brings the AA meeting to a close, Quinn’s phone finally beeps with t
he message she’s been waiting for. She skips the Serenity Prayer, ignoring Leo’s look of disapproval, and heads straight from the school to the café on the corner, where Danny is waiting.
‘How was it?’ he asks, as she pulls out a chair.
She brandishes her chip. ‘Six months sober.’
‘Cool.’
Danny’s still in his twenties, but he’s the best investigator she’s ever worked with. He runs rings round Simon Green and his goons at Berkeley International, the team of private investigators hired by the Lottie Foundation. Last she heard, Green had taken the Foundation for nearly a half a million quid, without a single firm lead to show for it. But maybe Alexa Martini wants it that way.
‘What’ve you got for me, Danny?’
Danny slides his phone across the table. She swipes through the pictures, her good eye narrowing. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘Immigration CCTV from Abu Dhabi. Your sources were right. He’s in Dubai. Been there pretty much since the shit hit the fan with that video. It makes sense – neither the UK nor the US have an extradition treaty with the UAE.’
Quinn sighs impatiently. ‘We knew that. Dubai’s a big fucking city, Danny. Did you find him?’
‘Better,’ Danny says. ‘We found them both.’
two years and two days missing
chapter 35
alex
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jack Murtaugh says. ‘Half a million? You’ve got to be kidding me!’
He glances around the table. You could cut the tension in the room with a spoon. Jack’s been an outspoken supporter of ours since he was re-elected as the local MP for Balham Central back in December 2019, two months after Lottie disappeared. But this is the first time he’s become directly involved with the Foundation, and the reason he’s doing so now, at my request, is because we need to bring an outsider’s clear-eyed scrutiny to what we do next.
The original campaign to find my daughter morphed into the Lottie Foundation after I returned to England. Our mission is not just to search for my daughter, but to raise the profile of missing children who would otherwise slip through the cracks: children like Jovon Jackson, whose parents don’t have the same resources and contacts I have. Legal restrictions meant the Foundation couldn’t be formed as a charity. Instead, we set it up as a not-for-profit company run by a board made up of friends and relatives, including Dad and me, Paul and Zealy.
