by Cat Clarke
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Cat Clarke
Cover photographs:
Woman © 2016 by J. A. Bracchi/Getty Images
Girl © 2016 by Cristinairanzo/Getty Images
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Crown and the colophon are registered trademarks
of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 9781101932049 (trade) — ebook ISBN 9781101932063
Random House Children’s Books
supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v4.1
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Excerpt from The Forgotten Children
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For Julia Churchill
She knows. She definitely knows.
I’m not sure how she knows. I’m not stupid enough to keep a diary, and I’m not one of those weirdos who’s all Mom’s-my-best-friend-and-we-tell-each-other-everything. Maybe it’s some kind of sixth sense unique to mothers?
It’s there in her eyes every time she looks at me. The problem is, I can’t tell how she feels about it. Why can’t that show up in her eyes, too? Is she angry? Disappointed? Disapproving? Resigned? A little bit proud?
“How’s Martha’s mom doing at work? Have they announced the layoffs yet?”
It’s a trap. Classic. Of course there’s no way I’m falling for it. I shrug. “Dunno. She came in pretty late last night. I think she went out for drinks after her evening class.” I sip my tea, cool as you like. “Martha says she’s been pretty stressed about it.”
Mom nods. She knows when she’s beaten. “It must be tough.”
“They’re loaded, though, aren’t they? Martha’s dad earns enough for both of them. I don’t know why she bothers working in the first place.”
This was the wrong thing to say. I wouldn’t normally be so careless, but I’m exhausted. Mom’s big-time into feminism and equal opportunities and not relying on men. Funny thing is, I agree with her, but I’d never tell her that. Arguing is much more fun. But Mom’s not biting today; she’s obviously got other things on her mind.
“Are you okay, Mom?” I try not to ask more than three times a day, but it’s a habit. One that I learned at a very early age. When she retreated into herself, into that hellish world inside her head, sometimes it was the only way I could get her to talk to me. I never believed the answer, which was always the same, no matter what sort of day it was: I’m fine, love.
There’s no deviation from the script today, which is oddly reassuring. I was half expecting her to come out with something like, No, I’m not okay, thanks for asking. My daughter lied to me about where she was last night so that she could go and lose her virginity to Thomas Bolt in the back of a van.
There’s a newspaper lying facedown on the kitchen table. I hadn’t noticed it before, because I was too busy trying to work out how I feel about losing my virginity to Thomas Bolt in the back of a van.
All I can see is the sports page: some team beat some other team, and some guy scored more points than he’d ever scored before. But I know the kind of thing I’ll see if I flip over the newspaper. That’s why Mom is giving me all these weird looks. That’s why she put the newspaper down as soon as I came into the kitchen; she doesn’t want me to see it.
In a normal house—in Martha’s house and Thomas’s house and houses all over the country—a newspaper is just that: some paper with news in it. Wars and politics and celebrities doing inane celebrity things. In our house—our anything-but-normal house—a newspaper is often an unexploded bomb.
I don’t let on that I’ve noticed the paper. Mom gets up to wash the dishes, her shoulders slumped with the unbearable weight she carries with her every day. While her back is turned, I slide the paper over and onto my lap. Unexploded bomb or not, I need to know.
It’s always bad. Even when it looks like it’s good, it turns out to be bad. That’s actually worse: getting your hopes up only to have them dropped from a great height and splattered on the pavement. It’s hardest for Mom; that’s what everyone always says. And I suppose they’re right, but it’s hard for Dad, too. And it’s not exactly a walk in the park for me, either. But Dad’s got Michel and I’ve got Thomas; Mom has no one.
I pray that this won’t send her into full-on tortoise mode. Last time she didn’t leave her bedroom for a week. I brought her meals on a tray, but she barely ate a thing. She wouldn’t talk to me and she wouldn’t answer the phone. When Dad came over to see her, I listened at the door. “You have to snap out of this, Olivia. For Faith’s sake. She needs you.” He was wrong about that. I was coping perfectly well, even though the timing was hardly ideal—right in the middle of my exams. I don’t need her, not like when I was little. It’d just be nice if she talked to me about it once in a while. I wish she knew that there are other options besides “complete and utter breakdown” and “plastic smile, everything’s fine.” There’s a middle ground, waiting to be found.
—
I turn the paper over. It’s bad.
I KILLED LAUREL LOGAN!
An involuntary noise escapes my mouth and Mom turns around. She whips the paper out of my hands and crumples it up. She stuffs it into the trash even though the can needs emptying. Some of the headline’s huge black letters are still visible because the lid won’t shut. Mom sees me staring at it and swears and stuffs the paper as deep as it will go. The lid swings back and forth.
She sits down and takes my hand. Her hand is cold—her hands are always cold. I often wonder if they used to be warm. Before. “I w
as going to talk to you about that.” Lie. “I’ve already talked to the police, and it’s nothing. The man’s a lunatic. They would lock him up for this if he weren’t already serving two life sentences.” She sighs. “It’s just more irresponsible journalism—it even says inside that there’s no way he could have done it. But that wouldn’t sell papers, would it?”
There are tears in my eyes, and I’m not even sure why. This happens on a regular basis—these stories in the papers or on TV or online. It’s been happening almost my whole life, so you’d think I would be immune to it by now. And I usually am immune, but for some reason today I’ve decided to be pathetic.
Mom doesn’t like it when I cry. I’m sure that’s true of all mothers about their daughters, but there’s something about Mom saying, Oh, darling, please don’t cry, that always makes me think it’s more about her than me. As if it just makes things harder for her. So I try not to cry when she’s around, because there’s nothing worse than being upset and then being made to feel guilty for being upset.
When she’s sure I’ve got the tears under control, Mom tells me all about this guy who claims to have killed my sister. He killed his whole family ten years ago and is safely locked up in a high-security prison. Recently he’s decided his favorite thing to do is to make up lies about murdering people, as if the ones he actually killed aren’t quite enough for him. Mom does a good job of pretending it doesn’t bother her, but I can see through her.
Even if I didn’t know from experience, I’d know from that interview she did last year. I think she forgets that I read it, or maybe she forgets that she talked all about how awful and heartbreaking it is for her when these news stories appear.
Dad claims he never reads the interviews Mom gives. It’s difficult for him, having stuff about their marriage splashed across the newspapers he despises. But he can’t say anything, because he knows we need the money. Plus, there’s always the chance someone who knows something about Laurel will see one of these stories and call the police. Whenever anyone asks Dad’s opinion about Mom’s “media activities,” he always says the same thing: Let’s hope the ends justify the means.
“What time is Michel picking you up?” There’s always something slightly off about the way she says Michel—a slight wrinkling of the nostrils. Or that could just be my imagination.
I check the time on my phone. “He’s coming at ten.”
“But you’ve only been home for an hour!” There’s silence for a moment or two, and then Mom coughs, and I know she’s about to say something awkward. “I’ve been thinking…” It’s never good when parents think, is it? “It might be nice for the two of us to spend a whole weekend together sometimes. We could do whatever you like—we could even go away somewhere. A long weekend trip to Prague or Paris?”
“Um…” A text from Martha flashes up on my phone, and I angle the screen away from Mom to read it. It just reads: Well? SPILL. x
I have no idea what to say to Mom. She knows full well what the deal is: I spend Saturdays and Sundays with Dad and Michel. It’s been that way for six years. It wasn’t decided by a court or anything; Mom and Dad arranged everything between them. It was a remarkably amicable divorce—that’s what they always tell people.
I don’t want to argue with her this morning. I don’t want to tell her that I can’t imagine anything worse than wandering around Prague or Paris or any other city beginning with P with her. Because we both know full well how it would turn out. She would pretend to be enthusiastic, dragging me around, doing all the boring touristy stuff. She would smile and make me pose for pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower or whatever, but she’d never let me take a photo of her. And the reason she wouldn’t let me is that then there would be photographic evidence of her unhappiness. She would smile and you’d see her teeth, which might make someone else think that it was a real, proper smile. But I would look at her eyes and see that there was something dead there.
There are photos of Mom in the newspapers all the time, and none of them ever show her smiling; she’s careful never to smile when there are photographers around. She says they’ll criticize her for it, and she’s probably right. (What’s she got to smile about? How can a mother smile when her daughter’s still missing?) So she doesn’t smile…and they criticize her anyway, calling her “cold” and “hard.” It’s lose-lose.
So I tell Mom I’ll think about it—spending the weekend with her—and say maybe we could talk to Dad and Michel about it in a month or two. She nods, but I can tell she’s disappointed by my reaction. I feel guilty. Guilt is never far away in this house. It lurks under the floorboards and behind the walls. You can hear it whispering late at night if you listen closely. I’d hoped that we’d left it behind in the old house when we moved, but Mom must have packed it up carefully, safeguarding it in Bubble Wrap and putting it in a box, labeling it in fat black marker pen, and putting it in the moving truck along with everything else. The guilt will follow us wherever we go.
I get up and give Mom a hug. She’s tense for a second, then she relaxes and hugs me back. She’s so very thin. So sharp and pinched and angular. She used to be slightly overweight; she looked much better like that. I wish I could remember that version of my mother, but all I’ve got are photos. My favorite is one of the three of us baking a cake together—Mom, Laurel, and me. Mom’s wearing a pink apron and her cheeks are rosy and she’s laughing—really laughing. I’m standing on a chair so that I can reach the counter. I have a streak of flour across my nose, and I’m sticking out my tongue at the person taking the photo. (Dad? I can’t remember.) Laurel is stirring the mixture in the bowl, her brow furrowed in concentration. For some reason, she’s wearing a feather boa and I’m wearing a tiara—obviously appropriate baking attire for a six-year-old and a four-year-old.
The phone rings and Mom gives me a kiss on the cheek before she goes to answer it. Her lips are dry and chapped.
“Hello? Speaking.” She tucks the phone between her shoulder and her ear and starts to wipe the crumbs from the kitchen counter.
I run upstairs to pack my bag for going to Dad’s. I don’t need much—I keep some clothes and toiletries there. It can be annoying sometimes; I’m always leaving my favorite jacket at Mom’s when I go to Dad’s and vice versa. Still, it’s worth the inconvenience just to escape for a couple of days a week. I feel different when I’m at Dad and Michel’s apartment—it’s easier to breathe somehow. But maybe that’s just the air-conditioning.
Mom’s standing with her back to me when I return to the kitchen. She’s still holding the phone in one hand even though she must have ended the call. “Mom?”
She ignores me.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
The I’m fine, love that I’m expecting doesn’t come. She’s deviated from the script.
She still won’t turn to look at me, so I have to shuffle around the side of the kitchen table and position myself right in front of her. She’s paler than she was when I left her. A single tear is trickling down her left cheek, and she does nothing to halt its progress. I watch as it negotiates the contour of her jaw and continues down her neck.
She finally looks at me, and there’s something different in her eyes. I have no idea what it is, but it scares me.
Mom clears her throat. She starts to speak and then stops herself. I can’t decide if I want to hear what she has to say, but it looks like I don’t have a choice in the matter.
“That was the police.”
No. Please, God, no. Not today. The call she’s been dreading every single day for thirteen years. It can’t be today.
Mom sways a little as if she’s about to faint, so I help her over to the table. She slumps into a chair, and the phone clatters onto the tabletop. She takes my hands in hers, and I crouch down in front of her.
“Tell me, Mom. Please.”
She clears her throat again. “A girl has been found. At Stanley Street.” Stanley Street is where we were living when it happened. “They think it’s…Laurel.” S
he squeezes my hands so hard it hurts. “They want me to go down to the police station right away to…identify her.”
My legs buckle beneath me, and it’s a good thing I’m so close to the floor already. “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry. I can’t…Oh God.”
And that’s when Mom smiles. “Oh no, Faith! I didn’t mean…Goodness, I should have thought!” She lets go of my hands and reaches out to touch my cheek. “They think it’s her….They’re almost certain….Faith? She’s alive. Laurel’s alive!”
I don’t believe it. I won’t allow myself to believe it. Mom’s trying to stay calm, too, but I can see it in her face—something I haven’t seen for years: hope. She thinks it’s different this time, which means the police must think it’s different this time. They wouldn’t have called her otherwise. They think this is it. After hundreds, maybe even thousands, of crank calls and false sightings and psychics claiming Laurel was living with goatherds in the mountains of Uzbekistan.
But it makes no sense. Her turning up in the front yard of our old house after thirteen years? I picture a six-year-old girl, shiny blond hair. She’s wearing a brand-new dress for the first time. The dress is white with multicolored polka dots on it. There’s a tiny grape-juice stain on the front, but you’d never know because it just looks like another polka dot. The girl is smiling, and she’s missing one of her front teeth. She’s cradling a teddy bear in her arms like it’s a baby. The only thing slightly spoiling this perfect photo is a nasty scab on the girl’s right cheek. Perhaps it looks like the sort of scab that a child might end up with if she’d been chased around the living room by her little sister and she’d tripped and fallen and hit her cheek on the corner of the coffee table.
