by Cat Clarke
I was the first one to mention the press. Sadie and I had talked about it. Even if Mom and Dad decided not to look for her, the media would be all over it in a matter of days. There would be no escape. So we decided that it would be best to preempt the problem. Release a statement saying Laurel was abroad, maybe seeking long-term treatment for some medical problem or other. And that’s exactly what we did.
The story died down much quicker than I’d expected. Without her here, there were no photos to accompany the articles. People aren’t as interested when there aren’t any pictures. Yesterday I did my usual trawl of the Internet, looking for any mentions of Laurel Logan. For the first time, there was nothing. Not even a single random conspiracy-theory blog post. I sat back and smiled. We’d done it.
—
Things haven’t been easy, especially with Mom. She barely left the house for the first couple of weeks. She’s been letting the phone ring, saying she doesn’t want to speak to anyone. The book editor, Zara, has left seven messages for her already. Who knows what’s going to happen with the book deal. Perhaps we’ll have to pay the money back, or maybe they’ll still want to publish the book, even though “Laurel” is gone.
Mom kept on asking me what she did wrong; she still doesn’t really accept my answer of “nothing.” I think she’ll be okay, though, in time. She’s going out for drinks with her friend Sita tonight. That’s got to be a good sign, right?
Dad seems to be coping better. He’s really busy at work; he says it helps keep his mind off things.
We had dinner together on Sunday—Mom, Dad, Michel, and me. It was Mom’s idea. She thinks we should do it every week. I think she’s hoping that doing lots of family things together will make Laurel come home sooner, as if she’ll somehow know, wherever she is.
Dad and Michel came over early. Dad read the papers, while Mom fussed around in the kitchen, worrying that she hadn’t bought a big enough piece of beef. Michel insisted on peeling the potatoes. “You go and put your feet up, Olivia,” he said. Mom smiled and thanked him, and both the smile and the thanks were genuine—for the first time ever, I think. I was about to go and sit down, too, but Michel asked me to stick around and keep him company.
I hadn’t been alone with him since she left. I’ve been avoiding Martha, too, as best I can. The urge to talk—to tell someone the truth—has been so strong at times that it’s almost overwhelmed me.
I see Thomas at school. I spied him sitting in the courtyard with Martha the other day. He hasn’t tried to speak to me, not even once. I thought he might have tried harder to fight for our relationship, but it seems like he’s given up. I can’t help thinking it’s a bit odd, especially if Sadie told the truth about him doing nothing wrong. The weird thing is, I don’t miss him. Not even a little bit. We should never have even been together in the first place; it feels right, being alone.
—
“So how are you doing? It’s been a crazy couple of months, hein?” said Michel, rinsing the potatoes under the tap.
“I’m okay.” Keep it simple. First rule of lying.
“Really? You don’t look okay. You look like you haven’t slept in a month.”
I laughed and elbowed him. “Jeez, thanks, Michel! You know you should never, ever tell a girl she looks tired, don’t you?”
Michel didn’t laugh. He didn’t even look at me. He just started peeling the potatoes. I stood next to him, ready to cut them into perfect-sized chunks. After a while, he spoke, so quietly I had to lean in to hear him. “There’s something I want you to know. I hope you know it already, but I’m going to say it anyway. There are some things in life that are too big to deal with on your own. You might think you can cope by yourself, but a thing like that can…eat away at you. It can poison you. A burden like that, it’s too heavy for one person. So if there’s ever anything you wanted to talk to me about—anything—you need to know that I’m here. You can trust me.”
I listened and watched his profile as he concentrated on the potatoes. What was he talking about? He couldn’t possibly know. Sadie and I had been so careful. “Um…thanks. Everything’s fine, though. Really.”
Then he turned to me. His eyes locked on mine. He started talking in a faux-casual voice as if this was a perfectly normal conversation after all. “Did you know that cuckoos don’t have nests of their own?” I shook my head, thinking he had well and truly lost the plot. “They lay their eggs in another bird’s nest and then leave. The other bird has no idea, because the eggs are camouflaged to look the same as its eggs. So it ends up caring for the cuckoo’s eggs along with its own. The poor bird is none the wiser, even after the eggs hatch.”
My heart was slamming in my chest, my mouth bone dry. He knew. Somehow, he knew. I looked toward the door; it was still shut. “What are you…I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
Michel shrugged in that impossible French way of his. “Nothing. I’m saying nothing. It’s just interesting, that’s all. Some people, they think that this makes the cuckoo evil.”
“What do you think?”
Another Gallic shrug. “Me? I think it’s a survivor. What’s that phrase? La fin justifie les moyens. The end…”
“Justifies the means,” I finished the sentence for him.
—
So Michel knows the truth—part of it at least. There’s no way he could possibly know what really happened to Laurel; maybe he suspects that she died years ago. I should probably be panicking that he might say something to Dad, but I’m not. I think if he were going to do that, he would have done it already. Maybe he has his reasons for staying quiet, just like I do.
I’ve slept better since that night, which surely can’t be a coincidence. Maybe Michel was right about sharing the burden. Still, I have no intention of ever actually talking to him about it. Because he must never be allowed to know the whole story.
I made a promise, one that I intend to keep for the rest of my life.
—
The phone rang this morning, just as I was leaving the house. A flash of hot panic when I heard Mom say, “Hi, Natalie.” I slammed the front door shut so Mom would think I’d left. I stayed in the hall. I needed to hear this. Why was Sergeant Dawkins calling Mom? Maybe there had been another sighting of “Smith”; there have been a lot of those recently. I bet there’s some poor guy out there who looks exactly like the description Sadie gave the police. I just hope he doesn’t get arrested.
I crept closer to the living room door. “Any news?” There was a pause as Mom listened. “But there must be something! Someone must have seen her, surely! She can’t have just disappeared off the face of the planet.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall. Took a deep breath. I should have known. It was too good to be true that she would just accept Laurel disappearing again. That she wouldn’t try to find her. Fuck.
—
I get on a bus going in the opposite direction from school. I spend the whole trip hoping and praying that Sadie is better at hiding than the police are at seeking.
I walk down the country lanes in the rain. I forgot to bring an umbrella.
Barnaby the Bear is sodden. I pick him up and hold him close.
I kneel on the ground next to the grave, and I talk. I thought it might feel silly, doing this, but it feels like the most natural thing in the world. I tell Laurel about Mom and Dad and Michel. I only talk about the good things, the happy things—the things I would want someone to tell me if I’d been away from my family for years and years.
I tell her I’m sorry. I tell her we did everything we could to find her. I tell her we never gave up hope.
I tell her I’m not sure I’ve done the right thing. I ask her what she would have done in my position, and I actually stop and listen as if I’m expecting an answer.
I tell her I’m proud of her, for being so brave all those years when she must have been so very, very scared. I’m proud of her for befriending Sadie, for being there for her when no one else was.
&nbs
p; I tell her that I love her.
There’s nothing left to say after that. I’ll be back—in a week or a month. Whenever the urge to tell someone gets too much for me, I’ll come here and talk to my sister. She’s the only one who understands. That’s one thing I’m absolutely sure about. Some people might find it hard to accept why I’ve done what I’ve done. They might think it’s unforgivable, that my parents deserve to know what happened to Laurel.
But my sister and I know the truth.
We know that sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to protect your family.
Imagine you’re playing in the sandbox in the front yard on a warm summer’s day. You’re showing your little sister how to build a sand castle. Your mom is inside, in the kitchen, perhaps. You can hear your dad mowing the lawn in the backyard. A man stops to talk to you. He seems nice. He looks up and down the street, then opens the gate and walks toward you. The man takes your sister by the hand; he says he’s taking her to get an ice cream. What do you do? You tuck your teddy bear under your arm, then push your sister away—so hard it makes her cry. You say, “No! I want an ice cream! Faith can stay here.” And you walk away with the man, quickly. You don’t look back.
You do whatever it takes.
Sarah Braithwaite, known to her family as Sadie, was last seen on 7 April 2001. The police were convinced she was snatched by her father, notorious local criminal Eddie Gibbons. Sarah’s mother, Gail, never believed that version of events. Sadie’s disappearance was only reported to the police after a week. For seven whole days and nights, no one was aware that anything was amiss. It was only when a neighbor visited, finding Gail Braithwaite unconscious in a pool of her own vomit, that the alarm was finally raised.
Gail Braithwaite was unable to help the police with their inquiries. A drug-and-alcohol addict for many years, she was not a credible witness. The police investigation into the disappearance of Sarah Braithwaite was closed within a month; the investigation into Laurel Logan’s disappearance is still ongoing, twelve long years after she went missing. The fact that the two little girls lived less than an hour away from each other only serves to highlight this terrible contrast.
UPDATE: I visit Gail again, thirteen years after Sadie’s disappearance, ten years after I last saw her. The town of Blaxford may have changed little since my last visit, but the woman who greets me at the door could not look more different from the one I interviewed all those years ago. Today, she may look slightly older than her forty-three years, but Gail Braithwaite is healthy and, to some extent, happy.
“Sober for eight years,” she says. “I want Sadie to be proud of me when she comes home. I want her to see that I’ve changed. Things are different now.”
“I think about her every day, you know. She’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep at night.”
As we’re talking, a little face peeks out from behind a door. “This is Selina,” Gail says proudly. The little girl is shy at first, but before long she’s sitting on her mother’s knee, bouncing up and down and pretending to ride a horse. Looking at mother and daughter playing together, you’d never guess at the terrible tragedy that tore Gail’s life apart all those years ago.
Selina’s resemblance to Sadie is striking, and I say so. Before Gail can say anything, the little girl pipes up. “Sadie! Sadie! Sadie!”
Gail smiles sadly. “We talk about Sadie a lot. I think it’s important that Selina knows all about her big sister. So that she’s not confused when Sadie comes home to us.”
Selina’s face shines with hope as she looks up, unaware of the living hell her mother has endured. “Sadie come home?”
Tears glisten in Gail’s eyes as she looks at the photo of her missing daughter, in pride of place in the middle of the mantelpiece. “One day, sweetheart. Maybe one day.”
Sincerest thanks to Allison Helleghers, Julia Churchill, Emily Easton, Samantha Gentry, Roisin Heycock, Ray Shappell, Trish Parcell, Alison Kolani, Talya Baker, Glenn Tavennec, the Sisterhood, UKYA bloggers, Mari Hannah, Gillian Robertson, Sarah Stewart, Lauren James, Cate James, Ciara Daly, Robert Clarke, and Caro Clarke.
CAT CLARKE is a full-time writer, and one of the UK’s leading YA authors. She was previously an editor at Scholastic UK, where she worked on some of the UK’s biggest nonfiction bestsellers. Cat has always been fascinated by the media coverage surrounding missing children—it was this idea that inspired her to write The Lost and the Found. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can find out more about Cat on her website catclarke.com, or follow her on Twitter at @cat_clarke.
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