Have You Seen Her

by Lisa Hall

  ‘Thank you,’ Kelly comes round and gently guides Ruth towards the door, ‘it’s so very much appreciated, but we’re waiting for a phone call. We’ll see you tomorrow?’ I hear her still murmuring to Ruth as they head towards the front door.

  ‘That was nice of her,’ I say to Fran, anxiously waiting to see her response, to see if she is still terribly angry with me.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, her face blank. She dabs at her eyes with a tissue, and sighs. It’s as though she’s run out of steam, no energy left to even be cross with me anymore. ‘I’m not too sure what she really wanted though. Is she the one who has been texting me?’

  ‘I think so,’ I say, ‘she used to go to drama school with you apparently. Years ago, she said.’

  Fran gives a tiny shrug of her shoulders, a barely there movement. ‘I don’t remember her. But yes, nice of her I suppose.’

  That gives me an idea. I run upstairs and grab my laptop, setting it up on the kitchen table in front of Fran.

  ‘Ruth was only being supportive,’ I say, quickly typing in my password and opening up Facebook. ‘The whole town is being supportive and doing everything they can to help. You don’t have to deal with everything alone.’ I search for the ‘FIND LAUREL’ page and twist the screen round so Fran can see.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘everyone is hoping Laurel will be home soon.’ I scroll down slowly, until Fran pushes my hand away and starts scrolling herself.

  ‘Oh,’ she breathes, ‘look at all these lovely, lovely comments. This one look – I hope you get your beautiful angel back home safely soon – isn’t that so kind?’ She looks up at me, tears making her eyes shine brightly, George Snow seemingly forgotten for a moment. ‘And this one . . . and, oh.’ She stops, her hand going to her mouth.

  ‘What?’ I say, peering over her shoulder. ‘What is it?’ Running my eyes down the screen I see what has made Fran so upset. A message, from someone calling themselves Lois Burns, whoever that may be – there is no profile picture.

  ‘Did anybody look into the parents yet? The girl’s mother says she took her eyes off her for a second and she was gone. Maybe if she’d looked after her properly this wouldn’t have happened. She doesn’t deserve to have children.’

  Clearly, not everybody in our small community feels the same way.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dominic walks back through the door an hour later to a silent, dry-eyed Fran, and an atmosphere that you could cut with a knife. Kelly and Fran sit at the breakfast bar, while I lean against the counter, itching to get away, to head upstairs to my room at the very least. The room is suffocating me, Fran’s distress coating everything in something heavy and sticky, and I am desperate to get out of the house completely. Dominic throws his jacket over a chair and stops to survey the room, clearly feeling the tension.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asks, looking from Fran to Kelly and back again. ‘Fran? What’s going on?’

  Fran sniffs, pulling the thin silk kimono she still wears more tightly around her neck. ‘Where have you been, Dominic? Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ She raises her eyes to his and he rubs the back of his neck before he answers, pulling at his collar as if it irritates him.

  ‘I had to go to the hospital, for a meeting,’ he finally answers. ‘You were asleep when I left, Fran. I didn’t think you’d . . .’

  ‘Didn’t think I’d what? Notice? Mind?’ Fran’s nostrils flare and she presses her lips together tightly before she speaks again. ‘I do mind, Dominic. You should have been here this morning, not at the bloody hospital.’

  ‘I . . . sorry. I had to get out of the house, just for a short while.’ I can totally relate to that, but I say nothing. ‘There was an important meeting that I was committed to . . . before. I thought I might as well go.’ Dominic turns to Kelly, who sits watching their exchange silently, taking it all in no doubt. ‘Kelly – did something happen today?’

  ‘They arrested someone, Dominic,’ Fran snaps, before Kelly gets a chance to speak. ‘They arrested someone right after they did the reconstruction. Not that anyone will tell us what’s going on or what it has to do with Laurel.’ She glares at Kelly, who doesn’t flinch.

  ‘Fran, to clarify, he hasn’t actually been arrested, but they have brought someone in, Dominic,’ Kelly says, ‘and I believe it is off the back of a lead brought about by the reconstruction but at the moment the gentleman in question is simply helping with our enquiries. As soon as I have more information I can tell you exactly what is happening.’

  ‘Who?’ Dominic asks. ‘Who is it? Someone we know? Someone who lives round here?’ Questions fire from him, but there is something in his tone – something that almost sounds like relief. I look away, busying myself at the sink as I wait for the onslaught to begin again from Fran.

  ‘Tell him, Anna.’ Fran’s voice is bitter, her lip twisted into a curl of disgust as she directs her glare in my direction now. Still, I say nothing. ‘Some man that Anna introduced Laurel to. That’s who.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I say, finally turning to meet Dominic’s gaze. He takes two long strides across the kitchen to stand in front of me, his hands reaching up to grip my shoulders so that I can’t turn away. My heart starts to thump in my chest, the memory of how he grabbed Fran rising to the surface as fear of what he might do makes my hands shake, but he merely holds me in one position.

  ‘Anna – who . . . can you please tell me?’ His eyes bore into mine and I can’t blink for a moment, held in his gaze.

  ‘He was just a man . . . he lives on the way to school. I never . . . I didn’t know . . .’ I stammer, and Kelly steps in, gently tugging Dominic away from me. ‘I wouldn’t have ever let Laurel speak to him if I had known something like this would happen.’

  Dominic bows his head, scrubbing his hands over his face before pushing them through his hair. I sag against the sink slightly, fear and adrenaline draining away to leave me feeling exhausted, my nerves ragged.

  ‘Maybe if you’d been here more often, Laurel wouldn’t have felt that she needed attention from this Snow man,’ Fran says, her tone filled with bitter hate, like a poison seeping out into the air. ‘Maybe if you’d spent more time here, instead of at that bloody hospital.’

  ‘And maybe,’ Dominic says cautiously, a quiet rage sparking to life behind his eyes, ‘if you hadn’t been such a bitch I would have spent more time here.’ Without another word he turns on his heel and marches from the room, the slam of the front door sounding behind him.

  Fran shoves her stool away from the breakfast bar and hurries out, her footsteps thudding on the stairs, leaving Kelly and me alone in the kitchen. I sink into the chair Dominic threw his jacket over, the harsh taste of the Jessops’ bitter words tainting the air around us.

  ‘Not your fault,’ Kelly says, quietly. ‘This is putting a strain on the whole family. They’re not usually as bad as this, are they?’

  I shrug, ‘No. Sometimes. Who knows anymore?’ Guilt makes me snappy and abrupt.

  ‘This really isn’t your fault, Anna – you weren’t to know what was going to happen.’ She reaches over and squeezes my hand, and I won’t lie, I’m grateful for this tiny gesture designed to make me feel better.

  ‘Do you think he has got something to do with it?’ I bite down hard on my bottom lip, a wave of nausea making my stomach roll at the thought of Mr Snow grabbing Laurel, dragging her away to God only knows where. ‘They wouldn’t have gone to his house and picked him up for nothing, would they?’

  ‘No . . .’ Kelly pauses, ‘they’ll just be asking him some questions at the moment. As soon as we know anything more they’ll let us know.’

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out to see Jessika’s name on the screen. ‘Do you mind if I take this?’

  Kelly shakes her head, getting to her feet and heading out into the garden, pulling the door gently closed behind her. I push my chair back, swiping to answer as I do so.

  ‘Hi, Jess.’

  ‘Anna. How are you?’ It
’s a bad line – I can barely hear her, and I wonder where she is. ‘Listen, I’m at the park with Daisy. Do you think you could come and meet me? I’ve got some stuff to tell you. Things I heard after you left. I think you’ll want to hear them.’

  I’m already on my feet, telling Jess to wait for me, I’ll be there, struggling back into my jacket with the phone clamped to my ear. As I stand, something catches my eye, the light reflecting off something on Dominic’s jacket. I peer closer, pinching my finger and thumb together to remove the offending item from the shoulder, swallowing hard as I realise what it is. A long, thin strand of bright blonde hair. The exact shade of Laurel’s hair.

  Heart thumping in my chest, I glance out of the kitchen window to where Kelly paces the patio, phone clamped to her ear. It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself, that hair might not be Laurel’s. And even if it is, it could have been there since . . . any time. I inspect it closely, holding it vertically between my fingers. I’m not even sure it looks long enough to be Laurel’s hair – could it belong to someone else? Is Fran right, is Dominic seeing another woman? Or is it simply nothing, and I am being stupid, trying to read something into a single hair? This whole horrific event has me jumping at ghosts, seeing things that might not even be there. Even so, I pinch the hair between finger and thumb, and wrap it in a piece of kitchen roll before tucking it into the back pocket of my jeans, my fingers snagging on something small and hard in the pocket of denim. The doll. I pull it out, careful not to dislodge the tissue with the hair in it, running my fingers over the doll’s face before I tuck it safely away again.

  Yanking a dark blue beanie hat over my hair – although the sun is out, it’s windy and there is a deep, winter chill in the air – I sneak out the front door, silently latching it behind me. I tell myself I’m not sneaking out, but I don’t want to have to explain to Kelly, or to Fran, why I need to get out for a while, and I hurry up the path eager to get to Jess and whatever it is that she’s discovered.

  I arrive at the park ten minutes later, my cheeks flushed and my armpits prickling with sweat, no longer feeling the chill in the air. Jess is at the slide, watching as Daisy launches herself down it over and over again. She turns as she hears me approach, a concerned frown on her face before she forces it away, pasting on a smile that would look fake to anyone who knows her as well as I do.

  ‘OK,’ I say, impatient to hear what she has to tell me. ‘What did you hear? Is it about Mr Snow?’

  Jess is quiet for a moment as she watches Daisy climb the steps to the slide one more time, awkward in the thick-lined wellies she wears. Laurel has a pair exactly the same, and my heart turns over at the thought of them lined up underneath the radiator, waiting for her to slide her feet into them.

  ‘Don’t freak out, OK?’ Jess finally says, pushing her thick hair back as the wind whips it across her face. ‘I’m not even sure how true this is, it’s basically something I overheard someone saying back at the school hall after . . . well, after I saw him being taken away.’

  ‘What? Jess, please just tell me.’

  ‘The thing is . . . what they’re saying is that this isn’t the first time. They’re saying that he did it before. He abducted another little girl.’

  It takes me a moment to fully process what Jessika has just said, my brain playing catch up. Surely, surely, this can’t be true?

  ‘What do you mean?’ I whisper, knotting my fingers together so tightly my knuckles turn white. ‘Another girl? But how? How come he’s walking around out there, living next to a school if this is true?’

  ‘I don’t know, Anna.’ Jess looks over at Daisy, supposedly keeping an eye on her charge, but really it’s so she doesn’t have to make eye contact with me. ‘It’s exactly what they said at the school. Listen, the police will know about it. They’ll investigate him properly and it’ll be OK. If it’s him, then they’ll find her, won’t they?’ She hoists her bag onto her shoulder and calls to Daisy. ‘I have to get her back home. Do you want to come with us?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, thank you. I have some things I need to do.’

  ‘OK.’ Jess runs her eyes over my face one more time but doesn’t make a move to hug me goodbye. ‘Be careful, Anna.’

  I wait until Jess and Daisy have left the park before I find a bench and pull out my phone, bringing up the Safari page. My fingers are itching I’m so eager to start my search, but before I can type in Mr Snow’s name, I find my fingers typing my own name into the Google search bar.

  The screen fills with links, underneath tiny thumbnails of my own face, the same picture used over and over. The one they used at the time, of me sitting on a rock at the beach, the sea in the background. My hair, much darker and longer than it is now, is whipped across half of my face, as I laugh up into the camera. Not a care in the world. A picture taken before everything changed. Before my dreams were haunted by that sickening crack, the blood that spread quicker than I ever thought possible, that pale, white face, eyes closed. I don’t read the articles, simply scan over the headlines, picking out my own name, the words nanny and disgrace. Feeling sick – it seems it still hasn’t gone away, not even after five years – I shut the browser, before reopening it and giving myself a mental slap in the face.

  I type in George Snow. All this brings up is a list of Wikipedia pages, one for a film-maker, one for a researcher, and one for a park in Boca Raton. I should have known it would never have been that easy – it’s not like it’s an unusual name, after all. I think about my own situation, about why I am so terrified that they will find out about the secret I have been keeping, and what they would think if they knew. What if that was the same for Mr Snow? I start typing again, trying different combinations of key search words. George Snow, Manchester, crime. George Snow, Manchester, Surrey, arrest. George Snow, Manchester, kidnapping. Bingo.

  Hand to my mouth, I click on the first link, the one from 1995, an article from a newspaper – not a tabloid, but not far off – the headline proclaiming, ‘MAN ARRESTED OVER KIDNAPPING OF LITTLE KATRINA.’ Kidnap? Even though Jess told me herself, I didn’t really think that Mr Snow would be capable of something like that – I thought, hoped, that it was merely idle gossip. Quickly, I start to scan the article, getting the main gist of things. There isn’t a lot of information, but it seems as though Mr Snow really did kidnap a little girl, named Katrina. Who was five years old at the time, close enough to Laurel’s age. Armed with a fraction more information, I delve deeper into the internet, piecing together facts – or alleged facts – from different sources, trying to make up the main picture. It seems that on a damp, chilly October evening in 1995, Mr Snow picked up little Katrina, and never took her home again. He was married at the time to Emira, Katrina’s mother. They were separated and according to her, she had allowed him to spend time with Katrina over the first weekend of the October half term, with the condition that he returned her to her home early on Monday morning. Monday morning came and went, and Katrina never arrived. What came after was a nationwide manhunt, searching for little Katrina, who, according to her mother, was in the hands of an unstable man, intent on destroying the last tiny vestiges of the relationship they had had together.

  I read in horror, one hand pressed to my mouth, about the search, the way he had just vanished and Katrina along with him, pictures of Emira appealing to him to return Katrina filling my screen. She is dark, pretty, Arabic . . . Turkish, maybe? She is less held together than Fran, her eyes red and swollen, her distress evident in every photograph, in every paper, her clothes rumpled as though she has slept in them. Finally, I reach the end. A picture of George Snow being led away in handcuffs, a jacket thrown over his head to shield his face from the lens of the paparazzi, as in another, Emira clutches Katrina, her face screwed up with relief, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. I zoom in on the picture, examining every detail. Snow’s head is bowed, and I can’t make out his features clearly, but I recognise something about him, the way he holds himself, maybe. It’s definitely him, th
e Mr Snow that I encouraged Laurel to speak to because it was polite.

  A damp chill seeps into my bones from the wooden bench beneath me, and I have to take a deep breath, filling my lungs with cold, crisp air, before I go back to the picture. Katrina looks bewildered by the events, her face smudged with dirt and her long, dark hair tangled down her back, but she looks OK. She doesn’t look hurt. Maybe I could speak to her? The idea makes a spark pop low down in my belly. If Snow does have form for this (which it appears he does), and if he does have something to do with Laurel disappearing, maybe Katrina can help? I’m sure the police will have already spoken to her, but maybe she’ll talk to me. I just want her to tell me that he didn’t hurt her, that he wouldn’t have hurt Laurel. That Laurel will be OK.

  CHAPTER 13

  Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, I scour the internet for information about where Katrina Snow might be now, ignoring the curious glances from dog walkers and passers-by. She might have married and be using a different name . . . she might not even be in Manchester any more . . . what if she’s gone abroad? All these thoughts cross my mind as I try and figure out where to start searching for her. All I can do is start with what I already know.

  I type in Katrina Snow, kidnapped, father, Manchester. This brings up another lengthy list of articles, newspaper reports and some downright weird websites, all about what happened, but with no further information on where Katrina might be now. I rub my hands over my face, my eyes feeling dry and tired from staring at the screen for so long, my body stiff and cold from being hunched over the phone screen. She must be here somewhere, I just have to know where to look. I, for one, know how hard it is to try and disappear completely – after all, I’ve never quite managed it, no matter how hard I’ve tried – the articles from Killin prove that.

  Wearily, I type her name in again, only her name, nothing else and yawn as I wait for the search results to load. If nothing new comes up then I’ll go home, get warm, and try again later. But maybe . . . if something does show up, I can track down a telephone number . . . Manchester will be difficult for me to get to, but maybe if she’ll speak to me . . . I start to scroll through the links again, not really believing that I’ll find anything, when all of a sudden, I see it. Of course. Excitement starting to fizz in my veins, my heart rate speeding up, I glance furtively around before I click on the link, anxious that someone will approach me before I get a chance to read it. No one is around.