Her One Mistake

by Heidi Perks

  On Wednesday I bought fresh food from the butcher and the grocery. But by the time it came to cooking dinner, I was so tired from cleaning that I couldn’t concentrate. As I stood by the stove and prepared lasagna, I found myself thinking about Alice, the investigation, and what was in the press, and I ended up throwing everything into one pan and serving it as a pile of mush that the children refused to eat.

  “This is really not nice, Mummy,” Molly told me, pushing her plate across the table.

  “It’s ’sgusting,” Evie added.

  “I know it is,” I sighed. “Don’t eat it. I’ll put a pizza in the oven.” I swept up their plates and tipped the food into the trash, trying hard not to acknowledge that everything I did was screaming out failure.

  With my back to the children, I tore into a pizza box and was only half listening when Molly said, “Mummy, Sophie said something horrible today.”

  “Did she, darling, what was that?” I traced my finger over the back of the box until I found the oven temperature.

  “She said her mummy said she wasn’t surprised you weren’t watching Alice.”

  I spun around, attempting to put the pizza on the counter, ignoring it when I missed and it dropped onto the floor. “What did you say?”

  “And she also said she wouldn’t trust you to watch the cat. I told Sophie we don’t even have a cat and they don’t either, but she said I was being stupid and that’s not what she meant. What did she mean, Mummy?”

  “Nothing.” I forced a smile. “It sounds like Sophie’s just being silly.”

  “Sophie said that meant she won’t be able to come here to play on her own again.”

  My fingers felt tingly. It spread quickly into my arms and down my legs. Please tell me Karen didn’t really say this, a small voice whispered inside me. Karen would call me up after a weekend to tell me she’d had another hellish couple of days because her mother-in-law had popped in again, uninvited. We’d laugh about it until we had tears rolling down our faces, because she always made her stories so amusing.

  But that wasn’t the kind of thing a six-year-old would make up.

  I picked the pizza off the floor, checked it wasn’t covered in dust, and put it in the oven. “I’m sure there’s a mix-up,” I said, smiling at Molly. “I’ll speak to Karen and sort it out.”

  “I want Sophie to come to tea again,” Molly said, hanging her head so I couldn’t see her eyes.

  “Of course she’ll come again,” I said, the smile still plastered across my face. “Now you’ve got ten minutes to go play and I’ll call you back when dinner’s ready,” I said, my voice far too high-pitched. “Go on,” I urged, practically pushing her out of the room.

  My hands shook as they reached for the island to steady myself as I sat on a stool. I’d been doing fine hiding away, cleaning and scrubbing and doing mindless chores. One stupid remark and I was falling apart again.

  Karen had sent me flowers on Monday with a card that said she was thinking of me. They were on the windowsill, tulips, in a variety of colors because she knows I like them.

  I reached for my cell, my finger hovering over it. I wanted to hear Audrey tell me I was being stupid, that no one was talking about me. I wanted her to say that Karen would have likely said something else instead and Sophie misconstrued it and it was all a misunderstanding. I wanted to laugh and put the phone down with relief that my friends weren’t talking about me behind my back.

  But on Wednesdays Aud went to rugby with her boys, so I pressed another button and waited for the dial tone. I’d promised I wouldn’t do this, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Hey,” Tom said when he picked up. “Everything okay?”

  “No.”

  “Charlotte, what’s happened? Is it Alice?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “You’re crying. Tell me what it is.” So I told him what Molly had said.

  “Oh, Charlotte.”

  The day we separated I swore I wouldn’t rush back to Tom when things got hard. “You make your bed, you lie in it,” my mother had said when I told her we were splitting up. “Your father left and tried coming back once, and I was stupid enough to let him. And you know what happened. Besides, the kids won’t thank you if you change your mind.”

  But then again, my mother had never lost someone else’s child.

  “Call Karen,” Tom said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can, she’s your friend.”

  “And say what? ‘Do you not trust me anymore?’ ”

  “Ask her what she said.”

  “Tom, it’s not that simple. What if she tells me she did say it? What if she says she means it?” I cried.

  I knew I shouldn’t have called him. There was no way I could ask Karen what she’d said. I’d sooner let the thoughts eat me up than confront her.

  I stared at my phone, wondering what I should do. My cell no longer felt like a lifeline between me and my friends. The initial flurry of messages I’d received in the aftermath of the fair had reduced dramatically. In fact, it was pinging with alerts much less frequently than it had before the weekend, and its silence was unsettling.

  I clicked on my group texts again, something I’d been regularly doing in the last few days, but the last message remained fixedly on one that had been sent the day before the fair. I scrolled up and down the various groups: Molly’s class, Jack’s class, book club . . . there were always messages waiting for me to read. Not a day passed without someone asking about homework or a uniform or setting up a new group for a night out.

  I pushed my phone away. I’d tried to ignore what was troubling me—the fear that new group chats had been set up without me, that my friends wanted to discuss things that didn’t involve me. But after what Molly had said, I started to believe it was happening.

  Since the journalist had pointed out I’d been on Facebook when Alice went missing, I hadn’t been able to look at my account and even deleted the app from my phone. Somehow I’d convinced myself that even just logging on would create a trigger for my activity to be monitored. As if someone was waiting for me so they could say, “Hah, see. Here she is again. She can’t keep off it.” I’d passed my theory by Audrey, who’d told me it was ridiculous, but still I hadn’t chanced it.

  Once the children were in bed that night, I knew I couldn’t hold out any longer. I needed to face whatever was being said. I needed to know. I poured a large glass of wine, which I took up to bed, and, taking a deep breath, I opened my Facebook page.

  My pulse raced as I scrolled through posts about upcoming holidays and friends’ high-achieving children, furiously searching—for what, I didn’t know. A post that stated what a dreadful mother I was? A high number of likes and shocked-faced emojis attached to it?

  The more I looked, the more my heart fell into an easier rhythm. I found nothing of the sort, but then I came across a Help Find Alice page that someone had started, asking others to share and post if they had any news.

  It had been set up by one of the mums I barely knew, though at some point we’d become Facebook friends. I stared at the profile picture of her and her two girls. If I didn’t know her, then Harriet wouldn’t either, which made me wonder why she was pioneering this campaign. If anyone was going to do it, it should have been me.

  I skimmed over the comments that others had left, but there were so many I couldn’t read them all. Most were messages of support and concern. Warnings to others not to let their children out of their sight when there was a monster loose on our streets. Prayers that had been copied and posted attached with personal messages of hope that Alice was found soon. Some chose to share their opinions on what had happened. Many thought it was most likely the same man who’d taken Mason.

  My name was mentioned a couple of times. People I didn’t know relayed how sorry they felt for me.

  “Just goes to show you can’t take your eyes off your children for one minute,” they said.

  “You shouldn’t trust an
yone, not even at a school fair.”

  And, “Don’t know if it’s worse to lose your own child or someone else’s.”

  I clumsily placed my glass of wine on my bedside table, almost knocking it over. I wanted to comment too. I had no idea what I’d say, but I wanted to let them know I was there, reading their thoughts, breathing, living this hell they were talking about.

  I closed my eyes, leaning back against the headboard, tears trickling out from beneath my lids. I could read between the lines. They were careful with their words, but the sentiment was obvious: I was careless and I’d lost someone else’s daughter.

  I know that’s what they meant because it was what I thought about myself.

  I should have stopped looking then and put my phone away, happy that I hadn’t found anything vitriolic, but instead I sat upright and tapped Alice’s name into the Google search bar. It was with a strange determination to punish myself that I knew I wouldn’t give up until the damage was done, and it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.

  I first found my name in a comments section of the Dorset Eye website beneath an article written by Josh Gates, the journalist from the appeal. His vindictive piece had attracted the attention of locals. Names I didn’t know, some anonymous, all thrilled at the chance to let rip and confirm I must be an awful mother.

  I should never have been allowed to look after someone else’s child, apparently. Mine should be taken away from me because quite obviously they weren’t safe. If I’d lost their child they wouldn’t be able to help themselves, one said. What he would do, he didn’t explicitly say, but the threat was clear.

  I balled my fist into my mouth, gulping large breaths of air that I couldn’t swallow down. These were people who lived near me. They came from Dorset, maybe they were even from my village, and they hated me. Every one of them hated me.

  I slid down under my duvet, pulling it over my head. Screwing my eyes tightly shut, I sobbed and screamed under the covers until I must have fallen asleep.

  • • •

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING I bundled the children into the car for school, hiding my red, raw, swollen eyes behind sunglasses. After leaving Jack at the school gate and taking Molly to her classroom, I was walking back across the playground with Evie when Gail called out to stop me. “Hi, I’m glad I’ve caught you,” she said breathlessly as she struggled to catch up.

  “Hi, Gail, how are you?”

  She flicked a long, sleek black ponytail over her shoulder, pushing her own dark glasses on top of her head. After last night I was glad to have Gail seek me out. I even felt guilty for the way I sometimes moaned about her. Gail wasn’t so bad, even if she could be high maintenance.

  “Oh, I’m fine, my lovely, I’m fine.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I just wanted to catch you because I don’t need you to take Rosie to ballet tonight.”

  “Wh— What do you mean?” I stammered. “I always take Rosie to ballet.”

  “Oh, I know, but tonight she’s getting a lift with Tilly’s mum. She offered and, you know—well, to be honest, I didn’t know if you’d be going or not so I said that would be fine.” Gail flashed me a row of white teeth and took a step back, already preparing her exit.

  “I’m still taking Molly,” I said. “So it’s not a problem for me to take Rosie, too. And Tilly lives on the other side of the village.”

  “Oh, well, thank you, Charlotte. But I might as well let her go with Tilly, as I’ve agreed to it.”

  “Right,” I said. “I see.”

  “Well, I’ll see you soon,” Gail said, waving and turning on her heel.

  “Gail!” I called before I had time to consider what I was about to say. “Wait a minute.” I dragged Evie across the playground. “Do you really think you can’t trust me to take your daughter to ballet? You’re worried I might come home without her?” My voice cracked as I spoke and I knew I was going too far.

  “No! God no, my lovely, nothing like that,” she said, smiling that smile again that didn’t reach her eyes. “Like I said, I just didn’t know if you’d be going or not.”

  “You could have asked me,” I cried. “That’s all you needed to do. You could have just asked first.”

  “Yes, I know, I realize that now of course. Silly me.” She gave a small, stupid laugh and I thought if I reached out I could slap the fake smile right off her face. I whisked Evie toward my car as quickly as her little legs would take her.

  • • •

  “SHE’S A STUPID bitch!” I cried on the phone to Audrey as soon as I got home. “What are they all saying about me? And don’t say nothing, because I know they are.”

  “Take no notice of Gail. She’s narrow-minded and neurotic. She’s bound to overreact.”

  “You know that’s not true, she’s only saying what everyone else is thinking,” I said, telling her what Karen had reportedly said. “Does everyone think I can’t be trusted?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then why does it feel like that?” I said. “I’ve seen the comments online, Aud. Have you read them? I have. Look at them. Read the article on the Dorset Eye website. No, better still,” I said, grabbing my phone and flicking up the internet, “I’ll send you the link.”

  “Charlotte, you need to calm down. Whatever these comments are saying, they’re just trolls. They’re nasty people with small-town attitudes and nothing better to do. These are not the thoughts of anyone who matters, and you know that deep down.”

  “But it’s about me. It’s personal. They’re talking about me.” I slumped into a chair. “So it doesn’t matter what I know deep down because this is my life they’re discussing.”

  “I know, honey, I know,” she said calmly. “But they aren’t your friends. They aren’t anyone who knows and loves you.”

  “Except they are. It’s Karen and Gail.”

  “Who haven’t said anything horrible about you,” Audrey said. “They just act stupidly sometimes. They’re putting their families first and maybe they don’t even know what to do for the best, but they’ll regret it if they know they’ve hurt you.”

  “Did they say anything about me before?” I asked. “Was I judged before Alice went missing?”

  “Charlotte,” Audrey sighed. “No, of course not. What happened to Alice could have happened to any one of us. It is horrific, but it didn’t happen because of you or anything you did.”

  “Then how come it feels like it did?” I said in a whisper.

  Before hanging up, Audrey reminded me about the school social the following Wednesday. “You should come along.”

  “It’s another six days away,” I said. “Anything could happen by then.” I didn’t want to think what I meant by that, but my hope was that Alice would be found. The thought of another week passing and still no news was unimaginable.

  “Of course, and God hoping little Alice will be found safe and sound. But think of the social as a time for you to speak to the people you think are talking about you, and then you can put your mind at rest.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Seriously, Charlotte, you should.”

  I promised Audrey I would think about it, but I knew I wouldn’t go. I’d rather continue hiding than face the mothers who’d be watching me with fascination. As soon as I put the phone down, it rang again. It was Captain Hayes asking if I would be in for the next hour. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere and mindlessly watched Sesame Street with Evie as I waited for him.

  When he arrived I took him through to the kitchen, making small talk as I made a drink for Evie, who was demanding a snack and asking if the policeman would play with her.

  “No, Evie,” I said, handing her a packet of raisins and an apple. “Go back to the playroom and I’ll be in soon.”

  “Sorry,” I said to the captain, once she was gone. “Do you have kids?”

  “Yes, I have two,” he said gravely. “Mrs. Reynolds, I have some news.”

  “Oh?” The look on his face tol
d me it wasn’t going to be good.

  “I’m afraid we’ve found a body.”

  HARRIET

  What does this mean?” Brian paraded back and forth in the small kitchen like a caged animal.

  “We don’t know,” Angela told them.

  “But the body wasn’t that far away?”

  “No,” she said. “Less than five miles from where he was taken.”

  “And it’s definitely Mason?” Brian asked.

  “Yes, I’m afraid he’s been identified.”

  “That poor family,” Harriet cried. “I can’t even imagine how they’re feeling. I can’t even think—”

  “Then don’t,” Angela said. “There’s still nothing that suggests what happened to Mason is linked to Alice.”

  “So what did happen to him?” Brian demanded. “How did he die? Was he killed straightaway?” He had stopped pacing, his hands gripping the back of a chair as he pressed forward, leaning toward Angela.

  “I understand you want to know, but I can’t give you the details yet.”

  “And I don’t want to hear them.” Harriet moved her hands to cover her ears.

  Brian moved to his wife’s side and carefully peeled her hands away from her head. “And you don’t need to, my love,” he said, kissing the back of them, his lips lingering on her skin, leaving a moist patch when he pulled them away. He slid into the chair beside her. “You shouldn’t have to be thinking about any of this,” he said.

  He left her no option but to think about it, as he continued to ask Angela questions about Mason that she repeatedly told him she couldn’t answer. Brian’s grip on her hands remained tight. His face was close; she could feel his warm breath touch her cheeks in puffs as he spoke. The scent of his day-old aftershave trickled up her nose and into her throat each time she breathed in.

  Eventually Harriet extracted herself, making the excuse that she needed the bathroom.