“Cassie,” Marion warned. “Why don’t you try to take some time today, spend it with your gran? She needs you.”
“I will. But it’s – it’s like wasted time.” I stopped. Shame made my cheeks burn. “That’s not what I meant. I know I need to be here. I know that. But Bella...”
“I know.”
“I need to feel like I’m doing something useful. What do we know about Bella’s family?” I asked, desperately trying to quell the panic inside me. “I’ve been trying to get in touch but Mrs Kaluza still won’t answer the landline number I have for her.”
“They’re Polish,” Marion said slowly. “The mother doesn’t speak very good English. She’s been avoiding the press like the plague. The father left about three months ago so it’s just Mrs Kaluza and Bella in the house.”
“What about the father?”
“You know he’s a taxi driver, doesn’t live in Bishop’s Green. He said he was working so we’re trying to track his fares from the morning now.”
“And the ring?” I pressed. “Did you ask Bella’s mum about the mood ring?” This was the question that was driving me crazy. I needed to understand how all of the pieces fitted together. Marion gave an exasperated sigh.
“One thing at a time, Cass. I asked but so far she seems too overwhelmed to be much help. Sometimes it happens like that. She says she doesn’t remember seeing Bella wearing anything out of the ordinary, but she does collect vintage clothes and jewellery – or did before Mr Kaluza left. They’re a bit tight for money now.”
I massaged the bridge of my nose. “What about her room? Did you find anything in there that might tell us anything?”
Marion made a disappointed noise. “No. We’ve taken her laptop and her phone but so far nothing out of the ordinary.”
“No diary?”
“Nothing like that. Children probably think that’s a bit old-fashioned now.”
I flicked the kettle on. “And Darren Walker?” “Nothing new yet. Cass, why don’t you just take today – let me do my job and I’ll let you know if we find anything.”
I was sure she didn’t mean to sound patronising but I couldn’t help feeling a surge of annoyance. The kettle finished boiling and I started to make tea. Marion heard the splash of the water and she sighed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to take it out on you. Just – hang in there. Okay?”
“Sure,” I murmured. “I’ll just twiddle my thumbs until the nurse comes tomorrow. Don’t worry about me.”
* * *
Later that afternoon there was a knock at the door. Doctor White stood outside, his brown hair slicked back and his slacks freshly pressed.
“Hullo Cassie,” he said. “Thought I’d pop round to check on you two. It is today she’s home, isn’t it?”
He didn’t wait for me to respond, just ducked into our front room with a practised ease. I wondered if he still made many house calls these days, or whether those were things of the past.
“Hello Peggy. How are you doing?”
I followed him into the lounge and watched as he knelt before Gran, a hand on her uninjured arm. He had with him a small leather doctor’s bag, old and scuffed.
Gran made a surprised exclamation, recognition brightening her face.
“She’s doing okay,” I said. “Not too much pain. They patched her up pretty well.” This time. I didn’t say it, but the words hung in the air anyway. What if, now she was home, it happened again?
Something in my voice must have betrayed my worry because the doctor half-turned and gave me that raised eyebrow of his again.
“Are you giving her the sleeping aid?” he asked.
“This happened to her in the evening, not the wee hours,” I said wearily. I couldn’t dislodge the lump in my throat. This wasn’t just a late-night accident and the thought made me sick. “She worries the life out of me.”
Doctor White gave Gran a once-over before answering. He checked her arm beneath its sling, her blood pressure, her breathing. Gran obliged the gentle tugging at her arm with little more than a grimace, her eyes still following the TV show.
Afterwards I made him a cup of tea and we moved into the kitchen. The light was grey in here, washing us in tired shades. I had to force myself not to wring my hands.
“She was very lucky,” he said eventually. “Although I expect you know that. Where were you when it happened?”
Although I was sure it wasn’t intentional, I couldn’t help notice the accusation in his tone. I felt my shoulders rise, folding my arms across my chest.
“I was – I wasn’t at home. I was working on that story about Grace Butler.”
He didn’t respond right away, choosing instead to stare out of the kitchen window into the windswept garden.
“It’s awful,” he said, “about little Bella. Grace was bad enough but I’ve known Bella since she was born.” White’s face was surprisingly impassive, although his voice was filled with some emotion I couldn’t identify.
“Do you know her well?” I asked. “What’s she like?”
“She’s…” He shrugged. “Clever. She reminds me of my daughter.” He paused. I hadn’t known he had a daughter, but I let the silence fill the space between us until he said, “She died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes. Well.” He turned back to me and suddenly he was all business. “Anyway, your gran will need a lot of attention over the next few weeks. She needs to keep her arm mobile so she regains all the movement she can, but it’ll be weak for some time. I suggest you try not to leave her alone any more than necessary.”
Now the look he fixed me with was obvious. The accusation wasn’t imagined.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. There was a miscommunication—”
I couldn’t control the frustration in my voice, the guilt and the anger at myself, but the doctor only sighed.
“I suggest,” he said calmly, “we have another look at her progress in a couple of weeks. If you ring the surgery I’m sure we can squeeze you in.”
Doctor White placed his unfinished tea on the counter and gathered his things. He was at the door quickly, his movements surprisingly swift. He said goodbye to my gran, then looked at me again.
“Watch out for her,” he said. His gaze was piercing. “We don’t want this happening again.”
* * *
The darkness of the night was cloying. Hot, oppressive. I opened my eyes wide, and saw nothing but stretches of inky blackness. I blinked. Blinked harder.
Then, suddenly, brightness. A perfect crescent of white light. Hotter than the darkness. The eclipse. So hot it burned my eyes. A silver circle with a bite out of it, spinning in the dark. The middle shifted, the crescent expanding, and then it was a circle, smaller. In my palm, searing the flesh.
The ring. It was there the second I closed my eyes, imprinted there like a scar behind my eyelids. I saw Olive’s expectant face.
“Why can’t I come home?” she asked. “Why can’t you do something?”
I roared to consciousness with a scream on my lips. To calm my heart, I tried to think of Marion, alone in her house after a long day at work. That only made me feel sick with worry.
I thought of Henry in his hotel room. I wondered if he’d be alone, and then I realised that despite the hour he would probably still be in the hotel bar. I would have been, too, in another life. I thought about the bar, about the sweet cocktails that tasted like candy floss, my mouth dry. I thought of Helen, back in London. The three years we’d shared together already a dream – a complicated, anxiety-fuelled dream.
And before I knew it I was seeing a girl serving drinks who looked like Olive, with big golden brown eyes that were so unique. It had to be her. What if she was out there, somewhere, waiting to be found? That was the dream that always haunted me the most.
But then the girl in my mind was Bella. And then she was Olive again. But real Olive, this time, not the Olive from my dreams who was older and happy. This
Olive was eleven years old and she wore that damn silver mermaid ring with the crooked tail and rubbed at it like Gran had rubbed at the photograph.
Where are you?
She wouldn’t have run away. Not Olive. Sensible, calm Olive. When I got angry I used to go up like a mushroom cloud; screaming, crying, I took everybody else along with me. But not Olive. She got sad, or quiet, sometimes. After a brief spell of writing furiously or drawing a picture, she was always okay again, as though she’d simply had enough of being upset.
I got sick of trying to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, the eclipse was there like an omen, the silver-white crescent spinning and spinning. Counting down the hours since the darkness. I couldn’t sleep for fear of dreaming; I didn’t want to see Olive again tonight, only to relive the crushing memory of her being gone when I opened my eyes.
I refused to get out of bed, although I knew I wouldn’t sleep now. I thought of Marion instead. Marion, who trusted me again. I hadn’t had that in so long. The warm feeling it gave me in the pit of my belly when I thought about her. She believed me, believed in me. I had to prove to her that I was worth it.
So I pulled my laptop onto my legs and opened it up. The screen that greeted me was a webpage I’d found and hadn’t closed. Cordy Jones. I hadn’t been getting anywhere with Bella so I’d turned back to Olive, only to get myself all tangled up again. This was an article that Henry had sent me, a page on a forum from the early 2000s with theories about his disappearance.
I flicked through the first page of it with my eyes half-closed. Here was a thread I couldn’t stop picking at, almost wishfully. Could he have been responsible for what happened to Olive, even if he’d died afterwards? Could Bella have been taken by somebody else? A copycat, even? I didn’t think so. Cordy Jones might be dead, and I was sure the same person had taken Bella and Olive.
Suddenly I remembered Marion’s text message. We checked it. It’s not relevant. It was a lead she had looked into and dismissed. A case of vigilante justice that would get its own team, its own file. But it was nothing to do with what was happening now. I felt angry at myself for the amount of time since Bella disappeared that I’d spent scrabbling around like a chicken in the dirt.
I moved to the second page of the article, which focused on Cordy’s time as the leader of the Bishop’s Green youth group. There was a picture of some event, a gathering of adults and children framed by crêpe bunting and balloons.
And there, staring right at me, was my father.
I bolted upright.
Dad?
Had he ever volunteered for the youth group? I remembered him hanging around for a couple of weeks at the start of the summer but he’d stayed in a hotel working on a thesis about women in Chaucer – or something like that – for a new class he was teaching.
Although, looking back, he’d probably been with Carol. She had been his student back then, before she became Wife Number Two. She had dutifully kept their affair a secret.
How well had Dad known Cordy? I couldn’t believe it was my father, but the man in the photo was definitely him. I squinted my eyes, and although he had a full beard and was wearing clothes I didn’t remember, I would recognise him anywhere. Perhaps he had stopped by early in the summer to check up on us and I didn’t remember. Perhaps he had felt guilty, spending his days with Carol when he should have been with us.
I lay back in bed, heart thudding. If Dad knew Cordy… Did that mean he might remember Darren Walker? I thought once again of the anonymous text messages. Of my surprise after the first one. back off. I hadn’t thought I’d known anything at all.
Could it be possible that Dad knew something without realising too?
31
14 February 2000
2000 WASN’T PROVING TO be much of a year for Olive. The TV was on the fritz again, and she was starting to realise why he’d given it to her. Half the time it wouldn’t turn on, and it tended to cut out when there was bad weather. Still, she remembered those early days, the long empty hours she desperately tried to fill with any sort of game she could think of. And she tried not to complain to herself too much.
Footsteps on the stairs outside of the usual health check days were rare, but when she heard them today it wasn’t a surprise. Valentine’s Day. She wondered if he’d come and see her. Bring her something. It was days like these where Sandman outdid himself; he brought her chocolates, flowers sometimes, too. Ice cream, maybe. She even found herself looking forward to it. Monthly anniversaries of his “saving” her were his favourite. He brought cake. But New Year’s Day, Christmas, Halloween… These, too, were an excuse for him.
Even so, her heart thudded when she heard him. That part never got normal. Neither did the deliberate sliding into place of the lock once he was inside, keys placed around his neck…
But when he came through the door today he wasn’t smiling. Wasn’t even just frowning. It was like the early days again, his face flat like ice.
Olive scuttled upwards from her perch on the floor in front of the TV. He didn’t wait. Just chased her across the room, shocking her into letting out a scream that hurt her throat.
“What? What?” she yelled.
“You know.”
Once he had her, he pinned her against the wall. The two of them were on the narrow, lumpy bed. One of his arms was against her throat and she felt her blood pounding inside her. Her stomach was oily slick, like rainbow oil on tarmac, and she wanted to puke.
“Where is it?”
She couldn’t breathe, never mind talk. Panic coursed through her, and she was ashamed to realise she was crying. Sandman shoved her again in disgust, and then let her go. His face was purple. A vein throbbed in his temple. Olive sobbed.
“Where. Is. It?”
“I don’t know—”
But she did know. Mickey. He was talking about Mickey. She didn’t know how he knew, but the thread of panic grew and grew until she couldn’t think. If he searched, all he had to do…
“Where?”
Olive couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t help. Couldn’t stop him. She was helpless, sore. Her head felt full of something fluffy. Something sharp too. She watched with wide-eyed terror as Sandman tore apart the room. He searched cupboards, pulled open the microwave and slammed it so hard a dinging sound bounced in her skull. He trashed her drawings on the wall, seemingly for the hell of it, and then, finally, came to rest in front of the TV. Panting. Sweat visible through his T-shirt, soaking his back.
He half-turned to her. Locked eyes. And then he tossed the TV against the floor. The unit smashed, bits of the screen mixing with plastic on the thin carpet.
Olive couldn’t scream, because already he was moving. Back towards the kitchen. And the bread bin. And Mickey, who was testing out a new three-tier bed Olive had made from cereal boxes.
“No!” she yelled.
But that only made him worse. Sandman grabbed the bread bin in both hands and spun on her.
“Are you stupid?”
Olive’s voice was gone. Broken into pieces like the TV. She sobbed harder.
“I found shit on your clothes. I could see the hair. Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said to you?”
He was still holding the bread bin. That’s all Olive could see. Everything else was wobbling around her. She knew that Mickey was inside it, and she really thought she might puke up her breakfast.
“Hygiene!” Sandman spat. “This vermin – I don’t know how long it’s been in here, but Christ, girl, you’ve really got a death wish.”
With that, before Olive could do anything, or say anything, or even blink, Sandman dashed the bread bin against the wall. Plaster cracked, what little was left over bricks raining dust across the floor. Olive became aware of a screaming so high, so long, it sounded like a ghost.
She realised it was hers. The scream was coming from her.
She could hardly see through tears, but she knew it was over. The bread bin was metal, but the impact would be enough to stun him. And the
re was Sandman making sure. Satisfaction on his face, the smell of disinfectant permeating the small room.
“Stupid girl,” he muttered. “I’m trying to teach you. You stupid, stupid girl.”
Olive didn’t care what he thought of her. She sat on the bed, unmoving. Sandman gathered the bin and the sharp bits of the broken TV, and then he left her. No new food. No new clothes.
She didn’t care about that, either.
She realised Sandman was right. She had been stupid. Stupid to believe that he could be kind to her. That the man who had taken her away from everybody who loved her, could be anything but a monster.
Pity he’d taken the bits of broken TV screen, she thought absently. Those might have come in handy.
32
Monday, 23 March 2015
AS THE FIRST GREY light of dawn began to trickle through the crack in my curtains, I hauled myself out of bed. The light was watery, like it had been during the eclipse – God, was that only Friday? Three days. Seventy-two hours.
I showered, dressed and took breakfast to Gran in bed, while waiting for the dementia nurse to arrive. The NHS had referred me to a company called Helping Hands and they’d offered to help after the accident. Not for free, of course, but Gran was in no state to be at the adult day centre and I had Doctor White’s warning echoing in my head as I thought of all the things I needed to do. I didn’t trust the people I’d been using before, although I still wasn’t sure whether it was my error or theirs that had led to Gran’s accident. I didn’t like the way the doctor had looked at me yesterday, but the feeling was overridden by shame at the way I’d spoken to him in response, and I couldn’t afford another day lost when I could be searching for Bella.
With Gran taken care of for a few hours, I drove the short distance to Chestnut Circle with my hands tight on the steering wheel. This morning it wasn’t Olive’s face I kept seeing, it was Bella’s. But the two were starting to mix in my mind. I’d only met Bella properly once and, I told myself, that was probably the reason this was happening. But I was starting to get unnerved by it, scared that it would affect my already-faltering judgement.
After the Eclipse Page 20
