by Anita Waller
Pilot woke her gently at about four thirty pm to say he’d be back later with his Mum and Dad. Lauren sat up with a struggle.
‘I need to feed her,’ she muttered. She gave Pilot a kiss. ‘Just go, I’ll see you later.’
As he left, Pilot saw the nurse on her way to help Lauren with the breast-feeding. He blew a kiss but she didn’t see it.
Grace fed well, and by six o’clock both Mother and baby were dozing. Then Lauren became aware of a doctor in a white coat touching her shoulder.
‘Mrs Farmer? I have to take baby for her Guthrie test. You can come with me if you want but most parents don’t like to see their babies having blood taken from the heel.’ His Scottish accent penetrated Lauren’s sleepy brain and she smiled at him.
‘No, you see to her. Just bring her back when it’s over.’ She closed her eyes once more.
At 6.30 pm Lauren felt another touch on the shoulder.
‘Is she back? Was she good?’
‘What?’ Pilot sounded puzzled. ‘Where’s Grace?’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Lauren tried to sit up without causing pain to herself; Pilot helped her, reorganising pillows behind her to make her more comfortable. ‘A doctor came and took her for a Guthrie test. It’s the test where they stab them in the foot. Remember them telling us about it at ante-natal class?’
Pilot nodded.
‘Yes, they have it at five days, don’t they? She’s not even one day old yet! Bit premature, aren’t they?’
He moved away towards the nurses’ station and asked where Grace was, explaining a doctor had taken her for a Guthrie test. There was instant pandemonium. The nurse hit the panic button, and the hospital was put into lock down.
Pat, David, Brenda, Ken and Freda, along with the new parents, sat around Lauren’s bed all night waiting but there was no news.
Grace had disappeared.
Chapter 3
2003
‘Olivia! Stop running! You’ll fall!’ Lauren shouted at the four-year-old in a vain attempt to stop the headlong flight down the grassy slope.
‘You’ll never get her to stop,’ Pilot said with a grin, cradling a very sleepy Noah in his arms. He felt Noah stir and whispered sssh to him.
‘Don’t worry,’ Lauren smiled. ‘He’s getting ready for a feed. Pass him to me and you go chase Olivia.’
He passed the tiny baby over to his wife and moved to follow Olivia down the slope.
‘Don’t let her out of your sight, Pilot,’ Lauren warned quietly as she knelt down on the grass.
He shook his head. ‘Never.’
The baby’s tiny head turned towards his mother’s breast and she unbuttoned her top.
‘Come on then, little man, feed time,’ she said softly and hugged him tightly before helping the tiny mouth on to her nipple. At two weeks old, Noah was still struggling with knowing exactly where his food came from. Lauren couldn’t remember Olivia ever being like that.
She heard Olivia giggling as her Daddy caught up with her and a smile that sometimes had to be forced came readily to Lauren’s lips. ‘Okay, Noah, time for lunch. And don’t hang about, the health visitor is coming to weigh you this afternoon and I want you to have put loads of weight on. So, drink up, big boy.’
She felt the familiar drag on her breast and then breathed a sigh of relief as Noah began to suck. No tantrums today, just a contented baby.
Olivia and Pilot came back up the hill towards her and Pilot said he’d go back to the house and bring down some drinks. Olivia flopped down on to the grass beside her Mummy, whom she looked so like. Her long blonde hair and deep blue eyes mirrored Lauren but the little girl was already showing signs of growth that would take her over Lauren’s adult height.
‘Tired,’ Olivia said.
‘Too much running around,’ Lauren responded. ‘Maybe we can have a nap later, do you think?’
The little girl gave a solemn nod and put her head on her mother’s lap. Within two minutes, she had drifted off into a light sleep.
Lauren wanted to wrap both of them in cotton wool and protect them for all of their lives. She wanted no part of the outside world to touch them and Lauren did not know how she would cope with the fact that Olivia was due to start nursery after the Easter holidays. How could she could handle the enormity of her child being away from her and outside her watchful protection?
The police had never had any idea where Treverick, her mother’s killer, was. Indeed, they had never had any concrete proof that he had been the one to snatch Grace. Back in 1952, when he had been eighteen-years-old, he had raped a small child called Amelia Andrews - more than rape her, he had destroyed her. He had destroyed her mind and he had destroyed her body. His intention had been to rape her and, if he’d been caught, to kill himself. Caught very quickly, he hadn’t even managed to kill himself – the bullet he fired from a rifle had grazed him enough to knock him out but had done no damage beyond a scar. If it had been a shotgun and not a rifle, the end result would have been very different. Hearing the shot, the police had found the house where he was hiding and he had been virtually gift-wrapped. When he had recovered, he had confessed and sent to prison. But not for nearly long enough. And that’s where everything had begun.
Lauren had never doubted for a minute that he had taken the tiny baby. She did not know what he had taken her for.
Pilot returned with their drinks and sat down beside her.
‘Ok?’
She nodded. ‘He fed well. Let Olivia sleep, we need to be going back to the house in about quarter of an hour for the health visitor. Daren’t be late for her - it’s that look she gives you when she disapproves of something,’ she laughed.
He nodded his head. ‘Oh, I know. I clearly remember the look when I placed Olivia in her crib on her tummy! If she only knew that Noah seems to be following the same sleep pattern...’
‘Do not tell her!’
‘Well I won’t if you won’t...’
They finished their drink in the early spring sunshine until some clouds crossed the sky. Lauren shivered.
‘The temperature’s dropping a bit. Let’s head back up to the house.’
Pilot gently woke his daughter and gathered everything up, placing it all in the pram basket. Noah was the one now fast asleep and Lauren carefully settled him in the pram before pushing it up the slight incline.
It was quiet as they entered the front door and Olivia went to the corner of the lounge that accommodated her dolls house. She opened the front of the house and took out all the little people before replacing them in different rooms.
Lauren could hear her chatting to the tiny wooden dolls as she rummaged in a drawer to find the birth book and notes. She placed them ready on the coffee table. Noah was still asleep so she sat on the settee and let her mind temporarily slow down.
And Grace wandered into it. She had known her first child for less than a day but every day at some point and at several points in the Christmas season, she thought about her daughter. They had no idea whether she was alive or dead, although there had been a scare within a couple of months of Grace’s abduction when a newborn’s body had been found. They had both had to give DNA samples because the police said the corpse was a couple of months old. That had been a really low point in their lives. But the DNA had proved it wasn’t Grace and they had breathed again.
Hope had faded now and she was starting to believe the unthinkable. Treverick had taken the baby and killed her. The police had nothing to go on, there had been no sighting of the bogus doctor and while several of the police officers privately thought it was Treverick, there was no proof at all.
Lauren enjoyed the quiet moments thinking about her firstborn. Tears fell at Christmastime, but the rest of the year was peaceful as she enfolded her tiny daughter into her memory bank. She heard the doorbell and stood, fixing the smile on her face that would welcome the health visitor.
Noah was pronounced fit and well with healthy lungs that he used to great effect. He had gained a few ounces aft
er dropping a little of his birth weight and everyone was happy except the health visitor who really didn’t like urine on her uniform.
Full of apologies for his wayward son, Pilot escorted her to the door. He returned to the lounge and he and Lauren doubled up with laughter.
‘Bet she sends somebody else next time,’ she spluttered. ‘Her face was an absolute picture.’
‘Well, by the time of the next visit, I’ll be back at work so you’ll have to deal with whoever turns up.’
She groaned. ‘I don’t want you to go back to work.’
‘I have to work, my love. It’s my publishing company now.’
She kissed him. ‘I know. I’ve just enjoyed having you around the place.’
‘Being waited on hand and foot, you mean.’
‘That as well,’ she conceded, ‘but as the brood mare in this family, it’s only what I deserve.’
‘So, tea and biscuits it is then,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Nothing but a man-slave, that’s all I am, nothing but a man-slave.’
‘Yes, Daddy,’ said Olivia from the depths of the dolls house.
‘And outnumbered by talkative women,’ he muttered as he headed for the kitchen.
Lauren was reading a magazine when he returned from completing his latest chores.
‘Biscuits are a bit naff,’ he said. ‘We could do with a shop sometime soon. Shall I go tonight?’
‘Might be an idea. Or send the list to your Mum – she said she’d do that for us if we needed anything.’
He nodded. ‘I know but it’s quicker to do it myself. Will you be okay while I’m gone? I can ask Brenda or Ken to pop over and stay with you...’
‘I’m fine.’ Her reply was sharper than Lauren intended and she softened it with a smile. ‘Really I’m fine. The door will be locked and the panic button has been tested. And can I just point out that Nan Brenda is now 87 years old and hardly up to babysitting me? Or fighting intruders off!’
‘Huh! I’d back her against anyone, and she’s only 87 in years, not in mind and body.’
Within a week of Grace’s abduction, they had installed the panic button, which connected directly to Padstow police. Lauren thanked God every day that the only time it had ever been used was on its six monthly testing. It simply gave her a degree of comfort to know it was there.
She knew that Treverick would be 69 or 70 years old by now but the fact that her own Nan was proof of age being just a number, gave her cause for concern that he could still be actively seeking to destroy the Thornton family. She hoped he was dead. Since the disappearance of Grace, there had been nothing. No sighting, no communication, nothing but grief on their part. He was an ever-present danger to them and they had no idea what he looked like, how he spoke, where he was.
In the end, Pat and David came over to visit with news of their own; Dawn and Josh would be here at the weekend to see the new baby. Lauren welcomed the news; since finding out she had a half-brother and getting to know him, she hated the fact that he lived so far away from them but loved the way they were able to just fly over whenever they felt like it.
The evening finally ended a little after eleven o’clock, with Lauren trying to stifle her yawns.
It had been a good evening: the last one for a long time to come.
Chapter 4
On Wednesday morning, Lauren was standing at the kitchen work surface chopping vegetables when she heard the car. She wiped her hands on the tea towel and moved into the lounge to see who it was.
‘Pilot!’ Her cry came out as a constricted squeak and she shouted again, this time with volume. ‘Pilot!’
He ran from the utility room where he had been loading the washing machine and his eyes followed her gaze.
‘It’s a police car,’ he said. ‘Don’t panic. Have we forgotten to pay a parking fine or something?’
‘They don’t send Detective Inspectors for parking fine collection.’ Lauren’s eyes never moved from the car and its occupants.
‘What? Oh...’
Getting out of the car, the man they had grown to trust and who had agreed with them that the abductor was probably Treverick, was accompanied by a WPC who stepped out of the back. The driver remained with the car while the two officers walked towards their door.
Pilot moved quickly and was at the door before they knocked. He held his fingers to his lips.
‘Sssh,’ he said. ‘The noisy one is sleeping.’
‘Mr. Farmer, can we come in?’
Pilot was a little put out – he had always been Pilot to Jake Dunbar, the detective inspector who had led the investigation into Grace’s disappearance.
Dunbar recognised the expression on Pilot’s face and spoke quietly.
‘Sorry to be so formal, Pilot, but we are here officially. We need to come in. Is your wife here?’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘And your little girl?’
‘Yes, Olivia’s playing in the lounge. Why? What’s happening?’
‘Is there someone who can look after the children?’
Pilot recognised the tone of voice and rang his mother. She took three minutes to get there and both children were whisked away five minutes later.
The WPC had made tea for all four of them and DI Dunbar produced a file from his briefcase, which he laid on the coffee table. His greying hair gave him a look of authority that, combined with his grey eyes and a height of well over six feet, always made Lauren think he should be in films and not the police.
‘I’m sorry to be so secretive,’ he said, ‘but I am mindful of the fact that you have a small baby, Lauren, and what I am about to tell you is going to change your lives. I needed to speak to you two together without distractions.’
He picked up the file.
‘First of all, I need to introduce WPC Sarah Miller. Please call her Sarah. The last thing we need at this moment in time is formality. I apologise for the way we were when we entered your home, but we have rules...’
Both Lauren and Pilot nodded and then looked at each other.
‘What’s going on, Jake?’ Pilot spoke quietly.
‘This file is the one we started when Grace was abducted. As you know, we never had any proof that it was Treverick who took her, just gut feelings and those can’t be put into a police file. However, we now have proof.’
He watched as Lauren’s head dropped and he reached across to touch her hand.
‘Stay with me, Lauren, stay with me. Almost two weeks ago, on the 19th March to be precise, we had a telephone call from an elderly couple who said they had taken in a small girl who had knocked on their door in a very distressed state. They guessed she was about five or six years old but they could make very little sense of anything she was saying.’
He watched as Lauren lifted her head and turn to her husband.
‘We sent officers immediately to the house and the case was handed to me. I need to say that because of the size of the little girl I did not initially connect her to Grace. We went with her to the hospital and they sedated her for three days. She was in a mess, covered in blood around her genital area, scratches and cuts all over her body and dirty. Her feet were cut to ribbons; she had walked some considerable way without shoes, just socks that offered no protection at all. The doctors and nurses cared for her and then gently brought her back to us. They had taken DNA samples while she was sedated but at this point we didn’t have results.’
He paused, searching for the right words.
‘When she saw me, she cried. Her first words were don’t let him hurt me again. We spoke to her calmly, and even at this stage, I felt she was five years old at the most. She was so fragile and tiny. Her language was childlike and her vocabulary limited. I asked her how old she was and she didn’t know. I asked her if she knew her birthday and she said, quite significantly as it turned out, that it was when her Daddy started hurting her. There was no doubt what form the hurting had taken; she was ripped to pieces inside. We tried to delve deeper but the child psychologist stopped us.
She said enough was enough for that day, and it was. She was allowed to sleep again.’
‘It’s Grace, isn’t it?’ Lauren’s voice was harsher than Pilot had ever heard it before. ‘He’s had my baby all this time.’ She jumped up from the settee and set about Dunbar. ‘I told you, I told you,’ she sobbed.
Dunbar held her wrists and pulled her closer to him. ‘You have to listen to the full story as we know it, Lauren. You have to listen.’
Pilot stood and held his wife, lowering her back into her seat.
‘They woke her again the next day and we tried to get her to open up but she wouldn’t talk. She had completely closed down. All we had was what the Wainwrights had managed to elicit from her while they were sending for us. Apparently, she said her Daddy loved her, but he didn’t want her to go out of the house because the air outside could kill her. He had told her she had an illness and she had to stay inside with him. It seems that every time he went out for shopping or to go to work, he chained her to her bed. She could reach a bucket, which she used for a toilet and he used to bath her. She said he liked to bath her. She never went out into the fresh air for the whole of her life.’
Lauren moaned.
‘This is going to get more painful, Lauren. Be strong. And then we get to last Christmas. He started to have sex with her, told her it was her birthday present. He apparently said to her that when little girls became older they had to do things with their Daddy. She said she didn’t like it because it hurt and then two nights before she arrived at the elderly couple’s house, he had raped her repeatedly. Remember all of this is what she told Mr and Mrs Wainwright. She didn’t have the right words, obviously, but it was very clear what he had done to her. It was spontaneous because she was so frightened that they would send her back to Daddy. We’re optimistic that one day she will say it all to us. That will be when she starts to heal, when her soul starts to heal.’
