by Elle Croft
Trust us. His words echo in my mind as I sit on the sofa a few hours later, cradling an iced coffee and staring at the wall opposite me. The curtains are closed to block the glaring midday sun, so the house is cool and dark. And so quiet. When we got home from the press conference, Jemima begged us to let her go back to school. I suppose I can’t blame her. The house isn’t a fun place to be, and distraction is probably the best thing for her. Distraction, and friends. Dylan offered to drop her off. He had to go back to work, said there was some kind of staff problem at his site that he needed to be there to fix. I wonder if he’s looking for a distraction, too. Or just a way to avoid being around the constant reminders of our missing daughter, of the decisions we made all those years ago.
I’m restless. My skin itches from the inside, like there are ants crawling under the surface. I try to sit still, but I need to do something, to take charge, to get my daughter back. I know the police want me to trust them, but it’s not their daughter who’s missing.
I’m standing up now, pacing, and chewing my nails, pulling them away from the flesh on my fingers.
Where is Imogen? It’s the only question that matters, the only words my brain can conjure. Only the answer is completely beyond my reach. I can’t think my way out of this one, can’t magically make Imogen come home. I have to trust.
Trust that she’ll be OK. That she’s alive. That she’ll come home.
Chapter 26
SALLY
I suppose, for a while, I allowed myself the indulgence of forgetting. Of pretending.
I like to think of myself as an intelligent woman, strong-willed. Logical. But I’m susceptible to the same temptations as you are: the pull of ignorance, the bliss of letting your brain travel in a completely roundabout path, avoiding the truth so that it doesn’t have to be conquered.
The upshot of having been here for so long is that I’m afforded the luxury of peace and quiet, which means I can think about – or ignore – whatever I want. Some of the inmates complain that it’s too loud to hear yourself think in here, but compared with when I first arrived, this is positively tranquil.
I’m not like most of the women in prison. They’re usually beaten down by the system, victims of their circumstances, acting like they’re tough, when actually they’re the kind of pushovers who let themselves be taken advantage of. No, I’m not like them. I mean something. People know me. Guards, fellow inmates, outsiders visiting loved ones, whose eyes constantly flick my way in a kind of thrilled horror.
It was knowing that I was better than the others, knowing my life had amounted to something, while they would be forgotten and overlooked, without legacy or achievement, that got me through those first few years. It had begun as soon as I was transferred, as soon as my sentence had been handed down and I was brought here to start the rest of my life. I’d been shown to my cell, which looked exactly as you might expect it to, complete with a tough-looking cellmate who growled at me when I entered. I’d rolled my eyes at the cliché of it all, which, looking back, probably wasn’t my smartest move.
As soon as the guard had left, locking the door behind me, my cellmate, a dark-haired woman with a hook nose and bad breath, had slammed me up against the wall. She’d leaned close, her hand pressing against my windpipe, her breath warm and acrid in my nostrils.
‘I know who you are,’ she’d hissed, and I resisted the urge to point out that everyone knew who I was. It wasn’t worthy of congratulation. ‘I know what you did.’ Her hand pressed further into my throat, and I’d squeezed the tiniest bit of air into my lungs. ‘You’re a monster. I may be a criminal, but I have kids of my own, and I’d rather die than do what you did to those poor babies.’
I’d wanted to ask her where her precious kids were then, while she was locked away, but I couldn’t breathe. If I’d had to guess, though, I’d have said they were probably in care somewhere. Maybe with relatives, if they were lucky. Either way, they weren’t with their mother, where they belonged. She couldn’t protect them from within the walls of our cell. I’d struggled to see the difference between her parenting skills and my own, ultimately.
‘I’m going to do to you,’ she’d whispered, ‘exactly what you did to them. That’s a promise.’
She’d let me go, and I’d fallen to the floor, gasping for air.
‘I’m Tracey, by the way,’ she’d said, then. Sweet as pie.
I had to admire my cellmate, as much as I detested her. She had a masochistic streak, an ability to make people trust her before stabbing them in the back, at least metaphorically. And she was true to her word, too.
Over the first few months, she stole my meals. Three times a day, she’d find me in the dining hall, swipe my tray from under my nose and throw the whole lot in the bin. If I was lucky, I’d get a couple of mouthfuls in before she found me. I’d try scoffing it down in the line-up, but she was usually right behind me, hovering, waiting to take it away. The guards did nothing. They knew who I was, too, and they revelled in my starvation. I was weak, too malnourished to muster any energy to fight.
Next came the burns. There weren’t any curling irons in the prison, but Tracey made do with her cigarette butts. I was her personal ashtray for weeks, until I was put into solitary confinement, ‘for my own safety’. Which, looking back, I understand was just another phase of Tracey’s plan. She was keeping her promise, making sure I experienced everything my children did, isolation included.
Once I was back in the general prison population, she broke seven of my bones over the course of just a few months: three fingers, my wrist, my ankle and two ribs. She laced my water with sleeping pills and shaved my hair and eyebrows off in my sleep. For two weeks straight, she didn’t let me sleep at all. She’d keep me up all night, sleeping in the day while one of her friends would make sure I couldn’t get back to my cell or fall asleep.
But I survived. I didn’t cry, and I didn’t report her.
On the morning of her release, I woke her up with a screwdriver to the eye, a bit of contraband I’d procured after threatening a new inmate who had the right connections. When she screamed, I made her look at me with the eye that was still working, and then I skewered that one, too. I was the last thing she ever saw; I’d say that made us even.
There wasn’t much they could do to punish me. I was put into solitary again for a few months, but I’d survived worse. And when I came out, Tracey’s cronies knew better than to come near me. I had a reputation, and finally, after a year inside, I was left alone.
Actually, left alone is a bit of an understatement. For about five years, the women who had known Tracey pretended I didn’t exist. I was a ghost, invisible. I wasn’t bothered by anyone, but I didn’t have any interactions, either. When you spend long enough not existing, you begin to act like a ghost, too. My life, and everyone in it, faded from my memory. What I’d done, it just evaporated, for a time.
Tracey’s bitches were slowly replaced by new blood, people who had only heard rumours about me, kids too young or too dumb to have been watching the news during my trial. I was part of the furniture by then. I was seen as harmless – a convicted murderer, yes – but not wont to strike out, unless provoked. Which is how I’ve always been. I never hurt anyone who hadn’t done something to warrant punishment. It’s not in my nature to attack.
By that time, though, I’d let myself fade, the colour bleeding from me like an old photograph. The story I told myself was one of half-formed memories and greyed-out scenes, diluted and powerless. I’d shrunk, turned into a husk of the person I’d always known I was.
And then the letter arrived. And my world was splashed in technicolour once again. My past slammed right back into me. Reminding me. Urging me.
I’d spent too much of my life lounging around in a state of half-living. But after that letter, I couldn’t do that any more.
I was back. I knew who I was. And I knew that it was time to get to work.
Chapter 27
KAT
Fifteen Years A
go
‘So what does that mean?’ Dylan asks as I grip his hand, absorbing everything the doctor just told us.
‘Well,’ Doctor Parker says, folding her hands in her lap, ‘it means that, although not impossible, the chances of you conceiving naturally are very, very slim.’
Finally, after years of overwhelming disappointments, I’m not crushed by this revelation. I’ve known it for some time, although I didn’t have a doctor to confirm it. And so, as she says the words and Dylan’s shoulders hunch over, I set my jaw and take a deep breath, readying myself.
‘So what are our options at this point?’
My voice is calm and steady. Dylan looks up at me in surprise. His eyes are glistening with tears, the corners of his mouth turned down. He’s expecting me to fall apart, like I have so many times before. But, if anything, I’m relieved. Relieved that my instinct was right. Relieved that I don’t have to keep allowing hope in, month after month, only to have it taken away again. Relieved that now we can start moving forward, start taking action.
‘You can keep trying, of course,’ the doctor says, as though it’s all just so easy, and just a matter of trying more, trying better. I try not to roll my eyes. ‘There are obstacles – for both of you – to conceiving naturally, but it’s absolutely not impossible.’
Except that, for the past two years, it has been impossible.
‘Or?’ I prompt.
‘Or you could try IVF,’ she continues. ‘Although I should point out it’s not some magic formula to conceiving. There’s a lot of cost involved, not to mention the emotional strain it tends to have on couples. It can take a long time, it’s not guaranteed, and there are some risks involved.’
‘So what’s the bad news?’ I joke.
Her lips form a thin line.
My cheeks heat up. I wasn’t trying to be inappropriate, but I’m nervous, and uncomfortable, and it just came out. I look to Dylan for help. He offers a wobbly smile, his tears gone.
‘Well, OK,’ he says. ‘Are there any other options aside from just keeping on trying, or IVF?’
We talked about IVF before coming here today. The conversation was inevitable, knowing that the results of our fertility tests were looming. We’d tried to carry on as normal, had tried to avoid the elephant in the room, but in the end I caved. I couldn’t cope with pretending any more. I did enough of that outside of our home: with my friends who have kids, with our families, with the nosy strangers who ask when we’re going to start a family.
‘I just want to talk about what happens if the results come back and they’re …’ I’d struggled to find words that didn’t scare me ‘… not good?’
‘Well, there’s really no point talking about a hypothetical situation, is there? Because we might get there and they say that things are fine.’
I didn’t bother pointing out that when things are fine it doesn’t take over two years to fall pregnant.
‘OK, and if that happens, great, but if that’s not what the doctor says, I don’t want to be blindsided in there. I want to at least know what you’re thinking.’
Dylan was silent for a few seconds.
‘Here’s the thing,’ he’d said eventually, and I’d felt my stomach clenching. This didn’t feel like a conversation I was going to enjoy. ‘I want a family, I really do. But I can see how hard all of this is on you already. And you know Chris at work? Him and his wife went through IVF, and it looked bloody awful. They fought all the time, they had to remortgage their house, and it still didn’t work. I feel for them, but I just … I don’t know, Kat. It doesn’t sound like something I want us to go through.’
I’d been deflated. Not because I disagreed with him, but because I felt the same way. Paula at work had IVF last year, and she’s now divorced. She’s also got a three-month-old, so it wasn’t a total disaster, but still. She’d warned me, when I’d tentatively asked, that it wasn’t an easy path. If Dylan had been keen, if he’d had no reservations, I probably could have pushed my own fears aside. But if we were both nervous about the risks …
‘There have to be other options,’ Dylan had said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘It can’t just be IVF or nothing.’
I’d nodded, unconvinced.
‘This is why I didn’t want to talk about this,’ he’d sighed. ‘You’re all upset now and we don’t even know what our test results say.’
But now we do know our results.
‘I’m afraid with your specific conditions,’ the doctor says, ‘there aren’t any other treatments available to you at this stage.’
And now we have all of the facts.
Facts like: my womb is hostile. Or: we can’t afford IVF. Or: we’re running out of options.
When we get home, I head straight for the kitchen and reach for the bottle of wine we bought on our first anniversary, with the intention of drinking it together on our fifth. The date of that particular milestone passed us by in March last year, but as I wasn’t drinking, it had remained unopened, taunting me and my body’s failings from the pantry cupboard.
‘Whoa,’ Dylan says. ‘You sure?’
‘Absolutely,’ I say, twisting the corkscrew aggressively. ‘Now that I know there’s nothing I can do – or not do – to change my inhospitable womb, I’m planning on getting good and bloody drunk. Finally.’
He knows better than to argue, reaching for two glasses and placing them in front of me.
I pour generously and hold my full glass up to meet his.
‘To bad news and no options,’ I say with mock cheer.
‘Kat …’
‘Don’t,’ I say, holding my free hand out. ‘I don’t want sympathy. I want to forget about all of this for a bit, and get drunk and eat junk food for dinner, and have sex because you’re hot and not because my body temperature is up by half a degree. Can I do that, just for tonight? Please?’
I take a huge swig, not waiting for my husband to reply. He mirrors me, and before long we’re giggling, throwing M&Ms into each other’s open mouths and acting like the irresponsible, child-free couple we are, but wish we weren’t.
We’re both so drunk – thanks to another opened bottle, and the fact that I haven’t touched a drop since January last year – that I don’t know who actually says the word first. All I know is that once the idea lands, it settles and sprouts and grows with a speed that takes my breath away. It’s the most obvious solution; I can hardly believe we haven’t thought of it before.
Any other idea, formed under extreme stress, grief and alcohol consumption, would have fizzled and died, drowned out by the next morning’s hangover. But this wasn’t just any idea. It was the idea, the one that would save us, the one that would give us hope again, and bring us more joy and struggle and heartache and love than we could ever have imagined. But we didn’t know that just yet. All we knew was the whispered idea, the sentence one of us uttered, that set our hearts on fire.
‘What about adoption?’
Chapter 28
KAT
I wake with a start, pulled from a deep, dreamless sleep by a heavy hand coming to rest on my shoulder. My eyes fly open and I gasp as I sit upright.
‘It’s just me,’ Dylan says, as my head spins and blackness threatens my vision.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes to stop my head spinning, staying perfectly still for a few seconds until the sensation passes. Dylan sits heavily on the bed next to me.
‘What time is it?’ I ask groggily.
‘It’s seven in the morning,’ he says. ‘You were out cold. I didn’t want to disturb you.’
I look at him sharply. How could I have slept for so long, wasted so many hours, when I should have been looking for Imogen?
‘The police just called,’ he says, and hope explodes inside me. ‘They haven’t found her,’ he adds quickly, apologetically.
The weight of fear and loss, temporarily lifted for just a couple of seconds, settles again heavily, landing in the pit of my stomach, the mass of it forcing the breath from my
lungs.
‘They do have some news, though. I thought you’d want me to wake you up to talk about it.’
I look at him for more information. My husband, I realise, has aged what seems like a decade in just a couple of days. His usually solid frame seems frail, somehow. There are new grey hairs playing at the edge of his temples, and the corners of his eyes are creased with far more lines than I’ve ever noticed before.
‘Come into the kitchen,’ he says softly. ‘I have some coffee for you. And Linda brought around some pastries. She says we should eat something. She’s probably right.’
I nod, wanting him to just spit out whatever information he has, but terrified of what it might be. If he’s stalling me like this, it can’t be good. I follow him out of our room and past the living room, where Jemima is sitting on the sofa, eating a blueberry Danish as a rerun of Pretty Little Liars plays in the background. I give her a kiss on the top of her head as I walk past.
‘Morning, Mum.’
Dylan guides me, one hand on the small of my back, into the kitchen, where I obediently sit at the table and sip a fresh cup of coffee while he slides a couple of pastries onto a plate. He places the plate in front of me, then serves his own and sits at the opposite side of the table. I stare at him, then at the croissants.
‘We really should eat,’ he says, tearing off a corner of a crescent.
I do the same, then pull it apart, breaking the pastry into tiny pieces. After a few seconds, I drop the crumbs onto my plate in frustration and wipe my hands on my shorts.
‘I’m not hungry. I just need to know what the police said.’
He sighs and pushes his plate away, then leans back in his chair. He crosses his arms over his chest.
‘They said they looked into the records from the Satan’s Ranch case,’ he says, his voice low and strained. ‘And they found the file for one of the other children who survived. A five-year-old boy, at the time he was rescued. Brad.’
