‘Later, OK? Be a good girl for Denny.’
‘Oh, she’s adorable.’ Becky gazes longingly. ‘I can’t wait to have kids.’
I would normally jump at the opportunity to talk about my children, but the audience is in place and Stacey is on set. My heart won’t calm down.
‘How are you feeling?’ I scan Aiden’s face, checking for signs of tension. Is he paler than usual or is it the lights? Is that sweat because he’s afraid? Or is it the heat? His hands aren’t balled into fists. The light layer of make-up covers his dark circles. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking at the best of times but now I have no clue.
‘I’m OK, Mum.’
I long for more than three words, but it’s the best I’m going to get.
‘So, no pressure or anything,’ Becky says. ‘But it would be incredible to have you both in the interview. And, honestly, it might make you both feel a lot less nervous. Andy, the director, asked me to have a chat and see if you feel comfortable with it. I’ll take care of Gina and I’m great with kids. If you like, we’ll stay right behind the camera so you can see us.’
My eyes are still fixed on my son. If I don’t agree to this, he’ll be out there alone. He’ll be facing those questions by himself. But if I go with him, I can protect him.
‘It’d be great if you could keep Gina where I can see her.’
‘Absolutely.’
And with that, Becky leads the way. The director shakes Aiden’s hand and talks very fast at us. Stacey hugs me and crouches to Gina’s height to make her laugh before gushing at Aiden’s bravery. She flicks through a copy of his art book, tells us how everything will happen, and all the while I can’t take anything in. My hair is curled and perfect, but I keep touching it and a stylist has to brush it again. I’m told to stop touching it. Stacey has clips in her hair that are taken out and another spritz of hairspray goes on.
I stand as close to Aiden as I dare, hearing the sound of his heavy breathing.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ I remind him. ‘It’s only a TV show. If you want to leave, we can.’
‘I’m fine, Mum.’
‘You control this,’ I remind him. ‘You tell them to stop at any moment. Look at me, Aiden. Listen to me.’
He turns.
‘You control this. You can stop it.’
He nods his head, slowly.
I want more from him, but at least I know he’s listening.
I take a deep breath for myself and we step out on the stage. There’s a swell of applause for us both, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Gina placing both hands over her ears, tears in her eyes. Make this be over.
‘What an incredibly warm welcome for my guests today,’ Stacey says, a glossy mouth moving in exaggerated motions. It feels as though her bright white teeth are constantly showing, even when she isn’t speaking. It reminds me of Amy Perry when she appeared on television, soaking up her fifteen minutes of fame, her teeth bleached, her hair highlighted. ‘Aiden and Emma Price, I don’t even know where to start. You’re both so strong and inspirational. The pain you’ve suffered. I mean, for you Emma, you thought that Aiden had died. You grieved for him. You even registered his death. What was it like when he came back?’
The lights are hot on my face and the chair is hard against my back. I don’t know what to do with my legs, whether to cross or uncross. My heart beats so loudly that I barely hear her question.
‘It didn’t feel real at first,’ I manage to force out of my lips. ‘I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I thought they’d made some sort of mistake, matched the wrong set of DNA or something. And then I walked into the room and I saw him and knew that he was my son.’
‘It was that instantaneous?’ she asks, raising her eyebrows in faux shock.
‘Yes.’
‘Mummy!’ Gina’s voice cuts through the brief gap in conversation. The audience laughs and awws.
‘Oh, that’s your adorable daughter right there,’ Stacey, the ultimate pro, waves towards Gina. ‘Born the night Aiden took you to the bunker.’
‘That’s right –’
‘Mummy, I’m hungry!’
The audience laughs again but it’s getting awkward now. ‘We won’t be long, Ginny.’
‘I’ll take her to the canteen,’ Becky says.
This time, even though I hate it, I agree, and Gina happily places her hand in Becky’s. They toddle off together, the dragon toy tucked into her armpit, and I find myself forced back to Stacey and her questions.
‘Talking about resilience,’ Stacey says, jumping straight back in, ‘Aiden, you’ve managed to turn your horrifying experience into a positive one through art. Tell me a bit about how you’ve managed to do that.’
Aiden swallows and his body tenses. It always takes him a moment to speak.
‘My art is . . . a . . . personal experience,’ he says, tripping over his words. His teeth gritted. ‘It’s my way of expressing . . .’ He lifts his hands as though trying to find the words. ‘Everything.’
Stacey nods along. ‘Do you think that’s the result of you losing your voice after your escape?’
‘Yes,’ he replies.
‘What was it like for you, Emma, when Aiden couldn’t speak to you?’
‘I just wanted to hear his voice. More than anything, I wanted him to tell me what he was thinking.’
‘It was a hard time for you?’ she prompts.
‘Yes, it was. But I was still so happy to have him home.’
Stacey opens her arms in a manner that reminds me of Oprah. ‘It was a miracle.’ The word draws a murmur from the audience. ‘But it was still emotionally tough for you. You were married to a controlling man, heavily pregnant with your second child –’
A high-pitched wail cuts Stacey’s question. Her animated expression freezes and she turns to her director. ‘What’s going on, Andy?’
‘It’s the fire alarm,’ he says.
I don’t often grab Aiden, but I do then, taking his hand in mine and holding it tight. There are a few moments of uncertainty. Aiden’s brow furrows as he gazes out towards the audience. They too seem unsure about what they should do, turning their bodies towards the exit, waiting for the instruction to leave. Behind the camera, people rush around speaking into their headsets. Stacey smiles tightly.
‘I’ll see if I can find out what’s going on,’ she says. Her skirt ripples as she stands up and heads over to one of the producers.
Eventually someone announces. ‘There’s smoke. It’s a real fire.’
I pull Aiden up from his chair. ‘We need to find Gina.’
Chapter Six
EMMA
The audience moves at a maddeningly slow pace, politely following the orders from the crew. I decided not to be polite, instead pushing my way through the crowd, keeping Aiden in my grasp. If there’s anything worse for him than being touched, it’s being in a crowded space with bodies pressed up against him. The best thing I can do is get him out of there as quickly as possible.
Once we’re off the set and into a corridor, I see the smoke for myself. There isn’t much of it, but the sight still makes me catch my breath. There’s a real fire here and one of my children is out of sight. Is there anything more terrifying?
I grab one of the make-up artists as she hurries down the corridor. ‘Which way to the canteen?’
‘It’s in the opposite direction to the fire exit,’ she says.
‘I need to find my daughter.’
‘It’s down the hall and on the right. You can’t miss the double doors.’
I quickly nod my thanks and hurry through the steady stream of people. Not everyone is as polite as the studio audience; there are many panicked crew members with walkie-talkies or headsets, either rushing up and down the corridor or shepherding people towards the exit.
Before we reach the double doors, Becky rushes up to me. The first thing I see is the dragon toy in her hands.
‘Where’s Gina?’
The sight of that toy in h
er hands is an ice-cold spear to my heart. Where is Gina?
‘I’m so sorry.’ Becky hands me Walnut. Her face is pale, eyes rimmed red.
I’ve seen this expression before. I remember it well from the day of the flood. The headteacher of Aiden’s school had stood in the entrance of the building waiting for me to arrive just so that she could break the bad news to me.
‘You lost her,’ I say. There’s a rushing sound in my ears, like fast-flowing water. My legs turn to jelly and as a light-headed sensation takes over me, I think I might faint. With one sharp pinch of my thigh I bring myself back, forcing myself to concentrate.
‘I turned away for a second and she slipped away from me. It was just a second . . . I . . . I’ll help you find her.’
We start to move.
‘Where did you last see her?’ I ask.
‘We went to the canteen and I bought her a cookie. We stopped and ate it, but she needed the toilet, so we came back out. Gina was right next to me. I swear it. But I bumped into someone I knew. I stopped, talked to my friend. Gina was right behind me. And then . . .’ Becky stops. ‘We were right here. When I turned around, Gina was gone.’
Aiden nods to the door next to the place where Becky says she last saw Gina. ‘There are some stairs here.’ The door is already open, with people filing out towards the fire exit.
‘Have you been down the stairs?’ I ask.
Becky nods. ‘I went down to the next floor, but the fire alarm went off and everyone started coming out. I decided to come back here to tell you. I did find the dragon, though. On the stairs.’
I want to scream. I want to throw this girl and her headset down the stairs. I shove past her and hurry to the stairwell.
‘Ginny! Ginny!’
The stairs clang and complain from the sheer amount of people clamouring to get out. The crowd of panicked people makes me want to scream in frustration, but I squeeze my way through them, determined to find my daughter. She could be trampled underfoot by this mob. Images of her broken body rush through my mind. A snapped leg. A broken arm. Or worse.
‘Gina!’
Off the stairs now, I run through the corridor on the next floor down, opening doors, scanning rooms, screaming her name until my throat is raw. In the panic I can’t even see Aiden. Did he stay on the floor above?
‘Mum!’ It’s his voice. He’s here.
I spin on my heel to face my son. ‘Have you found her?’
He shakes his head. ‘She might’ve gone outside with everyone else.’
But I don’t think she would. I think she’d get scared and hide somewhere. This is a huge building and the alarm was loud. Any four-year-old would run and hide in a safe place. An empty room, a cupboard, a toilet.
‘Let’s try the next floor down.’
He nods.
I haven’t seen any smoke since we came off set, which gives me hope that the fire wasn’t serious. If the building was ablaze, she could die of smoke inhalation, but we know she isn’t on the floor with the smoke.
‘Where did Becky go?’ I ask as we move through the corridor.
‘I don’t know, I just left her there,’ he says.
‘I never should have let her take her out of the room,’ I say. ‘We never should have come.’
‘We’ll find her,’ Aiden says.
Our search isn’t systematic, it’s frantic, but I can’t control myself. I can’t stop my thoughts from drifting to the past. The rushing sound of the blood in my ears is the gushing of the Ouse. Becky is Amy, a woman willing to give my child away. There could be some other dark presence waiting to hurt my child. Anything could happen to her.
Soon firefighters begin to filter into the building. One catches me on the elbow and tells me to leave via the fire exit.
‘My four-year-old daughter is missing.’ I blurt out her description and he nods, listening attentively.
‘Don’t worry, she can’t have gone far,’ he says. ‘We’ll be working through the entire buildings so we’ll find her, you can be sure about that.’
‘Her name is Gina, but she goes by Ginny too, OK?’ I almost hand over Walnut the Dragon as a promise for him to bring me my child. But I don’t, because he might need both hands to carry her.
‘She’s going to be just fine. The fire was started by a cigarette in a toilet bin, completely extinguished and harmless now. There was barely any damage and she won’t have been hurt.’ He pats me on the arm, but it’s no comfort to me.
When I emerge from the building with Aiden, a silent car park of blank faces watches us. Many from the studio audience. Are some of them Aiden’s strange fans?
I begin appealing to the crowd, asking as many people as I can if they saw her wander off on her own. No one saw her.
‘Actually, I saw a woman carrying a girl about four years old out of the building.’ The man was young, no more than thirty, in a shirt and jeans. ‘I saw her from my office window. It was just after the alarm went off.’
My world narrows. ‘A woman? What did she look like?’
‘I’m not sure, I didn’t see her face. But she had red hair. Slim build. About your height.’
‘The girl she was carrying, did she seem upset?’
‘It was too far away to see,’ he says.
I pull up a photograph of Gina, my hands shaking. ‘Was it her?’
‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Look, I only caught a glimpse so I can’t be completely sure, but the girl in the picture had the same hair colour if that helps.’
‘Which way did she go?’ I ask.
The man points away from the car park, towards the main road.
‘I’ll go, Mum,’ Aiden says. ‘Wait here and see what the firefighters say.’
The hot, mid-morning air forms a clot around me. Every inch of my skin burns and my heart pounds. Am I drowning? Is this drowning? Pulled into the boiling, syrupy air?
‘Maybe you should sit down for a minute.’ A pair of hands lead me to a bench.
I bend my knees automatically, like a wooden mannequin guided into position.
‘Someone has taken her,’ I whisper, more to myself than anyone else.
A voice, calm, female, says, ‘You don’t know that yet. Try to breathe.’
‘I can’t breathe until they’re back,’ I say quietly. ‘Both of them.’
When I close my eyes, I see the gushing river. I see the red coat fished out by a long pole, and the image of my son, six years old, bloated and pale. I see the nightmares I had after Aiden went missing, tendrils of dark hair pooling around a pale face, me in the water, being pulled deeper and deeper down into the depths. I see darkness.
Sweat drips from my nose and the kind woman peels away my suit jacket.
‘There’s crayon on my blouse,’ I say, my words slurring slightly.
‘That’s all right,’ she says. ‘Deep breaths now.’
I’m having a panic attack, I realise. My daughter is missing, and I need to find her, but instead of doing something useful about it, I’m having a panic attack.
‘Has anyone got a bottle of water?’
No, I think. I don’t want the water. It reminds me of the river.
Hands dragging my son out from the current. Holding him close. Taking him to a car.
And then . . .
Amy.
Of course.
The red-haired woman must be Amy Perry, the schoolteacher who gave my son to a monster. The woman who hates me with every ion of her being. She will have dyed her hair, kept her face away from the security cameras in the building. Did she set off the fire alarm to cause enough chaos to snatch a child?
The firefighter makes his way over to the bench, no tiny girl running along next to him, or carried in his arms.
‘We checked every room, Ms Price. We’ve called the police for you.’
No, she won’t be in the building.
I stand up and walk a few steps.
‘Emma. Ms Price. Maybe you shouldn’t . . .’ the kind woman says.
I left i
t too long to chase her and now she’ll be gone. What a fool I was to leave Amy alive. I killed for my family, for my own survival, but I left one threat alive, thinking she was too weak and pathetic to come after us. I remember her trembling beneath the knife I held to her throat, the high pitch of her voice when she confessed her part in Aiden’s kidnapping.
I take my phone out of my bag and scroll through my contacts.
Stevenson answers after three rings.
‘What can I do for you, Emma?’
‘My daughter is missing. Someone took her.’
‘What?’
‘I’m at the Studioworks in White City. I . . . I’m in London. Amy Perry took my daughter.’
‘Amy Perry? Hold on, Emma. What’s going on? You’re in London?’
‘You need to come. Help me find her. You owe me this.’
‘OK. I will. Have you called the police there?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m on my way, Emma. Give me a few hours.’
As I’m hanging up, Aiden is walking towards me, his shirt drenched in sweat and clinging to his torso. He’s been running all this time, and my boy has a weak body. He doesn’t have the sunglasses he needs for a bright day like today. He should have them. Did I forget to pack them? He leans forward and puts his hands on his knees, body convulsing with breathlessness.
He’s alone.
Chapter Seven
EMMA
The sunlight through the blinds casts stripes against the walls. On the desk are a number of stacked documents. The door is open and people come in and out. I feel eyes on me at all times, recording my reactions.
I’m in a building full of reporters and TV personalities. All of them want to see me react to this big news. An alert from the BBC app has already gone to thousands, if not millions, of phones with details about the investigation. A description of the red-haired woman carrying my daughter away. Mine and Aiden’s names along with our background as the boy from the bunker and his mother. It happened at eleven am at BBC Studioworks, it says, a place and time I’ll never forget. It sinks down deep, the realisation. My daughter is missing.
The local police are canvassing the area. Someone is pulling the security footage from the building. I’m being force-fed water and tea. Aiden paces the room. I tell them not to shut the door, he doesn’t like it. Every now and then, I realise I’m either wringing or scratching my hands.
Stolen Girl Page 4
