Child Taken: A chilling page-turner you will be unable to put down

by Darren Young

  ‘You could never have known.’

  ‘It’s easy afterwards to think I should have spent more time with her, but hindsight is wonderful, isn’t it? Truth was, we had enough problems in our marriage as it was.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Money. Stuart. Todd always said we shouldn’t have another child. He didn’t think we could handle two. Guess he was right. For once.’

  ‘What did you tell the other reporters?’

  ‘That she knew her mind, that she was bossy, cheeky – you know, the stuff they wanted to hear. She might have been all those things for all I know. Or none.’

  ‘Might have been?’

  ‘When she was little. She’s probably different now.’

  ‘You’re one hundred per cent sure she’s still alive.’

  Sandra blinked as if the question surprised her, as if she had never considered for one second that her daughter was anything else. ‘They didn’t take her to hurt her, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She was very … sweet. People loved her. She had this way about her; you couldn’t do her harm. The person who took her, they’d have loved her too.’

  ‘Why does no one else think that’s what happened?’

  ‘It was easier for them all to think she drowned,’ Sandra said quietly. ‘And, in the end, it just began to upset people when I said she was still alive.’

  ‘Upset?’

  ‘Todd, Stuart, the police. They thought I couldn’t accept it and had invented this story of her being taken as some kind of denial.’

  ‘Todd said that?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but he believed it. Other people just felt sorry for me – sorry that I couldn’t face the truth.’

  ‘That she had gone?’

  ‘That I was a terrible mother,’ said Sandra, a deep frown line stretching across her forehead.

  Laura finished off her glass of water. ‘Why are you sure she couldn’t have gone in the sea?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Stuart was by the water. She’d not have gone near it without him, and he always looked out for her. And there were flags.’

  ‘Flags?’

  ‘Red flags. Danger. The sea was too rough that day and the lifeguards weren’t on duty so I told the kids not to go in the water if the flags were red.’

  Laura made a note on her pad. ‘Could she have ignored you?’

  ‘I was strict,’ said Sandra, shaking her head. ‘Too strict, probably.’

  ‘But why do you think someone would take her?’

  Sandra shrugged. ‘Why does anyone do something like that? They had their reasons. I always wondered how they could live with the guilt afterwards. But they must have thought it was worth it.’

  Laura made more notes. ‘Why are you here? This unit, I mean.’

  ‘I told you. I refused to do what they wanted.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  ‘Face reality. When they called off the search, and then when Todd passed, they said maybe I could find some kind of closure.’

  ‘And you said … ?’

  ‘How can I get closure if she isn’t dead? Then they said I had to consider the facts.’

  ‘Facts? The hat washing up?’

  ‘The hat – the fact that no one had seen her, that the sea was rough that day, that a child could be swept out and their body never wash back up – and the fact that people just don’t walk off with other people’s children.’

  ‘I think people know that’s not fact.’

  ‘They do now, but twenty-odd years ago they said it was.’

  ‘So you fought them?’

  ‘Every day. The social workers they sent to help, they just got pissed off with me. I went through four of them in one year. Then I got so bad, they said I would be better off spending some time in a psychiatric unit.’

  ‘Some time? How long have you been here?’

  Sandra looked as though she was counting in her head. ‘Fifteen and a half years.’

  Laura winced. ‘And you still have hope?’

  ‘Not that I’ll find her,’ Sandra said softly, ‘but I’m never going to give up hoping that she might find me.’

  27 | Laura

  ‘Tell me more about Stuart.’

  Laura felt Sandra’s hostility return and her eyes glistened with anger. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘You lost him soon after your husband, didn’t you?’

  ‘If you know so much, why are you asking?’

  ‘I don’t want to upset you. I just want to understand.’

  Sandra didn’t look at her, but she relaxed in her chair a little. Big raindrops had started to fall, hitting the windows and running down in a haphazard fashion, and Sandra had to peer through the gaps between them to see the beach. The tide was almost out now, leaving brown sand with huge salty puddles in its place. Laura looked where Sandra was watching, the shoreline that stretched way into the distance. On a clear day, Laura thought, she would be able to see the whole beach until it reached the cliffs a mile or so away; she would have a perfect view of it, whereas today, she could only just pick out the sand right below them.

  ‘He was all I had,’ Sandra told her in a quieter, softer voice, the edge removed from it. ‘I’d lost Jess and then Todd.’

  ‘Why did they take him?’

  ‘They said I wasn’t fit enough to take care of him.’

  ‘But you were his mother.’

  ‘They probably thought, she’s lost one already so we can’t trust her.’

  ‘They said that?’

  Sandra looked down.

  ‘They wanted me to get help, proper treatment. So they wanted to put him in care and then see how things went.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘I told them he would be better off if they found him a new family. Permanently.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was for the best.’

  ‘Not for you!’ Laura almost shouted.

  ‘It doesn’t matter about me. Stuart needed a family that could give him the attention he needed. I’d lost a child, and a husband. I was fighting anyone and everyone over Jess and they wanted to put me in here. Where do you think was the best place for him?’

  ‘Was there no family who could have taken him in?’

  Sandra shook her head.

  ‘I read about Todd,’ said Laura. ‘But what really happened?’

  ‘What did you read?’

  ‘That he died. From alcohol poisoning.’

  Sandra laughed. ‘Is that a polite way of saying drank himself to death?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘I think he blamed me half the time and himself the rest. Eventually it was easier to drink a bottle of scotch than face it. And he never talked about it.’

  Sandra continued to look at the window, continually clenching and unclenching her fists, unsettling Laura, but she pressed on with her questions.

  ‘Because he couldn’t or wouldn’t?’

  ‘What’s the difference? I never knew what he was thinking.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘The drowning option was better. More final. If he believed she might still be alive, then he’d feel like he hadn’t done enough to find her. When Jess went, a piece of him went too, I know that. He’d worked too much and spent hardly any time with his kids, and never realised it until she’d gone.’

  Laura nodded and let her continue.

  ‘He drank until the pain went. I think that one day the pain wouldn’t go so he just carried on drinking till it all went away.’

  ‘Did he try to get help?’

  ‘I dragged him to the doctor once and he told him that if he carried on it could end up killing him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think it just gave him ideas.’

  Laura smiled sympathetically and Sandra blinked back a tear.

  ‘So why are you really here?’ Laura surprised herself with the question. It was just in her mind; one of those things you
wanted to say but usually stopped yourself.

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘I mean why are you still here?’

  Sandra seemed irritated. She made a circle with her finger next to her head. ‘I’m crazy, remember? You need to keep up.’

  Laura put her pencil down and glared at Sandra. ‘You’re no crazier than I am.’

  She watched the woman’s face. A half-smile formed, as if she was pleased with herself, although Laura wasn’t sure what for. Maybe for fooling everyone else for so long.

  ‘Even if I wasn’t before, I must be by now.’

  She motioned towards the rest of the room without looking at it. Laura watched Old Tony sitting in the corner watching the television, his hands thankfully nowhere near the waist of his trousers. The nurse was telling Bloody Mary off for climbing on the window yet again.

  ‘You know you don’t belong here, Sandra,’ she said softly

  ‘Is that your qualified medical opinion?’

  ‘I’ve been speaking to you for less than an hour and, qualified or not, I know you shouldn’t be here. It would only take a doctor a few minutes to … ’

  Laura looked at Sandra, who had her head a few inches from the rain-spattered glass with her mouth slightly open. Her hair hadn’t been brushed, probably for several days. In appearance, there wasn’t a great deal of difference between her and Bloody Mary, who had just began to climb on to the windowsill again as soon as the nurse’s back was turned.

  ‘You want to be here. Don’t you?’

  Sandra snorted.

  ‘You want them to think you’re crazy.’

  Sandra didn’t answer.

  ‘You could be looking for her,’ Laura said, almost in a whisper.

  ‘And where would I start? Who would help me? Who would even believe me?’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘I told you on the phone,’ Sandra said sternly, ‘no one wanted to know then and they won’t care now.’

  ‘So you sit here, just watching the beach?’

  ‘No one bothers me. I fit in here.’

  ‘Now that is crazy,’ Laura said a little too loudly causing some of the patients to look over at them. ‘You can’t just give up.’

  Sandra sniffed. ‘What I’d have given for someone like you twenty years ago. But it’s too late now.’

  ‘I thought you were never giving up?’ said Laura.

  ‘I said I won’t give up hope.’

  ‘But wherever she is now, she has no idea she’s Jessica Preston.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’

  ‘So unless you do something, you can watch that beach every day,’ said Laura, ‘but you’ll never find your daughter on it.’

  28 | Danni

  Sam had told Danni that she was welcome to stay as long as she wanted to, so she was packing a bag with enough clothes to last a week. That would be enough time to decide what to do next; she had no intention of imposing on her friend any longer than that.

  She heard her father’s car pull up and the front door open. She had planned to be gone by the time he returned, so to avoid a scene, and then let him know where she was later that evening. But his earlier-than-expected arrival had scuppered her hopes of a quiet exit, so she finished putting her things into her small case.

  There was a quiet, apologetic knock on her door.

  ‘Danni?’

  She told him to come in. Her case was open on the bed and practically full, while a few items were scattered next to it that she still had to find room for.

  Thomas put his head around the door and looked at the bed. ‘Just wanted to check you were OK,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I can see you’re busy. I’ll leave you to it.’

  He closed the door and Danni bit her top lip and cursed under her breath. She pushed the remaining items into the top of the small suitcase, forced it shut with all her strength and took it down the stairs and straight out into her car. Then she went back inside and called through the study door.

  ‘I’m going to Sam’s for a few days.’

  Her father opened the door. ‘Can’t we talk?’

  ‘She’s expecting me and I’m already late,’ she lied.

  ‘When will I see you next?’

  Danni couldn’t remember ever seeing him look so beaten. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow to pick up a couple of things.’

  She gave him a kiss on the cheek and went back to the car, afraid she was doing the wrong thing. They’d done nothing but argue or fight, but she still felt as though she was letting her mother down by walking away.

  The drive took less than two minutes. Sam was waiting at her front door and excitedly grabbed her bag and took her to the spare room, which she had made as cosy as possible, setting up a sofabed, and then they went downstairs and sat half-watching an American police drama on TV, while Sam questioned her about her father’s behaviour and then ordered in a takeaway. After they finished it, they shared washing-up duties and then spent the rest of the evening watching re-runs of old programmes, mostly comedies, at Sam’s insistence, to cheer Danni up.

  The next morning was clear and frosty, and Danni lay under the duvet in her temporary bed listening as first Mrs Newbold got up and left for work, and then, an hour later, Sam. She went back to sleep, and when she woke it was just after ten o’clock and the sun had come out and melted all of the frost.

  She hoped she could time it so that, when she arrived home, her father would be busy in his study or, better still, out altogether, because she didn’t feel like talking yet and she knew he’d want to. But, when she reached the house, not only was her father’s car on the drive but another one too, and she had to leave her own car on the footpath outside.

  In the kitchen, a man with a light grey suit was talking to her father as she walked in; they both stopped and her father made some awkward introductions.

  ‘Danni, this is Mr Graham. This is my daughter, Danni.’

  He didn’t offer any explanation as to who the man was or why he was there, and Danni nodded a curt hello as her father ushered him from the kitchen and into the hallway.

  ‘Well, Mr Edwards,’ Mr Graham said as she walked up to her room, ‘let me know if you decide you want to proceed with the letting.’

  Danni heard her father hurriedly get the man out of the house; she stormed back down the stairs and they collided in the kitchen.

  ‘Seriously?’ she said, glaring into her father’s eyes. ‘Mum’s only been gone a few weeks.’

  ‘Please let me explain.’

  Thomas persuaded her to sit down and filled the kettle with water. ‘I’m just looking at a few options,’ he said, and made them both a cup of tea. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about yesterday.’

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  He put her cup in front of her but she waved it angrily away.

  ‘I just think a smaller place would be better for us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Yes, a fresh start.’

  ‘I don’t want a fresh start! All of our memories of Mum are here.’

  Her father sat opposite and tried to hold her hand but she pulled it away. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But she isn’t. And it’s hard to be reminded of that every day.’

  Danni shook her head with disappointment.

  ‘Besides, this is too big for me.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘I thought you were at Sam’s,’ he said, and she realised her moving out had played right into his hands.

  ‘For a few days! To get some space.’

  ‘For now. But you’ll leave properly one day for a place of your own.’

  ‘You’ve really thought this through.’

  ‘You said I needed to move forward.’

  Danni glared at him again. ‘Or move on completely?’

  ‘Danni.’

  ‘Mum’s been gone a month and you want to go, just like that.’

  ‘I just think it’s for the best,’ he said.

  ‘The best
? Destroying everything you and Mum built together?’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. You know how much she loved this place. I thought you both did.’

  Danni stared into his eyes until he had to look away.

  ‘I’m not selling it.’

  ‘No, just letting strangers trample all over Mum’s memory instead?’

  Her father glared at her now. ‘I can’t win with you, can I?’

  ‘One of us has to remember her.’

  His hands were trembling now, and when he looked at her she felt a chill run down her spine. ‘Don’t you dare question my memory of her.’

  ‘Then stop making me.’ She stood up and he did too. ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Danni.

  He sighed and sat back down. ‘The last thing I want to do is to upset you,’ he said, more softly now, the anger subsiding.

  ‘Funny way of showing it.’

  ‘I’ll put the estate agent off until we’ve talked properly.’

  ‘Don’t bother. It isn’t just the house,’ said Danni. ‘It’s us two. We can’t be in the same room at the moment.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘What, by hiding in your study? Or moving out?’

  ‘It’s been hard,’ he said, and stood up again, picking up his empty cup to put in the dishwasher.

  ‘Too hard to be a dad?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘Is it?’ Danni asked.

  ‘That’s enough!’

  Danni stared at him. All the things she wanted to say were on the tip of her tongue and she knew she wouldn’t get a better opportunity.

  ‘You can’t just shut me up like you did Mum.’

  Her father’s face went bright red and the look in his eyes made Danni uncomfortable; it was one she had never seen before. She took a tiny backward step.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘When she said she wanted to tell me your secret?’

  He looked at her and she stood firm, her heart pounding, and stared into his eyes. It was clear to her that he was uncomfortable but was trying to hide it with confusion. ‘Secret?’

  ‘I heard you!’

  ‘I don’t know what you heard, but—’

  ‘Bullshit!’