The Stolen Child

by Sanjida Kay

  ‘I swear I didn’t touch her. Not like that.’

  I try and look at Jack as if I’ve never seen him before. It’s horrific to imagine that the person you trusted with your child, the man who is your daughter’s teacher, could have abused her – but surely I would have noticed? Wouldn’t there have been a difference in how she acted? She wouldn’t have been so excited about going to Jack’s if she’d been frightened of him. And then I remember the day I found the card from her father. She hadn’t wanted to go to Jack’s then. I’d ignored her.

  ‘What happened?’ Ollie asks. ‘The night she went missing. You said I picked her up.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I said her dad picked her up.’ He’s wringing his hands now. ‘I’m going to lose my job, aren’t I?’

  Ollie explodes, half rising from his seat. ‘Do you think I care about your fucking job? Just tell me where our daughter is!’

  Ben jumps, frightened by the shouting.

  ‘I don’t know. I promise I don’t know.’ Jack pauses. ‘I was in a hurry – I was going climbing in the Lake District with my friend. I didn’t want to get there too late. I didn’t know the way and I didn’t want to put my tent up in the dark. I can’t believe it now. I thought that was important at the time. I wish I could go back to Friday—’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Jack. Who took Evie?’ Ollie yells.

  ‘I don’t know! I thought it was you, but… We were the last people in the building. Everyone else had gone home. The receptionist had given me the keys to lock up. We went into another classroom so we had a view from the front of the school, out onto the road so we could see as soon as you or Zoe arrived. I was sitting at one of the computers, looking up climbing routes, and trying to get hold of my friend to tell him I was going to be late but I couldn’t get through. Evie was standing at the window, watching for you. She shouted, “My daddy’s here!” I saw a car pulling up. Evie was so excited. I thought she must have been really worried about Ben and being left at school like that. She started jumping up and down and she ran over to the door. And then I got through to Stefan, my climbing buddy. I thought I wouldn’t get another chance to speak to him – I’d been trying for so long – so I took it. I took the call and I waved goodbye to Evie. That was the last time I saw her.’

  ‘So you didn’t check? You stayed inside, on the phone, and waved her off?’

  ‘I thought… you know… we were expecting a car to pull up. She said it was her dad. I trusted her.’

  ‘You trusted her? She’s fucking seven. You should have checked.’

  ‘I know. I would give anything—’

  ‘I want to get this straight,’ I interrupt. ‘She said her daddy had come to pick her up and that’s what you told the police – knowing they would assume Ollie took her. But, really, you let her go to a parked car outside the school on her own, without looking to see who was in that car?’

  ‘Yes.’ It’s a whisper. ‘I thought, if I told the truth I’d lose my job. But then the police found those pictures – I’m going to be fired anyway. Evie said it was her daddy. Why would she say that if it wasn’t Ollie waiting outside for her? Even if she was mistaken, wouldn’t she have come back inside when she realized it wasn’t him? When I went to lock up, the car had gone. And so had she.’

  ‘Did you even see the car?’

  I can barely hear him when he replies. ‘No.’

  ‘But I told you—’

  And then I realize that I hadn’t. I never told Jack that Evie had been contacted by her biological father. I never showed him the card or explained about the presents from her ‘real’ father. Jack’s act of negligence is my fault.

  ‘And the pictures?’ asks Ollie. His voice is thick with loathing.

  Jack glances at the chest. ‘It’s full of costumes. I was trying to express the joy of that experience, you know, when a child transforms from being themselves into whatever they’re imagining in their magical world.’

  ‘You c—’

  I put my hand on Ollie’s arm to restrain him.

  ‘The costume,’ I say urgently, ‘the Frozen dress. We think she was wearing it when, when—’ I can’t finish the sentence.

  ‘I loaned it to her,’ he whispers. ‘She loved it so much, I said she could borrow it.’

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I can imagine him giving Evie the dress to stave off one of her monumental tantrums. And Jack wouldn’t have told me because he didn’t think like that, he never thought of things from a parent’s perspective, only the child’s.

  And, if I’m being brutally honest, I don’t believe he was deliberately taking indecent pictures, they’re too artistic; he’s managed to capture that magical moment when a child’s mind spins into a make-believe world. But actually, what Jack did is steal something – a child’s innocence – whilst creating something darker that will resonate with the adults looking at these photos: themes of sexuality and death, the leitmotifs that run through fairy tales, the stories that we tell ourselves about our children.

  Jack starts to cry. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t forgive myself.’

  Ollie is getting to his feet and I think he’s going to punch Jack, but instead he scoops Ben up then bangs the front door open and strides out, cursing under his breath. I glance back at Jack. He’s curled up in a ball on the sofa, hugging himself like a child.

  Ollie drives like a maniac down the narrow streets, a dark mass of fury.

  ‘Stop!’ I say. I want him to slow down before he kills us. ‘We need milk.’

  The shops are all shut and the centre is practically deserted. Ollie pulls up at the bottom of Cowpasture Road, round the corner from the newsagent’s opposite the school, where I bought Ben’s sandwich the other day. I leave the two of them in the car. A couple of the lights aren’t working so parts of the store are in semi-darkness, whilst the rest is incandescent beneath the strip lighting. I hesitate in front of the rack of tired-looking vegetables, cloudy grapes and puckered oranges. We need to do a proper shop so I only buy the things we have to have for breakfast, but I also stick in a cheap bottle of wine, the price tag in neon-pink.

  Jack’s picture is on the front page of several newspapers. ‘Did the teacher do it?’ screams one headline. The Guardian has gone for a different tactic: there’s a map of Ilkley showing the line of the river in relation to Evie’s school. ‘In the case of missing school girl, Evie Morley, an inside source claims the River Wharf will not be dredged because the police have insufficient funds.’ I’m never going to buy another paper in my life. They’re all so full of shit.

  The woman who serves me is Bengali. She has a headscarf pulled so tightly round her face it cuts into the flesh of her cheeks. Her nail varnish is chipped and dark red and she has the faded remnants of henna on her hands. She doesn’t look at me or speak as she rings through my shopping and places my purchases in a blue plastic bag so thin I know it’ll break. I think about my mum; how she would talk to everyone she met. It used to embarrass me as a child; by the time she’d bought her groceries she’d know if the cashier was married or divorced and how many children she had. Now I try to copy her. It’s only polite. But today I don’t have an ounce of energy to engage in small talk. I don’t even thank the woman as I take my change. I stop momentarily at the door, thinking of what Jack has told us. I take a breath – and then I realize where I am.

  I turn back to the woman. She’s talking in a low voice to someone behind her. ‘Excuse me,’ I say as I return to the counter. The other person steps into the shadows and disappears into another room. ‘I was wondering – my daughter is missing. She was taken from the school on Friday. I thought – you’re so close, I mean, you’re practically opposite – you might have CCTV footage? There could be something on it, anything that would help identify the man who took my daughter.’

  She’s looking at me now, her eyes dark and inscrutable. She glances down at the pile of local newspapers on the counter, as if my story is still on the front page.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says
, ‘the police came and they asked us that question already.’

  How stupid of me. Collier told us they were checking all the CCTV footage; of course his team wouldn’t have overlooked such an obvious location. ‘So they didn’t find anything?’

  She shakes her head, not left to right as I would, but a kind of wobbling figure of eight.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again. ‘I hope they find your little girl. When you see her, give her this.’

  She snatches up a Chupa Chups lolly from a stand in front of her and holds it out to me. It’s the kind of sweet Evie loves and only ever gets in party bags because I refuse to buy them for her. I take it from the woman and, for a moment, I’m frozen to the spot, clutching it to my chest.

  The cold bites into my face and seers my throat as I leave the shop and turn the corner into the wind. I put the lolly in my pocket and wipe tears from my cheeks.

  A voice calls, ‘Wait!’

  A young girl is running towards me. I don’t know who she is and I look around, thinking she must mean someone else. She stops near me, breathing heavily. She’s dressed in black. She’s not wearing a coat and she wraps her arms around her chest.

  ‘I’m sorry about my mum,’ she says. ‘She was embarrassed.’

  ‘That’s okay. I understand,’ I say, realizing she must have come from the newsagent’s.

  The girl shakes her head, as if I haven’t got it. ‘The CCTV is broken. It doesn’t ever record anything. The police told her off about it when they came round. She didn’t want to tell you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. The disappointment is crushing. I’d thought I could get Collier to take another look at the footage, now that I know a man who was not my husband did pick our daughter up, right outside the school gates. I’ve got to call him. I get out my phone.

  ‘It’s Anita,’ says the girl.

  I look at her in confusion and then I remember, she served me last time I went into the newsagent’s. It comes back to me now – her severe fringe, the acne, her self-consciousness. In the orange light from the street lamp, her skin looks worse, shadows and scars from her spots spread across her jaw and cheeks. She’s shivering.

  ‘Thanks for telling me. You should go back, you’re cold.’

  She glances behind her as if her mother might be coming to fetch her. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ She’s sullen. I’m about to contradict her when she says, ‘You came into my school one day and gave a talk. About your art? You showed us some of your paintings?’ Her voice rises at the end of her sentences.

  ‘Yes, I remember.’ I spoke to the sixth-formers at Ilkley Grammar earlier in the year. I don’t recall this girl though – but then, why would I? There were over three hundred students listening to me. I’d been petrified with nerves, angry with Jenny for arranging it, and telling me it would only be a handful who were studying for Art A level. I hadn’t expected it to be the whole sodding lot of them.

  ‘You inspired me,’ she says shyly.

  Christ, I think, is that what this is about? She’s found out my daughter has been missing for four days – and she wants to speak to me about a career in art?

  ‘I started taking photos after that.’

  I shift impatiently. My hands are frozen. I should have worn a scarf or brought a hat with me. I need to get back to Ben and Ollie.

  The girl is shaking. She looks behind her again and licks her dry lips. ‘I was taking pictures the day your daughter went missing,’ she says.

  ‘What? What did you see?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Nothing, I didn’t see anything. But you asked for the CCTV footage and we haven’t got it. I just thought – I was taking photos outside on the street, in that little park, near the school. I don’t know. It might be nothing.’

  ‘What might be nothing? If you saw something…’

  ‘I didn’t. But you might see something – it’s probably not helpful at all…’ She thrusts an object at me. I hold out my hand. It’s a memory stick. As soon as I take it from her, she turns and runs back down the road. The street lamps give her twin shadows, splaying out either side of her, and then she turns the corner and disappears.

  I run back to the car so quickly, I’m out of breath. ‘We need to tell Collier. He doesn’t know Jack lied,’ I say.

  Ollie says nothing, driving faster and faster. I shut my eyes and clench my hands in my lap.

  I let Ollie put Ben to bed. I hope it’ll help him calm down. I get out my laptop.

  ‘Look,’ I say, when he comes back downstairs, grey with exhaustion. ‘A girl – Anita – one of the sixth-formers at Ilkley Grammar gave it to me when I went into the newsagent’s. It’s all the photos she took around the school the day Evie went missing.’ They start downloading onto my laptop. There are hundreds. She hasn’t edited or deleted any of them. ‘It might be nothing.’ I echo her words. I can’t get our hopes up.

  Ollie looks over my shoulder. I click on the Information button.

  ‘I can narrow it down to the ones taken around the time Jack said Evie was picked up.’

  I make a folder and drag the pictures taken from 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday into it – just in case there might be something in an earlier photo. There are sixty-three. Ollie pulls up a chair and sits down next to me at the dining-room table. We go through them one by one and then we run them again as a slide show. I’m not sure what we’re looking for. I get distracted by the actual photos themselves. The girl has no talent. They’re snaps, almost random, but taken with a semi-decent camera. I can’t see the point of them. They’re not framed properly; I don’t know what the subject is supposed to be. You could vaguely say they’re street scenes, but since it’s Ilkley, they’re not particularly gritty or urban. There are bare branches and benches, flower beds and litter; people crossing the road, double-yellow lines; a woman on a mobility scooter. If I were being kind, they remind me of the video of a plastic bag dancing in the breeze that kid in American Beauty filmed. I don’t feel kind. I put my head in my hands. They’re worthless. I’d tried not to hope there was something in them, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘There!’ says Ollie, and jabs the space bar.

  The picture shows the railings in front of the school. There’s a car bumper in the bottom right corner of the picture. It’s slightly blurred as if it’s in motion. The photo was taken at four minutes past five. He moves on to the next picture. This one is a closeup of railings and shadows. A cliché. The car isn’t there. I swear. Ollie, more patient and methodical than me, selects the following photo. It’s similar to the first but the framing is different, it’s not so tightly focused, and the car’s in it again. It’s five minutes past five. The car is still blurred. You can’t see what model it is or the driver.

  ‘Can you do anything with it?’ asks Ollie. ‘I don’t know how these things work.’

  I import the picture into Photoshop. I enlarge the part with the car and lighten it. I sharpen it, then save a copy. I take the new copy and sharpen it further. I add some contrast and boost the highlights.

  ‘Look, you can see the numbers on the reg now,’ says Ollie.

  I sharpen and add more contrast until we can make a stab at what they are.

  Ollie writes down two different versions of what the registration could be and snatches up his mobile.

  ‘Are you calling Collier?’

  ‘I will. But I’m going to ring Gill first.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask. We haven’t spoken to Gill since I went to see her on Sunday afternoon. ‘She hates us for not sticking up for Andy.’

  ‘She’ll get over it when she calms down. She knows the score.’ He starts dialling her number. ‘Gill’s bound to have some contacts that could help us – or access to DVLA software herself. I’m sick of the police not telling us anything. Can you see who the driver is?’

  I shake my head. All the sharpening and boosting of the contrast has been good for the hard-edged numerals but it doesn’t work for the driver. What was a blur is now
an abstract pattern of light and dark, not even recognizable as a human face. I revert to the original photo and make a new copy. This time I work on the section of the car where the driver is. This is much finer work and it’s frustrating, because whatever I do doesn’t seem to help make him identifiable. After Ollie speaks to Gill he hangs up and comes over. I’ve enlarged the picture so much, it’s become abstract. I turn it black and white. Are those eyes or is it a shadow? There are reflections on the car windscreen and the more I work on giving clarity to the man’s feature’s, the clearer the reflection becomes – which obscures him even further. I sigh. Ollie steps back.

  ‘Zoom back out.’

  I do. I reframe the picture so what we can see of the car fills the entire screen of my laptop. I lean back in my chair as Ollie grasps my shoulders and bends forwards.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he says.

  I swallow and my heart clenches so hard it’s painful. We don’t have proof that this is the car our daughter was in. All we can say for sure is that this photo was taken around the time that Jack says Evie left him to run to a car, which pulled up in front of the school gates. Now that the photo is a better size, it’s clearer, less abstract. Sometimes you have such a fixed idea in your mind of what you’re looking for that you can’t see the real thing – even when it’s right in front of you.

  But I can see it now.

  ‘A woman,’ says Ollie.

  The figure in the car is dressed in dark flowing clothes that shroud her body. She has a scarf bound tightly around her head and across her face. A niqat. Only her eyes are visible.

  ‘Evie’s mother,’ I say.

  We sit in stunned silence.

  ‘But why would Evie go to a woman?’ Ollie says. ‘The cards were from a man – they were all signed “Daddy”.’

  ‘He could be in the car. Whatever the signal was that was mentioned in the last card, Evie must have recognized it. We can’t see the passenger side. Her father could even be in the back seat. It would make sense for him to sit with her, if he wanted to reassure her.’ Or drug her, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. ‘And it makes sense that she – or they – are Muslim. The prayer book,’ I remind him.