Now You See Her

by Heidi Perks

  ‘Or leave her with Brian and come away with the girls instead?’ Charlotte had persisted.

  She couldn’t see herself doing either so mostly she never let on how she felt because she despised the fact she was like this in the first place. No one would know what it took to leave Alice with Charlotte today. But Charlotte had been thrilled she had asked her so Harriet hadn’t told her there was no one else to ask.

  ‘You have to let them go one day,’ a woman in a shop once said to her. ‘One day they grow their wings and just fly away. Like a butterfly,’ she added, flapping her arms in the air. Harriet resisted the urge to slap them back down.

  Alice would want to fly away one day, just like she had. Her own mum had held on to her too much, so Harriet was well aware how destructive it could be. She’d promised herself not to be like that with her own children and yet here she was. Somewhere along the line she had become the mother she didn’t want to be.

  Harriet should forget the phone and go back into the room and suffer through the rest of the course. It didn’t matter, she told her reflection. It was only another – she checked her watch – two hours at most, and she’d be home at four-thirty p.m. as planned.

  Or she could slip away like that young girl had.

  Harriet tapped her fingers against the basin. She really needed to be able to make simple decisions.

  Charlotte

  As I peered through the mesh window of the Jungle Run, all I saw were screaming children tumbling over each other, barely realising they were stepping on others in their excitement. Alice could be crouching in a corner and most of the kids wouldn’t give her a second glance. I had to go on it myself – I couldn’t rely on Jack to search for her properly.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even. ‘Let’s go and see where Alice has got to.’ I grabbed the girls’ hands and as we ran to the back of the Jungle Run it crossed my mind I wouldn’t have been worried if it were any of my children. They were prone to hiding from me or wandering off. But Alice? I couldn’t imagine her doing either. There was something so fragile about her that wasn’t like any other child I knew. And there was something so unthinkable about losing someone else’s child.

  Five metres from the back of the run was the fence that separated the field from the parkland, and in the distance a line of trees partly hid the golf course beyond. I slipped off my shoes and, holding them in one hand, crawled through the Jungle Run, both girls close at my heels.

  I called Alice’s name as we clambered over ramps and scrambled through tunnels, looking at every child we passed, hoping to see a flash of her red dress.

  ‘Where could she have gone?’ I called out to Jack who was waiting at the end. He shrugged in response as I inelegantly swung a leg over the final slide and pushed myself down, holding my hands out to Evie who was giggling behind me, lost in a bubble of excitement that I had crawled through with her.

  ‘God, this is ridiculous.’ I looked around me, slipping my shoes back on and turning to the children. ‘Did she say anything about wanting to go anywhere else? Did she mention the magician maybe?’ I hadn’t seen her come into the tent but she could have wandered off in the wrong direction and got lost. ‘Surely I would have seen her,’ I murmured to none of them in particular.

  ‘Molly, did you actually see her get on this thing?’ I asked, my voice rising an octave as I gestured behind us at the inflatable.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well …’ She paused. ‘I think she came on after me.’

  ‘But you don’t know for sure?’ I said, trying my hardest not to shout.

  Molly shook her head. I went over to the woman who had taken my money and was now talking to another mum about the cake stall. ‘A little girl came on this with my children,’ I interrupted. ‘About ten minutes ago now, but there’s no sign of her.’

  ‘Oh?’ I doubted she’d noticed which children were getting on and off. She’d barely lifted her head when I’d placed the coins in her outstretched hand. ‘Sorry, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘About this high.’ My hand hovered at the top of Molly’s head. Alice was tall for her age. ‘She’s only four, though; she’s wearing a red dress with a white belt.’

  The woman shook her head as her friend stared at me blankly. ‘No, sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember seeing her. I’ll keep a lookout, though.’

  ‘Oh God.’ I felt sick. This couldn’t be happening.

  ‘What do we do?’ Jack looked at me, biting the edge of his thumbnail as he waited for an answer. He wasn’t worried; why would he be? He assumed I’d sort out the problem and then, when we found Alice, we’d move on to the next activity.

  ‘We start looking for her.’ I took hold of the girls’ hands again. ‘We’ll search the whole field. She has to be here somewhere.’ But my pulse raced a little faster as we started walking, Jack close behind us, weaving through the crowds across the field, back towards the car park. And the more time that passed, the quicker it beat.

  We stopped at every stall, looked under trestle tables, between the long legs of the adults, all of us calling Alice’s name with varying degrees of panic. Past Hook-A-Duck and the football shoot-out, the lines of dads cheering when one of them missed. The tombola, the cake stall again. As we passed each one the grip on my daughters’ hands tightened, my head constantly swivelling round to check Jack was following.

  ‘Have you seen a little girl?’ I stopped just past the cake stall and called out to a mum from Molly’s year who was running the toy stand. My voice was louder than I intended. ‘Blonde hair to here.’ I pointed to just below my shoulder. ‘Red dress.’

  Her expression was grim as she shook her head. ‘Where have you looked?’

  ‘Everywhere,’ I cried out in a tight breath.

  For a moment I couldn’t move. My hands started to tremble; I didn’t realise how tightly I was gripping on to my girls until Molly yelped as she tried to pull away. I needed to do something, but what? Put out an announcement? Call the police? I’d lost track of how long it had been since I’d seen her. Didn’t every second count in these situations?

  ‘Why don’t you see if you can put a tannoy out?’ the mum asked as if reading my thoughts.

  I stared back at her, not knowing how to answer. The truth was I didn’t want to. Because as soon as I did I was admitting this was serious. I was admitting I had lost a child. And someone else’s child at that.

  ‘Charlotte?’ A hand clasped my shoulder and I turned, coming face to face with Audrey.

  ‘Oh God, Aud.’ I dropped the girls’ hands and clamped my own over my mouth. ‘I’ve lost Alice. I can’t find her anywhere.’

  ‘OK,’ she said calmly, automatically looking about. ‘Don’t panic, she’s going to be around somewhere.’

  ‘What do I do? I’ve been round the whole field.’ I needed Audrey to tell me. Needed her to fix it in the no-nonsense way she’s so good at.

  ‘We’ll find someone in charge,’ she said. ‘Maybe they can close down all the exits.’ She looked over towards the car park and I followed her gaze. Streams of cars continued to meander in. The fete was getting busier.

  ‘Who?’ There was no one in charge. I’d not once seen the headmaster, Mr Harrison, with his loudspeaker. He was supposed to be here today; he always attended the fete. But no one was acting as security or even watching the gates to the car park or the perimeters of the field apart from Gail. Alice could have got out in any one of four directions had she wanted to. Is that what she had done at the back of the inflatable? Had she, for whatever reason, climbed over the fence and headed towards the golf course?

  ‘We’ve lost a little girl,’ Audrey called out to anyone who would listen. ‘We need everyone to look for her.’ She turned to me. ‘Maybe we should call the police.’

  I shook my head as a couple of other mums came up to us. ‘Are you OK, Charlotte?’ one asked. ‘Who have you lost?’

>   ‘My friend’s daughter,’ I cried. My hands pressed into the sides of my face, fingers stretching to cover my eyes. ‘Alice. Her name is Alice. She’s only four. Oh God, this isn’t happening.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said as she took hold of my arms and eventually prised my hands away. ‘Everyone can help look. Don’t worry, we’ll find her. How long has it been?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, my heart beating rapidly as I tried to think how long it was since I’d last seen her. ‘Maybe about twenty minutes.’

  ‘Twenty minutes?’ the mum said

  ‘OK,’ Audrey interjected. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  The news of a missing child spread rapidly. A Chinese whisper passed through the crowd, kicking up a burst of activity as everyone looked around them. The threat of danger, an unspoken murmur of excitement that everyone had a role in finding her, no doubt wanting to be the one who could call out that she was hiding beneath their stall.

  I doubted any of them were imagining the worst. Children get lost and it was never long before they were found and the terrified parents gushed their thanks to the person who happened to be the lucky one to come across them.

  In a daze I let Audrey lead us to the edge of the field by the car park, where she had agreed to meet the police.

  I rested my back against the fence, the glare of sunlight pounding down on us. People in front of me were beginning to blur and, as my eyes flickered to refocus, a wave of nausea surged through me.

  ‘Drink some water.’ Audrey pressed a bottle into my hand and I took a large gulp. ‘And for God’s sake move into the shade. You look as if you’re about to faint,’ she said as she nudged me towards a tree. ‘Alice will turn up,’ she went on. ‘She’s just run off and got lost.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’ After all, nothing awful happened in Chiddenford. Not in a sleepy Dorset village. ‘But I just don’t think Alice would run off.’

  ‘All kids do from time to time,’ Aud said. ‘Alice is no different to any other four-year-old.’

  But you don’t know Alice, I thought. Alice is different. Audrey had never taken the time to get to know Alice, most likely because she’d never got a word out of her. She’d never really taken the time to get to know Harriet either.

  ‘I should call Harriet,’ I said as she ushered my children to a patch of grass where they obediently sat down.

  ‘Talk me through what happened again.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened. Alice just vanished. She went round the back of the inflatable and never came off it. What do I tell Harriet?’ I took another sip from the bottle. ‘I can’t tell her I’ve lost her daughter, Aud,’ I cried.

  ‘You need to try and keep calm,’ she said, taking hold of my arms and pulling me round so I was facing her. ‘Breathe slowly. Come on. One, two …’ She started counting slowly and I fell into her rhythm. ‘Alice will be found soon, I know she will, so there’s no point worrying Harriet yet. And besides –’ her gaze drifted over my shoulder ‘– the police are here.’

  Audrey nodded towards the road and I turned to watch the marked car pull up alongside the field next to the entrance to the car park. Two uniformed officers got out and as they walked towards us the graveness of the situation smacked me once more. Now it was official. Alice was missing.

  PC Fielding introduced himself and his female colleague, PC Shaw. They asked if I needed to sit but I shook my head. I just wanted them to get on with what they’d come for.

  ‘Can you tell us what happened, Charlotte?’ PC Fielding asked.

  ‘The children were excited to go on the Jungle Run,’ I told him, pointing to the furthest edge of the field at the large inflatable. ‘Well, not my youngest, Evie, she wanted to go on the slide, but the other three went,’ I said, though I knew Alice hadn’t been excited.

  ‘And you saw all three get on?’

  I shook my head. ‘They ran round the back of it quickly and you can’t actually see the start of the run.’

  ‘So you didn’t go round and check?’ he asked, one eyebrow slightly raised as he peered at me over the thick black rim of his glasses.

  ‘No.’ My breath felt tight. ‘I didn’t check,’ I said. ‘I assumed they had because they were begging to go on it.’

  The policeman nodded and made a note on his pad. I reached my hand to my throat, scratching at the heat that began to prick my skin. ‘Obviously now I wish I had,’ I went on. ‘But I didn’t think I needed to because as far as I knew there was nowhere else for them to go …’ I trailed off. Of course I wished I had now. I wished to God I’d never let them go on it in the first place.

  ‘And what did you do next?’ he asked, nodding to PC Shaw who wandered off and began speaking into her radio.

  ‘I sat down in the shade with my youngest, Evie. She didn’t want to go on the Jungle Run and I had a headache,’ I told him, watching the policewoman and wondering what she was saying and to whom.

  ‘And could you see this Jungle Run from where you were sitting?’

  ‘Yes, I could see the end of it. I had my eye on it the whole time,’ I said, nodding to convey more certainty than I actually felt.

  ‘And did you see them at all after they’d run around the back of it?’

  ‘I – I did,’ I faltered. ‘I saw them coming off and running around again.’

  ‘All of them?’ He looked up from his pad.

  ‘I saw Jack first,’ I told him, remembering my son grinning from ear to ear, because I’d felt a surge of happiness that he was enjoying himself. ‘And then Molly.’ Her mouth had formed a wide O as she fell down the slide, her bunches flying into the air behind her.

  ‘And Alice?’ he asked, with a hint of impatience.

  I paused. I’d thought I’d seen her at the time. Or maybe I just assumed I had. I couldn’t actually remember her dropping down the slide like the others. ‘I thought so,’ I said, then added, ‘I can’t say for sure, though.’

  ‘So when did you notice Alice definitely wasn’t there?’

  ‘When my two came off. They said she wasn’t with them and they couldn’t remember if she got on.’ I looked over at my children, already dreading the moment the police would want to question them.

  ‘What about her shoes?’ This came from PC Shaw who was walking back towards us.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, don’t kids usually take off their shoes to go on inflatables? Were Alice’s still there?’

  ‘Oh.’ I paused and tried to think. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’ I didn’t even notice my own children taking off their shoes or putting them back on again.

  ‘You’d better go and check,’ PC Fielding said and Shaw nodded, walking off briskly in the direction of the inflatable.

  My heart was beating so hard it rang through my ears. I was sure he must be able to hear it too. I looked over at Audrey and the kids, then back at him. Why wasn’t he promising me she’d be found soon instead of asking me more questions? Now they were about Harriet and Brian and he needed me to give him their phone numbers.

  I fumbled through my bag for my phone and pulled it out, scrolling until I found Harriet’s number. There was no point in looking for Brian’s. I’d never had it but I made a pretence of checking anyway.

  I described Alice’s red dress with its white belt and the little birds embroidered onto the top that I’d seen her wear so often. It was getting shorter against her growing legs but it was obviously one of her favourites. I told him she had a plain white T-shirt and white ankle socks and light blue shoes with a Velcro strap. The shoes had tiny stars pinpricked into a pattern on the toes. I was relieved I could so accurately remember what she was wearing.

  I told him Alice was roughly the same height as Molly, with blonde, wavy hair to just below her shoulders. She didn’t have any clips in it and wasn’t wearing a hairband. I scrolled through the photos on my phone to see if I had any of her, but I didn’t, and even though the image of Alice was as clear in my head as if she was standin
g right next to me, I wasn’t sure how well I’d managed to get it across.

  ‘We need to be out there looking,’ I said. ‘She could be anywhere by now.’

  ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be officers already searching,’ PC Fielding said. ‘Where are the parents?’

  ‘Her mum is on a course in a hotel.’ I couldn’t tell him which one. There were a number of small hotels scattered along the coast and I’d never thought to ask Harriet.

  ‘And Dad?’

  ‘Fishing. He goes every Saturday morning.’

  ‘Do you know where?’

  I shook my head. Fishing was as much as I knew.

  ‘OK.’ He beckoned to PC Shaw who was returning across the field. ‘We need to get hold of the parents. Find anything?’

  She shook her head as she reached us. ‘No shoes, and the woman running it says none have been left behind.’

  PC Fielding looked at me blankly. He didn’t have to tell me what he was thinking: the mood was heavy with the sense of my incompetency. ‘So, very possibly she didn’t get on in the first place,’ he said.

  I joined Audrey and my children while PC Shaw tried to call Harriet. I stared at the woman’s back as she paced away from us, straining to hear if the call had connected, imagining my friend on the other end listening to the officer telling her that her daughter was missing.

  ‘You’re shaking,’ Audrey said. ‘Sit down. I’ll go and get you another bottle of water.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, don’t go anywhere.’ A ball of bile lodged in my throat and I desperately didn’t want Audrey to leave me.

  ‘Alice is going to be fine. You know that, don’t you? They’re out there, like the officer told you, and they’re going to find her.’

  ‘Only what if they don’t?’ I cried. ‘What if it’s the same guy who took that little Mason last year? And we don’t find her, and we don’t know what’s happened. Jesus!’ I sobbed, feeling Audrey’s arms grab on to me as my legs buckled. She reached for my elbows and pulled me into her. ‘I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t live with myself if she never comes back.’