by Heidi Perks
‘Of course you can’t, no one expects you to.’
‘Do you think she wasn’t watching the children properly?’
‘I’m sure she was,’ Angela said. ‘But she could never have expected something this awful to happen.’
Harriet rolled over on her bed. She hated to think that Charlotte hadn’t been looking after her daughter, yet none of that really mattered any more. Nothing but Alice’s safety mattered.
‘Brian said something earlier,’ Angela said. ‘Something about this not being the first child she’s lost.’
Harriet inhaled a deep breath and shook her head as she nestled into the pillow. ‘It was nothing like that,’ she said and, despite everything else she was feeling, Harriet was still ashamed that she had betrayed Charlotte by telling Brian.
How she wished she hadn’t listened to Brian about Charlotte coming to the house. It wasn’t a good idea like he’d insisted it would be. If he did it again she would have to refuse. There was no way she could bring herself to see or speak to Charlotte.
Angela eventually left and, when Brian came up to the bedroom, he found Harriet lying in semi-darkness. The only light that filtered into the room was from the moon, slicing through the small gaps in the blinds. Harriet preferred it that way. Suddenly the ceiling light flooded the room with its harsh white bulb as Brian flicked it on and slumped on to the edge of the bed.
Neither of them spoke until he got back up and paced to the window where he peered through the slatted blinds on to the street below. ‘The journalists are still outside,’ he said. ‘Is there nothing I can do to get rid of them?’
Harriet didn’t answer.
‘There are two of them hanging about outside our wall. What the hell do they think they’re going to get doing that? She told them we had nothing to say. They just want to look at us, like we’re animals.’
Harriet buried herself deeper into the covers, hoping he would either turn off the light and get into bed or preferably go back downstairs. She didn’t want to talk.
Brian remained a while longer and then let the slats ping back, running a hand through his hair that now sprang out wildly from his scalp. Then he strode out of the bedroom, leaving the light on, and went into the bathroom. Every sound he made echoed harshly through the walls. Harriet held her hands over her ears but could still hear the splash of him urinating into the toilet, the toilet flushing, taps being turned on, water violently splattering into the basin.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about the course?’ Brian reappeared in the doorway.
Harriet held her breath until her throat burned. She didn’t want to have this conversation. ‘I thought I had.’
‘You definitely didn’t. I would have remembered something like that. Why a bookkeeping course of all things?’
‘So I could do something when Alice starts school,’ she said. If he went on to ask why, she would tell him she knew they could do with the money. She’d seen the red bills hidden in his bedside drawer in the hope she wouldn’t come across them.
‘Did Charlotte put you up to it? Tell you that you needed to earn some extra money?’
‘No. Charlotte never—’
‘Is it because she’s a career woman?’
‘She works two days a week.’
‘But that’s still not a full-time mother,’ he said. ‘And you know that’s what you want to be, my love. She’s trying to do both and be good at it and you know you can’t do that,’ he went on, his voice rising higher. ‘Christ, we both know that now, don’t we?’ he cried.
‘Brian,’ Harriet pleaded. ‘Stop it, please.’ She couldn’t deal with this. Not now. Not tonight. Surely he must see that? ‘The course had nothing to do with Charlotte.’
‘I worry,’ he said evenly. ‘That it’s happening again, Harriet. You – you trust people too easily.’
‘I don’t, Brian,’ she said in no more than a whisper.
‘Just promise me you’ll forget about this bookkeeping idea,’ he said, sinking down on to the bed beside her. ‘You must know how it makes me so uneasy that you’re even considering it.’
‘I’ll forget about it,’ she told him. It’s not like she ever believed it was a real possibility anyway.
‘I care about you,’ he said, shuffling closer to her. ‘You know that, don’t you? You know I’m only thinking of you. After what happened before – well, I just worry we’ll go down that path again.’
Harriet sighed inwardly. How many times would he bring up the same thing?
‘I hate to ask,’ he said, looking at her with angst. ‘But you have been taking your medication lately, haven’t you?’
Harriet pushed herself up and stared at her husband.
‘Oh, Harriet.’ Brian closed his eyes and took a deep breath, carefully trying not to sigh out loud as he exhaled. ‘Your medication. The tablets the doctor gave you two weeks ago. I had a horrible feeling you’d stopped. Please tell me you haven’t?’
‘Brian, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have any medication.’
‘OK, OK,’ he said calmly, holding his hands in the air as if he didn’t want a fight. ‘Don’t worry about it now. I’m sure it’s not important.’
‘Of course it’s not important,’ she said, ‘because there isn’t any medication to take.’
Brian smiled patiently. ‘We don’t have to think about it tonight. It just worried me, that’s all, that you think you’d told me your plans and you clearly hadn’t. But like you say, it doesn’t matter right now, not with everything else going on. We’ll talk about it in the morning.’ He stood up and ran his hands down his shirt. ‘You need to sleep.’ And he walked out of the room, leaving the light on, and down the stairs before she could say any more.
Charlotte
I barely slept and, when I did fall into a confused mess of dreams, I was woken at six a.m. on Sunday morning by a piercing scream. I flung myself out of bed and raced into Molly’s room where, the night before, Tom had laid mattresses on the floor for Jack and Evie to sleep on.
When I’d got home from Harriet’s house I’d looked in on my sleeping children, my heart filled with love and grief.
‘Thank you, Tom,’ I whispered.
‘For what?’
‘I don’t know, just being here. Looking after them.’
‘Of course I’m going to, I’m here for all of you,’ he said. ‘Anyway, they wanted to be together. Evie said she was scared and I found Jack hovering on the landing not knowing what to do with himself, so I told him to go in with the girls. By the way, he could do with some new pyjamas. The ones he’s in are skimming the top of his ankles.’
I didn’t respond like I usually would have. How Tom thought pyjamas were a priority right now was beyond me, but I persuaded myself to let it go.
Evie was still screaming when I crawled onto her mattress first thing on Sunday and pulled her in for a hug. ‘What is it, Evie?’ I whispered. ‘Mummy’s here, what’s happened? Did you have a nasty dream?’
‘A bad man was coming to get me,’ she sobbed. ‘I was scared.’
‘Shhh. There’s no bad man,’ I said, though by then I was certain there was and he’d been metres away from my children.
‘What’s happened to Alice?’ she asked.
I put a finger to my lips and gestured towards her sleeping siblings. Molly stirred and rolled over but didn’t wake. ‘I don’t know, honey, but the policemen are doing everything they can to bring her home.’
‘Will she come back today?’
‘I don’t know, my darling. I don’t know. I hope so.’
‘Did someone take her?’ she asked, solemnly looking up at me with wide eyes. I furiously fought back tears. How I wanted to reassure her that Chiddenford was still a safe place to live and she had nothing to worry about, that her dream was just that, a nightmare she could forget about by the time she’d finished breakfast.
‘I don’t know what happened, but I promise you –’ I inhaled a lungful of air that burned my
chest as it sank through my body ‘– I promise I won’t let anything bad happen to you.’
I had no right to make such promises but I knew I would never take my eyes off my children again. I would never let them run through the trees where I couldn’t see them or play hide and seek in the sand dunes where the grass was so high it devoured them. I would never trust anyone not to be lurking a breath away from me, ready to snatch my babies.
Later that morning I spoke to DCI Hayes who told me what I feared – that there was still no news. I pictured him and his team standing around their whiteboard, rubbing their chins, glancing at each other in the hope there was something they had missed. Surely the child couldn’t have vanished without anyone seeing anything, they must have said. I wondered if they knew more than they were telling me, or were at least suspecting it. There had to be stats about these kinds of things, probabilities to determine what had most likely happened. Did they think Alice was already dead?
But he told me there were still no leads and couldn’t even reassure me they were inching towards finding her.
The day before, Audrey had patiently listened as I clawed at the empty space between last seeing Alice and realising she wasn’t there. I hoped that by dissecting it enough times something would come to me. If Aud went home and told her husband she couldn’t bear to hear any more, then she didn’t let on.
Karen and Gail had both called to see if there was anything they could do. Many friends had texted messages of support, a few asking if there was any news, and even mums from Molly and Jack’s classes who I barely knew had found ways to tell me they were sorry about what had happened.
As much as I needed their support and was initially relieved that I wasn’t being judged, I began to begrudge relaying the story just to feed their curiosities with firsthand details. Each time I closed the door or hung up the phone I felt as if someone had taken away another piece of me.
I’d even had a neighbour loitering on my doorstep, telling me, ‘I couldn’t imagine what I’d do in that situation.’
I tried to remain patient as I nodded along with her.
‘Still, I suppose you have to be thankful it wasn’t your own child.’
I looked at her in disbelief. ‘What?’
‘I mean, it’s awful, obviously, but losing your own child – well isn’t that worse?’
‘No, it’s not worse,’ I cried. ‘How can anything be worse than what’s happened?’
‘Oh no, I don’t mean it isn’t horrendous,’ she blustered. ‘I just think if it was one of yours then …’ she trailed off, looking desperately over my shoulder. ‘Where are your lovely ones anyway?’
‘Thank you for coming by,’ I said. ‘But I really need to get back in.’ I closed the door on her and pressed my back against it, shutting my eyes and silently screaming. I’d thanked her, for God’s sake. What was wrong with me? Was I so afraid of pushing people away that I was letting them eject their unwanted thoughts on to me? Was I scared of what they would say about me if I didn’t?
Audrey came back to the house when I was making breakfast, at a point when we had temporarily fallen into chaotic normality, and when I opened the door I realised how it must have looked.
‘Oh, Aud,’ I blustered. ‘I’m sorry, we were just trying to get breakfast sorted and the kids, well, you know what it’s like.’ I stepped aside to let her in, taking in the view of my hallway. Molly sat crying at the bottom of the stairs while Evie hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, dangling a sodden night nappy in one hand. The TV blared out from the playroom where Jack had turned up the volume to drown out his sisters.
‘It’s how it should be,’ she said as she gave me a hug and carefully folded her cardigan on to the hallway table. ‘I should have brought the boys round to sit with Jack. Anyway, you mustn’t stop their lives going on as normal.’
‘I know but—’
Audrey held up her hand to stop me. ‘I’ll make us both a coffee while you sort out whatever this is about.’
I smiled gratefully. ‘I’ll be through in a minute. Now, Molly, what’s wrong?’ I asked, crouching next to my daughter on the bottom step.
‘Evie kicked me,’ she sobbed.
‘Evie? Is that true?’
‘You forgot this,’ Evie said, hurling the wet nappy across the hallway.
‘Jesus, Evie, will you come and pick that up, please.’
‘Can I have breakfast?’
‘I said come and pick this up, Evie.’ I pointed to the nappy, rising to my feet.
‘I want Shreddies, not toast.’
‘Evie,’ I shouted. ‘Just do as you’re told. And come and tell me why you kicked Molly.’
‘She kicked me first.’
‘I didn’t, Mummy, I promise,’ Molly cried.
‘God!’ I clamped my hands over my ears. ‘Will you stop arguing! What is wrong with you both? Do you really think any of your petty squabbles are important right now?’
Jack glanced over from the sofa in the playroom and then back to the TV. ‘And will you turn down the volume, Jack?’ I shouted. ‘I can’t hear myself think.’
‘Why do you need to?’ Molly asked.
‘What?’
‘Hear yourself think?’
I gripped on to the banister, my hand clenching round it. I knew I should laugh but somehow I couldn’t. ‘Don’t talk back at me, Molly.’
Her bottom lip wobbled and then she flung her hands over her head, dramatically curling herself into a ball and crying.
‘Come and have a coffee,’ Audrey said, appearing in the kitchen doorway. ‘Girls, why don’t you go and sit with your brother and watch some TV? I’ll bring you breakfast in there today.’
‘Really?’ Evie’s eyes shone as she skipped into the playroom and eventually Molly unfurled herself and followed her in.
‘Have you eaten?’ Audrey asked, as we went through to the kitchen. The smell of coffee drifted from the pot. ‘I’m making you toast if you haven’t,’ she said, popping two slices of bread into the toaster.
I shook my head. ‘Thank you, but I’m not hungry.’
‘You have to eat.’
‘I will later.’ I smiled at her gratefully and realised how good it was to have her here again, taking control. How we hadn’t done this enough in the last couple of years, and had drifted apart since Tom and I hadn’t been together. Audrey had been supportive throughout our separation but had always made it clear she thought we should stay together for the children, so I’d stopped confiding in her. Not like I did with Harriet.
We sat on stools at the island in silence. She had folded back the doors to the garden and a soft breeze blew in, the sun shining daggers of light across the stone tiles.
‘So tell me more about last night,’ Audrey asked after a while. I’d called her once Tom had left but only given the briefest details.
‘It was awful.’
She nodded. ‘How were they?’
I sighed, stretching my arms in front of me, my hands wrapped around the mug of coffee Aud had pushed in my direction. ‘Brian more or less took over. He was the one asking all the questions and getting angry.’
‘Really?’ Audrey asked, a teaspoon of sugar hovering over her mug as she looked up at me.
I nodded. ‘It frightened me. I know that’s a daft thing to say given what he’s going through. I suppose I should have expected it.’
‘And Harriet?’
‘Harriet,’ I sighed, taking a sip of my coffee. ‘You put sugar in mine?’
‘I thought you could do with it.’
I frowned but took another sip anyway. ‘Harriet very obviously didn’t want to see me in the first place.’
‘I thought she asked for you to go?’ Audrey said.
‘She did. The detective made a point of telling me she’d changed her mind and wanted me to go over. I don’t know, maybe she changed it again, or possibly just seeing me was too much for her. Whatever it was, she couldn’t bear to look at me.’ I winced at the memory, still raw
with its ability to slice through me as if it were happening now. Audrey sucked in a breath. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I just can’t begin to put myself in her shoes,’ she said softly. ‘The first time she’s ever left that little girl and then the unthinkable happens.’
‘I know. And I was always encouraging her to let me have Alice.’
‘She must be thinking she was right to be so bloody paranoid all along.’
‘Aud, she wasn’t paranoid.’
‘Oh, she was. The poor woman is plagued by worries. She makes me nervous just talking to her.’
‘She was never that bad,’ I sighed. ‘You just didn’t know her, didn’t want to know her.’
I could feel Aud staring at me but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. ‘I never disliked Harriet,’ she said. ‘You know that. I just wondered why you two got so close. She’s very different to us.’
I wouldn’t get into this now. How Harriet genuinely wanted what was right for me and I could tell her anything. How she never judged me. But right now it was Audrey I needed, and I was so very grateful she was here.
‘Harriet might not know it, but she’ll want to see you again.’
‘No.’ I gave a short laugh as I shook my head. ‘I’m the last person she needs and I can’t blame her.’
‘Charlotte.’ Audrey leaned across the worktop. ‘You can’t give up trying. Tell me honestly who you think is going to get her through this?’
I sank my head into my hands. ‘Brian? You could see how much he was trying to protect her.’
‘She’s going to need a friend as well as her husband.’
‘I know,’ I cried. ‘Don’t you think I realise I’m the only friend she has? And that that’s what makes all of this so much worse? The guilt that I have because Harriet left Alice with me,’ I sobbed, placing a hand over my heart. ‘Me,’ I repeated, balling my hand into a fist, this time slamming it hard against my chest. ‘She’d never wanted to leave her before, you’re right, but I was always telling her she should, and I know she has no one else, Aud, but what can I do about it when I’m the one who’s done this to her in the first place?’
