Now You See Her

by Heidi Perks

‘Surprisingly, yes. We were both raised by our mums. We lost father figures in our lives from an early age. There was an understanding between us, because of that, that not everyone gets.’

  DI Lowry looks at me quizzically, but I won’t go into it. Instead I say, ‘It just meant we had something in common. Something we could talk about,’ I add, even though I was never the one to talk.

  I tell him more about our friendship, the hours we spent chatting on the bench in the park.

  ‘Your friendship sounds a little –’ DI Lowry waves a hand in the air as he searches for the right word ‘– one-sided.’

  I look up at him.

  ‘Don’t you think?’ he says, tapping his pen lightly against the desk.

  ‘One-sided? No, I think she wanted it too.’

  ‘Absolutely, Harriet. I meant it seems like she needed you a lot more than you did her.’

  I smile thinly because he could not have been more wrong.

  ‘Or maybe I have the wrong impression, but it sounds like you were there for Charlotte a lot more than she was for you.’

  That might be true, but only because I made it that way.

  ‘Do you think on some level she knows this now?’ he asks, and his words sound shrill as they ring across the desk. I know what he is getting at but he doesn’t say it outright.

  ‘It wasn’t a matter of either of us needing each other,’ I lie, because surely that was the essence of our friendship.

  ‘But why didn’t you ever share anything with her, Harriet?’ he asks. ‘Were you afraid she wouldn’t believe you?’

  No, that wasn’t it.

  At first I was afraid I didn’t believe myself and then I was afraid I would lose her. But I was also scared of what would happen, how far Brian would go. He had dispensed of Jane easily because I had let him. He had moved our whole life because of Tina, but with Charlotte I couldn’t take the risk because I had Alice to think of too.

  Wednesday 5 October 2016

  ‘Harriet is getting worse,’ Brian told the doctor today. ‘When I came home yesterday I found out she’d locked herself in a cupboard for most of the afternoon.’ He raised his eyes.

  ‘Oh?’ The doctor looked at me from under his bushy eyebrows. I might have mentioned my fear of small spaces once. ‘How did you cope with that, Harriet?’

  ‘The poor thing is claustrophobic,’ Brian said. ‘She can’t even lock toilet doors. We once had to walk up thirteen flights of stairs because she wouldn’t get in the lift.’

  ‘And where was Alice – was she with you?’ the doctor asked me.

  ‘She was there,’ Brian interjected again, shaking his head. ‘The little mite must have been going out of her mind with you in that cupboard. The worrying thing is, Dr Sawyer, I explicitly told my wife yesterday morning not to go anywhere near it because the lock was faulty.’

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘Harriet?’ the doctor asked.

  What was the point in answering? Brian would only contradict me. I shrugged my shoulders and said I couldn’t remember. But I can. I remember all of it.

  ‘I think my wife needs some more tablets,’ Brian said. Still I didn’t bother saying anything. It’s easier to go along with him. If I do that he has nothing to argue with me about. I would take the bloody tablets and flush them down the loo.

  The day before

  I woke with a burst of relief when I realised Brian had left the house without waking me because I could start my day without having to look at my husband. Never mind it was raining heavily outside. Alice and I would stay in and watch TV and play games.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked Alice when I found her in the living room with the plastic boxes upturned and her toys scattered over the floor. I would need to tidy them before Brian came home.

  ‘The game with rockets,’ she said.

  ‘I know the one. With the aliens and the spaceships?’ I crouched down next to her and together we looked through her toys but she was right. Neither the rocket game, nor any of her other board games, were there. ‘That’s odd,’ I said. ‘Did we move them somewhere?’

  ‘No.’ Alice shook her head.

  ‘No, I don’t think we did. Didn’t we play with it yesterday?’ I asked, now in the habit of checking everything with her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said and then laughed. ‘I won five times!’

  ‘Oh my goodness, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. And we put it back in here, didn’t we?’ I tapped one of the plastic crates.

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded again.

  ‘Then that’s very odd.’ I stood up. ‘The only place I can think of is the downstairs cupboard. Hold on a minute. Mummy will go and have a look.’

  I rarely use the downstairs cupboard, but it’s the only other place to store anything in this small house. I held the door open with my foot and pulled the light cord but the light didn’t come on. ‘Damn,’ I muttered under my breath, knowing the box of spare bulbs was at the back of the cupboard. I squinted in the darkness and could just about make out a stack of board games shoved on to a shelf at the far end. Edging closer, my heel still against the door, I leant in to grab the rocket game but couldn’t quite reach. I shuffled a little more, and as I touched the box my foot slipped and I fell forward, just as the door slammed shut behind me.

  I screamed out in the pitch-black. But with one hand on the game I straightened up and felt my way back to the door. It wouldn’t open. I shoved at it, pushing as hard as I could, but the door remained jammed. My heart hammered inside me as I shoved and shoved, banging on the door, though what use was that when it was only Alice and me in the house?

  ‘Mummy!’ I heard a whimper the other side of the door. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Alice, darling! Silly Mummy is stuck inside the cupboard.’ I tried my best to keep the fear from my words but I was scared stiff. ‘Can you try and pull the door from the outside?’

  I felt the door give a little as she pulled but still it didn’t open. ‘Turn the handle,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Oh Alice, don’t cry. Mummy will be fine; we just need to find a way out. OK, stand back,’ I told her. ‘Are you away from the door?’

  ‘Yes,’ she squeaked.

  I shoved against it with everything I had but still it wouldn’t move.

  ‘OK. Alice, what I’m going to ask you to do is a really big thing. Do you think you can go into the back garden and climb on to your big flowerpot? Lean over the fence to Mr Potter’s house and call for help.’

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘I’m too scared.’

  ‘I know but you need to. OK? You have to do this for me. Please be a big, brave girl and go and see if you can get his attention.’

  Mr Potter climbed over the fence to get into our back garden, and came into the house with Alice. When he tugged and twisted the handle and eventually got me out of the cupboard, I sank into his chest and sobbed, pulling Alice towards me too.

  ‘How long were you in there for?’ he asked.

  ‘It felt like hours.’

  ‘Well, the lock’s jammed somehow.’ He gave it another tug and the whole thing came off in his hand. ‘Lucky that didn’t happen a minute ago; you might have been in there a lot longer.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said.

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘While you’re here, do you think you can wait while I get the spare light bulbs – that one must have blown already,’ I said.

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said, nodding up at the ceiling. ‘There isn’t even one in there.’

  ‘That can’t be! I changed it just a few days ago.’ I shook my head, though of course realisation was dawning on me.

  BEFORE

  Harriet

  It was around six months before that fete that I understood how deeply Brian had me under his control, but by then I also knew there was little I could do about it. Not if I wanted any chance of keeping Alice.

  One morning last autumn I took Alice to the park in Ch
iddenford in a haze of despair. He had fooled everyone. Mostly me, but he’d managed to drag everyone else into his version of reality too. What chance did I stand against him? The crazy wife who put their child in danger. Who would believe me if I told them my truth?

  Charlotte was already at the park and I slipped on to the bench alongside her, watching Evie run around with a bubble wand clutched in her tiny hand. Alice stood by my side, hesitant to join in until she was ready. Charlotte babbled on about her sister’s wedding and, as I often did, I lost myself in the wonderful mundanity of her problems until she said, ‘There’s still no news of that little boy, Mason.’

  ‘I know. The parents must feel awful. You just can’t imagine what they’re going through, can you?’ I shuddered and both our eyes followed Evie a little closer as she ran around the park. ‘I haven’t read much about it,’ I admitted. Even though his disappearance was headline news, every time I thought of the little boy vanishing I felt sick.

  ‘Hmm. I know this is a dreadful thing to say, but do you think the parents are involved?’

  ‘No. Not at all,’ I gasped. ‘Why, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think so but that’s what some people are saying. I read this article online listing all these weird reasons the case doesn’t stack up and it makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No. I don’t think it’s them,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe for one minute it is.’

  Charlotte sighed. ‘No, I don’t either,’ she agreed. ‘But isn’t it awful that it gets so twisted by the media? His family’s lives have been invaded. They can’t do anything without the world watching them; it must be so hard.’ She fiddled with a scarf that lay across her lap. ‘But then I suppose if they do have anything to hide they won’t be able to for long.’

  That night I read everything I could about the Mason Harbridge case – the boy who vanished out of sight from a park. It was an interesting thought: how someone can disappear completely. And Charlotte was right: the eyes of the world are on those left behind. Mason’s parents couldn’t put a foot out of place without someone picking up on it.

  If they stripped back the walls that Brian had so skilfully built around us, what would they see? How long could he deceive everyone? Press poking into our lives, police trawling our house: living with us, watching every moment, hearing every lie that came out of his mouth.

  All I needed was for everyone to see what I saw. Then Alice and I could escape him. And Alice wouldn’t have to disappear for long. Just until the world recognised the monster I lived with.

  After all, how clever is Brian, really?

  Charlotte’s throwaway comment about the Harbridge family never left me and a few weeks after, in late November, I first saw a chance of turning the idea into reality.

  I was cleaning the house one rainy Monday morning when the doorbell rang. I smiled at Alice who was painting at the kitchen table and, with a duster in one hand, answered the door to find a man standing on my doorstep. He looked as shocked as I must have done when he saw me, and with one hand gripped on to the doorframe he leaned slightly forward as if he were about to speak.

  My eyes skimmed over his face. I shook my head nervously, took a step back. I didn’t recognise all of him, but his large green eyes were so familiar.

  ‘Harriet,’ he eventually said. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘No,’ I muttered, still shaking my head. ‘It can’t be you.’ I looked up and down the road but there was no one around, then back to him as he awkwardly scuffed his feet.

  He dropped his gaze to the ground, leaving me to stare at the patch where his white hair was thinning.

  ‘What—’ I said in a low breath. There were too many questions running through my mind. What are you doing here? Is there bad news? How did you find me? Are you really who I think you are?

  ‘Do you think I could, erm, come in?’

  I shook my head again. I couldn’t let him in. What would I tell Alice?

  ‘I don’t need to stay long. I would just like the chance to talk to you.’

  I eventually opened the door wider and directed him through to the kitchen, telling Alice that if she watched TV in the living room we could make a cake that afternoon.

  She didn’t need telling twice and, as soon as Alice was out of the room, I gestured for the man to sit down while I stood against the kitchen sink and said, ‘Everyone thinks you’re dead.’

  ‘You didn’t believe I’d died, then?’ My father, Les, played with his hands, twisting a wedding band around and around. I watched those hands closely, trying to remember them picking me up as a child or playing a game with me, but nothing came to mind.

  ‘No, I knew the truth,’ I said quietly. What I did remember was the first time I heard my mum tell someone in a shop that my father was dead. I’d looked at her in shock, wondering when it could have happened, but Mum gave a small shake of her head and even at such a young age I quickly understood she wasn’t telling the truth. It was another of her fabrications.

  ‘So Daddy’s not dead?’ I asked her later when we were on our own.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Mum said, flapping about a large sheet that she was desperately trying to fold. In the end she rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into the airing cupboard. ‘But he is gone and it will be a lot easier for Mummy if we tell people he is.’

  I hadn’t liked the sound of it, but I went along with her because she was my mum. There was no one else I could turn to, to ask if what we were doing was right. It certainly didn’t feel it, but I absorbed her lie and at some point over the years it became easier telling people he’d died than facing up to the fact my mother had deliberately created such a dreadful story. By the time I met Brian I didn’t even consider another version.

  As I grew older I understood Mum well enough to know she wouldn’t have coped with the looks of pity, neighbours talking behind her back, asking questions and wondering what it was that finally drove my father away. Or maybe what took him so long. I don’t know if Mum blamed herself for his departure – outwardly she blamed him – but she would have assumed everyone else thought it was her fault.

  All I was left with was a memory of him from an old crumpled photograph. Our faces pressed together with wide smiles as he held me in his arms, both sharing an ice cream with a flake stuck out of the top.

  Now I searched his face for the features I recalled. They were there, but hidden under skin that puffed in layers on his cheeks. The bright-green eyes were watery now and drooped under his white eyebrows. The years had taken away the one picture I had in my head and replaced it with this old man who looked so lost and out of place in my kitchen. Years I would never get back, I thought, as I turned away from him sharply and fussed with the kettle, filling it with water so my face didn’t betray me.

  His sudden appearance had brought a rush of unexpected emotion that I hadn’t even realised I’d been ignoring. Had I actually missed him? ‘How did you find me?’ I asked eventually. Not why? I didn’t know if I was ready to hear the answer to that yet.

  ‘I found you on that Facebook first, about a year ago.’ He had a gentle lull to his voice. ‘You were there under your maiden name and it said you worked at St Mary’s School in Chiddenford.’ I had set up a page once to keep updated on school news when I worked there but had never added a post or even bothered updating my details when I left.

  ‘Bit of a funny story after that,’ he went on. ‘I have a cousin who lives down here. He knows the area well, told me where the village was.’ He paused.

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted.

  ‘One day I thought I’d come down and have a look around. I didn’t really think I had any chance of seeing you but I happened to be walking past a park just round the corner from the school and—’ He paused. ‘I recognised you straight away. I never forgot your face. You had your little girl with you. She looks just like you,’ he said, glancing up at me and smiling. ‘The image of you back then.’

  ‘So you saw me and then what?’ I said harshly.


  ‘Then I followed you,’ he said, dropping his eyes to the table.

  ‘You followed me?’

  ‘I know, I know, it was an awful thing to do, I just – well, I should have come and talked to you but I didn’t have the courage,’ he said. ‘I dithered for ages until you got up and started walking away and I didn’t want to blow it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say and—’ He laughed. ‘Now I’m here I fear I’m still not doing a very good job.’

  I dipped a teabag into the cup and poured in a splash of milk, then turned back to him. My dad fidgeted uncomfortably at the table. Had he come to tell me he was dying? I wondered. Would that matter to me?

  ‘It’s a shock for you, I know that,’ he said. ‘Seeing me on your doorstep.’

  ‘I think there was a part of me that always imagined it might happen one day.’

  ‘I hope I haven’t upset you?’ He looked up at me with a glimmer of expectation as he tried to meet my gaze but he couldn’t hold it for long.

  ‘I’m more intrigued than anything,’ I said flatly, trying to sound distant. Often I had looked at Brian and thought children are better off without their fathers, but mine had never given me the chance to find out.

  I handed him the tea and he wrapped his large hands around the mug, pulling it towards him and studying the ripples of liquid inside. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.

  ‘What are you actually sorry for?’ I asked him, my back pressed firmly against the sink as I clutched my own mug tightly. A sudden desperate need to hear his apology surprised me.

  ‘For the way it happened,’ he said. ‘For not seeing you again.’

  ‘I don’t really know what happened,’ I admitted, watching him, wondering what it would have been like to have had a father around. If my life would have taken a different path and whether I’d have wanted it to anyway. The quiet hum of CBeebies filtered through the wall and I knew that no, despite it all, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. ‘Obviously Mum told me her version.’

  ‘It didn’t happen quickly,’ he said. ‘It was never a light decision for me. When I first met your mum she was a beautiful young woman.’ His eyes sparkled at the memory. ‘Full of energy and plans and I fell for her head over heels. We didn’t have much money but we were happy for a long time. Over the years I began noticing she had a lot of demons bothering her, troubles I wasn’t very good at handling. She worried about everything. Hated me leaving the house, convinced I wasn’t coming back. Every night she made me get out of bed at least three times to check the locks. Always on at me over some concern about something or other. I started drinking a lot.’ My father paused and nodded. ‘My way of blocking it out. One day I realised I wasn’t living any more, I was surviving, and I didn’t want to do it any longer.’