by Adam Croft
With independence, though, comes responsibility. I’m not foolish enough to think that I’m the most responsible person in the world. I forget things. I’m serially late. I do things in the wrong order. I get my priorities muddled. But no-one’s perfect. Tasha’s the organised one in our relationship, and that’s fine. A relationship with two Tashas in it sure as hell wouldn’t work.
This is why I don’t like getting up early. My brain’s always too active and I end up thinking things like this. I sigh deeply, rest my head back against the sofa and close my eyes.
4
Nick
I jolt awake with a start as Ellie giggles at the TV screen. I’m dazed for a moment, clearly having woken up at the wrong place in my sleep cycle. I blink and look at the clock on the wall. Shit.
What I really don’t need right now is another ear bashing from Tasha or the school about how I have a responsibility to get Ellie to school on time. I already know that, but it doesn’t help. I’m just not good with responsibilities. Never have been.
I rush to try and get Ellie into her uniform. She hates it, and I’m not keen either. The drab grey fabric looks more like something from a Russian Gulag than a state primary school. Having seen the inside of Hillgrove Primary, the two aren’t so different. I remember my days at primary school being full of colour and laughter. Whenever I go inside Ellie’s school, it just depresses me.
She squirms as I try to pull the jumper over her head, the same as she does every single weekday. We always have to go through this stupid routine, which makes it ten times harder for me.
‘No, I’m too hot,’ she yells.
‘Well, if you stop wriggling you won’t be so warm, will you? Now pack it in and put your jumper on.’
It might as well be Groundhog Day, this tedious and energy-sapping routine reminding me that it’s only Monday and there are another four consecutive days of this to come.
I hunt around her room for the various bits she needs for her day at school: PE kit, reading log, her bag of sticks for show-and-tell. The amount of things a five-year-old is asked to take to and from school every day is ridiculous. I’m pretty sure we just used to play in sandpits.
I’m almost buried under the chest of drawers, trying to fish out the missing gym sock, when I hear the doorbell go. I ignore it. Whoever it is can wait. It’ll only be Jehovah’s Witnesses or someone trying to sell me double glazing.
Five minutes later, bag assembled, I slide Ellie’s feet into her school shoes, wiggling and pushing them as I do so. I pick her up and carry her down the stairs to save precious seconds. The post has arrived and is on the mat. Only two bills with red FINAL REMINDER warnings this time, which is an improvement on Saturday. I put them on the hall table and make a mental note to pick them up later and pay them.
I usher Ellie through the door and out onto the driveway. There’s a light mist in the air, but nothing that won’t have cleared within an hour or so. It should be a nice day after that. I might even be able to take my laptop into the garden and get some work done out there. Peace, quiet and some sunshine. Can’t ask for much more.
The car bleeps to let me know it’s unlocked, and I open the rear door, sit Ellie in the child seat and fasten her seat belt. These child seats are ridiculous. They might be safe, but she looks more like an astronaut getting ready to blast off into space than a five-year-old about to do a ten-mile-an-hour car ride to school. The schoolbag’s plonked on the passenger seat and we’re ready to go. Just as I’m about to start up the engine, Ellie starts yelling again.
‘My picture!’
I sigh. I really, really don’t need this. ‘What picture, sweetheart?’ I say, trying to sound as calm and unflustered as possible. I don’t want my frustrations to rub off on her. That usually only gets her even more worked up and things tend to escalate from there.
‘I did a picture of Miss Williams,’ she says, glowering at me in that way she does, knowing she’ll get her own way.
‘Can’t you take it in another day?’ I ask, fingering the key in the ignition barrel, knowing we’re losing precious seconds here and that Miss Williams would far rather Ellie were at school on time than accompanied by a crayon drawing of her.
‘No! I need it!’ she says, clearly agitated. I close my eyes, feeling them sting momentarily. I decide to cut my losses.
‘Right. Stay there. I’ll go and get it,’ I say, taking the key out of the ignition barrel and pocketing it. ‘Where is it?’
‘In the kitchen. Near the toaster.’ The look on her face has changed completely now that she knows she’s got her own way. She knows exactly which buttons to push. I’ve no doubt she’s going to turn out like her mother – absolutely determined to get her own way in every walk of life, no matter what it takes.
I jog up the driveway to the front door, unlock it and skip into the kitchen. Next to the toaster, propped up against the wooden chopping boards, is a piece of A4 paper with a picture of what might possibly be a human being on it. I don’t know. It could also be a dinosaur or a goat. All I know is that my responsible fatherly duty is to say ‘Oooh, that’s a lovely picture!’ whenever she shows me one. Tasha always does a much better job of sounding genuinely impressed than I do. I shake my head, pick the picture up and head back out of the house.
I get back into the car and put the key back in the ignition barrel, holding the picture aloft over my left shoulder as I ask Ellie, ‘Is this the one you meant?’
I get no response.
I turn around in my seat.
The car’s empty.
5
Nick
It’s okay. She’s playing. She’s playing hide-and-seek. That’s all it is.
I tell myself all the lies I can muster as my head darts around on my shoulders, scanning the street for any sign of her. I was only inside for, what, thirty seconds? A minute? She can’t have got far.
I get to the end of the drive and turn left, calling her name as I jog along the pavement. A guy on a ladder cleaning a window a few houses up on the other side of the road turns and looks at me.
‘Have you seen my daughter?’ I shout to him. ‘She was here a minute ago.’
He shakes his head and turns back to his dirty window.
I jog back in the direction of the house, then past it, and keep calling Ellie’s name. There’s nothing.
I’m back up the drive and skirting around the car, looking in the bushes – anywhere I can think of – certain that she can’t have reached the end of the road on her own, so she must still be somewhere around the house.
‘Ellie, this isn’t funny. Come out now,’ I bark, trying to convince myself that she’s somewhere close by and playing a cruel trick on me. Then the realisation of what went through my head a few moments ago hits me.
She can’t have reached the end of the road on her own, so she must still be somewhere around the house.
She can’t have reached the end of the road on her own.
On her own.
If she’s gone, someone has taken her.
* * *
I’m well out of my depth here. I fumble in my trouser pocket and pull out my mobile phone, trying and succeeding the third time to enter my passcode as my hands and fingers tremble.
I hit the green phone icon and my first thought is for what number I should dial. I know I want the police, but should I still dial 999 from a mobile? Isn’t there a different number for mobiles? I can’t remember what it is. Surely 999 will still work. Or should I be dialling the non-emergency number? I can’t remember what that is, either, and as far as I’m concerned this is an emergency. I do the only thing I can and dial 999.
There’s an operator on the end of the line very quickly, and I tell her I want the police. Within a couple of seconds I’m put through, and before I can even think straight I’m babbling garbled words about my daughter having disappeared, someone having taken her and far too much detail about the picture she drew of Miss Williams.
The man on the other end of the p
hone does his best to calm me down with his matter-of-fact questions.
‘How long has she been missing?’ he asks.
I glance at my watch. I don’t know. It feels like hours, weeks, years, but it can only have been minutes at best. I don’t even know what time we got to the car in the first place. Right now, I barely know my own name.
‘I don’t know. Not long. But she’s never done this before. I left her for thirty seconds. I’ve looked. I don’t know.’
I can feel tears breaking.
‘And you say you last saw her outside your house? Have you searched the street and spoken to your neighbours to see if they saw anything?’
‘I looked. And asked the man on the ladder. I can’t find her. She’s nowhere. Please just help me. Please come and find her.’
‘How old is your daughter?’ he asks.
‘Five. She’s meant to be at school,’ I say, my brain switching into organisational – safe – mode. ‘She’s going to be late.’
‘Try not to worry too much,’ he says, trying to sound soothing but instead coming across as patronising. ‘Most children return very quickly. It’s usually just a misunderstanding. Do you have any friends or family around who could help you look?’
‘No, I don’t. Please, please just come and help me. I . . . I think she’s been abducted.’
At the other end of the phone I hear what sounds like either the clicking of a computer mouse or the man’s tongue against the roof of his mouth.
‘Is there someone who would want to abduct your daughter, sir?’
‘I don’t . . . I don’t know. But I’ve looked everywhere. She isn’t here. There’s no way for her to have got in the house. I was there. I’ve checked the front garden and you can’t get into the back from the front. I’ve looked all around the street. She isn’t there!’
‘Okay, sir, try not to panic,’ he says, riling me even more. ‘Could she have reached the end of the street in the time you were apart?’
‘No,’ I say, firmly. ‘No chance. It’s impossible.’
There’s what could only have been a few seconds’ silence, but it seems like hours before he next speaks.
‘What I’m going to do is I’m going to send some local officers out to you. In the meantime, can you knock on your neighbours’ doors and ask them to check their gardens and houses? It’s possible she might have wandered into someone else’s property quite innocently.’
‘I will,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you.’
I have to tell Tasha. I tap her name in my ‘Favourites’ list and the call takes an age to connect.
‘What is it, honey? I’m just about to head into the office,’ she says, without giving me a chance to speak or even saying hello.
‘Ellie’s gone,’ I say.
‘Gone?’
‘Yeah. Gone. I went to get something for her and I came back and she was gone. The police are on their way, but—’
‘What do you mean? She left the house?’
‘No, she was in the car. I went to—’
‘You left her in the car?’ she says, her voice rising in both volume and pitch.
‘For ten seconds. At the most. I just went to grab something. Then I came back and she was gone. I’ve searched everywhere, and the police—’
‘Christ, Nick.’
That’s all she can say. Brilliant.
‘Are you coming home?’ I ask.
‘What choice do I have?’ she says. ‘And I’ve only just got here. You knew I had that meeting with Maxxon today. Why do you always do this to me?’ she says and hangs up the phone.
6
Tasha
Fuck, fuck, fuck. That’s the only thing I can think right now. Everything’s a noisy blur. Part of me is so angry at Nick. All he had to do was get Ellie ready for school and drop her at the gate. Even he could manage that. She’s probably just gone for a wander, I tell myself. She’s probably somewhere inside the house or in the garden, or she’s gone to a friend’s house. Children don’t get kidnapped. Not really. Not from people like us.
Besides which, I imagine Nick hasn’t looked properly. He’ll have done what he usually does and just panicked, unable to deal with even the simplest of situations. And now I’m going to miss the conference and I’m going to miss the Maxxon meeting. I might be able to reschedule the meeting, but the conference is going to go on regardless, whether I’m there or not. It’s always a juggling act, and it’s one I always seem to lose. I sacrificed spending at least a bit of the morning with Ellie in order to make this conference, and now I’m going to miss that, too. She’s growing up without me as it is. I’d love to be able to see her off at the school gate in the morning and be there when she comes out in the afternoon, but if I did that we wouldn’t have a roof over our heads. I’m losing the present by providing for the future.
I slide my train ticket into the slot on the barrier and it throws it straight back out the top, the red light flashing and bleeping at me. I try again and get the same result. I fight my way back through the crowd of people tutting behind me and make my way over to the man on the gate. He looks thoroughly bored and fed up. I know how he feels.
‘My ticket won’t let me through,’ I say, handing it to him.
‘It’s a receipt,’ he says. ‘You need to insert your ticket.’
I clench my teeth. I just want to get home. Now. I look at the ticket. It’s definitely a credit card receipt. I go into my purse again and look for the ticket. I can’t find it. ‘Look, there’s been an emergency,’ I say. ‘My daughter. I’ve got to get back earlier than I planned. I don’t know where my ticket is, but I’ve got the receipt so you can see I’ve bought one.’
‘Sorry,’ the ticket inspector says. ‘That doesn’t tell me anything. Just shows how much you paid.’
‘Exactly. So you can see it’s not for just one journey, can’t you?’
‘Sorry,’ he repeats. ‘I can’t let you through without a valid ticket. You’ll have to buy another one from the ticket office.’
I clench my hand around the receipt, which is now a complete waste, scrunch it up and throw it in the man’s direction. I know instantly he could probably order me to pick it up or have me ejected from the station – or worse – but I think he can see the frustration and desperation on my face as he calmly bends down and picks it up himself.
A few minutes and sixteen pounds later, I’ve got my ticket and I make my way back through the barriers – successfully this time – avoiding making eye contact with the man on the gate.
It seems to take an interminable time for the train to arrive, but the clock tells me it’s only three minutes. I get on and find a seat, most of them littered with half-read newspapers and coffee cups.
The train seems to be on the go-slow. They always are around here, but the one time I want it to be quicker, it’s not happening. If I could get off and run, I would. I glance down at my phone for what must be the twentieth time since I left London. There’s no signal. I keep on at Nick to get our contracts changed and to move on to a provider which actually covers our area of the country properly, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve got a signal at home and at work, but that’s about it. The countryside in between is a no-go area.
I look at my watch. It should be forty minutes or so before I get to my stop, and then I’ve got to walk home. It might be quicker in a cab, but that depends on traffic. It’ll be a complete waste of time anyway. He’ll probably have found her by the time I get back, which will mean waiting for another train back into London and missing the conference altogether. Not to mention the extra expense. I just wish for once in his life he could make himself useful and stop making mine even harder than it already is. I’ll get home, we’ll find her, and my day will be wasted.
It’s not long before I realise this isn’t me getting annoyed at what I anticipate happening; it’s wishful thinking. I want it all to be a complete waste of time. I want it all to be Nick’s fault. I want him to find her before I get home. Because if none of t
hat happens, that means only one thing: it means our baby is gone.
7
Nick
I do as I was told and jog down the street, searching gardens and knocking on doors, trying to rouse my neighbours’ attention. I’m four houses down on our side of the road before anyone answers. I’m now opposite the man on the ladder and he’s looking at me strangely again.
An old lady answers the door. She must be in her nineties.
‘Hi. I live a few doors down and I’m looking for my daughter. I think she might have run into someone else’s garden or house. Have you seen her? A young girl, about this tall,’ I say, holding my hand out to my side.
The woman just looks at me. Considering the number of chains and locks she had to take off the door just to open it a moment ago, I’m guessing there’s no way Ellie’s in here.
‘I’ll just look in your hedges to see if she’s hiding there,’ I say. The woman still says nothing.
I turn and look more closely at her front garden. The grass is overgrown and the ‘hedges’ are mostly weeds and thistles. I move a few clumps aside with my foot and call Ellie’s name, but there’s nothing.
At the next two houses there’s still no answer, but before I can try the next one I hear the sound of a car engine increasing in volume. I look. It’s the police. I jog up the road and wave my arms as they round the corner and pull up alongside me.
‘Are you here for my daughter?’ I ask.
‘Mr Connor, is it?’ the middle-aged uniformed policeman asks as he gets out of the passenger-side door.
