Her Last Tomorrow

by Adam Croft

10

  Nick

  I feel completely helpless. There’s no other word for it. I can either blindly walk the streets, as I have done for a good half an hour after speaking to Derek, or I can do as the police told me and wait at home in case Ellie returns.

  When I get back to the house I sit on a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen and rest my head on my arms on the counter. I try to calm my racing mind and think more clearly, trying to remember what I learned from those ‘mindfulness’ websites. The incredible stress of the whole situation has made my skull feel as though it’s been stuffed with cotton wool.

  I want to cry, scream, shout and break things all at the same time. I know I’m going to crack, and very soon, but I don’t know in which way yet. The next thing I hear is the front door closing and Tasha marching through into the kitchen.

  ‘Oh my god, Nick,’ she says, throwing her house keys onto the worktop. ‘The trains were held up, something about a signal failure further up the line. I couldn’t phone on the way back. I tried, but I had no signal and just as it came back my battery died. I was going to charge it up at work, but—’

  She stops speaking as she sees the look on my face. I walk over to her and sob onto her shoulder.

  ‘Where are the police?’ she finally asks as I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

  ‘They’re out looking. They were here a little while ago. Two PCs and a couple of detectives. They wanted to know more about her, what she looked like. I gave them a photo from the living room.’

  ‘What happened? Where could she have gone?’ she asks.

  I shake my head slowly, clenching my eyes shut. If only I could answer that question. I’ve tried to answer it myself a hundred and one times already this morning.

  ‘I don’t know. I put her in the car, belted her up and then she said she’d forgotten something. A picture of Miss Williams. I told her to forget it and we’d take it in tomorrow, but you know what she gets like. I ran back to the house, grabbed the picture, came back out and she was gone.’

  ‘How long were you in there?’ Tasha asks.

  ‘A minute. If that.’

  ‘Oh god, Nick. Why couldn’t you have taken her with you?’

  I feel slightly as if I’m being accused of something. I know there’s no justification for leaving a five-year-old girl on her own, but this still doesn’t seem right.

  ‘It was a minute, Tash. Seconds. We were already late for school and I just wanted to get in and out again. Listen,’ I say, trying to pacify her but also trying to convince myself. ‘The police said she probably isn’t far. She might just be hiding in a neighbour’s garden somewhere, thinking it’s all one big game. You know what kids are like at her age.’ I don’t mention my suspicions, fast becoming assumptions, that she’s been kidnapped.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Nick. How could you be late? You were up at five!’

  I’ve got no response to that.

  We sit in the living room and can barely look at each other.

  ‘We should be doing something,’ Tasha says. ‘We can’t just sit here.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I feel helpless but there’s nothing we can do. We need to wait here in case she comes home.’

  Tasha’s head darts up and she looks at me. ‘What do you mean “in case”?’

  ‘I mean in case she comes back to the house on her own before the police find her,’ I say, trying not to panic her. Tasha under stress is just about the worst kind of Tasha there is. I need to try and keep things calm for all our sakes.

  ‘Was the car locked?’ she asks after a few moments of silence.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was gone for a minute at the most,’ I say, sighing. I look up at the Rosie Ragdoll. I swear it has sadness in its eyes.

  ‘A lot can happen in a minute, Nick. A lot did happen in a minute!’ she replies, her voice growing in volume.

  ‘Look, I know it’s my fault, alright? It was a fucking stupid thing to do. Don’t you think I know that?’ I hope the pleading in my eyes is enough to defuse her anger.

  Before Tasha can say anything else, the doorbell goes. I go to the front door and answer it. It’s McKenna again. I usher her through into the living room, trying to read her face, hoping she has some news.

  ‘Good news first,’ she says, fishing my mobile phone out of her pocket. ‘You can have this back. They’re almost finished with the laptop, too. Another officer will drop that by later.’

  I don’t even need to ask if there was anything of interest on it. I know there wasn’t.

  ‘What about the search?’ Tasha asks.

  ‘Our officers are still out looking,’ McKenna says. ‘There’s no sign yet, but that’s no bad thing. A five-year-old girl can’t get far on her own, like you said, and we got the search started very early so the chances are she hasn’t gone far at all. We’re still working on the assumption that she’s hiding in a neighbour’s garden somewhere. You know what kids are like at hiding. We’ve got officers going door to door along the street, asking your neighbours to check their gardens. But most aren’t home this time of day, and obviously we can’t get into anyone’s back garden without their permission.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tasha asks, her face showing incredulity. ‘Surely if you think she’s hiding in someone’s garden you need to look in all of them.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple,’ McKenna says. ‘We’re doing what we can. For a start, if she is hiding, we don’t want to alarm her by leaping over fences and storming the area. We want her to come out and back home.’

  This seems to have pacified Tasha.

  ‘There are a couple of things I need to check with you, though, Mr Connor. I’ve just been across the road speaking to your neighbour, a Mr Francis?’ McKenna’s intonation rises on the name, indicating that perhaps I should have a clue as to who this Mr Francis is. She sees the lack of recognition on my face and elaborates. ‘At number thirty-nine, directly opposite you.’

  ‘Oh, Derek,’ I say. This is the first time I’ve ever heard his surname.

  ‘His house overlooks yours, so I thought maybe he might have seen something.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I thought,’ I reply. McKenna and Tasha both look at me. ‘I went over to speak to him. When you left earlier. I wondered if he’d seen any strange cars knocking about or anything like that.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Francis did mention that you visited,’ McKenna replies. I try to detect the tone in her voice, but she’s kept it as neutral as possible. ‘He said he didn’t see anything. Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway,’ she says. ‘I presume he told you the same thing?’

  I nod.

  ‘Can you confirm again for me what time you put Ellie in the car, please?’ McKenna asks.

  ‘I’ve already told you this. It was a few minutes before nine.’

  ‘Jesus, Nick,’ Tasha says. Trust her to be more worried about Ellie being a few minutes late for school than the fact that she’s just disappeared off the face of the earth.

  I look at McKenna. ‘We were late. I fell asleep,’ I say, before turning my glance back to Tasha. ‘I’d been up since five.’

  ‘Mr Francis told me he was doing his ironing in his living room, in front of the window, from a quarter to nine until just before quarter past, when we turned up,’ McKenna says. ‘He would’ve had a clear view of your driveway, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I guess so,’ I say.

  McKenna nods, not breaking eye contact with me. ‘Not only did Mr Francis say he didn’t see anyone odd lurking around, nor Ellie walking off. He says he didn’t see you putting Ellie in the car in the first place.’

  I see Tasha’s head spin round towards me out of the corner of my eye.

  ‘What? No, that’s not possible,’ I say, but McKenna continues.

  ‘He says the first sign of life he saw was you leaving the house and jogging down the road a few seconds before we got here in the police car.’

  ‘He’s lying. H
e must have seen. He sees everything! How the hell could he miss that? Have you looked at his record?’ I say, feeling the beads of sweat breaking on my brow. ‘There’s something not right about him. How do you know he hasn’t got her? There are stories about him.’

  ‘Mr Francis said he thought it was a bit odd,’ McKenna continues, ‘because you usually set off for school with Ellie sometime between eight fifty and just gone nine.’

  Tasha looks at me again. I could really do without her judging me over what time I manage to get Ellie to school, seeing as she’s long gone and farting about in London by then.

  McKenna stands and paces about the living room as she speaks. ‘In fact, he says he went over and knocked at your door a bit earlier this morning. The postman delivered one of your letters to him by mistake, apparently, so he brought it over for you. He says you didn’t answer.’

  ‘Well, no. I mean, I heard the doorbell go but I was busy getting Ellie ready for school. It’s not exactly easy doing it on your own,’ I say, darting a look at Tasha.

  ‘I can imagine,’ McKenna says. ‘Must be very stressful indeed, day after day. It must eat away at you over time.’

  I ignore the comment. ‘Anyway, that can’t be right,’ I say. ‘He wouldn’t knock or ring the bell. He never knocks on anyone’s door. He barely ever answers his own. He would’ve just put it through the door or stuck it back in the postbox or left it out for the postman the next day. There’s no way he would’ve come and knocked.’

  ‘I’ve only got your word for that, Mr Connor,’ she says. ‘Just like I’ve only got your word for it that you put Ellie in the car when you said you did and that you were in the house when Mr Francis knocked at the door.’

  ‘Well, you’ve only got Derek’s word for it that I didn’t, haven’t you?’ I say. ‘Since when is his word taken more seriously than mine?’

  McKenna doesn’t respond to this.

  ‘Nick,’ she says, ‘where were you when Ellie went missing?’

  11

  Tasha

  She’s only been gone a few hours but it feels like years. There’s a bizarre disconnect: some things seem to be moving at a million miles an hour while others drag painfully. My head won’t stop spinning. The thoughts are flying through my head as if being fired from a machine gun. The police keep asking questions, confirming things, wanting to know more. What does it matter who her friends are at school? Why do they need to know about extended family? If they’d just get out there and look for her, they’d find her. She can’t have gone far.

  The pain is indescribable. All that time trying, the failed IVF, being told we would probably never have children. I wonder if that makes it even worse now, knowing that she’s missing. We thought it was a miracle when we found out we were pregnant with Ellie. My parents saw her as a gift from God. That’s why they chose Grace as her middle name.

  I have no idea how to even get through the day. I don’t know which way to turn. Even with the police having done their best to be supportive and family and friends rallying round, I still feel completely helpless.

  I’ve always wanted the best for Ellie. What mother wouldn’t? You see all these pushy, interfering mothers – the MumsNet Mums, I call them – who are constantly whingeing on Facebook about their child’s school or the fact that someone looked at their son in a funny way, instead of actually doing something about it. I’ve never wanted to be one of those. I need to show her how much I love her. We had a hell of a fight to try and get her into Hillgrove Primary, having been turned down at first. The local education authority wanted to put her in Bolbroke, which is closer to our house and is where Nick went. He was happy with that, but I didn’t think it was enough for Ellie. It’s my duty as a mother.

  Despite the early starts, I’ve always made the effort to ensure that I see Ellie before I go to work and before she goes to school. It’ll do her good. If she gets used to getting up earlier, she’ll be more likely to be able to hold down a good job when she’s older and be able to provide for her family.

  When she’s older.

  Those words rattle around in my mind, laden with meaning and unsaid connotations that wouldn’t have been there a few hours ago. When she was sat at the kitchen table, happily eating her breakfast, looking forward to another day at school. What if she never gets older? What if something dreadful has happened to her?

  I can’t let those thoughts win out. Nick’s convinced that she’s been taken by someone. He reckons there simply wasn’t enough time for her to get out of her car seat, open the door, close it again and somehow manage to get out of sight and past the end of the road by the time he got back. He says he was in the house for only a few seconds. But I know Nick. Those ‘few seconds’ could easily have been a minute or more. Two, perhaps. Maybe she did get out of the car and decide to go off exploring. She’s five. Kids do that, don’t they? Maybe she tried to find her way to a friend’s house but got lost. Maybe some Good Samaritan has taken her in and is trying to get her to tell them where she lives. But wouldn’t they have phoned the police by now? Wouldn’t the police have put two and two together?

  Wherever she is, I just pray to God that she’s safe. My parents have always been pretty religious, but fortunately none of that ever rubbed off on me. Now, though, I’m starting to wonder whether prayer might not be a bad idea. What have I got to lose?

  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

  Although I’m not one for faith or religion in the slightest, I find myself wanting to pray – to, whatever, call it nature – that Ellie is safe. That she hasn’t come to any harm. That she hasn’t been taken by anyone who’s going to hurt her.

  You see it all the time on the TV. Children snatched, predatory paedophiles, missing kids. It all blurs into that distant, removed aspect of life known as ‘the news’. It isn’t real. Sure, we all watch the cases and have sympathy with them and we all say ‘Oh, can you imagine if that happened to us?’ but who could? Who could actually know what it feels like to suddenly not have your daughter there any more? I always thought I could, but now I know I couldn’t. Nothing could have prepared me for this.

  Wherever she is, I just hope she’s not suffering. By extension, that means she’s either absolutely fine and just wandered off somewhere or . . .

  The thought isn’t one I can contemplate, and I’m hanging on to every last shred of hope and optimism I have, but they’re vanishing fast. I feel so desperate, so completely exposed. I want to scream and make it all go away. I want it to be me that’s missing, me that’s in danger. Anyone but her. Anyone but Ellie.

  12

  Nick

  It’s late. The last few hours have been a blur. It’s now starting to get dark and we’ve still heard nothing.

  They’ve returned my laptop, which is something. Apparently these days it’s often just a case of mirroring the machine and then giving the original back.

  The accusatory tone of McKenna and the things she insinuated have poisoned the atmosphere in the house, and Tasha’s gone out to join the search for Ellie. One of us needed to – it’s a case of getting as many people involved as possible – but we also need to keep someone in the house in case Ellie comes back. Tasha made it perfectly clear that person should be me, suggesting that I’d done enough damage today already.

  Tasha’s put out a Facebook appeal which has already been shared over five hundred times. The police say that if we haven’t found her by tomorrow they’ll go to the press. Bearing in mind Ellie’s age, they say, it’s vital that we get the usual appeals out much faster than would otherwise be the case.

  It feels like everyone’s getting involved. A few of Tasha’s former school friends – Emma, Leanne and Cristina – have been in touch. I was surprised at that as she seems to have alienated most of her old friends by setting her sights so blindly on career progression. Tasha’s parents are on standby and have planned to fly over from Brisbane on the next available flight if Ellie hasn’t been found by tomorrow. I told them that wouldn’t be
necessary and that by the time they get here we will more than likely have found her anyway.

  The last thing I need is them around. Don’t get me wrong, we haven’t had any major fallings out, but I really couldn’t cope with them right now. I know they’d be putting the blame on me, telling me what they would have done differently, how they never let Tasha – who they only ever call Natasha – out of their sight when she was younger. It feels like they use every possible opportunity they have to make me feel small. They denigrate my work and look down on what I do as somehow inferior and not a ‘proper job’. What I need right now is support, not people to make me feel worse.

  Julie and Tim are good people, but I can’t deny that it’s a relief knowing they’re on the other side of the world. Life has been so much quieter and easier since they moved away. My parents, on the other hand, would have known just what to do. Mum would have gone straight into organisational mode, drawing up maps and itineraries and splitting everyone off into groups. Dad would do his best at keeping everyone calm and spirits high. I’ve missed that direction and positivity since they died.

  It’s impossible to describe what it feels like to be in the position where you know you need to do everything but can’t possibly do anything. Lying in your bedroom staring at the ceiling while everyone you know is out looking for your missing five-year-old daughter feels so wrong on every conceivable level, but there really is no other option.

  You always hear people say that the worst part is the not knowing. I’ve never really understood that phrase until now. Not knowing where she is. Not knowing whether she’s coming back. Not knowing if she’s with anyone. Not knowing if she’s safe. Not knowing if she’s happy. Not knowing if she’s alive.

  Not knowing.

  I guess it’s one of those moments when your life changes forever. There was before Ellie disappeared and after Ellie disappeared. A firm, deep line in the sand. A gulley. A canyon. Not to be crossed. My new life began on this day.