by Nicci French
‘Where did you think you saw her?’
‘It might have been someone else but I think it was her. It was from a distance, you see, and we were at the top of the long hill. Lost Road or something funny like that. She was at the bottom. She had a bike.’
‘She was riding her bike?’
‘No, she was standing with it and talking to someone in a car.’
‘Listen, Laura, did you see who she was talking to?’
‘No.’
‘Or what kind of car it was?’
‘It might have been a van.’
‘What colour was it?’
‘Red,’ she said. ‘Or maybe blue. It wasn’t white. Definitely.’
‘Red or blue?’
‘Or that silvery colour all cars are.’
‘Red or blue or silver?’
‘I dunno, really. I didn’t think of it.’
‘But you think it was Charlie?’
‘I didn’t think so at the time, but when Ashleigh called Carrie and then Carrie told me, I thought I remembered.’
‘Did Carrie see it too?’
‘No. She was talking about something. She wasn’t paying attention. Maybe it was someone older.’
‘That Charlie was talking to?’
‘Maybe. They had their head out of the window. They didn’t look young.’
‘Man or woman?’
‘You’re asking too many questions. I don’t remember anything. Maybe a man. It was a long way off. Maybe it wasn’t Charlie anyway. I didn’t know I was meant to be keeping an eye out or I’d have noticed more. You don’t notice things if you’re not trying to.’
‘OK, listen to me. I’m going to give you a number to call. You want to speak to Detective Inspector Hammill, and tell him what you’ve just told me. Do you hear?’
‘Detective Inspector Hammill,’ she repeated.
‘This moment. Do you promise?’
‘Yeah, all right.’
‘Everything you remember, tell him. Don’t wait. If he’s busy, hold on.’
She promised and laboriously wrote down the number as I dictated it but I was doubtful of her managing it, so I phoned DI Hammill and told him what she had said and gave him her details. There. Let him do some detecting.
I went into Charlie’s bedroom once more, my head buzzing. Charlie talking to a man. It seemed like important information, but even when I was talking to Laura I had thought of a snag. I believed that Charlie had been snatched by a man and here was a witness who had seen her talking to one. But it had been too early. With my day of driving around, I had a map of Sandling Island inside my head and I could picture exactly where Laura had been when she saw Charlie and where Charlie had been, and she was at the beginning of her paper round. Whoever the man was and whatever their conversation had been about, Charlie had gone on to deliver half a dozen more newspapers. So who had he been?
The sheep clock told me it was twenty past three. In a couple of hours or so we should have been boarding the plane to Florida. I sat on the floor, among the mess, and once more stared around. Perhaps Charlie had been snatched randomly, and there were no clues or patterns. Or perhaps I would find, among the clutter of her teenage life, some sign. I began with the drawers of her desk. One by one I opened them and tipped out their contents. I picked up each object and looked at it before replacing it in the drawer.
A lightbulb, a tiny velvet cushion in the shape of a heart, several coloured crayons of various lengths, metal and plastic pencil sharpeners, notepads with nothing in them except blank pages, certificates for swimming and hurdle-jumping, a head teacher’s merit award I’d never seen before, for an excellent essay on Great Expectations, an empty bottle of perfume, a crumbling bath bomb, several tangled necklaces, a box of broken pastels, ink cartridges, sanitary towels, tampons, ancient catalogues, last year’s birthday cards from friends – I looked through each one – Thinking Putty, dried-up Pritt Sticks, her old mobile phone minus its SIM card, a canister of safety-pins, a half-full pack of Marlboro Lights, two small boxes of matches, a bookmark she’d made in primary school with cross-stitch embroidery, a few old glossy magazines, a large shell, a battered copy of Lord of the Flies, another of The Outsider, a small torch that didn’t work, scented candles that had never been lit, hairbands, a thin white wristband with the message ‘Make Poverty History’, a travel sewing-kit, some knickers (clean), gel pens, cartridges for her printer, an ancient Beanie Baby she’d had as a small child, a watch that had stopped working long ago, a bright cotton scarf with an inkstain at one fringed end. There were folders full of GCSE work, and I leafed through every sheet of paper, just in case there was something among the algebraic formulae, the scientific data, the graphs and maps, dates and jottings that would point me in a new direction.
I rifled through the scattered possessions on her desk once more, then stopped abruptly. Her laptop.
I pulled out her chair, threw the hoodie and the old jeans on to the floor, and sat down. I turned it on with a ping and waited for it to load up. Rory and I had given Charlie her computer on her last birthday. I didn’t know how to find my way round it: it was a different make from mine, with different software. Like her room, her virtual desktop was in a state of total disorganization. I found essays for drama, history, science, English, art and French. I found various quizzes, articles that she had downloaded. There was an MSN icon. But what I really wanted was to go through her emails. I knew Charlie used Hotmail, and I assumed her user name was Charlie, but I didn’t have a clue what her password was. I tried ‘Charlie’ and ‘Charlie1’ and ‘Charlie2’, ‘Charlie3’, ‘Charlie4’. I tried ‘Landry’ and ‘Oates’ and ‘Landry Oates’. I tried the road we’d lived on in London (Wiltshire), then added our old phone number and tried again. I tried ‘Sludge’, then the name of her beloved rabbit, who had died when she was eight, ‘Bertie’. Despairingly, I keyed in several of the bands or singers I knew she liked. I rang Ashleigh and asked if she knew Charlie’s password and she didn’t.
I nearly gave up. I typed in ‘Hope’ (my mother’s maiden name), and ‘Falconer’ (Rory’s mother’s). I remembered that a year or two earlier Charlie had wanted to give herself a middle name: Sydney, of all things. I tried that.
And I was in.
Charlie was fiercely protective of her privacy. I had to knock on her bedroom door and wait for her to tell me to come in. If I happened to glance at what she was reading or writing, she would cover it with her hand and glare at me. If she received a letter, she would often take it to her own room to read it. Now I was here in front of all of her emails. There weren’t very many, once I had discounted the junkmail and technical updates. Most of her communications were done in MSN chatrooms or by text. But there were enough for me to get an illicit glimpse into her private world. For a start, there were several messages from her father. If I hadn’t known who Rory was I might have thought they were from a boyfriend, for in them he told Charlie how beautiful she was, how special, how she shouldn’t grow up too quickly, how he would always love her. I read them quickly and closed them down.
There were a couple from Ashleigh, in text language so I could barely decipher their meanings. ‘LOL & CU l8er?’ said one. Another sent her the entire text of the song ‘My Favourite Things’.
A boy called Gary had sent her several emails, rather formal and jocose, with articles he’d cut and pasted from various current-affairs websites. There was one about George Bush and his connections with oil companies, and another about fossil fuels. I didn’t stop to read them.
There was one message from Eamonn saying simply, ‘Parents suck. This is the piece I told you about’, followed by an incomprehensible article on some musician whose name meant nothing to me.
And just one brief message from Jay: ‘My phone’s buggered, so this is to say you should meet me in our usual place at 2. I’ll bring the stuff. Jxxxx.’ What stuff? What place? I put my head into my hands and closed my eyes for an instant.
I heard the door slam downstairs
and Sludge’s muffled barking, and rose to my feet, closing the lid of the laptop as I did so.
‘Sludge wouldn’t stay out,’ called Jackson, as I went down the stairs. ‘She kept whimpering and dragging at the lead. She did a poo on the front lawn of those people with the smart house near the pub and we didn’t have a plastic bag.’
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘He had to go and fetch the car where we’d left it. He’ll be here soon.’
Jackson’s eyes glittered and his cheeks were flushed. I wondered if he might be feverish, and put a hand on his forehead, but he winced irritably.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know you asked me to make that list?’
It took me a few seconds to remember the instructions I’d given him while I was waiting for the police.
‘Yes. Did you?’
‘Shall I get it? It’s not very long. Really, it only says a few words. It says, have you looked at her computer?’
‘I’ve just been looking through her messages.’
‘And have you looked at her diary?’
‘What diary?’
‘You know.’
‘No.’
‘It’s in her schoolbag probably. That’s where she usually keeps it.’
‘Her bag?’ I hadn’t come across that either, nor had I thought about it. ‘Where is it?’
‘I saw her put it in the downstairs toilet yesterday when she came in.’
It was there, under her old coat. While Jackson watched me, I pulled it down from the hook and opened it at once. Her art scrapbook was in there, the container with the messy remains of yesterday’s packed lunch, her pencil case, two or three exercise books and a maths textbook. And, in the front zip-up pocket, a little spiralbound diary. I leafed through it, my hands trembling so that I found it difficult to lift the individual pages. At the beginning of the year she’d put in almost everything: the dates that terms began or ended, coming weekends or Sundays with Rory, visits to the dentist, appointments with friends, parties, concerts, inset days. But gradually the pages became blanker. Occasional initials were put against pages with question marks. There were doodles. Phone numbers were jotted in corners. Autumn and winter were scarcely marked except, I noticed, the occasional small cross in the top left-hand corner of a day. I turned back. There was a cross against Monday, 26 July, Friday, 20 August, then again on Thursday, 16 September, Wednesday, 13 October, Tuesday, 9 November. That was all.
‘What is it? Mum, what are you looking at?’
‘It’s all right,’ I muttered to Jackson. I gazed at the crosses, frowning, turning the pages between them. They came, I saw, approximately every month, and struck by a thought I counted the days between each cross: twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-seven, twenty-seven.
Charlie’s periods. Of course. But then an icy trickle ran down my spine and I turned to December again. Nothing. No cross. There were – I did the sum – thirty-nine days between the last cross on 9 November and today, Saturday, 18 December. Perhaps it didn’t mean anything, or perhaps it meant that Charlie had missed her period and was anxious she was pregnant. Perhaps it meant that she was pregnant.
I closed the diary and stared blankly at Jackson.
‘What is it, Mum?’ he asked again.
‘Nothing,’ I replied.
He nodded mutely.
‘There, I think your dad’s coming in. Why don’t you run and ask him to make you one of his famous toasted-cheese sandwiches?’
‘Will you have one too?’
‘I’ve got a phone call to make.’
I ran upstairs to avoid Rory and went into my bedroom. Renata was lying in the bed. Her eyes were open and she was staring blankly at the ceiling. I snatched up the phone and rang Hammill’s number. It was engaged and I couldn’t leave this as a message. So I rang the police station, asked for Detective Constable Beck and was put through.
‘This is Nina Landry,’ I began. ‘My daughter may be pregnant, or think she is.’
‘How do you –’
‘In her diary,’ I said shortly. ‘Did you follow up Laura’s sighting?’
‘I believe she’s talking to DI Hammill now.’
‘No other news, then?’ I asked, knowing the answer.
‘We’re proceeding. We’ll let you know as soon as we find anything. Honestly, I’ve got a daughter of my own and I can imagine how desperate you must –’
‘Right.’ I slammed down the phone, closed the curtains in case Renata wanted to sleep, and left the room, shutting the door behind me.
Rory and Jackson were in the kitchen. Rory looked terrible, peaky and red-eyed. He was talking nineteen to the dozen to Jackson, feverish gibberish that fooled nobody, certainly not Jackson who was gazing at him anxiously.
‘I need to talk to you,’ I said to Rory.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Charlie?’
‘Alone,’ I said. ‘Jackson, darling, can you wait in your room for a bit? It’s something private.’
He stared at me for a few moments, then wandered disconsolately out of the kitchen. We heard him trudging heavily up the stairs.
‘I’ve been looking through her diary,’ I said.
‘Well?’
‘It’s where she writes her arrangements, but the thing is –’
The phone rang in the living room again and I ran to it.
‘Nina? This is DI Hammill.’
Sudden hope blasted through me, and I could hardly stand up straight.
‘Yes?’
‘No news yet, I’m afraid, but we’re very anxious to talk to your husband as soon as possible. Has he arrived yet?’
I called Rory, who came through and took the receiver. His face was chalky; there were beads of perspiration on his upper lip and forehead.
‘Yes,’ he was saying. ‘Right. Of course.’ He put down the phone and turned to me. ‘I’ve got to go to the police station. They want me to make a statement.’ He gave a twisted little smile, barbed wire across his features. ‘Funny how they make a man feel guilty for being a father.’
I waited. My insides were churning.
‘It’s just off Miller Street, right?’
‘Right.’
He hesitated, and I waited without speaking.
‘See you, then,’ he said.
As soon as he closed the door, I took my mobile from its charger and dialled. I waited and a young voice answered:
‘Yes?’
‘Jay? It’s Nina.’
‘Have you found her yet?’
‘No.’
‘The police called. They want to talk to me.’ He sounded scared. But, then, Rory was scared of the police too.
‘They’re talking to everyone,’ I said. ‘Everyone who knows Charlie well. I wondered if I could come and see you.’
‘If you like.’ He paused. ‘I want to help.’
‘Good. I’ll come to the farm, shall I?’
‘OK.’ Another slight pause. ‘Don’t tell my dad what it’s about, though.’
‘I’ll fetch my car and be with you in a few minutes. Five or ten at the most.’
‘I’ll wait by the barns. You don’t need to go all the way to the house.’
‘All right.’
First I had to sort out Jackson. Rory was at the police station and it was clear that I couldn’t leave him with Renata any more. She needed looking after herself. I didn’t want to take him with me, to hear about Charlie’s sex life, but I didn’t want to leave him alone. He was eleven years old and very frightened.
I rang Bonnie’s house, in case she had come home early from her Christmas shopping, but there was only an answering-machine. I tried Sandy’s parents, although I knew Jackson and Sandy had fallen out over some playground football game recently. My qualms were irrelevant. There was no answer. It was nearly Christmas. Everyone was out, shopping, collecting Christmas trees, visiting grandparents, waiting in airports for their flights to the sun.
I went to Jackson’s bedroom. It was
cold because I had turned off the heating. I hadn’t thought we’d be needing it until January. He was standing by the window, looking out at the sea. His shoulders were hunched and when he turned to me his face was pale and stunned.
‘Honey, I’ve got to go out and I think you should come with me. Grab your jacket, will you?’
Wordlessly, he followed me down the stairs and pushed his arms into it.
‘We’ve got to get my car. I left it by the newsagent’s.’
He nodded and we left. The wind was like iron. The sky had turned white and low. As if snow might fall, I thought. I held on to Jackson’s cold hand and hurried him along. Occasionally I said things like ‘It’s all right, darling,’ and ‘We’ll find her.’ I remembered that he hadn’t had anything to eat.
In The Street I took Jackson into the bakery. There wasn’t an impressive selection of food – pasties and pies that looked scarily industrial. I turned to him. ‘Do you want a cheese roll or a ham roll?’
‘Don’t mind.’
They were only a pound. I bought one of each. I tried to remember when I had last eaten and couldn’t. At the party? I didn’t know. Back out on the street, I handed the cheese roll to Jackson, then I peeled back the polythene from the other and took a bite. The bread was doughy, damp. The ham didn’t taste of anything. I struggled to chew and swallow it. It didn’t matter: I just needed to get something into my body so I wouldn’t fall over or faint later. I took Jackson’s free hand and stepped over the road towards the car. Somewhere close there was a screech of brakes and tyres. Everything slowed down and I had time to find what was about to happen weirdly, foully comic. My daughter was missing, I was running around like a lunatic, and in the middle of it all my son and I were about to be run over. Charlie would be missing and Jackson and I would be in hospital. The idea was almost restful. Somebody else could take control.
But we weren’t run over. I swung round, Jackson behind me, and saw the grey bonnet of a car that had come to a halt just inches in front of me. Steam was rising through the grille as if the car itself was angry with me. I couldn’t see the driver because of the shifting reflections on the windscreen, but the vehicle was familiar. I walked round and was greeted by Rick’s shocked face. He wound down the window.
