Losing You

by Nicci French

  ‘She’s the girl who took the photo.’

  ‘What photo?’

  ‘The one of me and Charlie. The one she sent in the post.’ The one I’d given to the police. My head was spinning. My thoughts were like mud. I leaned towards him in the half-darkness, and gripped his arm.

  ‘You were saying who was she, and I didn’t know, but it was her.’

  ‘Liv,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. Now I remember. She was nice. Giggly.’ Suddenly he jerked away from me. ‘What d’you mean, her body?’

  ‘She was with you and Charlie last week?’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  Somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, I knew that things were piling up that I would have to deal with on another day: careless words, cruel ones, people insulted and hurt, secrets exposed, wounds reopened, trust abused; above all, Jackson, my little boy, who had stumbled unaided through this terrible day. One day, not now. Not yet.

  ‘Darling Jackson,’ I said, ‘she’d dead, yes, but I’ve got to find Charlie…’

  ‘What’s Liv got to do with Charlie going?’

  ‘I’ve got to think,’ I said. ‘Don’t say anything. Wait.’

  I turned on the car light and scanned the story. Olivia had disappeared last Sunday. She had told her parents that she was going shopping with a friend, and had seemed cheerful, but they had neither seen nor heard from her since.

  Did this change anything? I tried to clear my brain of everything but the necessary information. I had the feeling that I knew all I needed to know but hadn’t been able to make it add up, and the effort now to connect the pieces felt physical. I could almost feel my brain humming, fizzing, overheating.

  Outside, a young couple walked past, leaning against each other and laughing. They were both smoking cigarettes. I stared at them blindly for a couple of seconds, then leaped out.

  ‘Excuse me, can I nick a cigarette from you?’

  ‘You what?’ The youth goggled at me and the girl he was wrapped round snickered. For a flash, I saw what he was seeing: a middle-aged woman with wild hair, red eyes, dirty hands and shabby, rumpled, mucky clothes, begging for a smoke.

  ‘I’m desperate,’ I said.

  Wordlessly, he handed me one. I took it and leaned forward while he struck a match, cupped his gloved hands round the frail flame, and put it to my cigarette. I sucked until the end flowered and I felt the acrid sting in my lungs. ‘Thanks.’

  I stood by the car with my back to the house, aware of Jackson still huddled inside, tired, hungry, wretched and scared. I gazed out at the sea, almost invisible in the dark, the frosty ground glinting beneath me, and smoked the cigarette.

  Olivia Mullen had come to see Charlie on the morning of Sunday, 12 December. I knew that from the date printout on the photograph. I even knew the time: 11.07. According to the paper, that was the day she had gone missing. So she had visited my daughter and then she had disappeared. And she had said she was going to ‘finish it’.

  Then – I took a huge drag at the cigarette and, for a moment, felt dizzy and sick – a story about Olivia’s disappearance had been published this morning in the paper that Charlie was delivering, and Charlie had also disappeared. The two linked facts whirled in my brain: Olivia went missing after she’d visited Charlie. Charlie went missing when a story about her friend’s disappearance was published.

  What else did I know? I knew Charlie had been bullied and yesterday night had had her drinks spiked by her so-called friends.

  I knew that she had a boyfriend, but had kept it secret for months, creeping out to assignations with him on the hulks.

  I knew she’d had a fling with Eamonn and had feared, or maybe known, that she was pregnant.

  I knew that Eamonn had told his father.

  I knew that someone had come into my house while the abortive party had been going on and taken things that belonged to Charlie, but that it couldn’t have been Charlie. Why had they? This was after the bicycle had been abandoned half-way through the paper round. Could it have been as a decoy? To make it look as if Charlie had run away when she’d done no such thing? Whoever had done it had only done it for show. They had only taken things that were visible, things whose absence would be noticed.

  I knew that Rory had been there this morning, secretly, and had met Charlie on her newspaper round, that he’d lied about it to me and then to the police, and had only come clean when I’d discovered Charlie’s things in the back of his car.

  I knew that Olivia and Charlie had met in the summer on a course that Joel had taught on. But so had dozens of others. There’d been hundreds of them down by the beach, sailing and windsurfing.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, under my breath, dropping the cigarette on to the ground where it glowed up at me, a winking red eye. ‘Wait.’

  Something had crept into my brain, a tiny wisp, like fog. What? I stared at the darkly glinting sea and tried to catch it. Yes: something about so many people coming to the beach that it was hard to keep track. Who’d said that? Who’d just said that?

  ‘I never said the beach,’ I whispered aloud. ‘I never said Liv was connected to the beach.’

  Think. Think. Joel had said that many people from the island taught kayaking and sailing in the summer: himself, Alix, Rick, Bill, Tom… I remembered Rick’s calm look, the sudden sense of composed purpose. Why would Rick be calm? What was his purpose?

  The waves licked at the shingle a few feet away from where I stood; a soft shucking sound. They gave me my answer: calm because the tide was rising to the full flood and my time to find Charlie had all but run out. I opened the car door and leaned in. ‘Jackson.’

  ‘Mummy? Can I –’

  ‘What did Rick get when you went out with him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell me what he got. You said a booklet.’

  I knew what he was going to say and he said it. ‘For the tides. When it’s high and low.’

  I tore open the car’s front locker and pulled out a pile of maps, service records and, yes, a tide table. I opened it and followed with a finger the tides for Saturday, 18 December. Low tide was at 10.40 a.m.; high tide was at 4.22 a.m. and 5.13 p.m. Beside the day’s times was a dotted black line, signifying that today’s was a relatively high one. I glanced at the screen of my mobile: 16.56.

  Rick had left Charlie just before low tide, and had spent the whole day – with Karen at the hospital, with Jackson, of all people – being hampered from getting back to her. But now, when the tide was up and the waves were lapping on the shore, he had relaxed. There was only fifteen minutes before it was at its highest. And Rick had been calm, knowing that.

  I pulled out my mobile and punched in the number of the police station. A familiar voice answered. ‘This is –’ I began, but then, with a start, I disconnected.

  Because now I was thinking with complete clarity. I knew what would happen. The detectives would bring Rick in and he would spend hours giving a statement, admitting nothing. And all the while the sea would be doing his work and everything would be lost. There were few certainties, but I was nearly sure that to call the police would be finally to lose any chance of finding Charlie.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I turned to Jackson. I took a breath and made my voice slow, calm, reassuring. ‘A change of plan, honey. You’re going to have to wait for me in the house.’

  ‘No,’ he said, in a wail.

  ‘It’s important and I’m very proud of you, my darling.’

  ‘No!’ he shouted, his voice high with hysteria. ‘I won’t. I’ll run away. I’ll follow you. You can’t leave me again. It’s not fair.’

  For a desperate stupid moment, I thought of taking him with me. He could hide on the back seat. He could stay quiet. He might fall asleep. I was considering it, even though at that moment I had no time. Then, somewhere out of my reverie, I saw two figures walking down the road, an adult and a child. The adult was laden with shopping-bags, shuffling towards me. I saw that they had come
from the bus stop. And then I recognized them: Bonnie and Ryan.

  ‘Bonnie,’ I called, opening the door.

  She recognized me and smiled. ‘We’re all done,’ she said. ‘It took us five hours and we hardly had time to eat but we’ve got presents for everyone, haven’t we, Ryan? In fact we were so busy examining them we missed our stop.’ Then her expression changed. ‘But weren’t you supposed to be on your way to Florida by now? Nina, you look terrible.’

  ‘No time,’ I said. ‘An emergency. The biggest emergency. You’ve got to take Jackson again. I’m so sorry. Charlie’s missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘No time. Take Jackson. I’ll phone. Jackson, out. Quick.’

  ‘But –’ said Jackson.

  ‘Great!’ said Ryan.

  ‘Right,’ said Bonnie immediately, dragging Jackson out by his forearms. Then she looked at me. ‘Go.’

  I sped away as she slammed the door, driving back from the direction I’d just come. When I was a few yards from Rick’s house, I drew to a halt. I switched off my headlights but kept the engine running.

  And I waited, praying that I wasn’t too late, praying that I hadn’t got it wrong, praying that I had and that in the nightmare of fear I had simply concocted a Gothic tale that had no roots in the truth. This was my gamble, my one last throw of the dice. I was risking the life of my daughter on the chance I was right. I knew now that Rick had taken Charlie. I believed that he had hidden her somewhere that would be covered by the tide, which was now almost at its height. And I was staking everything on the hope that he was still at his house and that he would now go to her and I would be able to follow and stop him. Such a frail vessel in which to place all my faith. I knew, oh, I knew, how very likely I was to be wrong. And if I was wrong, I would have the whole of the rest of my life to dwell upon these moments, to replay them and to know what I should have done if I could have looked down upon the story from a distance. But it was all I had. I was trapped in the foggy darkness, groping after the truth and seeing only tiny fragments of it.

  I don’t know how many minutes I sat there. Maybe very few. There was a movement, the front door opened and he emerged. I clenched the steering-wheel with both fists. He carried a sack over his shoulder that looked, as far as I could tell in the darkness, like the nylon bag that sailors use. He walked over to his car, slung the bag into the back, and started the engine. I waited as he drew off. I let him disappear round the bend, his tail-lights red. I memorized his number-plate and the back of his old grey Volvo in case I lost him, although there was no one on the roads this winter evening. They were all inside, in the glowing warmth, with their Christmas trees, their televisions and their log fires. Sheltering from the storm.

  The road turned right and I could see Rick ahead. I followed at a distance, praying he wouldn’t notice my car in his rear-view mirror. We crossed The Street, then took the right turn that led to the barrow, where he turned left, on to Lost Road. Everything was dark, except the red lights in front of me. I slowed the car and turned off the headlights. Now I could barely make out the road in front of me and several times the car bumped against the verge, once tipping sharply sideways. I shuddered at the thought of sliding off the road into a ditch. But if Rick saw me, broke off and returned home, that would be the end.

  I leaned forward, concentrating on the road just ahead but making sure that I could still see the pair of red lights. My fingers were numb with cold, but there was sweat on my forehead and between my breasts. I could hear my breath coming in short, ragged gasps. Now on my right there was farmland and I could occasionally make out, between the trees built as a windbreak, the lights from Birche Farm. On my left there were the empty stretches of marshland. In the distance the sea came back into sight, rising up like a wall of darkness under the dark sky. The moon cast a wavering yellow path over its waters.

  This was where Alix and I had been just a few hours ago. The road veered to the left, past a couple of houses. The red tail-lights followed it, going gradually down a shallow slope, but now, against all my instincts, I stopped. I couldn’t risk Rick seeing me. He reached the coastal road and the car stopped at the junction. To the right was Charlie’s newspaper route, which dwindled to a track, then a boggy path that led to the treacherous marshes and borrow dikes. To the left, the road ran along the low, subsiding cliffs, then turned inland again, away from the cliffs, the dikes, the land that slid and melted into silted mud and salty water, and back towards the causeway.

  I watched, leaning over the wheel, ready to move forward. There were things I felt, but at a great remove – the sharp pain of my swelling ankle; the numb cold of my fingers and toes; the soreness behind my eyes; the nausea in my throat; the rough chafe of my jacket against my neck; the hollowness in my stomach; the pressure of my bladder; the bang in my skull. My skin felt too thin and frail to contain the way it hurt to breathe, the way it hurt to think, the way it hurt to be alive and not moving, not racing like a giant with huge avenging strides, like a dragon with monstrously beating wings, to where Rick sat and considered what to do with my daughter.

  ‘Hold on, Charlie, my darling. I’m coming. I’m coming to get you. Just hold on.’ I don’t know if I spoke out loud or not. Her name throbbed in my blood.

  The two tail-lights disappeared and instead I could see the glow of headlights in the mist ahead of the car. Rick had turned left. My eyes were accustomed to the dark now and I could see the dim shape, hardly more than a shadow, of the road ahead of me. I reached the junction, turned left and saw once more the red tail-lights. It was impossible to judge the distance and for a moment I had the illusion that the two red lights were floating in front of me as if on a screen. But I was on the east side of the island now, heading north: there were still some streaks of light behind the clouds. Soon it would be entirely dark.

  Where was Rick heading? We were on the most deserted, remote part of the island. I barely knew it and I tried to remember the layout of the roads here. The direction Rick was driving along the coast would eventually lead to the causeway to the mainland but I was almost sure that the road didn’t reach that far. It petered out into a track and then into impassable marshland where the sea wall had collapsed.

  The red lights had vanished. I stopped the car, blinked, rubbed my eyes and stared into the darkness. There was nothing now but grey behind the clouds, and along the horizon, lights from houses on the mainland. I made myself consider the possibilities. The lights could have been hidden by a dip in the road. He might have turned off again. He might have stopped and switched off his lights. Was it possible that he had spotted my car and was waiting for me? What was I to do? Waiting for the lights to reappear was the safest option, but also the most potentially disastrous. If the lights didn’t reappear, I might have lost Rick completely. No. I had to continue and take the risk. Was there a chance he would hear the car, even if he couldn’t see it in the darkness? I rolled down the window. The wind off the estuary blew wetly into my face. I felt sure he wouldn’t hear the car unless it collided with him.

  I started to move forward slowly at little more than walking pace. I stared into the darkness so hard that my eyes ached with the effort. My frustration was almost unbearable. I wanted to switch on the headlights and accelerate with as much power as I could but I was sure that if I did so I would lose any chance of finding Charlie for ever.

  The silvery sheen of Rick’s car loomed out of the darkness and, even at that crawling speed, I nearly ran into it. I braked and felt the scrape of gravel under my tyres. Had Rick heard anything? I switched off the engine and sat still. I looked round, expecting his face to appear at the window. There was no sign of any movement. Outside was just blackness. I picked up my mobile and found the police-station number. When it was answered I didn’t ask to be put through to anyone. That would take too long. I just said, in a voice as calm as I could manage so that they wouldn’t think I had flipped into a florid state of hysteria, ‘This is Nina Landry. I have found my daughter but sh
e is in great danger. Come immediately to the end of Lost Road. Turn left where it meets the coastal road and drive as far as you can. Where the road ends, you’ll find two cars. We’re there. Come at once. Have you got that? End of Lost Road, turn north towards the causeway. It is urgent. Urgent. Life and death. Send an ambulance.’

  I ended the call. Was there anything in the car I could use? I remembered a possibility. I opened the glove compartment and was almost blinded by the light that came on. Inside there was a roadmap, the car user’s manual and a small torch. I tried it, pointing down at my feet so that nothing could be seen outside the car. A thin beam illuminated my trainers. Thank God, thank God, thank God. I slipped it into my pocket.

  Trying to avoid making even the smallest noise, I opened the car door. Again a light came on inside the car. I stepped out and shut the door. The light stayed on. I cursed silently. He might not hear anything but that light would be visible for miles. I took a deep breath, opened the door an inch, then slammed it. The light vanished. I was in darkness again but damage had been done. My eyeballs seemed to be swarming with fluorescent micro-organisms.

  I tiptoed round Rick’s car. Empty. He had gone. I tried to think of anything else from my car I could use. I edged my way back to the boot and opened it. Another light came on, but hidden under the lid. I almost laughed, almost cried, to see the luggage I had packed for the airport, long ago, many years ago, when we had been going on holiday. Something heavy, something solid. To one side there was the long black plastic bag containing the car jack. I had never opened it. I pulled at the drawstring and tugged out a long steel handle. That would do. I pushed down the lid and looked around.

  I didn’t even know in what direction Rick had gone. Think, Nina, think. He had moved across the road and parked on the right-hand side. Surely he had gone in that direction over the grass, the marshland and the mudflats that led to the water and the mouth of the estuary. This was the worst of signs. I had been hoping, against the evidence of the tide booklet he’d bought, that he would lead me away from the water to a barn, a shed or an outhouse. I didn’t know this landscape well but I had walked with Sludge on blustery windy days and I knew there were no buildings there, scarcely even a bush to shelter behind. Nowhere for a living person to be imprisoned. I knew that I mustn’t think about that. I must do what I could.