The Perfect Christmas

by Caroline Anderson

  Julia laughed a little unsteadily. ‘Oh, wow, I can hardly wait. Yes, I’ll give you a hand. Let me put this in my locker.’

  She rejoined Sally at Mrs Harrison’s bedside, and together they tidied her up and comforted her. The poor woman was acutely embarrassed and upset, and Julia put her problems aside and concentrated on convincing her that it didn’t matter and nobody minded and once her tummy settled down it wouldn’t be a regular feature of having a colostomy.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s probably only for a short while until your bowel’s healed, and then you can have it reversed.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t wait,’ Mrs Harrison said miserably. ‘I just hate this so much. I can’t believe it’s happening to me.’ She started to cry again, and Julia hugged her and settled her down again for a rest.

  Then she phoned Nick Sarazin and told him about the return of bowel function, and he said he’d come and talk to her as she was so unhappy, and see if he could cheer her up before Christmas.

  He appeared a few moments later, chatted to Mrs Harrison for a few minutes and then came and found Julia.

  ‘I’ve said I’ll reverse the colostomy before Easter at the latest. I just hope I don’t get struck down for lying to her, but hopefully the timescale will be all right.’ He paused and peered at Julia closely. ‘Hell, you look a bit rough. I gather you were caught up in the chaos on Saturday—are you all right?’

  She nodded, glad that he’d taken the obvious line and not enquired more closely. ‘I’ll be OK after a couple of days off.’

  ‘Hmm. David’s looking pretty grim as well. It must have been a hell of a day. Are you spending Christmas together?’

  She busied herself at the desk. ‘No—he’s got a big family do on. Katie and I are having a quiet Christmas on our own.’

  ‘You can’t!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, Julia! If we weren’t going away I’d say come to us for the day. Isn’t there anywhere you can go?’

  She dredged up a smile. ‘We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us, we’re OK. We’re used to it.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ he said doubtfully, but she was saved by his bleep going off. She handed him the phone and made herself scarce before his searching eyes delved a little deeper and came up trumps.

  Then, finally, it was twelve o’clock and she could go off duty. She left the ward in a hail of Christmas greetings, and made her way home through the busy traffic. Everyone, it seemed, was knocking off early.

  She showered and changed when she got home, and then at a quarter past one the doorbell rang and Katie skipped in, laden with presents and smiling from ear to ear.

  ‘Thank you so much for keeping her the extra night,’ Julia said to Mrs Revell. ‘Have you had a lovely time, Katie?’

  Her daughter nodded furiously. ‘We did so many things! We went to see Father Christmas, and we had tea in town, and we put the presents under the tree and opened them yesterday morning—Have we got a tree yet, Mummy? Can we do it later?’

  ‘We’re going to get one this afternoon,’ Julia promised. ‘We have to go to town—I didn’t get my shopping done on Saturday.’

  ‘You won’t get anything now, dear,’ Mrs Revell said, looking disapproving. ‘You should have started earlier. I’d done mine by October.’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t,’ Julia said as evenly as she could manage. ‘So, if you don’t mind, we need to get on because time is now very short, as you’ve pointed out. Thank you so much. Katie, say thank you, darling.’

  The child hugged her grandmother, kissed her goodbye and turned to Julia expectantly. ‘Are we going now?’

  ‘Yes—right this minute. Have you had lunch?’

  She nodded, and so Julia put her coat on, scooped up her bag and keys and they headed down into town on foot. There was no point trying to take the car, and it was only a short walk.

  The precinct was nearly deserted today, the scaffolding all cleared away and the shopfronts boarded up where the glass had been broken. It seemed like a ghost town, Julia thought. The blood had all been washed away, but she could still hear the screams and the weeping, and propped up against the shop that had been most badly affected were several bouquets of flowers.

  Three people had died in there, two others under the scaffolding, and the tragedy seemed to hang in the air. People fell silent as they passed the site, and in the surrounding shops business was far from brisk.

  They went into a big department store that seemed to have escaped from the sombre atmosphere of the street. ‘So, what did Granny and Grandpa get you for Christmas?’ she asked Katie as they wandered round through the last-minute crowds.

  ‘Oh, lots,’ she said, and rattled off a list of things, several of which had been on Julia’s list of possibles and many more too expensive to be in reach of her budget.

  Her heart sank. They walked out into the street again, to find that the Salvation Army band and choir were standing outside. They were singing ‘In the Bleak Midwinter,’ and as Julia and Katie went past, the choir sang the words, ‘What can I give Him, poor as I am?’

  The words struck a chord with Julia in her desperation. What can I give my daughter? she thought. Not my heart—she has that already and, anyway, just at the moment it’s not really worth having. Oh, David…

  They passed the shop with the print of Little Soham in it, and she hesitated outside. She still wanted to buy it for him—and they had another picture, too, of puppies playing in the snow. It was only a modern print, nothing special, but the puppies looked just like the ones at the Armstrongs’ farm, and she knew Katie would love it.

  ‘Oh, look, there’s Father Christmas!’ Julia said, pointing to a jolly man in the usual red garb with a flowing cotton-wool beard and red cheeks and a wonderfully padded stomach. ‘I tell you what. I want to go into this shop for a minute. Why don’t you stand here in the doorway and watch him, just for a second, all right?’

  Katie nodded, and followed her into the shop, standing just inside the doorway while Julia had a murmured conversation with the man behind the counter.

  One eye on her daughter, she pointed out the old print of Little Soham and the one of the puppies.

  ‘Could you wrap them for me, please?’ she asked, rummaging for her cheque book. ‘My daughter’s just standing over there, I don’t want her to see.’

  ‘Sure.’ The man whipped the puppy picture down behind the counter, and then wrapped the two together in bubble wrap and brown paper.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Julia said, hugely relieved that she’d found something suitable. She wrote out the cheque, told herself not to think about the cost and turned, pictures under her arm, Katie’s name on her lips, but the doorway was empty.

  ‘Katie?’ Pushing past the people in the shop, she went out into the street and looked up and down, but there was no sign of her.

  ‘Katie?’ she called, telling herself to be calm, but the panic was starting to rise and she ran back into the shop, frantically calling and searching amongst the racks of prints.

  ‘Are you looking for a little girl?’ a woman asked her. ‘The one with blonde curly hair?’

  ‘Yes—she’s five. Nearly six. She’s got a blue coat on.’

  ‘She went out, just a minute ago, while you were at the counter.’

  Oh, God. Oh, please, God, no.

  Julia ran back out into the street, calling Katie at the top of her voice, but there was nothing.

  A policeman heard her calling and came over to her. ‘Have you lost someone, madam?’ he asked, and she looked up at him and started to shake.

  ‘My daughter,’ she said. ‘I can’t find my daughter. One minute she was there, the next she was gone. I told her to stand there. She was looking at Father Christmas—’

  ‘Small girl, blonde hair, blue coat?’

  She nodded in relief. ‘Yes. Yes, that’s her. Where is she?’

  The policeman’s face creased in a frown. ‘She went with the man—Father Christmas. She was talking to him, and they went off together. I ass
umed she knew him.’

  Julia stared at him in horror. ‘She went with him? But she didn’t know him! She’d never seen him before! Where did they go?’

  But the policeman was already on the radio, calling for help to locate them. ‘Don’t worry, madam, we’ll have her found in an instant,’ he assured her, but she didn’t believe him.

  Her legs were trembling, her heart was pounding and there was a roaring in her ears. ‘Katie,’ she whispered desperately, her eyes still scanning the street. ‘Katie, come back. Where are you?’

  But there was no sign of her, or of the man dressed as Father Christmas who’d used the disguise to prey on her innocence and lead her goodness knows where. As the significance of her disappearance started to sink in, Julia’s terror threatened to choke her. She could hardly breathe, bile was rising in her throat and the trembling spread to her whole body so she was racked with violent shudders.

  Police were arriving, asking her questions, putting her in a patrol car and driving slowly along the precinct in the direction the pair had been seen to take.

  Still no sign, no word, nothing. No one had seen them, nobody knew anything. Then a Father Christmas outfit was reported abandoned in a litter bin in the multi-storey car park, and Julia’s world fell apart.

  ‘We’ll take you back to the station, madam, and start looking through the security videos from the CCTV cameras around the town,’ the policeman sitting in the front of the patrol car suggested. ‘Maybe we can pick something up. If you wouldn’t mind coming to help us, we can probably pick her out easier with your assistance.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, her hand over her mouth. ‘I need to be in the town in case she comes back, looking for me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the town—we’ve got people on the lookout for anyone answering her description. Do you have a picture of her?’

  A picture? ‘Yes—yes, I do, her school photo. It’s in my bag.’ She unzipped the little back pocket in her bag and pulled out the picture. Katie’s bright, smiling face was shining up at her, and the happy image was more than she could stand. Would she ever see her again?

  Julia started to cry, huge racking sobs that tore through her body, and the WPC next to her put her arms round her and held her tight.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find her,’ she promised, but they were just empty words, and everyone knew it.

  They pulled up at the police station and went inside, and someone asked for tea. ‘Is there anyone we can call for you?’ the policeman from the car asked, and she replied without thinking.

  ‘David,’ she said. ‘I need David.’

  They handed her a phone, and she phoned the hospital and asked them to page him. When he answered, he sounded wary. ‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice tight, and her courage almost failed her, but then she thought of Katie, and she knew she couldn’t do this alone.

  ‘Are you finished there?’ she asked him.

  ‘Just about. Why? Changed your mind? I can’t deal with this, Julia. Not now. Not here. Besides, I didn’t think there was anything left to say—’

  ‘It’s not me,’ she said hurriedly, terrified that he’d hang up. ‘Please, David, listen to me. It’s Katie. She’s gone missing, in town. David, someone’s taken her, and I don’t think I’ll ever get her back!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE was silence for a moment, then David said, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The police station. David, hurry.’

  ‘Stay there. I’m coming,’ he told her, and the phone went dead.

  Julia didn’t know how she got through the next few minutes. Somehow saying it out loud had made it all much more real, and a terror she’d never imagined swept over her. She remembered thinking that if she could just lose Katie for a minute, she might be able to buy her a surprise present, but she’d never meant this—

  ‘We need to look through this video first,’ someone was saying to her. ‘Tell us if you recognise her.’

  She tried to focus, but her eyes were dry and unblinking and she could hardly see. People milled about in front of the camera, but because of the angle it was difficult to work out what she was seeing anyway. A great feeling of helplessness threatened to swamp her—helplessness and guilt, because if she hadn’t taken her eyes off her…

  ‘This is the shop you were in,’ the man told her, pointing out a doorway, and gradually it began to make sense. ‘Now, we had the call from PC Oswald about ten minutes after this, so it should be possible to see you go into the shop. How long do you think you were in there?’

  She shook her head numbly. ‘I don’t know. Not long. I knew what I wanted and there wasn’t a queue. I just bought two pictures.’

  ‘So we might see you on this piece of film—there. Is that you?’

  Was it? Possibly. ‘I think so—and there’s the Father Christmas that we saw.’

  ‘Excellent. So, we’re in the right place on the tape. All we have to do is keep watching.’

  There were voices behind her, and she turned just as David came into the room.

  ‘Julia,’ he said, and his face looked so dear and familiar that she burst into tears.

  His arms were round her, holding her up against his firm, solid chest, and his hands were rubbing her shoulders soothingly and holding her close.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she wept. ‘Oh, David, help me. We have to find her.’

  ‘We’ll find her,’ he said, but although she wanted to believe him, in a town the size of Audley, what hope did they have of finding one small girl before it was too late?

  ‘What can we do?’ he asked the police over her head.

  ‘Not much, at the moment. We’re screening video footage from the CCTV cameras around the area and in the car park where the costume was found.’

  ‘Costume?’ he asked.

  ‘Father Christmas. The man dressed up as Father Christmas.’

  ‘And so she trusted him,’ he said slowly. ‘Oh, my love.’ His arms tightened, and she clung to him and dragged him down onto the seats.

  ‘We have to look for her,’ she said, her voice brittle with desperation. ‘On the videos. We’ve just found the bit where we go into the shop.’

  They watched impatiently as the Father Christmas stooped to talk to the little children that passed, and then suddenly there she was, her Katie, her little face turned up trustingly to the cheerful figure in red.

  ‘That’s her,’ Julia said. ‘That’s Katie.’ She had a death-like grip on David’s hand, and he put his other arm round her and held her tight. They watched in silence as the man held out his hand, and Katie slipped her little hand into it and went with him without question.

  The police team worked on the images, refining them as much as possible, but it wasn’t good enough to get any idea of the identity of the abductor. With the heavy disguise it was impossible to see more than just the eyes, and they were too indistinct to be of any use.

  Then David stiffened and leant forwards to get a better view.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘That hand—it doesn’t look like a man’s hand, and that person’s not very big, you know. Katie’s deceptively small—you compare them to the other people around them. I don’t think it’s a man at all. I think it’s a woman.’

  They looked again, studying the film over and over, and Julia nodded slowly. ‘You’re right. That person doesn’t walk like a man. There’s too much sway of the hips. Men don’t walk like that, and Katie would look smaller beside a man, anyway, unless it was a very small man.’

  ‘Right. I want the women checked,’ Tony Palmer, the detective in charge, snapped. ‘Any woman with a record of abduction or anything similar, anyone with a psychiatric record—anything that might be even slightly relevant. Let’s look through the car park footage again. We were looking for a man—we might have overlooked something.’

  Please, Julia thought, let it be a woman. A woman might not hurt her—not so much. Not in that way. Oh, God, please, let it be a woman.

  And t
hen they found her. An ordinary woman, slim, dressed in jeans and a jumper, was ushering a child in front of her, stooping to talk to her. As she turned to unlock the car, they could just make out that the child was Katie. She seemed quite happy, and there was certainly no struggling. She got into the car without protest, and a moment later they drove away.

  ‘Get that registration,’ Tony Palmer snapped, and for the first time, Julia felt the first tiny stirrings of hope.

  They had the number of the car, and with that number they could trace her.

  They zoomed in on the video image and managed to get all but one letter of the registration. Julia’s hope faded again, but David squeezed her hand. ‘They’ll get it. They know the make and colour of the car. That’s enough.’

  Did she dare to believe him? ‘Please, hurry,’ she said under her breath. ‘Please, please, hurry.’

  ‘Right, got it,’ someone said a couple of minutes later. ‘The car’s registered to an Avril Brown—84 St Anne’s Drive.’

  ‘Right, let’s go,’ the team leader said, and held a hand out to them. ‘You’d better come. If she’s there, Katie will need you.’

  The drive was a nightmare of sirens and flashing lights, but as they approached the house the sirens were turned off and they approached carefully.

  Men ran round the back, others surrounded the front of the modest little semi-detached house, and then Tony Palmer rang the doorbell.

  For a moment there was no response and Julia felt her hope draining away again, but then the door opened and a sad, mousy woman with hopeless eyes stood there on the step.

  ‘She’s here,’ she said woodenly, and then Katie appeared at her side, a bedraggled teddy tucked under one arm, and beamed up at them, and Julia’s thrashing heart nearly stopped dead with relief.

  ‘Hello, Mummy,’ Katie said excitedly. ‘I’ve been watching telly and playing. Avril’s one of Father Christmas’s helpers—she has to dress up and talk to the children to help him, but she’d finished work today so we came back here, and she let me play with all sorts of toys. I said we should tell you, but she said you wouldn’t mind. Did you mind, Mummy?’