S is for Stranger

by Louise Stone

  ‘Amy!’ I shouted, my words swallowed whole by the milling crowds. ‘Amy!’

  A young woman stepped in front of me and I tripped, falling to the ground. Without hesitation, I picked myself up and wiped my dirty hands on the back of my jeans, ignoring the throbbing pain in my left wrist. I looked from side to side, desperate to regain my bearings.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said more loudly now. ‘Can you get out of the way?’ I put out my arm and started shoving people. A woman to my right tutted and a balding man shouted ‘Oi’ in my ear. But it worked and a gap slowly opened up. Once I had managed to escape the main avenue of stalls, I cut a left and ran to the rollercoaster ride. Amy was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Amy,’ I hollered, moving from left to right and back again. ‘Amy, where are you?’

  People were staring but I didn’t care.

  ‘Amy!’

  A tap on my shoulder.

  I spun around. They were stood in front of me: Paul holding Amy’s hand.

  ‘Amy.’ I couldn’t disguise the anger in my voice. ‘Who were you talking to?’

  ‘When?’ Her gaze tipped downwards.

  ‘Back there, next to the ride. I was trying to get your attention.’ I pointed to the rollercoaster.

  ‘No one.’ Amy shook her head.

  ‘What do you mean no one? I saw you.’

  She shook her head again and pushed her fisted hands into her coat pockets, like she was trying to hide something.

  ‘What have you got there?’ I grabbed her hand and prised her fist open. A red lolly fell to the ground. ‘Where did you get this, then?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Sophie, leave her alone. It’s just a lolly,’ Paul said, taking my arm and jamming his fingers firmly into my coat and skin. ‘She’s here, I’m here, and that’s all that matters now.’

  I let go of her and Paul continued to hang onto me, his fingers hot on my chilled skin.

  Through clenched teeth, I said, ‘Do you mind?’

  Paul released my sleeve and gave me a withering look. My head pounded with the onset of a headache.

  ‘Sorry, Amy.’ I hugged her close. ‘I didn’t mean to shout. You just gave me a scare, that’s all.’ I turned my attention to Paul who was looking at me like I had lost it.

  ‘And where were you? Where did you go?’

  ‘To the toilet,’ he said, unflinching.

  ‘To the toilet,’ I repeated, ‘to the toilet. You call that good parenting?’

  ‘I was only a few minutes.’

  I inhaled deeply.

  ‘Sophie, maybe you’re tired. You look tired, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  He was trying to undermine me but I was familiar with his tactics and I didn’t rise to the bait.

  ‘Amy, how about you and I go get some candyfloss or something,’ I suggested, my voice calm except for a slight tell-tale waver. ‘How does that sound?’

  Amy looked to Paul before answering. He started to protest but surprised me. ‘Go on, Amy, it’ll be nice to spend some time with Mummy.’

  ‘OK,’ she agreed quietly.

  I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

  ‘Meet me here in twenty, OK?’ Paul said, and pointed to the information booth sign. I nodded. ‘And I mean twenty. No later.’

  Amy led me from one stall to another and we finally stopped to watch a young boy focused on winning a Winnie-the-Pooh-Bear at the coconut shy. We stood in silence for a few moments before Amy’s face took on a weighted seriousness.

  ‘Mummy, why do you get so angry with Daddy?’

  ‘Because we don’t always see eye to eye. But it’s not you. You do know that?’ I put my arm around her. ‘I’m sorry about shouting at you earlier. I was just worried.’

  She paused. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ She pulled the cuffs of her coat further down.

  ‘I know that.’ I studied Amy’s face. ‘Were you talking to someone back there?’

  Her lower lip started to tremble. ‘No. You told me not to talk to strangers.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, more gently now, ‘but did a woman talk to you? I know you wouldn’t approach a stranger yourself.’

  She shook her head furiously from side to side and hugged me, burying her head in my coat. ‘Don’t worry, Ames. It doesn’t matter anyway, does it? You’re safe now. That’s the most important thing.’

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yep?’

  I didn’t expect it. Her words knocked me for six. ‘Daddy says we shouldn’t talk about you any more.’

  There it was; like a knife in my heart. No warning. ‘He does, does he? And why’s that?’ My voice was pitched high, unnaturally high.

  ‘Because he says that, when you left, we had to make our own world and, so, if we talk about you, it’s …’ She stopped.

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘It’s like you’re still my mummy.’

  I looked away, tears threatening to overspill onto my cheeks. ‘I am still your mummy and I’ve wanted more than anything to see more of you.’

  ‘Daddy says you don’t really want to see me any more and that’s why you didn’t come over on Saturdays.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I started and stopped. ‘I wanted to see you, Amy. You need to trust me.’ I knew it was inadequate and, yet, I knew she’d never accept the truth or want to hear it: how could an eight-year-old girl understand her father hadn’t allowed me to see her? I also didn’t want to admit that I had had no control over the situation. That if I turned up and caused a scene, it would only upset her and Paul would make me out to be the bad guy. I knew that the least I could do was to protect her from arguments. ‘Anyway, Ames, let’s get that candyfloss and head back to Daddy, yeah?’ I was desperate to change the subject.

  She nodded, hurt etched across her tiny features.

  I gave her a few pound coins and watched her walk confidently up to the candyfloss seller. She asked for two sticks and turned around to check if that was OK. I put my hand up and indicated three. She changed the order. I couldn’t believe how she had grown up, the same little girl who at one time preferred to remain wrapped around my legs, her small pudgy hand in mine.

  My phone vibrated in my bag, cutting through my thoughts. Paul, no doubt. We had been over twenty minutes. I rummaged around in the tote, found the phone and hurriedly tried to flip it open before the third ring ended. I got it on the fourth.

  ‘We’re just coming back.’

  A rough, low, muffled female voice filled the phone.

  ‘Happy birthday, Sophie.’ A pause. ‘Your turn.’

  ‘Who is this?’ I managed to blurt out, my heart pounding furiously. I could hear someone else calling out my name and then, the call went dead.

  The voice. So familiar.

  Blood rushed to my ears, my heart hammering my chest.

  I looked over to the stall to check on Amy and dropped my mobile to the ground, my eyes fixed on the spot where she had just been standing.

  She was gone.

  A deathly chill passed over my body, my heart dropped into my stomach. Half a beat later, I snapped out of it and quickly retrieved my phone off the ground. I moved erratically from one side of the stalls to the other, my eyes desperately scanning the crowds.

  ‘Did you see where that little girl went?’ I asked the candyfloss seller.

  ‘Huh?’ The overweight man squinted at me through his spectacles.

  ‘The little girl who just asked you for candyfloss. Did you just sell candyfloss to a girl about this high?’ I showed him. ‘Auburn hair?’

  He shrugged his shoulders and called over me to the next customer. I whipped around. Droplets of sweat formed on my upper lip. I clasped my throat; dry as parchment paper.

  ‘Amy!’ I called out, my voice drowning in the hubbub of the fair.

  I attempted to control my shaking hand as I scrolled through the phone menu looking for Paul’s name. It went straight through to voicemail. I tried again. My eyes darted left and right searching for any sign of Amy’s pi
nk duffle coat or strawberry blonde hair. She had vanished. I prayed to god she had found her way back to her father. It didn’t seem possible: I had taken my eyes off her for less than thirty seconds. I wanted to scream at the woman staring at me as she passed by with a pushchair and her young son hanging onto the handle, I wanted to shout at the man who had just dug his elbow into his friend’s side and nodded in my direction. They both walked off laughing. Thirty seconds. Where had she gone in thirty seconds?

  Paul eventually picked up.

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘I can’t find her, I can’t find Amy,’ I shouted over the mounting noise. ‘Is she with you?’ A moan escaped my throat. I pushed the phone up against my ear in an effort to drown out the arcade games and music.

  ‘What do you mean you can’t find her?’

  ‘She was here,’ I said. ‘Oh god, oh god …’ My face crumpled. Large tears landed on my lips, I licked them away and wiped my nose on the back of my sleeve. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At home,’ he answered.

  ‘Home?’ I shouted. How much time had passed? My mind felt a familiar fuzziness, the same sensation warning me of the onset of a panic attack. My body telling me I was in danger. ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘What do you mean, where am I?’ I shouted, throwing my free arm into the air. ‘I thought I was with you! At the fairground!’

  The phone line went silent.

  ‘Sophie, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t at a fairground with you today.’

  CHAPTER 3

  I felt cold, shaking furiously; DI Ward said it was the shock and advised me to do my coat up, wrap my scarf tightly around my neck. But I couldn’t warm up. An icy, hard dread sat in the pit of my stomach and I knew that, until I found Amy, it wouldn’t go away. I dabbed pointlessly at my eyes with tissues but they were disintegrating after two hours of constant use; white bits fell to the floor. I wondered if tears could run out. At this point, it didn’t seem that they could. Whenever I managed to slow my breathing and try to focus on what was being asked of me, I thought the tears might have stopped but then, in a heartbeat, I’d remember and fresh tears would spring up.

  ‘Here.’ DI Ward handed me a new one. ‘It’s clean,’ she assured me.

  ‘What happens now?’

  The detective surveyed the scene, taking in the chaos of the fairground. I was trying not to get my hopes up but, surely, with an active search party on the lookout, our chances of finding Amy had just gone up ten-fold?

  DI Ward gazed at me, her brown eyes steady. She put a hand on my arm. The gesture lacked warmth and made my skin crawl with goose bumps. ‘We start at the beginning. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I should’ve, you know. I should’ve kept a closer eye on her.’ My words were coming out all garbled and I stopped, took a deep breath, and started again. ‘When I couldn’t see her, I thought maybe she had just wandered off. But, I knew in my heart, she doesn’t do that. She’s such a good child.’ I blew my nose. ‘We had just been chatting, you know?’

  ‘Have you told the missing persons tent?’

  I shook my head, my gaze shifted downward. She quickly removed her arm and started walking in that direction. I got the impression the no-nonsense detective was finding it hard to deal with my tears.

  ‘No,’ I said lamely, jogging to catch up with her. It hadn’t even entered my head.

  ‘Well, Ms Fraiser, it’s always a good place to start. Amy might have headed there herself.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, a woman reprimanded.

  DI Ward led me over to the marquee and addressed the nearest official, a tall girl of no more than nineteen kitted out in jeans and trainers.

  She flashed her ID. ‘This lady’s little girl is missing. Can you put a call out?’ She looked at me. ‘Ms Fraiser, tell her what you know. Where you last saw her.’

  ‘So how old is your daughter?’ the girl prompted me. ‘Why don’t you tell me what she was wearing?’

  ‘Ms Fraiser, the quicker we act, often the better the result,’ DI Ward urged.

  I went to speak but my body had shut down. Inside I was screaming: I shouldn’t be having this conversation. This kind of thing happens on film sets, not in real life. Why was everyone acting so goddamn calm and rational? They wanted me to think straight; but my brain was a fug of emotions and every fibre of my being so taut, I thought I might snap right in half.

  The tears had started to flow again and the detective spoke more softly this time. ‘Ms Fraiser, we all want to find your daughter. You’re going to have to help us out here. What was Amy wearing?’

  I dabbed my nose and eyes before filling the girl in on the details. DI Ward thanked the girl and took me to one side.

  ‘So, I need to ask, your daughter, Amy, is she at risk? For example, does she suffer from any medical conditions?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t got any medical conditions.’ I leant heavily against one of the marquee’s poles and just as quickly straightened up. ‘Course she’s at bloody risk, she’s missing!’ I shoved my shoulders back. ‘I saw someone talking to Amy earlier. A woman.’ She nodded. ‘She was wearing a black coat and I think she might have bribed her with a lolly.’

  ‘How do you know she gave her a lolly?’

  ‘She had one in her hand.’

  ‘So you spoke to Amy after her meeting with this woman?’

  ‘Yes, I saw her talking to her and ran in Amy’s direction. When I did find Amy, the woman had gone.’ I paused. ‘But …’

  ‘But what?’ She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  ‘Amy told me she hadn’t spoken to anyone.’

  ‘And you’re sure she had definitely spoken with a woman?’

  I squinted at her. ‘Yes, I’m not delusional.’ But even as I spoke, the fuzziness started up, the tingling at my temples. Had I imagined it? ‘I have this feeling I know this woman.’ I looked up. ‘I think she’s come back for me.’

  I held my head in my hands, willing the tingling to go away. I couldn’t have a panic attack now and not after all this time; what if the court found out? Why would they hand me my child if the attacks were back?

  ‘Who, Ms Fraiser?’ When I didn’t answer she said, ‘Are you feeling OK?’

  I looked at her, terrified that the attack would get worse. My hands were trembling, the grass was shifting in front of me. I rammed my hands into my hair and dug my nails into my scalp, willing myself not to black out. The ringing was intensifying in my ears and I could hear my shallow breathing. I needed to control it.

  The detective was behind me now, her hand on my back. ‘I’ll get help.’

  ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll be fine. Can you just get me a glass of water?’

  She looked at me intently for a moment and nodded before walking off. As soon as she had left I forced my shoulders back and exhaled and inhaled loudly until the ground started to come into focus, the ringing had dimmed and as the DI reappeared, a gust of air cooled the sweat on my face.

  ‘OK?’ She shoved the glass in my direction.

  I nodded.

  ‘OK, what were you saying about the woman?’

  ‘When I was at university,’ I started. My lower lip trembled. ‘I witnessed my friend die. Cold-blooded murder. I think the woman was there but I don’t know, I blacked out at the time. The whole thing was like a dream.’ I paused. ‘A nightmare.’ I shook my head, tried to physically remove the fog that descended every time I thought of that night. A coping mechanism, the Priory therapist Dr Hurst, had said: a way of protecting myself.

  The DI clenched her jaw, started scribbling madly again in her notebook. ‘Why are you relating the two?’ Her eyes bored into me. I could tell her mind was already running my profile through the system: she wouldn’t find anything.

  I leant against the pole again. ‘I don’t know. The woman’s voice was so familiar.’

  ‘You heard her voice?’

  ‘She rang me just b
efore Amy disappeared.’ I bit my lip. ‘Although, why the woman would know my number …’ My voice trailed off. Maybe I was imagining things, maybe it was another trick of my imagination. It wasn’t feasible, was it? ‘No, I don’t know what I’m talking about.’ I paused. ‘But there was something about her voice.’

  The DI’s shoulders visibly tensed. ‘Why do you think Amy said she didn’t speak to a woman?’

  ‘I guess she didn’t want to get into trouble.’

  ‘Maybe she genuinely didn’t?’

  She didn’t have to say it: she thought I was delusional. Maybe I hadn’t seen the woman. Maybe because it’s my birthday, I’m remembering … She died on your birthday twenty years ago. I shook my head hard; I didn’t want to remember. Amy was missing but it has nothing to do with the night Bethany died.

  My heart twisted when I thought how angrily I’d spoken to Amy only a couple of hours ago: I had been worried about her talking to a stranger. I hoped that wherever she was she realised I wasn’t cross with her. Had she run away because she thought I was angry? Had she run away because, as her gaze often told me, she was scared of me? What if there had been no woman and I had accused Amy of talking to thin air? She would think her mother was mad: again. That thought caught me unawares and I stifled a sob.

  DI Ward nodded. ‘OK, I just need to be clear on everything. When Amy went missing, what were you doing?’

  ‘Buying candyfloss. Over there.’ I pointed to the stallholder at the far side of the green. ‘I gave her money and she went up to order it. Next thing I know, I get a phone call. It was an unknown number and this woman’s muffled voice said, “Happy birthday” and “Your turn”. I looked over again and Amy was gone.’ I gave a small shake to my head. ‘Just like that. Gone.’

  ‘This caller said “your turn”? and what on earth does that mean? Are you sure?’