Those Other Women

by Nicola Moriarty

  ‘Too busy, huh?’ she asked sympathetically as she took up her position and prepared to serve the ball.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said, and was caught off-guard as Linda hit a perfect serve and she had to dart sideways in order to return it.

  Linda hit the ball back and Frankie took a swing and completely missed it. ‘By the way,’ she said as she walked to the back of the court to retrieve the ball, lowering her voice in case other staff on the adjacent courts could hear them, ‘I just wanted to thank you for the bonus. I’m beyond thrilled. You don’t even realise how perfect the timing is.’

  Linda took the ball from her. ‘What bonus?’ she said, and served the ball with perfect accuracy yet again. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Frankie hit it back and struggled to chat while concentrating on the game. ‘Paul told me yesterday about my bonus that you two agreed on,’ she said between breaths. ‘It’s such a great surprise.’

  Linda loped forward elegantly, somehow able to keep up the conversation without losing her breath or breaking her stride. ‘I’m sorry, Frankie, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  She smacked the ball with surprising strength, but this time Frankie didn’t even try to return the ball, instead letting it fly past her ear, hit the glass behind her and bounce to the floor. She let her racquet hang by her side as Linda picked up the ball and turned to face her.

  ‘But . . .’ said Frankie, ‘he was definitely completely himself when we spoke. I’m certain of it. And he told me you two had worked out the finances together. And that everything was about to be sorted by the lawyers too.’

  Linda shook her head. ‘Oh, darling, he was way ahead of himself. Of course we’ve talked about giving you something once this is all sorted out to show you how appreciative we are of your help. I mean, you’re doing a lot of overtime, and that’s while trying to look after a family as well. But he shouldn’t have promised you that. Not yet. Cormack’s not in a position to pay you a bonus right now. And it’s still the kind of thing the board needs to approve. We can’t run this past them at the moment, not until we have everything under control.’

  ‘Oh,’ Frankie said, unable to help the disappointment showing on her face. She couldn’t believe she was going to have to tell Dom her windfall was a lot further off than she’d thought.

  ‘I wish I could give you better news, Frankie. I’m sorry, I really am, but there’s no bonus coming – not right now.’

  CHAPTER 29

  It was a whole heap of things that led to the worst afternoon of Frankie’s life. Just one little thing after another. One choice. One mistake. One wrong move.

  Leaving her phone on her desk.

  Not checking the voicemail on her work phone the moment she got back to her desk.

  Assuming that everything was fine. Assuming that the afternoon was going the way it was supposed to go. But nothing ever seems to go to plan when you’re a mother.

  The first lucky break was when she sent Mandy that text message. At least that way she found out that something was wrong. Otherwise she might not have realised for hours.

  Hey, thanks again for picking the kids up today. Any chance you could remind Coby to keep working on his speech for science?

  The reply came straight back.

  Didn’t you get my messages?

  But before she had a chance to ask what she meant, the phone started ringing in her hand. It was Mandy.

  ‘I left messages, one on your work phone . . . another with one of your co-workers. I couldn’t get the kids today. Oh my God, she promised she would pass the message on.’

  ‘What do you mean? So wait, you don’t have the kids?’

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  ‘But then . . .’ Frankie looked at her watch. Classes had finished forty minutes ago. Why hadn’t the school office called her to ask who was picking up the kids?

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Mandy said. ‘They’ll be waiting at the office, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Okay, I have to go,’ Frankie said, ‘I have to call them.’

  She hung up and dialled the school. The recorded message kicked in. She left a garbled voicemail. ‘This is Frances Macchione. Is anyone still there in office? I’ve just found out my kids weren’t picked up today – Coby and Hayley Macchione. Are they there at the office? Can someone please call me back urgently?’

  She hung up and stood frozen for a moment. What was she supposed to do next? Start calling around to their friends, figure out if they’d gone home with someone else? But if anyone else had taken them, wouldn’t they have let her know?

  Frankie snatched up her handbag. She needed to get to the school. She had to find them. Her phone started ringing again and she looked down to see the school calling. Thank God.

  She answered it. ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is Renee from the office. I’m sorry, Mrs Macchione, but Coby and Hayley aren’t here. Mr Tiller from maintenance and I are going to do a sweep of the school now, check if they’re waiting somewhere for you. But listen, are you sure someone else hasn’t collected them for you?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Frankie said, aware that she sounded like the worst mother in the world. ‘Mandy Quick was supposed to take them home today but apparently I missed a message from her telling me she couldn’t, so now I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay, stay calm. I’m sure they’re fine. We’ll start checking. You call around your school mums network and see if someone else has them for you. I’ll call you back in ten.’

  Frankie hung up once again, feeling more afraid than ever. She looked up to see Poppy and Annalise striding towards her determinedly.

  ‘Poppy! You drive, don’t you? Can you please give me a lift? My kids didn’t get picked up from school like they were supposed to and now I don’t know where they are. I need to get there as quickly as possible.’

  They both stopped short, staring at her for a moment, maybe taken aback that she would ever ask either of them for help, considering their relationship. But Frankie knew Poppy, she knew what she was really like. She’d seen her other side through NOP. She’d seen how compassionate she could be – provided she wasn’t spiralling because of that idiot ex. She also knew how much Poppy had appreciated the way she’d stepped in and stood up for her when they’d run into said ex and his new partner at the shops. Poppy owed her for that one.

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy said, seeming to find her voice. ‘Of course I’ll give you a lift.’

  Annalise had turned a funny shade of grey. At the time Frankie thought she was actually worried about her children. She knew better afterwards.

  Annalise came with them in the car. She sat quietly in the back while Poppy drove, weaving between the traffic at high speed, God bless her, and Frankie made calls. She phoned parent after parent, trying to track down the kids. She tried Eve who lived a few doors down and she ran up the street to check the house for her. The kids didn’t have their own keys, but Eve made sure they hadn’t walked themselves home and weren’t sitting on the front porch waiting for her. Frankie then tried Lucy in case she’d somehow picked them up for her. She hadn’t.

  They were almost at the school when Frankie realised she hadn’t even called Dom yet. Now she felt like an awful wife as well as a terrible mother. What was she going to tell him? He needed to know – even if they were perfectly fine at a friend’s house and it was all just about to be okay, he needed to know what was going on. Frankie would want to know.

  She dialled his number and waited for him to answer. Voicemail. She left a shaky message: ‘Call me as soon as you get this.’

  Hopefully by the time he heard her message and called back it would all be okay. She would have found them.

  As they pulled up to the front gates of the school, Frankie’s phone rang again. It was the school office.

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, breathless, ‘here at the school. Have you found them?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Macchione, they’re not here. Are you sure they’re not with another pare
nt? At a friend’s house?’

  ‘I’ve called . . . I’ve . . . I’ve tried everyone,’ she said as she climbed out of the car and strode towards the office. Renee met her out the front and she hung up her phone to speak to her face to face.

  ‘I’ve tried everyone I can think of,’ Frankie continued. ‘I don’t understand, where could they have . . .’

  She was getting so confused. All she wanted was to see those two kids walking towards her. She’d lost Coby at the shops once, when he was a toddler. Hayley had barely flickered into existence in her belly at the time and she’d been in a clothing store in a large shopping centre. Coby was toddling in and out of the clothing racks while she browsed. She kept thinking she ought to stop him from doing that. He still had jam on his chin from his sandwich, he was probably going to make the dresses sticky. But he was having such a fun time and she was tired.

  She stopped paying attention to him for what could have only been twenty seconds. She was so sure of that. The problem was that she spent too long searching among the clothing racks all around her, because she was certain that any second he would pop out and surprise her. She never thought that he’d have run off out of the store. But by the time she realised she’d given him far too much of a head start.

  When she dashed out of the shop, she didn’t even know which way to turn. Up towards the movie theatre? Or down towards the food court?

  And all she wanted was for him to just appear.

  That’s all she wanted today. She wanted Coby and Hayley to both appear.

  Obviously, she found Coby back at the shopping centre that day. A security guard helped her and within minutes he’d taken a message over his radio. A small boy had been spotted by some staff at a jewellery store; he was sitting on one of those little shopping centre rides. It was a good sixty metres from the clothing shop where she’d lost him.

  She remembered that she cried and she thanked the jewellery store ladies a lot. And she hugged Coby very, very tightly. Later she wondered if those women were all judging her. If they all thought she was a terrible mother. And she wondered what her own mum might have said. Would she have been cross with Frankie for losing her grandson? Or would she have laughed and reassured her that it happened to all parents?

  Today, however, even though Coby was much, much older, even though the two of them were so much more capable and responsible than a three-year-old, it felt worse. Frankie didn’t know why. Was it because the world was a scarier place these days? Or at least it was if you believed social media and the news. Was it because of all the stories she’d read over the years of people who disappeared without a trace?

  ‘Do we . . . When do we call the police?’ Frankie asked Renee.

  Renee looked back at Frankie, the mention of the police seemed to frighten her. She pushed her glasses up her nose, ‘Umm,’ she began, ‘I guess now we should . . .’

  ‘Hey, Frankie, what’s going on? Is everything okay?’

  Frankie swung around to see Chelsea striding towards her, looking smart and capable as usual. She was the last person Frankie wanted to see right now and she didn’t have the time to deal with her.

  Renee answered before she could. ‘We’ve got a bit of a situation going on here. Frankie’s kids didn’t get picked up as they were supposed to and now they’re . . .’ She obviously didn’t want to say the word “missing”, but there was no point pretending it wasn’t happening.

  ‘Missing,’ Frankie finished for her.

  ‘Oh God, Frankie,’ Chelsea exclaimed. ‘I stayed late to help out with band practice, but unfortunately I didn’t see your two. What can I do to help? You’ve obviously already done the ring-around to their friends to see if someone else has picked them up for you?’

  Frankie nodded. She appreciated the fact that Chelsea at least gave her the benefit of the doubt that she’d be smart enough to have done that much.

  ‘And are the police involved yet?’

  ‘We were just about to . . .’ said Renee.

  ‘All right, that’s good,’ said Chelsea. ‘You make that call now. The sooner they know what’s going on, the better. Frankie, I’m going to get on my phone and start getting our own search underway for you. There’s an online mum’s group I’m a part of – MOP. They’ll help us to get a bunch of local mums out on the streets. Don’t worry, we’ll find them. It’s only 4 pm. They can’t have got too far.’

  Frankie didn’t bother to tell her she was also a member of MOP. She was happy for Chelsea to be the one to coordinate the search – she didn’t think she had the mental capacity to do it herself.

  Frankie realised that Poppy and Annalise were still there, waiting by Poppy’s car; they looked to be having a tense, quiet conversation. A moment later, Poppy strode over to her. ‘We’ll start searching the streets for you. Tell me your address, we’ll drive between here and your home looking for them. Are there any shops or parks that they like to go to sometimes after school? Anything like that we should check?’

  Frankie gave Poppy the details and showed her a couple of photos of the kids from her phone. ‘Hayley’s backpack is bright pink,’ she added as they headed for the car. ‘Oh, and Coby will probably be playing with his fidget spinner. He never puts the thing down.’

  She watched them drive away with a silent prayer that Poppy and Annalise would be her saviours that day. That they would find her kids for her. Meanwhile, Renee called the police and Frankie dialled Dom again. He needed to know what was going on.

  PART SIX

  Poppy, Annalise and Frankie

  CHAPTER 30

  They were both quiet as Poppy reversed out of the school driveway and turned the car down Williams Street to start the search. But eventually Annalise spoke up.

  ‘I fucked up, Poppy. I really fucked up, didn’t I?’

  Poppy shoved the knuckle of her index finger into her mouth, her other hand on the steering wheel. Annalise could tell she was biting down hard. Her chest heaved as she sucked in air. ‘Look,’ Poppy said eventually, ‘yes, it’s bad. It’s really bad. But I’m sure they’re going to turn up. We just need to find them. We need to find them and everything will be okay again. She doesn’t ever need to know you had any part in this, okay? We’ll fix it.

  ‘Annalise,’ she continued. ‘Just one question. I . . . I have to ask. You didn’t do this on purpose, did you?’

  ‘What? What do you mean, on purpose?’

  ‘I mean you didn’t do it because of one of those stupid NOP challenges, did you? You know, “make the mums stay at work later” kind of thing.’

  ‘No! That’s not what this was. I made a mistake, that’s all. I literally forgot to pass the message on.’

  ‘Okay. I just wanted to check. Don’t worry, we’ll find them. We’ll find them and everything will be fine.’

  Poppy drove slowly down the road, her eyes scanning the footpath, and Annalise tried to focus and do the same on her side of the road.

  Annalise didn’t make a habit of crying. In fact, she could probably count on one hand the number of times she’d let tears fall down her face as an adult – including watching that stupid movie with Harmony recently.

  But right now, she felt like crying. She wanted to cry about everything. About her horrible mistake that had led to Frankie’s kids going missing. About the secret she was holding inside right now. About the truth of her past that she still hadn’t confessed to Poppy.

  She had gone to Poppy that afternoon to tell her what she’d found out about Frankie. It was going to bring the two of them back together, she’d thought. It was going to be the focus of their attention and she’d use it to find a way to make Poppy forget about her lies. Or she’d come up with more lies if she needed to. Either way, they would put all that rubbish behind them.

  Poppy’s face had flushed red when Annalise told her what she’d seen on Frankie’s computer screen. ‘Bloody hell, I was starting to like that woman,’ she’d said.

  Annalise had been surprised by that. What did she mean
she was starting to like Frankie? Since when?

  They were going to confront her together. But then Frankie had dropped her bombshell. Her children were missing and instantly Annalise knew it was all her fault. She’d admitted her mistake to Poppy while they were waiting at the car just now. Poppy had stayed calm. ‘We’ll fix it,’ she’d said, ‘We’ll find them ourselves. They can’t have got far.’

  Now, as they drove from the school to Frankie’s house and then turned around and back-tracked, Annalise started to panic. Why the hell hadn’t they found them yet? When they were close to the school yet again, Annalise suggested they split up. ‘I’ll go on foot,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ll see something or hear something if I’m out of the car.’ She felt like she was grasping at straws, but the car was suffocating. ‘You go and try the park Frankie mentioned.’

  Annalise had only taken a few steps when she saw it on the ground. The metal edges caught the sunlight. A fidget spinner.

  It didn’t mean anything, did it? Anyone could have lost that. It wasn’t necessarily his. She picked it up and felt the cool shape press against her palm. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But it didn’t feel like a good sign.

  She walked back up to the school. She was going to have to show it to Frankie.

  * * *

  Dom finally answered the phone on the third call. His tone was irritable when he picked up but Frankie didn’t give him the chance to grumble at her.

  ‘The kids are missing,’ she blurted.

  ‘Missing? What do you mean missing?’

  ‘I mean there was a mix-up with school pick-up and they’re . . . they’re just gone.’

  At first he tried to calm her down, tried to reassure her, offered all the same solutions that everyone had already suggested before him. ‘A friend must have them.’ ‘Could your sister have picked them up?’ ‘Aren’t they waiting at the school office?’ ‘Did they walk themselves home?’

  Frankie snapped at him, ‘You think I haven’t already thought of all that?’ She felt guilty and softened her voice. ‘They’re properly missing, Dom. You need to get here.’