by K. L. Slater
I still felt stupid now when I thought about how it happened. I’d had a hideous stomach upset one weekend after we’d been out with Mike and Bev to a new Thai restaurant in town, and spent what seemed like a whole day in the bathroom before sleeping it off. I didn’t get out of bed until Tuesday.
When I was feeling better, I completely forgot to take my pill. and after another boozy night out a couple of weeks later, while my dad babysat Grace, the result was… Oscar.
It was a real shock to us both at first, but Blake readily adapted to the idea and I had to put a brave face on it, though in reality I had many sleepless nights and hours of worrying how life would be with a new baby again.
I came around to it in the end, and when we told Grace that she’d be getting a new brother or sister, she was apoplectic with joy.
‘I want a sister… a girl, pleeease! I can do her hair and play her my favourite Little Mix songs!’
But she loved him anyway when he arrived.
I handed Oscar his rattle again and picked up my Kindle, opening the thriller I’d started reading last night. I’d managed about three pages before I fell asleep with the device on my chest. Oscar had been fractious and snuffly the last few days with his cold, but last night, when Blake brought him back home from Dad’s, he’d rested really well so we were able to catch up on our own sleep a bit.
I idly picked at the hem of the quilt cover as I wondered what other plans Blake had for the day. He’d already mentioned he’d got to ‘pop out’ later, which was shorthand for being gone a while; hours sometimes. It’s not that I didn’t trust my husband; I did. But just lately, his impromptu absences seemed to have increased substantially. I don’t know… Blake often remarked that I had an over-active imagination. I supposed he might have a point.
Oscar let out an ear-curdling squeal, as if he felt frustrated, too.
‘I can’t just say no when people ask me for help, Luce,’ Blake said when I complained about the time council business took up at the weekends.
Anyhow, that was why I was so used to my husband being out of the house. He’d had to give up his job as a healthcare assistant at our local GP’s surgery to focus on his work as a Rushcliffe borough councillor, but still, he never seemed to have enough hours in the day. It was in his nature to do over and above what was required and expected, which was what made him so good at whatever he turned his hand to, and so popular with people in the local area.
My head snapped up at the sound of an ear-splitting scream and a bump.
‘Oh no!’ I raced around the bed and scooped up my baby from the floor. He was already bright red in the face from screeching. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, darling.’
I sat down on the edge of the bed, stroking him and kissing his head, speaking soothingly to try and calm him. When he’d calmed a little, I propped him up on my knee so he was facing me. I looked him over.
An angry red welt throbbed on his left temple where he must have glanced his head on Blake’s bedside table as he fell. Thank goodness it hadn’t drawn blood, but I could tell just by looking that he’d have a mark there for a while and possibly some bruising.
I felt like the worst person in the world.
I spent the next ten minutes singing back-to-back nursery rhymes and tickling Oscar’s stout little belly, never taking my eyes off him for a second. It didn’t take long until he perked up. He was such a joy; he hardly ever cried unless he was hungry, ill or needed changing. He just seemed to have a positive aura surrounding him that I felt certain he must have got from Blake.
Grace could be a little reserved at times; like me, I suppose. For as far back as I could remember, I’d always had the feeling that the world was against me, that good things happened to other people, not to me. This ingrained belief meant I always tended to expect the worst, while Blake naturally gravitated towards more positive thoughts.
‘Have you ever considered you might just get lucky one time?’ he often needled me when I was fretting about how something or other would turn out. But he might not be as cynical if he knew why I felt that way…
Seven
Sunday afternoon
I feel stifled inside the police car, as if there’s not enough oxygen to breathe.
We must only be about 300 yards from our house but the police had insisted on accompanying us home. I’m desperate to be out there, on foot, looking for Grace but my protests fell on deaf ears.
During the short journey, I’m vaguely aware of Blake looking over at me and reaching across to touch my arm reassuringly several times.
I can’t respond. I can’t even press my lips together in a sign that I acknowledge him, never mind give a little smile. I can’t look into his eyes and feel my own fear reflected right back at me.
I keep reliving the moment he went outside to meet Grace. The moment I decided to turn up the music, to visit the upstairs bathroom, rather than the downstairs loo. The self-indulgent moment I lingered to check for new wrinkles in the mirror.
And now, I can’t stop thinking: why? What made me decide to do those things?
If I’d stayed downstairs and turned the music off, I’d have heard Blake calling out the second he slipped. Crucial seconds would have been saved.
It tears me to pieces to think that so many wrong decisions had to be made in order to create the perfect scenario for Grace to be left completely alone on her walk back home.
Blake had to step on the patch of slippery moss at exactly the right angle to ensure an ankle sprain that he’d struggle to get up from. He had to check his phone at the precise moment he did, although that wasn’t so unlikely, given that he is virtually surgically attached to the damn thing.
In those minutes before my husband went outside to meet our daughter, I’d been so smug in my life. Fondly making light of having to listen to Grace’s incessant chatter when she returned home, looking forward to a fun evening ahead.
As the police car drives slowly up our own street, I look out hopelessly at the unusual profusion of local people milling around, talking with their hands in groups, discussing what might have happened to Grace.
I recognise some of the familiar faces staring at us sympathetically as we pass; we already have a new role as the poor parents of the missing girl. Bursts of radio static pepper the silence inside the car and I have to fight not to scream for them to open the door and let me out.
The houses, the gardens, the people; they all look exactly the same as they did yesterday and the day before that. How can that possibly be, when Grace has gone?
‘We’re here, Lucie.’ Blake squeezes my hand, studies my face. I know my expression is blank as I stare at the back of the driver’s headrest as the car slows to a stop.
I turn and look vacantly at the house. At the path where Blake slipped. At the gate Grace should have run back through, full of stories of her day at the theme park.
The brickwork looks darker, the windows cold and angular.
It doesn’t look like home any more.
There’s a flurry of movement outside the car.
My door opens and a female officer helps me out. Our eyes meet and she gives me a sad little smile that says she knows how hard this is. She spoke to me earlier, told me her name before we got into the car, but I can’t seem to remember anything she said.
I walk towards the house. There are police officers either side of Blake and me. I’m placing one foot in front of the other. One two, one two. The ground is solid and unforgiving beneath my feet but I feel as if I’m floating just above it. Untethered, somehow.
I hear the creak of the front gate, the shuffling of heavily booted feet on concrete. My eyes fix on the skein of moss that patches the path in front of me. The group pulls back for a moment as Blake stops walking and stares down at the cursed spot. I know he’s thinking about the consequences of his accident.
There is a bottle of eco-friendly moss treatment fluid in the cupboard under the kitchen sink that he bought on special offer from B&Q last month. That he
noticed the mossy path at all… was this a hint, a warning of the terrible event scheduled to happen? Or was it just another example of his good intentions being scuppered by his failure to follow through?
He has no such trouble at work, just in his domestic life. Rushing around ticking off his to-do list, trying to wear all the hats.
What does it all matter now? I return to my silent, exhausting quest of trying to make sense of what has happened. Yet in trying to search for a reason for Grace’s disappearance, it feels like I’m about to topple over the edge of the normal life I took for granted only this morning, into a kind of relentless madness only I know is there.
The front door opens; a firm, reassuring hand on my shoulder guides me through into the hallway where every day Grace shrugs on her coat and puts on her shoes, then carelessly discards them again, sometimes several times throughout the day.
I stand next to the stairs, the end balustrade strong and unforgiving against my back.
The small space is full of people, yet it feels empty, lifeless, and the air is full of foreboding as feet shuffle and mouths cough. People try their best not to steal curious glances at me and fail.
They must be wondering why I let my nine-year-old daughter walk home alone. Why I chose to nap and listen to music instead of ensuring she was safe.
Thankfully, if they are, nobody is saying it out loud.
My heart yearns for Oscar. I need my baby in my arms, safe and warm. Perhaps I can ask them to call Dad and get them both back here.
‘Get that door shut quick,’ an authoritative voice growls, and it swings closed, but not before I spot a photographer near the gate.
Then a woman in a red mac appears seemingly from nowhere and springs forward with a microphone, shouting something.
It seems the local press have already arrived.
Eight
Olivia
Sue from next door had put the television on for her and made her a mug of hot chocolate, which Olivia hadn’t touched yet.
She sat in this lounge every night with her mum and dad, but right now, with Sue here, it felt like she was in someone else’s house.
Everything was upside down since Grace had gone missing on her way home. It was like someone had messed up a completed jigsaw puzzle and now the picture looked all wrong.
Sue was chattering on and on about her grandchildren, Elsa and Niall, who lived in Spain and visited her twice a year. Usually Olivia liked Sue’s stories about the stuff Elsa and Niall got up to. And she’d usually laugh when Sue explained how she was trying her best to learn Spanish but kept pronouncing all the words wrong and getting them in the wrong order so her sentences made no sense.
But today, she wished Sue would just turn off the television and stop talking, because Olivia was trying very hard to think.
She stared out of the window, Sue’s voice and the television both fading away into the background.
Their usually quiet street was buzzing with people, and lots of them were police officers. Men, women and even children walked in groups, heads turning, necks craning this way and that, as if they expected to find Grace hiding under a hedge or even in one of the wheelie bins that people had put out for the council’s scheduled rubbish collection tomorrow.
Her friend wasn’t in any of those places, Olivia could have told them that. Grace wasn’t stupid; in fact, she was one of the cleverest in Miss Barr’s class, proven by a recent test they’d all had to sit.
There was no way Grace would hide somewhere or run away. If she was planning on doing either of those things, she would definitely have told Olivia. Olivia was Grace’s best friend, after all, and they told each other all their secrets. Like at Christmas, when Olivia had taken half a cooked ham out of the fridge and the girls had smuggled it to the park. While their mums chatted, they’d dodged into the small copse and left the meat there, so the local stray cats could have a festive feed too.
Grace had never told on her, despite both their mums ganging up together and demanding the truth from them. That was what best friends did for each other, and if Grace had been planning anything daring or exciting, Olivia knew she’d have been the first person she’d have told.
Yet if Grace hadn’t disappeared on purpose, then what could have happened?
Olivia swiftly pushed the shadowy thoughts away. She didn’t want to think of what else might have happened to her friend. On Violet Road, people knew each other, spoke in the street and often got together, like they’d done for the royal wedding street party in May.
The girls often complained that nothing exciting ever happened to them like on the programmes they secretly watched on Netflix upstairs in their bedrooms. They both wished some sort of a crime would be committed so they could investigate it like in the Nancy Drew books that were in the school library.
But nothing ever did happen. Until today.
And now, it didn’t feel exciting at all. It felt horrible to think Grace had somehow disappeared after leaving here, and it made Olivia’s hands go all cold and clammy when she thought about her friend screaming on the rides earlier that day.
Sue was still droning on, something about what she planned on cooking when her grandchildren flew in from Spain next week. Olivia stared at her before turning her attention to the window again. Didn’t she know this stuff wasn’t important right now?
Grace was missing. It didn’t matter that Sue was cooking all her family’s favourite meals.
There were familiar faces in the crowd searching the street outside. Her mum and dad were there, and Olivia spotted that man Jeffery with them, who lived next door to Grace.
Sometimes, in the warmer months, they played out in the garden, and they’d spotted Jeffery watching from his upstairs window on more than one occasion. They’d stuck out their tongues and wiggled their ears at him and he’d soon disappeared. It had been so funny to see him scurry back from the glass.
But there were also lots of people out there that Olivia didn’t recognise at all.
The adults had all banded together, trying to solve the mystery along with the police.
Nobody had asked for Olivia’s help.
‘Darling, did Grace say anything about not going straight home when she left here?’ Her mum bit her lip while her dad paced back and forth, to and from the window. ‘Did she mention she might call somewhere else first?’
Olivia had told them the truth: that Grace hadn’t said a word about anything like that.
‘Is there anything else you can tell us, Livvy?’ her dad had asked. ‘Anything Grace has said or done that shows you she’s been unhappy, or is worried about something that’s happened at home, or at school?
‘No,’ Olivia had said.
She’d thought about telling her parents what Grace had whispered to her in the playground a couple of days earlier, but she didn’t want to get her friend into trouble.
And once Grace was back from wherever it was she’d gone, Olivia was bound to wish she’d kept the secret to herself. If she told, even for the right reasons, Grace would more than likely get into one of her grumps, where she stopped talking to Olivia and was all sulky for a while.
Anyway, even though the thing that Grace told her had happened was horrible, it had nothing to do with her going missing this afternoon.
It couldn’t have anything to do with it at all.
Nine
Lucie
Sunday afternoon
I sit in an armchair in the lounge, alone for the first time in what seems like ages. It’s a seat that Grace has christened ‘Dad’s chair’.
The people who ushered me in here don’t know that. They don’t know our ways, our routines, how we spend our time as a family.
I no longer feel like I know those things either. The room feels strange, unfamiliar. I’m uncomfortable here, like a reluctant visitor who doesn’t know how to act or what to say.
What do you do, how do you react when your daughter is missing, when you feel utterly hollowed out, inside?
I’m in a stranger’s house because other people are now in charge. My emotional connection to our home has been ripped away like a nail from a fingertip.
The door opens and uniformed officers stand aside as Blake comes into the room with two men, both wearing badly fitting suits. One is short and plump, the other tall and thin. They look like a comedy duo off the television. They don’t look like the sort of people who might be capable of finding Grace.
The plump one steps forward and shakes my hand. His palm feels soft and warm against my own, but there is a steely strength in his fingers that underpins his seemingly benign grip.
‘DI Gary Pearlman, and this is my colleague, DS Rob Paige.’ He perches on the edge of the couch opposite me, bows his head slightly. ‘Mr and Mrs Sullivan. I can only imagine what you’re going through, but I want to reassure you that we’ll do everything within our power to find Grace as quickly as possible.’
It sounds so obviously straight out of the training manual, but the furrows on his brow show me he is genuinely concerned.
‘Thank you,’ Blake says. ‘Please… call me Blake, and this is my wife, Lucie.’
‘Thank you. Blake, I know you’re in a lot of pain with your ankle at the moment and you’re going to need medical attention…’
‘It’s nothing, only Grace matters. Please, carry on.’
The detective nods his approval.
‘I can’t emphasise how important these next few hours are in the investigation. It’s crucial we make as much progress as possible…’ His voice fades out as I recall the numerous times I’ve read in newspapers, watched on television, seen online the assertion that the first seventy-two hours are vital in finding any missing person alive, and terrifyingly, how that time frame plummets to just forty-eight hours when it’s a child who is missing.
