by K. L. Slater
I’m tight as a drum from the top of my head to my toes. I can’t seem to keep my mind on track in the relaxation exercise of naming the parts; fingers, thumbs, palms, wrists, forearms…
I lose my way time and time again, and my mind starts to drift further and further away until I’m disoriented, trapped in a bubble of anxiety that starts my heart banging, making sleep impossible.
I reach for my phone on the bedside table.
It only rings twice before Dad answers.
‘Lucie? Blake called earlier. Is Grace back home?’
‘No, Dad,’ I say, squeezing down my emotion. ‘They’re… still looking. They’ve taken Blake to the police station.’
‘What?’ He’s dumbstruck for a moment or two. ‘Why? I mean, they don’t think…’
‘They just want to ask him some questions, Dad, it’s a formality. He volunteered to go, to try and keep the press away from the house.’ I glance out of the window, at the shoddy band of local newspaper reporters and photographers. ‘It hasn’t worked, I’m afraid. Looks like they’re going nowhere any time soon.’
Dad sighs. ‘I’m so sorry this has happened, love. I wish I – oh God, I feel like somehow I’m to blame and—’
His voice cracks and for an awful moment, I think he’s going to burst into tears.
‘It’s not your fault, Dad!’ I can’t bear hearing him like this, my rock for so many years. Then I realise I interrupted him. ‘You were saying, you feel like you should’ve… what?’
There’s a beat of silence and when he speaks again, he seems to have collected himself.
‘I just meant I wish I could get out there to help look for her. It’s so frustrating, stuck in here like an invalid.’
‘You’re doing us a massive favour looking after Oscar, Dad. That’s why I’m ringing, to see how he is. It shouldn’t be too long before Blake can fetch him.’
I force myself to imagine Grace home and the four of us being reunited tonight.
‘He’s fine, aren’t you, lad?’ I hear Oscar chuckling in the background. ‘He can stay here as long as you like, you know that.’ He hesitates. ‘But I’d much rather be there with you, love.’
‘Thanks, Dad, but there’s nothing you can do at the moment. I’m just sat here twiddling my thumbs and going quietly crazy waiting for news.’ I feel unable to keep the flat, dark feelings out of my voice.
‘But I can support you and Blake, can’t I? I feel cut off here, I’d like to come over. Be together as a family.’
A tingling pinch starts up between my eyes.
‘OK, thanks, Dad. I’ll send Blake across to pick you up soon as he gets back from the station,’ I manage.
‘Gracie’s bound to be back soon.’ He jollies up his voice but it can’t disguise the weight of his worry. ‘I mean, she’ll have wandered off somewhere, that’s all. Nosy little thing that she is.’
‘I know. I hope so.’ I take a breath. ‘Got to go, Dad, see what’s happening. I’ll tell Blake to call you when he comes home.’
‘Let me know when Gracie’s back,’ he says as I end the call.
I let out a sob.
I hope with all my heart Dad is right and Grace has wandered off somewhere. But how can it take hours for her to resurface again? West Bridgford is a friendly place. A small place. She’d only have to ask someone if she somehow got disorientated and needed to get back to Violet Road.
Deep down, although nobody is actually saying it, we all know that Grace hasn’t wandered off at all. The only logical conclusion, the thing that makes most sense, is that someone has taken her.
I can feel the truth of that unbearable possibility growing with every fibre of my being. Even as I pray it’s not the case, I can feel my own stability beginning to slip.
As each hour passes without Grace, I know it’s only a matter of time before events of the past begin to inch closer. If I allow those pernicious memories to get too close, it could quickly turn into a landslide I won’t be able to escape from.
And I haven’t a chance in hell of helping my daughter if I become ill again.
Sixteen
Sixteen years earlier
Lucie stared at the letter in her hand, read it for the umpteenth time.
‘I’m so proud of you, love,’ her dad said again. ‘The first one in our family to go to university!’
Lucie smiled, and her dad’s usually tired, strained face broke into a wide grin. He had worked so hard for as long as Lucie could remember. Often worked double shifts at the chemical factory to give them both a good life after Lucie’s mum, Susan, left them when her daughter was just three years old.
Susan emigrated to Germany with her new man, Klaus, a wealthy financier.
Susan had divorced Pete and married widower Klaus within a year. She’d kept in touch with her old family for a while, promising to fly back to the UK three or four times a year to see her daughter, but the visits had never materialised.
Lucie was far too young to remember, but Pete told her that Susan was a successful saleswoman for a major UK telecommunications company. She’d been very forward-thinking when it came to travelling to Europe when overseas business was a much smaller market than it was now.
‘She earned three times my salary and I fully supported her. I knew her career was very important to her,’ Pete had explained to Lucie when she was old enough to properly understand the dynamics of relationships. ‘I trusted her completely, and that was my downfall. She was mixing with people who had very different lifestyles to the one Sue had been used to.’
Susan’s business trips to Germany had become more frequent, increasing from every two or three months to two or even three times each month.
‘Still I didn’t suspect,’ Pete said. ‘I was an idiot. Maybe I could’ve changed her mind if I’d known she’d already met Klaus and fallen in love with him.’
Pete had found out from a chance meeting with one of Susan’s old work colleagues that she had died of a heart attack just two weeks after Lucie had turned eight years old.
Her colleague told a devastated Pete that Klaus was a high-functioning drug addict who lived the party lifestyle. Susan quickly got pulled in to the cocaine-fuelled weekend yacht trips and hedonistic parties at their palatial home on the outskirts of Frankfurt. And it had ended in tragedy.
It was only as Lucie got much older that she realised how difficult it must have been for her dad, losing everything. Everything but her.
He’d always worked at the factory, for as long as she could remember. As she grew up, he made no secret of his ambitions for her.
‘Being stuck in a dead-end job isn’t what I want for you, love,’ he told her repeatedly over the years. ‘The world is your oyster if you get a good education. You’re bright, just like your mum.’
So when she received the offer of a place at university, she knew just how much it meant to her dad, and that in turn meant everything to Lucie. It was like she’d spent her life trying to make her dad proud of her, to somehow pay him back for being such a rock, and now she truly felt she’d achieved the ultimate goal. As far as her father was concerned, anyway.
But the best feeling of all, she had discovered, was her own sense of pride in accomplishing something she’d thought would probably be out of her reach. She had got the required A-level grades and would begin a four-year accountancy degree at Newcastle University in the autumn.
She folded up the letter and handed it back to Pete, smiling as he tucked it back inside the official envelope, stamped with the university’s name and distinctive logo. She knew that it would look rather more dog-eared after he’d proudly shown it to friends and family many, many times. Not in a boastful way – well, maybe, she grinned to herself – but almost in an attempt to validate his own performance as a single father. To him, the letter meant he had achieved a very important goal of his own, in raising a daughter who had risen to a level of academic excellence.
‘So as we agreed, if you can begin sorting through your wardrobe,
I can get the first batch of clothing laundered and we’ll be nice and prepared,’ Pete suggested.
Lucie sighed inwardly, resigning herself to the fact that this was how it would be until the day she left for university, in five weeks’ time.
She loved her father more than anything, but he could be a bit of a martinet. A strict roster of tasks was how he’d survived in the years bringing her up alone. So part of Lucie couldn’t wait to finally be in charge of her own life. If she wanted to leave her laundry until she actually felt like doing it, if she wanted to eat crap and watch TV all night long, then so it would be done.
The thought of it filled her with relief.
With just a week to go, everything was organised. Lucie would travel up to Newcastle on the train with just hand luggage and the rest of her belongings would follow, transported by a man-with-a-van her father had found in the local paper.
The day before she was due to travel, Lucie realised with some sadness that she had next to no one to say goodbye to. There was only really her dad.
Lucie didn’t have a solid group of girlfriends who she’d known since her schooldays, like lots of people did.
Maybe it was something to do with growing up so close to her dad. Girls her own age always seemed so silly and giggly, and she quickly tired of their company. Losing her mum so young had taught Lucie that sometimes, terrible things happened in life, and she found she felt safest and most secure at home, in the company of her father.
She’d got on well with a couple of girls at college, but they’d both moved away from the area now, and despite emotional promises from all concerned, they hadn’t kept in touch.
During the two years she’d studied for A levels, Lucie had held down a part-time job three evenings a week and at least one weekend shift at a local coffee shop. She’d become a qualified barista there and enjoyed getting out from under Pete’s feet and being amongst people without getting involved with any of them.
Still, she reminded herself, although it would be nice to make new friends, her real aim was to bag herself an accountancy qualification that would win her employment at a prestigious company back in Nottingham. Ultimately, the plan was to open her own accountancy practice, thus securing her financial independence and a bright future.
The trouble was, Lucie had heard her father suggest that career path so many times, she was no longer sure whether the dream was his or her own. In the event, it didn’t really matter.
Neither of them could possibly have envisaged the terrible consequences that would follow within a year of Lucie leaving home for Newcastle.
Seventeen
Lucie
Sunday evening
I snap awake at a light tapping noise on the bedroom door. I can’t believe I drifted off.
In the second before the brain fog clears, I remember. Grace. Pure, undiluted fear grips my heart like an iron vice as one thought presents itself:
It’s now dark outside.
The tapping noise sounds at the door again.
‘Come in,’ I call out, sitting bolt upright in bed.
The door creaks open and DS Bean’s pale, well-meaning face appears.
‘Have they… Is Grace back?’
She presses her lips together and shakes her head. ‘They’ve let me know that Blake will be leaving the station in the next half an hour.’
I can’t think about Blake right now; all I can think of is the square of dark at the window. The heating is on but the room feels chilly. I shiver.
‘It’s already dark.’ My voice cracks. ‘What will… Oh my God, what will happen if…’
Fiona walks quickly over to the bed and sits on the edge, near the bottom. Part of me recoils at the presence of a stranger in my bedroom, but part of me welcomes the support.
The kindness in her voice when she speaks is enough to break me.
‘We won’t stop searching for Grace, Lucie. All night if we need to. The dark will make no difference.’
But it does make a difference. A big difference. It feels like the light of the day is fading in direct parallel to the hope burning inside me. If I dwell on it too long, I’ll crumble.
‘Her medication. What if she’s lost it, or… can’t use it for some reason?’ I block out what this reason might be. I can’t face even the suggestion of it. I feel like my insides are gradually tightening like a fist.
Fiona nods. ‘I know this is a real concern. Someone on the team is contacting your GP, so hopefully we’ll know more about the implications very soon.’
‘I can tell you myself how serious it could be.’ I can hear the desperation in my own voice. ‘All sorts of complications can arise if she—’
‘It’s in hand, Lucie,’ she says calmly. ‘We’ve asked your GP to come here, to speak to you and to… offer help if you need it.’
Help? I know what that means: they want to medicate me. Sedate the panic out of me. But I’m not having it. I’ve lived in that bubble before and it’s not an existence I want to go back to. I can’t help my daughter if I’m drugged senseless.
‘I’m not taking anything. I want to feel the pain, the panic. It’s what’s going to motivate me to find my daughter.’ I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up. My legs feel wobbly and I sit down again and speak through locked teeth. ‘I’m not sitting here waiting. I want to be outside, helping to look for Grace. I’ve already been resting far too long as it is.’
‘You’ve been up here for about an hour.’ Fiona waves away my concern. ‘It’s a good thing you managed to get some rest. You won’t be able to help look for Grace without it, Lucie, think of it that way.’
I wouldn’t call it rest, exactly. More like purgatory, caught between the life I had when I woke up today and the hellish existence I’ve plunged into without Grace.
Nevertheless, I’m shocked how long it’s been. I feel exhausted, but I’ve no right trying to rest when my daughter is out there, alone. I push up off the bed and slowly stand again.
‘I’ll come down.’
Fiona walks over to the door. ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs.’
When she’s left the room, I sink to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees.
I can’t breathe. I drag in air, but it’s not enough.
I can’t do this, I just can’t. I can’t sit around the house doing nothing, despite what Fiona says.
I am Grace’s mother. If I go out there, search for her, I might get some kind of telepathic vibes, an invisible maternal thread of communication that only we two can feel.
It sounds mad, I know, but I don’t care. Anything that can guide me closer to my daughter is worth considering.
The one thing I’m certain of is that sitting here drinking endless cups of tea with DS Bean is not going to contribute to finding Grace. And I hate being cooped up in the house with a stranger watching my every move and reaction; it’s ramping up my anxiety to levels that are bordering on unbearable.
In the bathroom, I splash some water on my face. I scoop out the tweezers I discarded there only a couple of hours ago and glance in the mirror. The last time I looked in here earlier today, I was scanning my face for new wrinkles. Now, the dark circles under my eyes are a physical mark of the terrible events of the past hours.
I dab my face dry with a hand towel and steel myself to go back downstairs, my heart growing heavier by the second. I feel like I can’t go on. Something has to change, because I honestly feel I’m on the verge of losing my mind.
At the same time, I know it’s a waste of energy even thinking such a thing. What I want has no relevance to what will happen, because other people are in charge of my life now. Not least the person – or persons – who knows where Grace is.
I step out of the bathroom and am about to walk to the top of the stairs when I look up and see Blake’s office door facing me.
Office is a bit of a fancy word really; it’s the fourth and smallest bedroom, just about big enough for a single bed but no wardrobe. Our plans to make it a ki
tsch little guest room faded into oblivion when, by default, it became the dumping ground the week we moved into the house. It stayed that way until just over a year ago, when Blake decided he’d run to be a local councillor.
He needed a quiet space away from the television and Grace’s constant chatter. And from me too, I suppose.
So we spent a gruelling weekend bottoming the room. Seeing as we’d barely touched anything in there for the best part of four years, we ended up throwing most of the stuff out and relocating what was left to the garage.
Blake’s mother insisted on ordering some Scandinavian-style bleached-wood furniture that looked a bit incongruous in such a cramped space; she refused to listen to Blake’s protests about not needing anything new. He’d planned to recycle some furniture he’d been offered from the nearby vicarage.
‘I’m not having my son, possibly the future prime minister, working on a scruffy desk that somebody else threw out,’ Nadine announced haughtily. ‘It simply won’t do.’
Blake laughed and tried to protest he’d never get so high up in the government, but I could tell he was flattered underneath.
Grace knows not to disturb her daddy when he’s working up here, and I hardly ever cross the threshold, mostly because the space is so small. If I need to speak to him, I can do it from the doorway. I can even pass him a cup of tea from there.
I walk past the stairs and open the office door.
Blake doesn’t keep it locked; there’s no need. He takes care of the cleaning in here, insisting I have enough to do in the rest of the house. So it’s rare for me to enter the room.
