DORSET, 2010
ONE YEAR LATER
Autumn deepens into winter. In the morning the silence presses coldly against my face.
I listen, though I’m not sure what I’m listening for. By now I should have learned the absence of the sounds that I took for granted: the muted steps of bare feet, the distant kettle, murmuring radio voices, and the porcelain clink of the coffee cups on the edge of the bath. The noises one person makes are quiet, careful, separated out. They ebb into silence. I open the window and the softly crashing breath of the sea comes into the room like something alive.
I touch her bedroom door as I pass to the bathroom. She chose this room when she was small. It was never really her bedroom, because until the past few months it had just been our holiday home, but we all thought of that room as hers. As a child she liked to pretend the little round window under the thatch was a porthole and that her bed was a boat.
The police took the mattress away, and all the bedding. The wood of the door is cold and damp under my fingertips. Ted washed the blood off the floor; I haven’t been inside since I arrived.
The wavering reflection of the window frame fractures around my hands as I lie in the bath water. When the bell rings I get out quickly, a towel around me, then my dressing gown. At the top of the stairs my steps freeze. I can see a man in uniform through the glass of the front door. My heart goes so fast I feel faint and I hold the banisters. This could be the moment they have come to tell me they have found something in the mud of a field: the heel of a shoe perhaps, soft and rotten, the gleam of a silver charm, the white of a tooth. There is nothing they can tell me that I haven’t thought of, but I stop as if I’ve been shot. Then I see red somewhere on his jacket, a bulky bag. Someone with a special delivery. When I open the door, he hands me the post: the order of small paintbrushes from the art shop in Bristol. On the mat already is a postcard of a Welsh mountain from Ted’s vast collection. His way of keeping in touch. No message, as usual. I sit at the kitchen table and my heart slows. The sketchbook is in front of me and I pull it toward me, open it at the next page. When the police came to the door, and I saw the black and white, the padded jackets and the badges, her absence became official. It was still dark but it must have been early morning, maybe four or five A.M.
The pencil is rough in my fingers; I can feel the chips where it’s been bitten as I draw a little hooded top, shading between the folds with short gray lines.
BRISTOL, 2009
THE NIGHT OF THE DISAPPEARANCE
The policeman at the door was in his mid-fifties, his colorless eyes sunk in soft pouches of flesh. Whatever natural expression he had was overlain by a veneer of professional calm, though his eyes, moving quickly over my face, betrayed his unease. Behind him was a small woman, brown hair in a tight French pleat, immaculate red lipstick. I thought I could see anger tamped down. Perhaps she’d had to get up specially, put on the crisp uniform and the thick makeup.
“Dr. Malcolm?” The man’s voice was carefully neutral.
At home I didn’t call myself doctor; I was the children’s mother, my husband’s wife, but if this policeman thought I was a fellow professional he might try even harder.
“Yes.” I stood back to let them in.
“I’m Police Constable Steve Wareham and this is Police Constable Sue Dunning.”
He took off his hat; there was a little ridge running around his thin gray hair. He shook my hand and spoke quietly. He was sorry for us but not the sort of sorry I was afraid of. I’d been afraid he would say sorry for your loss. The woman was brisker. She nodded but put her hands behind her back as if she didn’t want to touch me; I was the kind of woman whose child doesn’t come back home.
I took them to the kitchen. We had just returned from Shan’s house and I needed to watch the clock. It was ten hours since Naomi had walked out of the back door, and I wanted to tell them immediately about the man whose shadow seemed thrown against the bright walls of the kitchen. In my mind I was screaming at them to hurry. Leave now. You might catch them. He is driving with her down a long street in the rain, he is going into a house, he is locking the door, he is turning around to face her, she is crying. No, of course not, she never cries. Hurry.
Ted began talking; he started from the beginning, which was what they wanted. They wanted everything and it took an hour. They asked for her laptop, then her birth certificate and passport. They tried the cell phone again, but there wasn’t an answering message, or even a ringtone this time. Out of charge. Naomi’s phone was often dead, it didn’t mean anything. When Steve Wareham told me they could have traced the location of the phone if it had been charged, I fought back a surge of helpless anger and fear.
I gave them her school photo from last term. I stared at it for a few seconds. It had been taken a few months ago, but still, she looked so young. It was as though I was looking at another person with a wide smile, her bright hair pulled back in a ponytail, her face shining. I thought of the foundation pooling around the little bottle. She hadn’t looked like that child in the photo before the play. Did she have hobbies? Maybe. I didn’t know. I was at work all day, I couldn’t know everything. The constable raised an eyebrow briefly. What school, what doctor, what dentist? (Dentist? What, dental records? The brief spasm of pain on Ted’s face showed he had got there too.) School friends? Names? Boyfriends? Not a boyfriend, no. Someone who waited at the back of the theater. He had dark hair and she thought he was hot. He’s got her. He could be hurting her at this very moment; his hands tight around her neck. Perhaps he’s forcing her down on the ground, pulling off her clothes, pushing her under him, the side of a hand in her mouth to stifle her. I pushed my fingers hard into my own mouth, biting them to stop myself screaming.
They wrote everything down.
Police constable Sue Dunning gave me a missing person form to fill in. She said it was too soon to call it an abduction, no evidence as such. My hands were shaking, so I wrote slowly. They kept talking to me, asking questions. Height, about five foot five. Weight? One hundred ten pounds. Yes, she was slim. No, not anorexic, just one of those people always on the go; she ate plenty.
Are you hungry? You didn’t have supper, did you? I didn’t mind about that then, because I thought you were going out for a meal. You should have told me, I could have made you something.
What was she wearing when I last saw her? She was coming downstairs with her bag and I think she was wearing a raincoat, or was it her school coat? Perhaps her little gray hoodie. Let me think. I can check in her closet and let you know.
I hope it was a raincoat; it’s raining, you’ll get wet.
She was going to change into a dress for the . . . for after . . . and new shoes. They were black with straps, high heels. Different. They may have been a present, do you think? A trick, a bribe. She was wearing a charm bracelet. That might be important. The bag she was carrying had little holes in it. I don’t know, Tesco’s? Waitrose?
Don’t try to run in those shoes, you’ll break your ankles. Take them off, and then run.
Were there problems at home? Had she gone missing before? Had she ever tried to harm herself? The questions were relentless. I was exhausted. They hadn’t understood anything. She was in the play. She was tired, of course, tetchy sometimes, but underneath she was fine. And all the time, I was listening for her footsteps; she might walk in at any moment, an excuse ready-made, amazed at the fuss. All this would fade into a nightmare.
Steve Wareham was still speaking. “Before we go any further, we need to search the premises.”
I stared at him. Didn’t he believe anything we had said?
“What?” Ted’s voice was incredulous. “Now?”
“You’d be surprised.” He didn’t mean to sound patronizing. “You wouldn’t believe the number of missing children we find still at home; kids hiding in the closet. Making a point.”
They looked upstairs, Ted showing the way. They went into the loft, the cabinets, and the closets. They were methodical and quiet, so thankfully the boys slept on. They looked in the garden shed and the garbage bins. I waited in the kitchen, my hand resting on the phone. When they had finished, they looked tired.
“Someone from the force will come back later.” Sue Dunning was faintly embarrassed. “You will have to be eliminated from the inquiry. Routine measures.”
She didn’t need to be embarrassed. They were being thorough; that meant they would find her.
Ted asked what would happen next and she reeled off a list: file the report, contact the school and the theater, visit Nikita for a witness statement, look at Facebook, examine her laptop, and the cell phones of friends for texts, interview the teachers, go to clubs, pubs, restaurants, garages, railway stations, seaports, airports. Interpol. And, if she’s not back in twenty-four hours, get the media involved.
Airports? Media? Ted put his arm around me.
“One final thing. We’ll need her toothbrush,” Steve Wareham said quietly. “In case.”
The pink toothbrush looked oddly childish in the yellow plastic mug in her bathroom. Sue Dunning slipped it into a little plastic envelope and it wasn’t Naomi’s anymore. It was DNA from a missing person. In case.
“Thank you for your cooperation.” Steve Wareham stood up stiffly, hand in the small of his back. The lines on his face looked deeper. I wondered what it must feel like to face parents like us, and for a fleeting moment I felt sorry for him.
“We will fully inform the day shift, which starts at seven A.M. There will be a meeting with the senior manager of the Criminal Investigation Department, not, of course, that we know there is any criminal activity involved at the present time.” He took a breath and continued: “In the meantime, it would help us if you searched for clues here in your house, in case there’s anything you might have overlooked. Go through everything that’s happened in the last few days and weeks. Anything that seemed different about your daughter. Write it down and tell us. I’ll take the laptop away with us for now.”
He smiled at us as he picked it up, and his face became gentler. “Michael Kopje will be in contact. He’s the family liaison officer for this area. He’ll be around in a couple of hours.”
A couple of hours. What about the next five minutes, and the five minutes after that?
They have a picture. It’ll help.
But it doesn’t show the way her hair shines so brightly it looks like sheets of gold.
She has a tiny mole, just beneath her left eyebrow.
She smells very faintly of lemons.
She bites her nails.
She never cries.
Find her.