‘I’ve got to go, Richard,’ I say, facing him. ‘I’m driving myself mad just pacing round waiting for a call.’
I see his face drop. ‘No, Kat. You’re not heading out to Aberystwyth now. It’s a two-hour journey, along a mountain road. It’s November and it’s after 9 p.m. Have you seen the weather outside?’
From the pattering sound on the windows I’m aware the rain is harder now, and my heart sinks. But I feel this compulsion to go out there into the wind and the rain to find her.
‘I don’t know what else to do,’ I say, tearful now. ‘I feel so bloody helpless,’ I cry, not thinking, just rushing around the kitchen, grabbing my warm jacket from the coat stand, while wrapping a thick scarf around my neck.
‘No, Kat. Don’t just set off like this… wait. What if she calls? What if she’s on her way here?’
‘And what if she isn’t? What if something’s happened? I’ll sit up all night anyway. I know you think I’m mad, but I have to do something.’
‘Yes, but this isn’t the answer. You’re doing that Kat thing of responding only with your emotions and tearing around here like a headless chicken. You can’t just head off into the night, you’re likely to have an accident – or cause one.’ He’s following me from the kitchen through to the living room as I search for my handbag. ‘And if she is on her way home, what then? She turns up here and you’re in Wales and… Kat, it’s madness. It’s bloody madness. Why are you so hell-bent on making something of this?’ he asks, and I stop.
‘And why are you so hell-bent on making nothing of this?’
For a moment we just stare at each other.
‘I… I feel so helpless, Richard.’ I’m angry with him, but I say this in a calm voice so he doesn’t think I’m losing it and try to stop me. Right now, I’m finding calm hard to do, but I pull my jacket around me and face him.
‘Okay, okay, call the police.’ He holds up both his hands in a surrendering gesture. ‘Do that before you set off. I still think it’s too soon to register her as a missing person, but you can at least take the police’s advice – because, let’s face it, you’ll never take mine.’
I ignore his petty little remark, there are far bigger things going on than his hurt face because I refuse to do as he suggests. He still seems to think I’m overreacting, but he knows me well, and he knows I won’t rest until I know Amy’s safe. Our relationship was forged in pain, and Richard is only too aware I still live with the threat of losing my daughter every day.
Eventually I find my handbag in the living room, check my car keys are inside and, against Richard’s advice, I leave the house. I should probably call the police, what I’m doing doesn’t make sense, but instinct is driving me forward, and I have this compulsion, this need to search for her, like I have a sixth sense and only I can find her. It’s pitch-black, blowing a gale, and rain is slashing diagonally across the darkness. I run to the car and jump in, relieved to be dry, but unable to see through the windscreen for the splashing of wind-lashed rain hitting the glass. But I don’t care that I can’t see in front of me, I’m going to Aberystwyth to find Amy, and if she’s having a lovely time and simply forgot to let me know, then that’s fine – it’s better than waiting, and waiting.
I’m about to start the car, when Richard makes me jump, appearing at the driver’s window, carrying a large blanket. ‘I can’t let you go alone,’ he’s saying, as I wind down the window. ‘I’ll come too,’ he offers, still in his slippers, rain smacking his face.
I know it’s the last thing he wants to do, and I honestly don’t want to drag him on a journey that might be fruitless. ‘Look, Richard,’ I start, but he runs round to the other side of the car. He opens the passenger door and sits in the seat, leaving the door slightly open, a sign he isn’t really committed to coming along.
‘Call the police first, get them to check the flat,’ he says.
‘I’m not sure I want to do that yet, because she might have just lost her phone or it’s damaged and she’s fine… or, as you said earlier, she might just be out.’
‘Exactly!’ he snaps, irritated. ‘She might just be out, and what will you do then?’
‘Nothing, I won’t need to do anything, but at least when she turns up at her room this torment will end.’
‘But you can’t drive all the way there and all the way back tonight.’
‘No, I’ll sleep on Amy’s floor and take her out for a full Welsh breakfast in the morning. I’ll be back by lunchtime,’ I say with fake brightness.
I reach for his hand, wipe the speckles of rainwater from it and calmly try and convince him I’ll be okay, but just at that point, the wind whips up even more. It’s battering the trees, it’s thundering past, making the car shudder. Am I being foolish?
Richard must see the glint of doubt in my eye and he pounces. ‘Let’s give it until morning, sleep on it, and if we still haven’t heard from her, we’ll call the police.’
Another blast of wind whips along, my little car is fragile against the elements, and so am I. My resolve begins to crumple, and like a paper bag it’s carried away on the wind, disappearing into the darkness, and I just break down in tears. I’m petrified, I want to run and find her, but run where? What should I do? I have no plan, no map. I’d just be setting off into bad weather on a blind mission that might achieve nothing.
Richard walks round to my door, opens it and leans in, putting both his arms around me. They’re strong and warm and I melt into them. I’m sobbing as he helps me from the car and walks me back to the house, quickly taking off his jacket and holding it over my head as he opens the door, his shirt now wet through, his hair stuck to his head with rainwater, while, thanks to him, I’m still dry.
We walk back into the hall, and silently I head up the stairs, leaving Richard at the foot of them, watching me. I walk along the landing, drawn back to the place where I know I’ll find her in my mind. Opening the door to Amy’s bedroom, with stars on the ceiling and a once loved soft toy abandoned on the bed, I lie down.
I’ve been here before. The not knowing, the not listening, my loved ones not believing me, my instinct raging, pushing me forward, making me fight for what I knew to be the truth. That was fifteen years ago, I was right to trust my instinct then. And I am now. I lie on Amy’s bed, in the room where I feel closest to her, gazing up at the starry ceiling, the waft of vanilla lip balm and lavender-scented bath bombs permeating the air, bringing her into the room. And as sweet as that feels, I’m frightened I might never see her again, and I’m thrust back to a past where I felt this fear and didn’t know where we were heading. Like now.
On the second of June 2004, in what seems like a different life, my first husband Tony and I took Amy on her first holiday abroad. She was just two years old and though she didn’t really understand what was happening, our excitement was catching, and she ran around in circles at the airport, to the amusement of onlookers and her proud parents. I was totally smitten with her and every day was special, every milestone a treasure to be locked away in my memory collection, and as we’d never taken Amy on holiday before, this was going to be a fortnight of firsts. We were flying to Menorca, where we’d booked a family-friendly hotel, complete with pool, and a playground – all just a few steps from the beach. Amy had been tired and grizzly on the flight – but on arrival could barely contain herself with pleasure at the sight of the brightly coloured children’s playground and the brilliant-blue pool. She began to disrobe the minute she spotted the little toddler swimming pool, and, petrified she’d fall in, I had to catch her to put on her water wings. I took so many photos of her splashing Daddy in the water, squealing with delight, my bright, funny, happy little girl. It’s probably the last time I ever felt really happy, with no shadows on the horizon, just a golden sun suspended in a big, blue sky, the future as wide and open and promising as that wonderful view.
When, on the second day, Amy fell off the swing and cried for a long time, there was nothing to suggest it was anything more than exhaustion and too much excitement. ‘She’s overwhelmed,’ I’d said to Tony, ‘let’s have a couple of calm days.’
So we did. For the next two days we just played with her on the beach, all very gentle and easy, under that persistently blue sky. But on the fourth day we returned from the sea and I was bathing her when I noticed several bruises. Tony appeared as confused as me, but I suspected his confusion was caused by the sneaky drinks he’d been having in the hotel bar. Over the next couple of days, Amy seemed to be constantly tired, and though I couldn’t pin down what it was, I just knew it wasn’t right.
Like now, as I lie in her bedroom fully clothed on top of her navy-blue duvet, I know something isn’t right. What seems perfectly normal and explainable to everyone else is a mystery to me.
I turn on the lamp by her bed and am greeted by a poster of Ed Sheeran looking down on me while holding a cat. ‘Where are you Amy?’ I murmur into the gloom.
I check my phone again, nothing. We didn’t have phones with internet in Menorca, so I’d headed for the hotel computer room. I spent too long in that hot little space where the signal came and went, as I conjured many scenarios in what became my own private hell. Whatever ingredients I put into Google, the same alarming diagnoses results kept recurring and, desperate for peace of mind, I insisted to Tony that we call a doctor.
He wasn’t happy. Just like Richard now, Tony doubted me, thought I was just ‘fretting’ and ‘making a fuss’. He’d virtually accused me of pretending Amy had had pneumonia a few months before. ‘I think you like the attention,’ he’d announced, as we left the hospital with a healthy baby. ‘From now on, no more calling the ambulance just because the baby’s teething.’
As a new mother I had been naturally anxious and had taken Amy to the hospital several times, worried about various different childhood illnesses, including that visit for suspected pneumonia. She’d had a stuffy nose and, as I’d sat with her throughout the night – Tony having gone to bed telling me it was just a cold – I’d watched her little chest rise and fall ever quicker, and I knew from checking online that these were both classic symptoms of pneumonia. I wasn’t prepared to leave it any longer, and made a disgruntled Tony get up and take us to the local A & E. After testing and an overnight stay, I was told there was nothing wrong with her, and Tony looked at me as if I was mad.
Consequently, when I wanted to call a doctor on our first foreign holiday as a family, Tony at first refused, telling me I was the one who needed to see a doctor. But I didn’t listen to him, I listened to my instinct, which told me my daughter needed medical attention.
The resort doctor was rather monosyllabic but said he doubted Amy had anything serious, just some bad bruising from a fall. I didn’t like his laid-back approach, and I tried to make him see that this might be potentially serious.
‘But she’s tired,’ I insisted, ‘and this bruising isn’t normal, it’s everywhere.’
To Tony’s I-told-you-so joy, the doctor said Amy was fine, and looked at me suspiciously as I described her symptoms in more detail. But I wasn’t giving up, and demanded he take me seriously. He reluctantly referred her for blood tests at the regional hospital, probably just to get me out of his face. But I didn’t care, Amy was my priority, and just like now, it seemed like no one but me believed anything was wrong.
The following day, amid much complaining from Tony about me ruining the holiday, we ordered a taxi and set off for the hospital.
‘Who goes for blood tests on holiday?’ he’d snapped as we drove away, Amy subdued and whimpering in my arms.
The blood tests made her cry again, and at the end of a long day we were told we had to go back to the hotel and wait forty-eight hours for the results.
On our return to the room Tony held her protectively in his arms, as if I’d physically hurt her. ‘You’re obsessed, Kat,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe what you put her through today.’
I was so upset by what I feared was wrong with her, and by the distress I’d caused her, I couldn’t retaliate – but still I believed I’d done the right thing. And for the next forty-eight hours I checked her temperature, gave her cool baths and kept her in the quiet of our room out of the heat, while Tony stayed mostly in the hotel bar.
‘You won’t be happy until she’s genuinely ill,’ Tony had said as we climbed into the hire car two days later to get the results of the blood tests. ‘You’re like one of those Munchausen people who keep taking their kids to the hospital even though there’s nothing wrong with them.’
For him to say that was unforgivable, and something even he regretted later, because the outcome of my ‘obsession’, my supposed Munchausen behaviour, was the diagnosis I’d feared.
‘Your daughter has leukaemia,’ the doctor told us in a soft Spanish accent that made it sound like an exotic dance rather than a deadly illness.
The word hit me in the chest with such impact I thought I might faint, the only thing that kept me conscious was the fact I was holding Amy, and my need to know what the outcome might be. But of course the doctor couldn’t commit to anything, wasn’t prepared to lay any bets on whether she’d survive this terrible thing or not. I wept, while smiling at little Amy so she didn’t pick up on my anguish. I wished that Tony had been right and that I was just an obsessive mother, how I wished I’d been wrong, how I hope I’m wrong now and she’s fine. But I have a mother’s instinct, and I had known my daughter was dangerously ill.
The following day we took emergency flights home. In my hand luggage I’d carried a hypodermic needle, an adrenaline shot and an oxygen-mask kit given to me in case Amy showed any reaction to the platelet transfusion she’d been given that morning to be ‘fit to fly’. I remember taking off, my stomach hitting the floor, as Amy slept in my arms, and later glancing over at Tony, his head slumped against the window, a handful of mini whisky bottles, all empty on his tray. I knew then that we were returning to the UK as different people. And I had to be so much stronger, for Amy. If anything happened to her, I knew I wouldn’t survive.
Sometimes the pain of that time fills me up. And now she’s missing, it’s flooding back, like a tide sweeping over me, taking me away from reason, and pushing me towards a horrible and too familiar madness.