NOEL KNOCKED TWICE and waited.
When there was no reply, he called out her name, softly, so as not to spook her. Verity had gone back to bed. She had not gone to school today.
Still no answer, so he knocked again before trying the handle. The door gave way and Noel stepped inside, into the darkness. He couldn’t yet make out the shape of the bed, the desk whose sharp corner was in the habit of attacking the side of your leg if you strayed too close.
Noel stood glued to the spot, hesitant to advance further.
‘Verity, love,’ he whispered. ‘You still in here?’
Verity’s room caught the morning sun. This hadn’t bothered her until she turned fourteen and then she had declared it impossible to sleep in. He’d had blackout blinds fitted, expertly, evidently, as he could barely make out the bed as he made his way towards it.
‘Verity,’ he whispered again, reaching out and patting the covers, finding what felt like his daughter’s leg.
Now there was movement. And a second later, light, the room suddenly illuminated as Verity switched on the bedside lamp.
Earbuds in, Verity looked at him, her expression wary, frightened. He gave her a reassuring smile, mouthing, ‘It’s okay,’ as she cut the sound from her iPod. Her cheeks were flushed a baby pink and he suspected she’d been lying with her duvet pulled right up, covering her face, in an attempt to shut out the world.
‘You’re hiding up here, then?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘Okay if I sit down?’
Verity wriggled herself into a sitting position. She was still in her pyjamas, her hair in a tatty knot. She looked just like her mother. Jennifer used to fashion her hair in a similar way: piled high on top of her head, sometimes secured with a pencil.
‘Have you eaten?’ asked Noel.
‘No.’
‘You should, you know. You should really try to—’
‘Have you eaten?’ she asked accusingly.
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘…Can’t face anything right now.’
Verity hung her head. ‘Me neither.’
There was so much he wanted to say. His daughter was in pain, and he wanted to fix it, take it all away. He wanted to say, ‘Don’t worry. It’ll turn out okay,’ like he usually did when she was distressed. ‘In a week or two you won’t remember what you were worrying about,’ he would say, and this would bring her comfort. Because, usually, it was true.
‘They blame me,’ Verity said.
‘No,’ replied Noel. ‘It’s not that. Karen and Bruce are not blaming anyone. They’re scared.’
‘They blame me,’ she said again, crying now.
What could he say? They did blame her.
‘They’re right to blame me,’ she went on. ‘I shouldn’t have left her. I should have stayed with her. What if Brontë never comes home? What if—’
Noel put his arm around his daughter. ‘Shhhhh,’ he whispered. ‘Stop this.’
‘She’ll be so scared, Dad. She’s not used to being without one of us. She’s going to be so frightened…I read about a girl and this freak took her and locked her in a cellar and made her do—’
‘When did you read this?’
‘This morning. I searched “kidnapping”, and don’t tell me I shouldn’t have, because I know I shouldn’t have, but I just needed to know something. I needed to know what could have happened to her.’
‘No. No, you don’t need to know that.’
‘I feel so bad. I feel like I’ve got this huge stone in my stomach. But I feel like if I know what she might be going through, then maybe it won’t be quite so bad for her. Like I’ll be able to understand…and, maybe, if she does come home, I might be able to help her.’
Noel held Verity a little away from him. ‘Promise me you’ll stay away from that stuff. You have to, Verity. Promise me.’
‘But what if she’s already dead?’ she cried. ‘What if she’s dead and we don’t know it?’
‘She’s not.’
‘But she’s so small, Dad.’
‘I know.’
‘She’ll be so frightened.’
‘I know.’
‘What if they don’t find her?’
‘They will.’
He held on to his daughter again, as she wept in his arms.