I am determined to collect Henry on time today, but as so often recently, time slips away from me somehow, my mind full of the encounter with Esther earlier today. As I come panting round the corner, I can see I’m one of the last to turn up at the school gates for after-school club pickup. There are only a few children left standing by Mrs Hopkins and the new teaching assistant, Miss Jones. Most of them get collected at three o’clock by a parent (a mum mostly) or a grandparent (again, usually female). After-school club is for the unfortunates like Henry with two working parents and no helpful family members to take them home for cuddles and hot chocolate. The sky is clear with a sprinkling of stars already visible, and there’s a smell of wood smoke in the air. I’m looking forward to scuffing through the russet leaves with Henry on the way home, and it’s not until I’m fairly close that I realise that none of the children at the gate is Henry. Mrs Hopkins looks at me blankly. A tremor runs through me.
‘Where’s Henry?’ My voice is spiky with fear.
‘He was picked up at three…’ She turns to Miss Jones. ‘Wasn’t he?’
Miss Jones looks concerned, but not overly so. She thinks it’s a misunderstanding, something easy to sort out.
‘Yes, his grandma picked him up.’
For a blissful half-second I think it’s OK. My mum has come for an unexpected visit and decided to surprise him. She knows I hate the fact that he has to go to after-school club most days. But very quickly I realise it’s not OK, not at all. Quite apart from the fact that she never voluntarily looks after him, Mum would never have done that without letting me know.
‘His grandma?’ My voice sounds unfamiliar, high and wobbly. Could Sam’s mum possibly have decided it was time to get to know her grandson?
‘Yes, an older lady, with long hair,’ says Miss Jones, looking uncertainly from me to Mrs Hopkins. Sam’s mum has an elegant crop.
‘That’s not his grandma! I don’t know any older lady with long hair!’ My knees buckle and I reach out, my hand finding the fence. A tiny splinter of wood skewers itself under the top layer of skin on my palm.
‘He said it was his grandma,’ Miss Jones says, more to Mrs Hopkins than to me. She’s realised now the seriousness of what she’s done.
‘He’s four!’ I scream at her. ‘Did you tell him she was his grandma? Is that what she said?’
‘Well – yes…’
‘He’s four years old! He believes whatever you tell him! He thinks that when he loses his first tooth a fairy is going to come into his bedroom and replace it with money! I went into the office last week; I told Mrs Harper that I had concerns! You don’t take the word of a four-year-old child, there are procedures, named contacts. Why did you just let him go?’
I’m up close to Miss Jones now, shouting in her face. Mrs Hopkins inserts herself between us.
‘I absolutely appreciate the seriousness of this, Mrs Parker. Unfortunately I got called away to deal with a violent incident on the playground involving another parent. I left Miss Jones to manage pickup.’
‘I bet I know who that was… that horrible woman with the vile little boy.’ Fear has loosened my tongue and Mrs Hopkins looks shocked.
‘There was a message… from the school office. Miss Wallis said you’d called at lunchtime.’ Miss Jones has found her voice; her eyes are round with horror. ‘You said that he wasn’t going to after-school club, and that his grandma was picking him up. Henry seemed to know her… I thought it was OK… I’m sorry…’ She’s starting to cry now but I don’t have any emotion spare for her.
‘That wasn’t me on the phone! I never called the office! Mrs Harper should have told Miss Wallis that I had been in to check the safety procedures. And anyway, surely you don’t let them go with anyone unless you know who they are. Don’t you know anything?’
Mrs Hopkins intervenes again. ‘You’re absolutely right. This is a real failure on our part and I take full responsibility. We will be taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.’ Her eyes flicker to Miss Jones. ‘But for now, let’s focus on where Henry is. Do you have any idea who this woman is?’
‘No, I don’t know. There isn’t anyone.’ I grip the fence harder and the splinter works its way further in.
The three of us stand there as if suspended in time, all looking to the others for the answer. In the depths of my bag my phone beeps. I scrabble frantically for it, hands shaking.
A new Facebook message from Maria Weston:
I was right, Henry is a nice little boy. If you want him back, come to 29 Woodside St in Sharne Bay. Come alone. If you don’t, there will be consequences for Henry. I’m waiting for you.
I drop my phone into my bag as if it’s scalding my fingers.
‘It’s fine, I know where he is now,’ I mutter. ‘I… I’ve just realised who the lady is. It’s OK, it’s no problem. I forgot I’d asked her to pick Henry up.’
I don’t think they believe me, Mrs Hopkins and Miss Jones, but what choice do they have? I run back towards the car, leaving Mrs Hopkins looking puzzled and extremely concerned. Miss Jones looks mostly relieved.
I tear out of the school gates, my phone already pressed to my ear. He answers on the third ring.
‘Hi, Lou.’
‘She’s got Henry.’
‘What?’ says Sam distractedly. ‘Who has?’
‘Maria,’ I say, panting. I’m already out of breath from running, but I can’t slow down, mustn’t waste a second.
‘Hang on a minute.’ I’ve got his attention now. ‘What are you talking about?’
I tell him what has happened.
‘What the fuck? Who’s doing this? I’m calling the police.’
‘No! She said come alone or there’ll be consequences for Henry. She might hurt him if she realises we’ve called the police. I just need to get to him, to see he’s all right. The police can come later.’ If at all.
‘Right, we’ll go in my car. Thank God I’m working from home today. Where are you?’
Fifteen minutes later we’re on our way. At every red light, I grind my teeth a little harder, my jaw wound tight.
‘Oh God, oh God. What if Maria hurts him?’
‘He’ll be OK. It’s just someone trying to scare you.’ He doesn’t sound convinced though and I can see the tremor in his hands as he changes gear. He’s as frightened for Henry as I am, he’s just trying to be strong for me. ‘But Lou… you can’t really think that Maria’s still alive?’
I shrug, stare out of the window, dig my nails into my palm.
‘I’ll come in with you,’ he says after a few minutes.
‘No! You can’t, I have to go alone.’ If I don’t, I know what will happen. Maria’s already stepped over the line; done the unthinkable and taken my child. If she told me I had to cut my leg off to save him, I’d do it in a heartbeat. ‘You’ll have to wait outside.’
Sam looks at me with real concern.
‘This could be dangerous. You’ve no idea who’s in there.’
‘I don’t care. All I care about is getting Henry out of there. I don’t care what happens to me. I never have. No one does.’
‘Don’t say that. I care what happens to you.’
I think of Sam’s way of caring for me. I am better off without it.
‘And I’m not the only one,’ he goes on. ‘Lots of people care about you.’
‘But none of them really know me, do they? If they knew what I’d done, they wouldn’t care quite so much, would they?’
‘You’ve never given them the chance, Lou. Like you never gave me the chance. Even though I knew what you’d done, even though I was part of it, you still held me at a distance.’
‘I wasn’t holding you at a distance.’ Tears are starting to flow unchecked down my face now. ‘I had no choice, I was at a distance anyway. I’ve always been at a distance, from everything, ever since Maria disappeared. Being with you made it a bit better, I didn’t feel so far away, because you knew, at least you knew who I was. So when you left me…’ I can’t speak, great sobs wracking me. Sam reaches out a hand and takes mine, the contours as familiar to me as those of my own hand. I pull mine back and brush fiercely at my eyes, wiping away the tears.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Don’t touch me.’
He puts his hand back on the steering wheel and we drive in silence.
I wish that there was someone else to support me, that Sam wasn’t the only person in my corner. I wonder whether he has ever been in my corner or if, and maybe this is true of most people, the only corner he is really in is his own.
We speed down the A11 in silence as the Norfolk landscape unfolds around us, the huge skies and endless fields pulling me back to them once more. The journey has never felt so long. There’s an old train ticket in my bag and I tear it into pieces as we race along, each scrap tinier than the last. Neither of us knows Woodside Street, so as we enter the outskirts of Sharne Bay, I check the map on my phone again. We turn left off the main road onto an estate of boxy modern houses, all neatly tended gardens and sensible cars. Woodside Street is the third on the right and we drive slowly down between the bungalows.
‘Don’t get too close,’ I say, panicking as we pass number 11. ‘Stop here.’
Sam pulls over and already I’m opening the door, running down the street.
‘Louise!’ he calls after me.
‘Stay there,’ I shout, leaving him looking desperately after me. I am zinging with electricity; if anyone touches me they’ll get thrown back like someone who’s put a knife in the toaster. After these last few weeks of hiding, running, reacting, there’s something almost freeing about doing something positive, taking back some of the control that has been wrested from me. I run down the street: 19, 21, 23, 25, 27. And then I’m there. Number 29 looks innocuously back at me. Whereas the other houses glow invitingly from behind closed curtains, the windows at number 29 are blank and unlit. I open the rusty gate and make my way up the path. The front garden is mostly paving stones with a few drooping weeds forcing their way up between the cracks. It’s bordered by a narrow strip of flowerbed that looks as if it was once well cared for, but has been recently neglected.
The front door is blue, with two panes of frosted diamond-patterned glass in the top half. I am raising my hand to ring the bell, quickly before I can change my mind, when I realise that the door is ajar. Slowly, I push it open, reminding myself to breathe. The door gives a slow creak. I step inside, my boots squeaking on the dusty laminate floor, the sound echoing round the narrow hallway. There’s a musty, unused smell of damp and long days with nothing to do.
The bungalow is double-fronted, and there is a doorway either side of me. I take a few steps further in, my ears straining for any sound in the silence. Cautiously I peer into the room on the left. It’s the living room. By the light of the streetlamp outside I can see an old-fashioned green three-piece suite clustered around a glass-topped coffee table. A pine sideboard holds dusty trophies and china ornaments, and on the top shelf, sitting alone, I can just make out a photograph in a silver frame, elaborately curlicued. It’s the face I’ve been looking at onscreen for the last few weeks: Maria’s school photo. I step back and turn to look into the room on the opposite side of the hallway. It’s also dark and empty, and looks like a spare bedroom, a double bed with a peach frilled eiderdown the only furniture.
Back in the hallway, my mind is screaming at me to run in, shouting Henry’s name, but I need to take this carefully. I clutch the doorframe of the spare bedroom, trying to calm my breathing. The door straight ahead of me at the end of the corridor is closed. There are two doors identical to the ones I have just looked through a couple of metres further down the corridor. Both are tightly closed. I take a step, and another. Two more and I am standing next to the doors. I look from one to the other, and then reach out a cautious hand to the one on my left. Slowly, slowly I push down the brass handle. The door swings soundlessly open to reveal a bathroom, clean but old-fashioned with an avocado suite. Sick with fear, I take a step towards the bath and peer in. It’s empty. I let out a stifled sob of relief mingled with terror. I pull the bathroom door to and turn to the door on my right, which I guess must be another bedroom. I put my hand on the handle, trying to stifle the panic that surges upwards in me, a silent scream that I must not let out. As I push the door open, light spills through the gap, more and more of it until I can see the source, a standard lamp next to a desk.
A woman sits with her back to me at the desk, looking at a computer screen. Her long wispy grey-streaked hair hangs down over the back of her chair. She keeps her back to me, and I look frantically around the room, trying to take everything in before she turns round. There’s a brand-new-looking wooden train set on the floor, the track set up in a complicated arrangement that with a lurch of fear I recognise as one of Henry’s favourite layouts. On the wall in front of her, to the left of the computer, is a photo of me, the one from my Facebook page. Next to it is a photocopy of the article from the Sharne Bay Journal about me winning that design award, and a printout of Rosemary’s testimonial from the homepage of my website. To the right there are photos of Sophie – lots of them. She poses and pouts from the wall, blowing me a kiss. There’s even a cutting from the same paper featuring Sophie, immaculate even after a 10K run in pink fairy wings. On the screen in front of the woman, Maria’s Facebook page is open.
‘Maria?’ I whisper. The woman pushes her chair back, stands up, turns around. I’m looking into Maria’s hazel eyes, clear and cool. But the face is lined, her hands gnarled and loose-skinned. My brain struggles to make sense of what I am seeing. Of course Maria would be over forty now, I wasn’t expecting a sixteen-year-old. But this woman is at least sixty-five. It’s not Maria. It’s her mother. It’s Bridget.