I dream of the little girl, only this time, in the way you do in dreams, I know she is Grace. Grace is confused at first when the two men pick her up, but then she starts to struggle and when they smack her wrist into the sliding door, she screams. I am already running but too far away to stop them from bundling her into the back of the vehicle. Desperately, I race after the van, knowing that if I can just keep it in sight, I can save her. If I can get close enough I can at least read the number plate. But as I run after my baby, the road melts and each step is pulled through dripping cement, until I am barely moving. The van vanishes into the dark distance, Grace’s shrieks ringing in my ears.
I wake, with a gasp, to Grace’s hungry sobs. Almost eight months and still not sleeping through the night. I turn to Tom, who is sound asleep, snoring, with his arms thrown out as though he has hit the bed from a great height. I rise quickly and stumble from our room.
I put the hall light on and open Grace’s door. She’s standing in her cot, clinging to the bars, fat tears slipping down her cheeks, howling her hunger and loneliness. Navigating by the hall light, I sweep her up and into the chair under the windowsill. Then I pull up my t-shirt and she latches instantly onto my breast with a sigh.
As she feeds, I play with her fingers and stare out of the window at the streetlight opposite. How many other mums are awake, as I am, at … I check my watch … 2 a.m.? How many are staring out of their own windows?
My eyes are heavy, but I fight them open. Grace needs to learn to fall asleep in her cot, not in my arms.
How is it possible that no-one has reported the kidnapped girl missing? Is a stranger, speeding past in the leaves and dust, really her only hope?
Grace snuggles into me and her mouth falls open. I lay her back on her mattress and stroke her hair. She sniffs, shifts and I quickly shove Frankie under her questing hand. She cuddles back down, pulling him towards her chin.
I tiptoe out and hesitate at the top of the stairs. The iPad is in the study. I find it without turning on the light and search the news sites again. Surely someone has written about the missing girl by now.
Nothing.
I do a general Google search on ‘missing girl’ and my heart stutters.
Police launch urgent appeal to find 16-year-old girl missing in Cornwall
UPDATE: Latest on appeal to find missing 13-year-old girl from Cheltenham
Divers look for missing girl
Missing girl, 12, last seen leaving her home in school uniform
Police concerned over welfare of Burnley teenager
The list goes on. My chest tightens. How is it possible that all these girls are missing, are going missing, all the time? What is wrong in the world that these girls aren’t safe at home? My fists are clenched, my nails digging into my palms.
Would they all be found?
I push the iPad away just as Tom staggers into the doorway. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I—’
‘Come back to bed.’
He wobbles into the bathroom, I hear him pissing, then he weaves back, slapping the light off as he passes.
‘Come on, Bridge. Leave it.’ He looks at me and I rise.
‘I had a bad dream,’ I whisper.
‘I’ll protect you.’ He puts an arm around me and tugs me in the direction of our bedroom. ‘Cuddle in,’ he says as he lies back down, his eyes already starting to close.
I put my head on his chest and listen to his gentle snoring.
How could so many girls be missing?
The next day is Saturday. There is still nothing on the news, nothing on the Internet. No mention of the kidnapping. How are the police going to find witnesses if they don’t publicise the abduction?
‘Should I speak to a reporter?’ I sip my tea as I refresh and scroll through the news sites yet again.
There is a fresh appeal on the BBC website, a video of a press conference showing the parents of a five-year-old boy, Vihaan Sharma, who has been missing for a week. They sit behind microphones in their formal clothes, she in a frayed sari, he in a suit, their faces drawn, their eyes bleak, begging for his return.
So many missing children.
‘Let the police do their job, Bridge.’ Tom is putting Grace in her coat. ‘Come for a walk with us.’
Feeling as if the iPad is stuck to my fingertips, I refresh once more and then, with difficulty, push it across the table. ‘You’re right. I should get some air.’ I hesitate. ‘Wait, it’s almost twelve. Let me put the radio on.’
‘If it’s not online, it won’t be on the radio.’ Tom pulls Grace’s hat over her ears. ‘Come out with us.’
‘Five minutes,’ I snap.
Tom sighs. ‘Fine, at least get ready while you listen.’
The news plays the Sharmas’ appeal, but then, instead of talking about another missing child, the presenter segues into weather and sports. My heart thumps painfully. ‘Why isn’t anyone talking about her?’ I look at Tom. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Try and forget about it.’ Tom puts a rice cake and a banana in one pocket and his wallet and phone in the other. He picks up the changing bag. ‘Remember when we could go for a walk without packing like Sherpas?’ He grins, slinging it over his shoulder.
I don’t smile back. ‘I wish I knew what was going on. Do you think they’ve looked at all the CCTV yet? Do you think they’ve found the van?’
‘Bridge, please!’ Tom is frowning now. ‘There’s no point in obsessing. There’s nothing you can do, the police are doing their thing, now you need to do yours.’
‘Mine?’
‘You’ve hardly seen Grace all week.’ Tom is heading for the cupboard by the door with Grace in his arms. ‘Can you at least try to be present for the weekend?’
‘That’s not fair!’ I lurch to my feet.
‘I know.’ Tom groans and stops. ‘I’m sorry, just … let’s have a nice walk. Find some flowers or something to show Grace. Forget about everything for half an hour or so.’ He pulls the cupboard door open. ‘Help me with the pram, will you?’
Although Tom offers, I want to push Grace. He walks beside us, feet crunching in the leaf-strewn verges, pointing out birds and handing her leaves or sticks when she points. I watch him, struck by how the last seven months have aged him. His hair is thinner on top, his face lined and tired, but his body is the same. Same flattish stomach, same tight rear, same runner’s build, same bicep that bulges when he clenches a fist. I refuse to look down in case I catch sight of my tights cutting into my gut. With every step, my thighs wobble out of my skirt and my shirt pulls against my chest. Yes, Tom has changed, but barely. How long before he looks at me and sees, not the old me, but the new one? How long before he realises that he is now stuck with this frump for the rest of his life, and that this whole thing was a mistake?
Grace squeals and I look down; she is squirming, yanking at the straps of her pram, trying to get to Tom who is jumping in a pile of leaves as if he’s found a puddle.
Like an oncoming train, it strikes me that it won’t be long before she is walking and then she’ll want to walk without holding my hand. After that she’ll be going to school, university, moving away.
‘You’re doing it again.’ Tom has stopped kicking the autumnal debris. Now he is looking at me all concern, rubbing a hand through his dark hair, messing it up.
‘She’s going to leave us,’ I sob, bent almost double, clinging to the pram. ‘Look how fast these last few months have gone!’
‘Bridge, we’ve got years yet. Years!’
I look at her, squirming to reach her dad and suddenly I can’t breathe. ‘What if she gets sick? It happens! What if someone takes her away, like that little girl? Or like the Sharmas’ son, the one who was on the news?’
‘Jesus, Bridge!’ Tom tries to put his arm around me but I jerk my shoulders angrily.
‘It could happen!’ I’m shouting and Grace stares up at me, her eyes wide, lips trembling.
‘You’re scaring her.’ Gently Tom pries my fingers from the pram and pushes Grace a little further away, towards the verge. I don’t try to stop him.
A thick-set man in a Barbour jacket stops, his dark eyes flicking between us. He has a Cocker Spaniel on a lead. Grace is delighted.
‘Is everything all right, mate?’
Grace reaches for the dog and Tom tears his eyes from me to deal with the newcomer. ‘Yeah, man, we’re fine. Just—’
The man looks at me. ‘Are you all right, love?’
Tom touches his arm. ‘She’s a little upset, but we’re fine. Thanks for stopping, honestly.’
The man clears his throat, hesitates, and then walks away. A younger couple are strolling towards us, arm in arm. He shakes his head at them, almost imperceptibly. They cross to the other side of the road.
Tom flushes. ‘Bridge, you have to take a breath. Do you really want things to go back to … you know … before the medication?’
I shake my head but my heart is pounding. All I can think is that I’m going to lose Grace and there’s nothing I can do. ‘One day someone will take her away from us.’ I look at Tom and he sighs.
‘I’m investing in a shotgun and rocking chair as soon as she turns sixteen, remember.’
It’s an old joke between us, started at the twenty-week scan.
‘The birth is going to be quite enough of a shock for one day,’ I laugh, when the technician asks if we want to know the gender. ‘I don’t need an added surprise on top of it. Plus, I want to decorate the nursery, buy baby clothes and pick names while I’m not high. I’m sure that’s how babies end up being called Chardonnay or Estrella. New mums, nine months without drinking, high on exhaustion and diamorphine!’
‘I can’t guarantee anything,’ the technician says without cracking a smile. ‘This is how it works: I look for a penis. If I find one, then it’s likely you’re having a boy.’ He moves the stick around my slippery blue stomach, already swollen and bulging with a faint tracery of veins. He leans closer to the image. ‘There doesn’t seem to be a—’
‘We’re having a girl!’ Tom gasps.
‘Or I couldn’t spot the penis,’ he reminds us. ‘Don’t go mad buying pink nursery furniture. It does happen. We had a family last week—’
‘A girl!’ Tom grins at me, his whole face alight. ‘It takes a real man to make a girl. I’ll have to get a shotgun!’
I punch his shoulder. ‘No boy will ever be good enough, right?’
‘Are you kidding, I was a teenaged boy. No meaty-pawed, Jack-the-Lad is getting near my baby.’
It doesn’t work today.
‘I should go back to the house.’ I glance over my shoulder. ‘I’m ruining things. You and Grace go on without me, enjoy your walk.’
‘No.’ Tom shakes his head. ‘Bridge, don’t!’ But I’m already striding away, head down, feeling the stretch between Grace and me, as if the cord still connects us, getting thinner as I walk away. Not snapping, not yet, but on the verge.
I glance back. Tom is getting his phone out. I check mine, thinking he might be wanting to talk, but it doesn’t ring. Who is he calling?
I’m running by the time I get back to the house, fumbling my key, suddenly desperate to be inside. I slam the door behind me and lean on it, as if someone is after me. My heart is racing and I’m sweating. Not because I ran; it’s a cold sweat.
I hurl my coat into the cupboard, race into the kitchen and grab the iPad, already typing before I’m sitting down: Child abductions UK
There were 1.2 thousand child abduction offences recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2018/19, an increase of 61 when compared with the previous year. There were over twice the amount of child abduction offences when compared with 2012/13 when there were only 513 of these types of offences.
I grip the edges of my chair. Over a thousand just in the last year! How can these incidents be increasing? Surely, with modern technology and social media and advances in policing, you’d think things like this would be on the decrease. Even with only five hundred a year that’s over five thousand children abducted in the last ten years, in the UK alone.
I sway. What is happening to these children?
I scroll down the list of links to find a report saying that 42 per cent of all abduction attempts are made by strangers. That means that most are undertaken by people the families knew: parents, relatives, friends. Surely some of these are divorce cases, child custody battles, kids who ran away by themselves. But not all.
I’ve always been good at maths. It was why I was nominated for Young Researcher of the Year before I had Grace. I can work through pages of numbers and find the real story they are telling. ‘That’s 504 children,’ I murmur, ‘abducted by strangers. This year. And Shaw and Ward already have one case … at least one. No wonder I haven’t heard anything from them.’
My fingers hover over the keypad again and I jump as the phone rings. Its shrill hum reverberates through the kitchen. Pick me up. Pick me up.
I do so without thinking. ‘Hello?’
‘Bridget, darling!’ My mum’s voice. ‘How many times have I told you to answer the phone properly. You should say “Carlson residence”.’
‘Sorry, Mum.’ I sit on the stool by the breakfast bar, tucking the phone under my ear, my heart slowing. I think of telling her that she is the only person we know who doesn’t call our mobile phones. That I have no intention of being polite to people trying to get me to buy double glazing or sue someone for an accident I’ve never had. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, you know me, can’t complain! I’m calling because I’m hoping to take Grace this afternoon.’
‘But … it’s the weekend.’
‘I know, darling, but I didn’t see her this week. I’ve been very busy and Tom said he could manage without me.’ She pauses. ‘Gillian’s back from France.’ Her voice is excited and guilty relief ripples through me; Aunt Gillian is back! Mum doesn’t have many people in her life. There was Dad, there is me and there is Aunt Gillian.
I don’t remember much about Dad. But I often wish he was still around, mainly because some of Mum’s attention would have gone to him, like a river being diverted. Sometimes her love seems to contain deep and dangerous currents, enough to wash us away.
‘I’m really glad Aunt Gillian’s home,’ I say. ‘How long has it been since you’ve seen her? Two years?’
‘Almost exactly.’ She sounds giddy and I’m delighted. ‘And that’s the other reason I want to take Grace.’ Her voice fades and then comes back, as if she’s taken the phone away from her ear. She’s multi-tasking. Always busy, my mum.
‘I don’t under—’
‘Gillian hasn’t seen her. I’ve sent lots of photos and we’ve … face-timed … is that the word?’
‘Yes, Mum, but—’
‘And now she wants to meet her.’
‘Does it have to be today? I’ve been working late a lot the last few days. I’ve hardly seen her either.’ I look guiltily at the door, suddenly wishing for Tom to walk through it, but he said he wanted a half-hour walk and a half-hour walk is what he’ll take.
He’s probably gone to the park to show Grace the ducks. Or to the swings. Grace loves the swings. He takes his coat off and tucks it behind her, so she doesn’t slip out.
I clench my fists on my lap. Why had I ruined things? Why wasn’t I there, pretending to try and catch her feet as he pushed her? By the time they get back she’ll need lunch, then a nap. I’ll have missed her whole morning.
I realise that Mum has been quiet for almost a full minute. Then she speaks again.
‘Tom called me the other night. I was very worried.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum, I—’
‘Luckily, I was still awake when he rang again to say you had come home. You aren’t spending nearly enough time with him, darling. Normally I take Grace when you’re at work, but if I took her for a couple of hours this afternoon, you could do something with Tom. Go out for a … a drink or something.’ She talks as if she has no idea what couples do, but she was with Dad for twenty years. They ran a business together.
‘I—’
‘I’ll understand if you don’t want me to see her,’ she says. ‘I just thought … I missed her, and it would make Gillian so happy. If you haven’t seen Grace much this week, I imagine you haven’t seen Tom much either.’ She hesitates. ‘It’s so important to make time for one another … while you have the chance.’
‘Mum …’ I swallow. ‘Tom’s not going to do what Dad did.’
‘No, of course not.’ I picture her looking down, plucking at her skirt. Her breath catches. ‘He would never! Of course, I didn’t expect your father to—’
‘You can take her.’
‘Really? Only if you’re sure.’
‘Yes. You’re right. I should spend some time with Tom.’
‘Wonderful. I’ll be there at three.’
After she hangs up, I sit and stare at myself in the cupboard glass. Would it really be so bad to spend a couple of hours alone with Tom? If I hop in the shower now, while he’s out, I can do my hair, put on something nice and take him to The Queen’s Head for a pint.
I look at the stairs. I can be in and out of the shower in five minutes. But then, before I know it, I’m pulling the iPad back toward me.
During 2013/14, 158 children were abducted by their parents, 401 children were abducted by people other than their parents and 321 children were kidnapped. Kidnappings, which are defined by the use of force or fraud to remove a child, include cases such as children taken in return for a ransom or young gang members held by rival factions.
The figures include both successful and attempted crime, however, PACT (Parents and Abducted Children Together) believes that many cases of attempted abduction and kidnapping involving children are never recorded by police and the true rate of offending may be four times higher than police figures suggest.
I’d always thought that kidnapping and abduction was the same. I type again.
Abduction is when someone uses deceit or force in order to take a person away from their home or relatives.
Kidnapping is taking away or forcefully transporting a person against their will and holding them in false imprisonment.
So, the little girl was kidnapped not abducted. Surely, I should have heard something by now. I look at the card pinned to the noticeboard with Naomi Shaw’s contact details. But what if she’s busy? What if she has a lead and taking time out to talk to me slows things down? Who am I anyway? Just a curious stranger.
I slide my finger over the iPad, switching the screen to black. I should get in the shower. Tom will be so pleased to see me making an effort. I touch my greasy hair.
The front door cracks open. ‘We’re home.’