My coat is empty. I feel in both pockets, certain I put it in the right-hand side, but frantic enough to believe I made a mistake. There’s no sign of the Dip Dab wrapper in its sandwich bag. I start looking around the floor in the hallway, unable to leave for my doctor’s appointment until I’ve found it. Tom appears at the top of the stairs.
‘What have you lost?’
‘Something important.’ I can’t take my eyes from the floor. I’m digging behind the shoes now, fingertips dragging through the gritty traces of mud that we’ve tracked in and which have collected under the coat rack. It isn’t there. It isn’t anywhere. Maybe I took it out and tucked it in the hood of Grace’s pram, where I sometimes keep things. I open the hall cupboard and yank the hood open, scattering crisp packets, pennies and hair bands on the floorboards. A piece of paper flutters past me, folded. Not mine. Automatically I lean to pick it up, but Tom is there first.
‘Bridge, what are you looking for?’ Tom retrieves the paper and slides it into his pocket. ‘Let me help, or you’ll be late.’
‘It’s …’ I hesitate, reluctant to tell him that I’m losing my mind over a Dip Dab wrapper. ‘You haven’t seen a sweet wrapper, have you? It was in my pocket.’
‘Why do you …?’ he starts. Then he sighs, as if he dreads my answer. ‘Well yeah. I wore your coat to take out the recycling yesterday evening after we got home. I emptied the rubbish out of your pocket. It was disgusting and you’re welcome.’
‘You put it in the bin?’ I race for the kitchen.
‘The wheelie bin outside.’ Tom follows me. ‘They took the rubbish this morning. It’s gone, Bridge. I’m sorry, I didn’t know it mattered.’
‘It did.’ I grab the kitchen counter. ‘Oh God, it did.’
‘Why?’ Tom stares at me. ‘What’s so vital about an old sweet wrapper?’
‘It was hers!’ I shout, knowing I’m likely waking Grace from her nap. ‘It was proof that she was there. A connection. Now it’s gone and she’ll never be found.’
‘What the hell?’ Tom doesn’t move forwards, doesn’t take me in his arms. ‘This again? It’s a sweet wrapper, Bridge. There’s no possible way you could tell who it belong—’
‘I just know, all right?’ I’m yelling, top of my lungs, almost screaming. I hear Grace start to cry upstairs. ‘I just know. It was hers and you threw it away.’
‘Jesus, Bridge.’ Tom starts to back off. ‘I’m going to try and settle Grace back down. You have to go to the doctor. I mean you really need to. Talk to her about upping your dosage. Talk about counselling, call your mum’s friend … whatever it takes. You have to get better. I don’t know how long I …’ He trails off, turns, strides towards the stairs. His feet are heavy on the treads, then they thud on the landing. I hear Grace’s door open, the soft murmur of his voice against her hysterical sobs. I did that. I made her cry.
I open and close my fists. ‘Crazy Mummy,’ I murmur. ‘Crazy Mummy.’
Dr Lewis is kind, but stern, and I can’t imagine her having hysterics about anything, let alone a sweet wrapper.
‘I–I’m not coping very well.’ I keep my eyes on my fingers. ‘I mean … the drugs have helped, but … is there anything stronger?’
She looks at me long and carefully. ‘How much sleep are you getting?’
‘Not much. I mean it takes me a while to get to sleep. And then I … I have nightmares. And Grace gets up at two for a feed, and then usually again at four.’
‘Twice in the night still?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there anything else going on I should know about?’
I shake my head, heavy with the lie.
‘Here, fill this in for me. I’ll wait.’ She passes me an Edinburgh Scale; its questions are familiar to me now.
1. I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things.
2. I have looked forward with enjoyment to things.
3. I have blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wrong.
4. I have been anxious or worried for no good reason.
5. I have felt scared or panicky for no good reason.
6. Things have been getting on top of me.
7. I have been so unhappy that I have had difficulty sleeping.
8. I have felt sad or miserable.
9. I have been so unhappy that I gave been crying.
10. The thought of harming myself has occurred to me.
I find it hard to fill in. I don’t blame myself unnecessarily. When things go wrong, I blame myself perfectly necessarily. I’m the one who’s meant to make sure things go right. I’m the mum. If things go wrong, it’s my fault. And yes, I’ve been anxious and scared, but I’ve had every reason. Grace is a baby, she could die. Babies die. And they get stolen. Like the dark-haired little girl with the sweet wrapper and the blazer with the rose on it. Or like the Sharma boy, whose mum was crying on the Breakfast Show this morning. My breath starts coming in short gasps.
‘You’re having difficulty?’ Dr Lewis takes the paper back off me. She looks at it. She consults my records. ‘It’s a better score than last time, which is good, but you’ve thought about harming yourself?’
I nod without looking at her.
‘Often?’
‘Not often.’ I think of the drive over, how easy it would have been to have swerved in front of an oncoming lorry. How I barely kept my hands tight on the wheel, only by thinking of Grace and how hungry she would get if I wasn’t there for her next feed.
‘I’m going to up your dose of Fluoxetine.’ She starts writing a prescription. ‘You should still take two tablets at night, but they’ll be stronger.’ She glances at me. ‘Have you thought any more about counselling? Last time we met you said you’d had therapy before, as a teenager, and you weren’t keen to do it again. But I really think—’
‘Yes.’ The word stutters from me like a gunshot. ‘I’ll talk to someone.’ At least that way I could tell Mum that I’d paid attention to her. And it might help. It might.
Dr Lewis actually smiles at me. ‘Great. I’ll put you on the waiting list.’ She types something and looks apologetic. ‘I’m afraid there is a waiting list. If you haven’t heard anything in six weeks, let me know and I’ll get my secretary to see what’s happening with the referral.’
‘Six weeks!’ I gasp.
‘I’m afraid so.’ She looks as if she wants to pat my hand. ‘Unless you or your husband have private health insurance?’
I shake my head.
‘Well, see how you get on with the Fluoxetine and the six weeks will go by. They might even contact you sooner, you never know. Come back if you feel worse and I’ll see if there’s anything else I can do. Are you still in touch with your antenatal group?’
I lick my lips. I know she wants me to say yes but after I got sick, I lost contact with most of them. Then I went back to work and the others drifted away. Or rather, I let them drift away. ‘They meet up at lunchtimes, but I’m back at work.’
‘I see.’ She sighs. ‘Having friends who are going through the same thing – well, it helps, I promise. Perhaps see if you can catch up again?’
I nod, knowing I won’t. They aren’t like me, those other mummies, with their Boden dresses, boots and leggings, their babies in Petit Bateau, or JoJo Maman Bébé, talking about their husband’s jobs and how lucky they are to be able to stay at home and make organic baby food. Or the splinter group, with the teenaged mum who looked taut as an Olympic gymnast two weeks after giving birth, and the working mums who are so very smug about their career choices and how they are showing their sons and daughters ‘a good example’ and who always seem to be discussing which childminders are best. I was working, yes, but I didn’t want to be, and we couldn’t afford Boden or a childminder. I didn’t seem to fit anywhere.
Dr Lewis tilts her head as she looks at me. Then she makes another note. ‘I’m signing you off work for a week, Bridget. Try and get some rest, yes?’
‘Thank you.’
‘All right.’ She stands up, my cue to do the same. ‘I’m glad you came to me, Bridget. We’ll get through this.’
I mutter a thanks and head for the door. Six weeks. Could I hang on for six weeks?
When I get back to my car I sit with my phone in my hand.
I think about calling Tom, then I consider Althea’s words: how much would I risk for the missing girl?
I place the call.
This time Sergeant Shaw answers and, at the sound of her voice, my heart slows to a more regular beat. I hadn’t realised how afraid I’d been of hearing Ward on the line.
‘Shaw.’
‘Sergeant Shaw … it’s Bridget Carlson, from the train … I saw the little girl being kidnapped.’
There’s a pause on the other end of the line, a rustle of paper, then she speaks. ‘Of course, Bridget. How are you? Are you calling for news?’
‘There’s news?’ My heart starts to race.
‘Not as such, I’m afraid. More of the same. How can I help you?’
‘I …’ I take a deep breath. ‘I think I remembered something else, something about what she was wearing, and I was hoping …’
‘Can you tell me what it was?’
‘It was the blazer, the school blazer. It had a rose on the pocket, I’m sure of it.’
‘A rose.’ There’s another rustle. ‘That’s very specific.’ A pause. ‘You went by very fast and you weren’t that close to her. You’re certain you saw a rose? Nothing else that could be similar in shape or colour?’
‘A rose.’ I clutch the phone tighter. ‘I’m sure.’
‘All right then, I’ll look into it. Thank you.’ She doesn’t hang up. ‘How are you doing, Bridget? Something like this, it can be quite traumatic.’
‘I’m okay.’ I blink at the phone. ‘I’m having nightmares.’ I don’t know why I told her that.
‘Understandable.’ Shaw’s voice is gentle, kind. ‘Let me know if you remember anything else, won’t you?’
‘I will. And there’s a boy.’ I speak in a rush. ‘I keep seeing his family on the news. Vihaan Sharma, is he …?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss other cases with you, Bridget.’
‘Of course, sorry, I just … because he was kidnapped too, it feels … the same, I guess. It couldn’t be the same people?’
‘I don’t believe so.’ Now Naomi sounds impatient. ‘I really have to get back to work.’
‘Thank you for listening to me.’
‘You’re welcome. Take care, Bridget.’ She hangs up and I relax a little. Naomi will find the uniform and the school, then the police will know that I’m not making all this up.
I start the car and head towards the main road but instead of turning towards home, I make a left past the shops on the corner and drive towards the library. I don’t know why, it’s only that the girl is on my mind now, and I can’t go home and pretend to forget about her just to placate Tom. I want to do … something.
I pull into the car park and pick up my phone again. I shoot Tom a text. Everything fine. Dr has upped dosage. Just need a couple of hours. OK?
It’s not a lie, not strictly. I wait for his answer and it soon arrives, bleeping into the car, a curt OK.
The library is quiet. A couple of mums with toddlers are in the children’s section and an old man is using the computer in the far corner, grunting over the keys as he laboriously types an email. I imagine he has a son in another country, or maybe he’s emailing a faceless department about benefits, a victim of the Government assumption that everyone is happy to communicate online. I prefer to think he is sending a message to a family member, that he’s replying to a grandson who has been telling him about playing football and doing well in a test.
I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here. I head to the desk where I buy an hour on the other computer for no real reason and then I go to sit there, with my back to the old man, and wonder what to do.
My fingers hover over the keys. I have an hour. Automatically I enter the search I’ve been putting in my own phone at home every night: child kidnapping, UK. I’m not expecting to find anything about the girl but something I said to Naomi sticks in my mind: could it be the same people? Have I unconsciously stumbled on something? The kidnappers seemed to know what they were doing and if this isn’t their first time taking a child, there could be some kind of pattern.
And that’s my job: looking for patterns in data. I’m good at it. Usually I’m looking for explanations such as why customer satisfaction in a particular company might be deteriorating, why a factory or department might be less productive, how a company could most effectively extend its reach. But there is no reason why my skills can’t be applied to this. Tom is right, I’m a middle-class mother of one. I know nothing about criminals. I can’t find kidnappers in the real world, that’s Naomi’s job, but I might be able to spot them hiding in the data.
An hour later I have bookmarked half a dozen stories from the past ten years. All children taken from a train station or near to one. Always in an area of lower affluence. The children all between the ages of four and seven years old. Have I found a pattern?
I use my work login to find Office for National Statistics data that isn’t available to the general public, then I filter for cases with children between the ages of three and ten, who have vanished in the last ten years and who have never been found. There are so many.
So, perhaps I haven’t found a pattern. Looking at the sheer number of missing children, it would be almost impossible not to find clusters with similarities.
But there are patterns, I’m sure of it. In that volume of data, there has to be. I buy another hour and extend my search to twenty years.
Some might think that more data would mean it would be more difficult to find one lost little girl, but more data means my findings will have more statistical validity. I can seek correlations, and differences will be more significant.
I need to graph the data and put things together: places, dates, numbers.
I glance at my watch. I’m running out of time. I really should go back to Tom and Grace. It’s not fair on Tom otherwise. But I’m getting somewhere, finally achieving something. Raw data can’t lie.
Dr Lewis has signed me off work for a week, but Tom doesn’t have to know that. If I don’t tell him, I can return tomorrow and keep working. If I don’t tell him, it isn’t exactly a lie.
I ask the librarian for some paper and make notes of the bookmarked pages, just in case. Unable to stop myself, I linger over a story about the tragic Sharma case: the boy, who was being watched by his older sister, Vamil, vanished from a park in Peterborough, when she left him for a few minutes to chat with a friend. Then I ask if I can do some printing, trying not to think about the fact that each of the lines of data represents a missing child.
As I am sweeping up the paperwork, the librarian arrives to switch off the printer and looks over my shoulder. ‘Odd thing to be researching. For a dissertation, is it? You’d be amazed what we get people looking up nowadays for their courses.’
‘Sure.’ I nod. ‘Something like that.’
‘Well, if you’re interested in this kind of thing, we’ve got a bookcase over in the far corner filled with True Crime. There’re a few about child abductions: Secret Slave, Girl in the Cellar, that sort of thing. Those ones are autobiographical. One came in the other week about particularly tragic UK abductions actually, and that might suit you.
‘Particularly tragic?’ I must look taken aback.
‘You know, where the child was never found, or found dead … or worse.’
‘Worse?’
She lowers her voice. ‘Worse. You know, abused or taken to order. Where the child has no idea who they once were. That’s what I think happened to little Ben Needham. Remember him?’
I clutch the paperwork closer to my chest but the librarian doesn’t notice my discomfort. ‘Let me fetch it for you.’ She bustles off and I exhale. I consider escaping, leaving the library before she can return with her book of horrors, but if I want to sit here all week, working, then I ought to remain on her good side. I wait patiently until she comes back. ‘Have you got a library card, love?’
I shake my head.
‘Let me sort that out for you first then. Have you got your driving licence?’
Fifteen minutes later I have a library card, a book of tragic child abductions titled Kidnapped! and a pile of paperwork, all of which I need to hide in my car. I battle the sick feeling in my stomach and stow it in the boot, under the crumpled picnic rug. Then I head for home via the chemist.
I do feel a little better, perhaps because I spoke to the doctor, but more likely because I feel as if I’m finally achieving something. I have a week, I think. A week to find them in the data. If they’re in there, I can track them.