6. Emily

Emily lies in the bath, wishing she could disappear into the steam altogether. It’s coming up to forty-eight hours now since Daisy disappeared and the police don’t seem to be any closer to finding her, to finding out what has happened. She tries not to think about the significance of the passing of time: in the hours that followed the discovery of Daisy’s disappearance Emily sat at her PC, robotically Googling ‘missing children’ in a bid to find something, anything that might provide clues to bringing her back home. But everything she found seemed to relate to either runaways or parental abductions, and the few statistics relating to unknown kidnappers were chillingly spare. The one message that came through loud and clear was this: the first twenty-four hours were crucial. After the first twenty-four hours, a child’s chance of being found alive plummeted dramatically. But twenty-four hours has been and gone, and now they are approaching forty-eight hours, and the odds are stacked against them. In all that time, Emily has barely slept, apart from these occasional minutes of deep slumber from which she finds herself waking with a start, as she remembers it all again.

This afternoon, after the doctor had been called out to see her, Jess had persuaded her to take a bath, to brush her teeth and wash her hair and freshen up. ‘You’ll feel a lot better after a bath,’ she’d said gently, sitting across the table from her, trying to coax Emily into making eye contact. But Emily was mesmerised by the glow of Jess’s hair in the window light; the blonde locks of her childhood had transformed into darker sun-kissed waves that rested untidily around her shoulders, unkempt, unadorned. It was this that Emily always envied: her carelessness.

‘Ha!’ Emily had retorted, as though it was Jess’s fault she was like this, filthy and near-insane with worry. She could see Chloe sitting in the corner seat of the room, her attention fixed resolutely away from the rest of the family, her thumbs scrolling up and down the screen of her smart phone. She’s barely said a word since she heard the news, and Emily wishes she could gather up some feeling of compassion towards the girl, but she can’t, not when all her thoughts must stick to Daisy. ‘What are we going to do, Dad?’ she had heard Chloe whispering to James on the landing late last night. ‘We can’t just go to bed, can we? Shouldn’t we be doing something? How can we sleep?’ Her voice was urgent, childish, and yet in those few words Emily was shamed by her own lack of agency, as she lay in her bed, staring helplessly at the ceiling. When they rose this morning they had discovered that Chloe had been up all night, launching a #findDaisy campaign on Twitter and Instagram and countless other forums, and, while Emily’s immediate emotion had been one of fury at the public intrusion, Jess and James had convinced her it was worth a try. She had no fight in her, and she’d sat as she was instructed, and waited for the doctor to arrive.

Though her body is inert, hands floating loosely in the hot bathwater, Emily’s mind jumps from thought to thought, back and forth over the past two days. It tangles and writhes, never ceasing, even through the welcome fog of these tablets.

‘How many of these are you meant to take?’ Jess had asked James, scanning the leaflet that came with the perscription. It seemed strange to Emily how they all carried on like this, with DC Cherry the quiet, gaunt-faced liaison officer constantly there, hearing their every word, their every breath. There was no point in asking James, Emily had wanted to say, bitterly glancing across the room where he stood at the kitchen window, staring out over the wintry garden. This man was barely recognisable, so unlike the confident, light-hearted James that she’d left at the party just days ago, mingling like a pro and topping up the glasses of the good and the beautiful. ‘Emily, he’s an angel,’ Jan had called over to her that night, as she passed him two more bottles of champagne from behind their marble-topped drinks bar. ‘Marcus has buggered off somewhere, so I’ve commandeered your good man. I adore him!’ James had laughed, taking the two bottles in one hand and blowing them each a kiss, one after another.

In the absence of an answer from James, Jess had continued to read the instructions to the end of the page, before fetching her sister a glass of water and sending her off to the bathroom with a clean towel.

‘Thank you,’ Emily had whispered before shutting the door behind her, but she wasn’t sure if Jess had heard her or not. She didn’t even know if she’d spoken it out loud. Thank God she’s here, Emily thinks, smarting with guilt over her earlier ill feeling; who else would talk to James and Chloe otherwise? Who else would make them eat, and ask them if they’re all right, and check if they needed anything? Who else would answer the endlessly ringing phone and chase off the reporters who have started camping out on the street and knocking at the door at all hours? It’s hard enough for Emily to listen to her own thoughts and horrors, without having to live through their tortures too. James is as broken as she is right now, and Emily can find nothing to say to him, nothing of any value. She can gather no sense of feeling for him; for Chloe; for herself even. Eighty per cent, she thinks, visualising the number in her head. That was another of the statistics she uncovered online yesterday. The number of relationships that break down after the loss of a child. Eighty per cent.

Her skin has turned pink, leaving two pale circles where her knees protrude from the hot water. She presses her toes against the hot tap, topping up the bath, sending more steam billowing out into the room. The police said they’d like to do a television appeal tonight, and they want her and James there, to speak to the cameras. To make a statement, an appeal to anyone who might know something. Emily replays these words in her mind. These aren’t the kind of sentences a parent should ever have to hear; they belong in TV dramas or the ten o’clock news – they belong to other people. If she didn’t feel so subdued by medication, Emily knows her heart would be racing now, with the fresh terror those words bring. ‘Will it make a difference?’ she had asked DCI Jacobs. She knows how the public view these appeals; she’s not stupid. How were you meant to conduct yourself in a situation like this? In the face of such horror, how could you gather the strength to address a room full of cameras and journalists, to speak the words aloud, without publicly breaking down? And at the same time, she knows, it is impossible to appear blameless in the absence of such an open display of grief. It’s what the public want to see. They want to measure up the parents, assess their emotional responses for authenticity. Every person in every household around the country will be watching them speak, and they’ll be wondering, are they behind it? Is he guilty? Is she? She’s thought it herself, when watching some poor beggar or other imploring their missing teenager to make contact, to come home, and she realises now, with shame, that she’s flippantly thought, well, that’s that, she’s dead for sure.

Is Daisy dead? She thinks of the photograph the police took away on that first night, the one of her snapped by a pop-up baby photographer in Portsmouth on a Christmas shopping trip last month. It’s this photograph that is now the official image of Daisy, the picture that every news channel and newspaper in the country has featured, heading up the daily news along with its horrible nod to modernity: Chloe’s #findDaisy hashtag. It’s not even the best picture of her, but it’s the clearest, a close-up portrait, well-lit, with an ugly mottled backdrop that makes her soft baby form stand out starkly. She’s a little too pale in it, and her smile not quite full, but her blonde curls and clear blue eyes are captured exactly. My Daisy, Emily thinks now. My little Daisy. ‘This is perfect,’ DC Piper had said, and he’d smiled at the photo, adding, ‘She’s a bonny little thing, isn’t she?’ Emily stares into the memory of that photograph. Is it conceivable that her beautiful, smiling Daisy is dead?

She’s not.’ She hears the answer, spoken clearly into the vapour-filled room, and slowly it dawns on her that she said the words. These tablets are strong, she thinks with more clarity; she must be careful when taking them. At the same time, it feels good, the numbness she’s experiencing now, the way in which she can think it all through, dispassionately; rationally. She has a sense of profound understanding tickling beneath the surface of her conscious thoughts, as though she holds the key to Daisy’s disappearance, to her whereabouts, as though the answers lie within her alone. She draws her hands up and over her face, pressing the tips of her fingers into the dark hollows of her eyes, concentrating hard, trying to unravel it all. Her mind rests on James, on the freeze-frame image of him as he entered the house that night to find her stooped over Jess’s blood-stained body, screaming at her to talk, to tell her what happened. Already the police were on their way; after charging up the stairs and finding Daisy gone she had phoned them – it was the first thing she had done. She remembers the emergency operator telling her to slow down and speak more clearly, and when she asked if anyone was hurt Emily found herself back in the kitchen standing over Jess, looking down at her prone body, at the golden mess of hair fanned out around her side-turned head, and she’d said no. Why had she said no? She focuses hard on that image, trying to get herself back into the moment. She had been used to Jess’s fainting fits, ever since they started in childhood, and she’d been known to have the occasional nosebleed too. But Emily would have thought all that would’ve stopped long ago, that Jess would have grown out of it, so why wouldn’t she have taken this seriously, finding her sister in that state?

In her mind, she repeats the sequence and tracks back again to that first moment when she walked through the front door. She was completely sober, as she’d offered to drive that night so that James could have a few drinks with Marcus and their various colleagues, but in the event she’d driven home alone as James had insisted on staying on for a nightcap. So, she’d walked in through their front door, surprised not to find Jess curled up on the sofa watching TV in the living room, and while nothing was obviously out of place she had immediately sensed something wrong; a stillness. And then she had seen her through the open archway to the kitchen: Jess, or at least her legs, stretched out on the hard floor, just visible beyond the island unit that dominates the large room. Throwing down her bag and keys, Emily had rushed to her – yes, that was the first thing she did – and straight away she’d felt for Jess’s pulse. Thank God, it was there, a strong beat, and she’d shaken her roughly, calling out her name, even slapping her cheeks with a light hand in an attempt to bring her round. And she had come round, with a gasp of shock, but she had looked dazed and she’d whispered, ‘Daisy?’ – and instantly Emily had smelt alcohol on her breath, and thought, she’s pissed! She had been so angry, she’d shaken her again, furious that she would even contemplate drinking when looking after their child, but Jess had grabbed the sleeve of her coat and tugged her closer, repeating, ‘Daisy!’ with such urgency that it had sent a pinch of cold fear right through her, and Emily had recoiled and rushed for the stairs.

That was why she’d told the operator no one was hurt; she had really thought Jess was just drunk, that she was OK. And if she’s completely honest with herself, she thinks now as she hooks the plug chain between her toes and allows the bathwater to drain away, the moment she discovered Daisy was missing, she couldn’t have cared less what happened to Jess.

The first time Jess was rushed into hospital, Emily travelled in the back of the ambulance with her and Mum. Jess was nine, Emily ten, and as there had been no one else at home they had all had to go. Emily remembers the flutter of excitement she felt as the paramedic tended to Jess, fitting her with a breathing mask and strapping her arm up in a tight blue band. Emily clung to her mother, sitting on her lap as the vehicle sped towards the hospital for the first, it turned out, of many visits they would make over the next few years.

To begin with, having no concept that Jess would be anything other than fine at the end of it, Emily enjoyed the thrill of the hospital. Together they were rushed into A&E, where Jess was looked at by an endless stream of concerned and smiling doctors and nurses, and Emily and her mother were swept along like special guests with a backstage pass. For a while there were three or four medics squeezed into the side room where Jess was, so to make space Mum told Emily to step outside the booth to sit on one of the plastic chairs facing the open doorway. Emily could still see everything that was going on; Jess was now fully awake and quietly answering their questions, lying perfectly still on the trolley bed as they listened to her heart, shone lights into her eyes and talked among themselves. Briefly, Emily thought she would like to be one of those doctors in a white coat, that she would perfectly suit the medical setting with her clear-thinking mind and her ability to organise things. Her last school report home had said, ‘Emily is an outgoing, responsible and hard-working member of the class. She’s a pleasure to teach, and a good example to others.’ She could remember it word for word, so proud was she. Jess would be no good in a hospital at all; she’d get horribly upset every time someone couldn’t be fixed or, worse still, if they died. Her school report had used the words ‘sensitive and thoughtful,’ so she’d probably be better off working in a library or a nursery school or something quiet like that. But Emily would be perfect as a doctor! She would cure people and save their lives, and they’d forever remember Dr Emily, perhaps even naming their girl babies after her like they did in the movies. The A&E corridor was busy, with occupied wheelchairs and trolley beds passing by every couple of minutes, parents carrying crying infants, teenagers limping past on crutches. She made a point of smiling at them all, practising to achieve an effect of sympathetic confidence, but her smile faded quickly when the victim of a road traffic accident was rushed past her on a gurney, the surgical wadding doing nothing to hide the damage inflicted on the poor man’s face.

‘Emi!’ her mum called from Jess’s booth. Emily could see that Jess was now sitting up, beckoning her sister to join them. She had a slightly bemused expression on her face, but the colour had returned to her skin and she was smiling.

‘Is she going to be all right?’ Emily asked, only now feeling a flood of anxiety that had earlier been completely absent. Her gaze returned to the empty corridor where the crash victim had just been, and she burst into tears.

Jess reached out and pulled her on to the bed to lie beside her. ‘Don’t cry, Emi,’ she said, patting her shoulder reassuringly. Emily felt good lying there in Jess’s warm embrace, the focus of concern having suddenly shifted to shine brightly on her. She nestled in beneath Jess’s arm where the hospital smells of bleach and metal mixed contentedly with the scent of Vosene that still lingered in Jess’s freshly washed hair. ‘I’m going to be fine,’ Jess told her. ‘It was just a funny turn, that’s what the doctors said, didn’t they, Mum?’

‘That’s right,’ Mum said, and Emily looked up to see her mother tugging at her bottom lip as she stood and watched her two girls curled up together on the hospital bed. ‘Just a funny turn.’

But time would show them all that it wasn’t just a funny turn, and, although Emily couldn’t imagine it now, the initial excitement of the hospital ward would soon wear thin. She wasn’t accustomed to Jess soaking up the full light of her parents’ attention, and, when her sister’s ‘funny turns’ threatened to become a regular occurrence, Emily sought out their sunlight in the only way she knew how: by casting a few shadows.