Peter lives in a small flat in Bedminster. I’m standing in his immaculately clean open-plan lounge watching him hunched over his computer, the curtains closed. It’s the scene I saw in the show, Peter sitting on a grey office chair and the bright strip of pink behind his monitor.
‘Anything?’ I ask, placing the tea he offered me down onto his kitchen counter.
He shakes his head. ‘This might take a while.’
I sigh. ‘How long is a while?’
He swivels to look at me, his face blotchy and his eyes bloodshot. ‘Maybe a day or two. I should know, I’m the one who encrypted it.’
‘You didn’t see anything on it?’
He shakes his head. ‘You said you found it in the snow globe?’
I nod. ‘I don’t think the message was for you, I think it was for me. I think she knew something bad was going to happen. So she stashed this USB and wrote an inconspicuous message in her notepad, hoping I’d find it, that I’d make sense of it.’
‘She can’t have known she’d go missing,’ he says, turning back to the computer.
‘No, but she knew she was involved in something dangerous and for some reason, that had to stay a secret.’
‘Yeah, because why not put “USB is in snow globe” and then the police would have found it or you would have and…’ He stops.
‘We might have found her or know why she went missing,’ I say. ‘It makes no sense.’
‘Do you want me to call you in the morning?’ he says. ‘To give you an update.’
‘Call me no matter the time if you have something.’ I grab my bag from the kitchen counter and turn to Peter, but he’s still hunched over, working. He turns to me after a moment and sees the uncertainty in my face.
‘You can trust me,’ he says.
And for now, that’s enough. I leave him trying to crack into Katy’s USB, hoping that any files can be salvaged. I don’t know if I can trust Peter fully, but in all of this mess, he makes the most sense to me now. He knew about Katy’s USB; he seemed like the only one who did.
When I look at him, I see someone who was very much in love with my daughter. But love can be dangerous, too.
* * *
When I get home, I check my phone and there are a few missed calls. Detective Lane’s is the first number I recognise and I call him back immediately.
‘Harrison?’ I say as he picks up. ‘What is it?’
‘Grace,’ he sighs. ‘I just wanted to give you a heads-up.’
‘You’ve found something?’
‘No, not that, we’re still sifting through all the messages we’ve had, that will take a while, but…’ He pauses. ‘I don’t know if you saw the last episode of that show.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I say, shocking myself.
‘Oh, well, your ex-partner, Ian, he was on it, and he said some things.’
‘Some things about Katy?’ I ask.
‘No, not really, more things about you.’
‘Me?’
‘How you kept Katy from seeing him. It’s all very distorted and upsetting and I’m sure you had your reasons, but there have been a couple of threats…’
‘What kind of threats?’ I ask.
‘Well, a few nasty people seem to have gotten it into their heads that you were involved in Katy’s disappearance. It’s completely unfounded, but they’ve written some hateful, quite threatening messages to the studio. I just wanted to warn you to stay offline for a while.’
‘Me?’ I say, incredulously. ‘What did he say?’
‘Don’t watch it, Grace, it’s a complete farce. But you really should speak to Maggie. You should have been aware of what he was saying about you, so you could prepare, so you could defend yourself.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That you won’t give him a paternity test.’
‘Why should I? He isn’t her father.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Grace – if that’s how you feel, then that’s the truth and you need to ignore what people are saying. I know you thought this documentary would help. You were reluctant to get involved at first, but you did it for Katy. And I just want you to keep that in your mind going forward. This is for Katy.’
I hang up on him. Don’t check online? What are people saying about me? That I could have done something to Katy? The room starts spinning and I’m taken back to that night all those years ago when I was twenty years old. When I was trying to leave Ian after a bad fight and he grabbed my arm and pulled me back. How I couldn’t escape, so I just gave in…
I allowed my voice, my self-worth, my confidence to be snuffed out and all that was left was Katy.
The phone rings again and when I look down it’s Mum.
‘Grace,’ she says soothingly.
‘I didn’t watch it,’ I say. ‘But Detective Lane told me it wasn’t good.’ I start to choke back tears, but they force their way through. ‘How could they get it so wrong?’
She doesn’t comfort me like I expect her to. She isn’t reassuring and doesn’t whisper to me that none of it was my fault.
‘It’s time’, she says, firmly, ‘to tell the world the truth.’
I’m silent for a moment, until I whisper, ‘I can’t do that.’
‘You have to be strong, my love.’
‘I just can’t.’
Then she says something I don’t expect. ‘Katy isn’t coming back.’ The words hang between us for what feels like hours, until she says. ‘She will never know what happened to you, what she is the product of. She will never know your pain, so it is not your burden to keep anymore. Do you understand?’
I sniff. ‘Let them think what they want about me,’ I say, staring down at the shards of glass on the floor. The pieces of pink castle broken, but not beyond repair. ‘Katy is coming home.’
I put down the phone, biting so hard on my bottom lip it starts to bleed. I fix things, broken things, and send them home to be loved again. I can fix this.
I start picking up pieces of glass when the doorbell rings. It’s late, almost 10pm, and I could turn the lights off and ignore the world, but I drift towards the front door. The outside light is on and through the window I see the top of Joanna’s head.
As I open the door, she’s already swinging her arms around me. She pulls me into her, her hair wrapping around my face as she squeezes me tightly. I stand for a moment, my arms by my side, until I slowly reach around to hug her back. We stand in the doorway like that until she lets go, sliding her hands down my arms to grab both of mine. She looks at me, her eyes filled with tears.
‘Are you okay?’
I nod, trying not to cry. ‘I didn’t watch the show, but—’
She shakes her head, tears rolling down her round cheeks. ‘You don’t need to justify yourself, Grace. I’m the one that should explain.’
She follows me inside and takes her usual seat at the dining table. Juniper appears in the doorway, already purring as she sidles up to Joanna’s leg, leaving a trail of hairs across her leggings.
‘Hey, June,’ she says, affectionately.
I sit opposite her, placing two cups of tea on the table. She takes hers gingerly, wanting to say something she can’t quite bring herself to say.
‘I’m sorry about Tom. He’s not dealing with everything that well, what with the baby and then this show airing. I heard what he said to you and it was so wrong. I’m so sorry, Grace. He didn’t mean it; he just needs to cool off. He just thinks that what happened to Katy has such a grip on our lives, and perhaps it does.’
‘It doesn’t matter, I’m sure it’s no worse than what people are saying about me right now.’
‘No one that matters,’ Joanna says. She takes a sip of tea. ‘He was abusive, wasn’t he?’ she says, but she won’t look me in the eye. ‘You don’t have to talk about it, but I could tell, when you were asked about him on the show, maybe it’s because I know you, but he wasn’t good to you.’
I shake my head. ‘Did he…?’ she says, but stops.
‘He isn’t Katy’s dad,’ I say, but she knows that isn’t true. Anyone could tell by looking at him that he’s Katy’s father. ‘What I mean is, he isn’t Katy’s dad to me.’
‘And he wasn’t to Katy, either,’ Joanna says. She reaches over and places a hand over mine. ‘I’m ashamed. I don’t know who told you, but it’s true, Katy and I weren’t talking when she went missing. I should have told you, I just… She was still my friend, it didn’t feel like anything had changed.’
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘She didn’t like Tom, and you know what she was like, she always said it like it was. But I found that hard to accept. I was young, stupid, only twenty-one, and boys were everything back then.’
‘You’re still with him, so that’s something,’ I say.
She forces a smile. ‘I’m not sure why. I think after Katy went missing, I just became numb and I followed life like a paint-by-numbers, unable or unwilling to make any decisions for myself. Tom was there, so he stayed there. Does that make sense?’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘Katy and I, we had this fight, she said she thought Tom wasn’t right for me, and I accused her of being jealous. It got nasty, and I was just scared of how it would look. I was selfish, but I still loved her, she was still my best friend. It was just a stupid fight. That’s all it was.’
‘I would have believed you,’ I whisper.
‘I was ashamed, I was second-guessing everything after Katy went missing, retracing every possible situation, every person we interacted with, everything she told and didn’t tell me. But I think I missed it; in those three weeks we didn’t speak before she went missing, I think I missed the key bit of information that would have told me why and where she had gone, and I blame myself. I think about it every day.’ She pauses. ‘But Katy didn’t tell me everything. She had her secrets.’
‘I know,’ I say, thinking about the USB stick, the gold key sitting in my pocket. Should I tell Joanna about it? I feel bitter, like it’s something only Katy and I know about. Something we share. Our secret. ‘You should have told me, I would have understood.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Do you think I need to tell the police?’
I shake my head. ‘It won’t do any good.’
Joanna points towards the mess in the lounge, the stained blue liquid on the cream rug and the shards of glass. She goes to speak, but drops her hand to her mug and lets what she was going to say go.
‘What now? she asks.
‘I guess we wait.’
* * *
After Joanna leaves, I prop my laptop on the dining table and open the private forum. They’ve never said a bad word about me, Grace Harper, in the chat before. But Detective Lane told me to stay offline, not to look, and I saw just how toxic some of the spaces discussing Katy could get. But not my group, they wouldn’t do that. They’re only interested in the truth. They’ll see through it.
LAINDON24
Have you seen what they’re saying in the public chat?
AMA
Disgusting, honestly, it’s like watching it all unfold all over again
IN_THE_SHADOWS
I know, poor Grace
LAINDON24
There’s something going on there, though, don’t you think? Something the Mum isn’t saying
AMA
Not you too
LAINDON24
I didn’t mean it like that, but denying someone a paternity test, that’s not the amicable breakup he said it was
IN_THE_SHADOWS
I agree, he creeps me out
LAINDON24
Something definitely went on between Grace and Ian, he might have just gone straight to K if he thought she might block any contact
IN_THE_SHADOWS
It’s the first time we’ve ever known about the dad, that puts us in a good position, lots more information to go through
AMA
Police say he has an alibi, and that he didn’t even know about Katy at the time, he only saw her on the news and saw Grace and put the timeline together
REDTURTLE
Do you believe that?
LAINDON24
Not for a second, let’s dig
IN_THE_SHADOWS
Agreed
I shut the laptop. I wonder what they’re saying about me. What the threats are, if they’re verbal or physical, or both. I walk through the house, closing the curtains, double-locking the front and back doors. I get a blanket and curl up on the sofa, turning on the TV. There’s a reminder that The Disappearance of Katy Harper Part 4 has been recorded and is ready to watch. But I ignore it, scrolling to a new Disney film. I smile. Katy’s never seen this one, but she would have liked it. She always said Disney princesses were too passive, that it’s damaging to children to see women constantly portrayed as the damsel in distress.
I just hope that she didn’t take that too literally, that she didn’t get into a fight she couldn’t win. That she was sick of playing the damsel and decided to do something about it. Peter said that, when he saw her the night she went missing, she was scared. I just wish I knew what she was scared of.
‘Scared that you’d watch Happy Valley without me.’ Katy laughs.
‘Don’t make light of this.’
‘Someone has to. You’re so serious now, Mum, you used to be the light-hearted one, remember?’
‘There’s no room for that anymore.’
‘You should make room, because I’m not coming back.’
‘You are,’ I whisper.