by C J Parsons
Carrie had stood watching from the front window as the two of them headed off down the pavement, her daughter skipping at Simon’s side, wearing her smile-emoji backpack. But as Carrie turned to face the silent house, she saw Penguin Pete lying on the floor by the sofa. Pete was Sofia’s favourite stuffed animal: the one she cuddled in bed at night. A weekend without him was unthinkable. Scooping up the toy, Carrie slammed out of the house and ran down the pavement, chasing their retreating backs, catching them in front of the second-to-last house on the street: number seventy-eight. An elderly woman was outside, pruning her hedge. She watched them over the top as she clipped.
‘Petie!’ Sofia flung her arms around the stuffed penguin, hugging it against her face. ‘I’m so sorry, Petie! How could I forget you?’
‘How indeed?’ Simon said. ‘It’s almost as though he was kept behind on purpose.’
Carrie blinked as she tried and failed to interpret this remark.
‘I don’t understand what you mean by that. Explain to me?’
He was usually good about spelling things out for her. But today his only response was a headshake and a closed-lip smile. She didn’t know what that meant either, but something about him seemed . . . different.
‘Are you OK, Simon?’
At least her instincts had got her that far. That far . . . but no further. She looked at his face carefully, trying to latch on to something she could make sense of, a pattern she recognised from their time together. But his features were arranged in a way she’d never seen before.
‘Oh yes.’ A broad grin split his face, uncovering teeth tinged yellow by coffee and cigarettes. ‘In fact, I am better than OK. I am fantastique.’ And he laughed, throwing out his arms.
Had it set off alarm bells: his reaction, the width of his smile? Some flicker of doubt? She would ask herself that later, but, in truth, the answer was no. Other people’s emotional displays always seemed so exaggerated, and Simon’s even more so when he was around Sofia. So she had accepted his claim that he was fine, that he was fantastique. And she’d let the two of them go. Had watched them walk off down the pavement and disappear around the corner in the direction of the bus stop.
Carrie hadn’t registered the rhythmic scissoring of the hedge clippers until the sound suddenly stopped. She turned to see the grey-haired woman stab the tool into the ground at her feet, the handles jutting from the soil. She took off her straw sunhat and used it to fan herself, squinting at Carrie.
‘Are you sure that was wise?’
Carrie looked back at her across the plane of severed leaves.
‘I don’t understand what you mean. Was what wise?’
‘Letting your daughter go off with a man like that?’
Carrie had been about to tell the old biddy that the ‘man like that’ was Sofia’s father, thank you very much. But something stopped the words. She felt a cold clutch of dread, a creeping certainty that she’d missed something.
‘Why . . . why would you say that?’
The woman’s lips puckered, making the skin around them appear cracked.
‘Well, anyone can see he’s not right in the head. That smile . . .’ Her shoulders made a shuddering movement. ‘I know the polite term these days is “mentally ill” but I believe in calling a spade a spade. And that man is just plain crazy.’ She returned the sunhat to her head. ‘Of course, it’s none of my business. But I wouldn’t let someone I love be alone with a man who smiled like that.’
There was a beat of time, a brief pause before the weight of the woman’s words hit Carrie like an avalanche, knocking the breath from her.
That man is just plain crazy.
Oh no, oh please, God, no.
She wheeled away and raced down the pavement after them, arms pumping, feet hammering concrete, lungs snatching air, two thoughts slamming back and forth inside her skull like a battering ram: Simon is psychotic. Simon is with Sofia. Simon is psychotic. Simon is with Sofia. She had to get her daughter back, to catch them before the bus arrived and carried them out of reach. Every cell in her body strained forwards, towards Sofia. Her lungs were scorching as she rounded the corner.
And saw that it was too late; the bus was already pulling free of the curb. She chased after it, waving her arms over her head, shouting.
‘Stop! Stop the bus!’
A man walking his dog up ahead shot a glance her way before quickly crossing the street. The bus picked up speed, belching exhaust as it heaved around a curve in the road and out of sight.
They were supposed to be going to the zoo, so that was where Carrie went first. Sofia liked to present her membership card at the entry gate because it made her feel grown up, so their arrival should have been logged in the London Zoo’s computer system. Should have been . . . but wasn’t. Carrie had pushed past the queue at the entry gate, shown them her own card, on the same family account as Sofia’s, and said she needed to locate her daughter right away; it was an emergency. The zoo staff checked and re-checked their computer records, but the answer was the same both times: if Sofia was inside the zoo, she hadn’t used her card to get there. Carrie was already tapping at her mobile, ordering an Uber, as she ran back out onto the curved road that arched around the zoo. Panic was tearing at her, sinking its claws into her chest. How had this happened? Why hadn’t Simon taken his meds? She knew why he used to skip them; his episodes were so infrequent, the drugs so strong, the side effects so severe, that it hadn’t seemed worth it. At least, that’s what he’d told her, after that first time in the pub. He’d said polluting his body with powerful, mind-dulling chemicals when he was absolutely fine, and might remain absolutely fine for months to come seemed (to call a spade a spade) crazy. But he’d changed his tune after Sofia was born. The stakes were higher now, he’d said. So he would take his pills every day without fail. For her sake.
But now he’d broken that promise and he was psychotic and Carrie couldn’t find him. He loved Sofia, there was no doubt about that, but would it be enough to protect her from his demons?
The lift in Simon’s block of flats was broken again, so she ran up the four flights of stairs through the trapped heat. By the time she reached the third floor her back was slick with sweat. She was halfway up the final flight when she heard the scream.
‘Daddy, no!’
Carrie’s heart spasmed in her chest. She reached Simon’s door and hurled herself against it, beating the wood, shouting: ‘Simon! Let me in!’
He answered in a voice she barely recognised, uneven and high-pitched.
‘I can’t open it! They’re trying to kidnap her!’
Carrie stopped banging. She stood motionless in front of the door, toes clenched inside her trainers, blinking fast. Took a long pull of air. And as she released it, everything inside her suddenly went still. The gale of panic that had been flinging her thoughts in frantic circles dropped away. She was in the eye of an emotional storm. And in that silence, she was able to think, to recall what Simon’s doctors had told her about the way his mind worked during these times – and the strategies for dealing with it.
She took a few more breaths, focusing herself. Logic. Calm. These were her allies. She marshalled them now.
Carrie put her mouth close to the door so that she could speak without raising her voice.
‘Simon, I need you to think carefully about what I’m about to say. Can you do that?’ Silence. She forged ahead. ‘I love Sofia. You know that, don’t you? I love her and I only ever want what’s best for her.’
Another pause. Then: ‘Yes. I . . . I know that. But I love her too! And bad people are trying to steal her, to—’
She interrupted the building hysteria. ‘I would die before I’d let anyone hurt her. You know that too, don’t you?’
A faint rustling sound. What was he doing? Why couldn’t she hear Sofia?
‘Yes. I know.’ He wasn’t shouting any more
. Which was a good sign, surely?
‘Now tell me this, Simon. Accepting both those statements to be true, would I ask you to open this door if doing so would place Sofia in jeopardy?’ Was it her imagination, or could she actually hear him breathing? ‘I need to come in there so I can’ – she swallowed – ‘help protect her.’
She leaned her forehead against the door, ears and thoughts straining across the wooden barrier.
Please, Simon, let me in. Please-please-please.
There was a thud of footsteps and a scrape of metal: the bolt being pulled back. Then footsteps retreating.
‘OK. You can enter.’
Carrie turned the knob and eased the door back slowly, so as not to startle him. Then froze on the threshold, as she digested the tableau before her. Simon’s front door opened on to the main living space: a kitchen-diner with windows along the far wall. The shutters were closed, but lines of daylight leaked in through the slats, to fall like prison bars across the Ikea sofa, the small kitchen table, the yukka tree struggling in its pot. They striped the wall to her right, slashing across the poster-sized photo of a laughing Sofia and the ‘Ryder Place’ street sign he had stolen one drunken night at university.
Simon was crouched in front of the coat closet just inside the door, his eyes fixed on a point beyond Carrie’s shoulder, as though expecting to see a crowd of enemies behind her. His right hand was raised, held level with his cheek. When she saw what was in it the breath locked in her throat.
Simon was holding a knife.
She recognised it from their time together; his favourite chopping knife, the one for slicing vegetables. His knuckles were white around the handle. As Carrie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw something on the blade and a vacuum opened up inside her, sucking away every particle of oxygen.
Blood. The tip of the knife looked as though it had been dipped in it. As she stared, a single drop fell, leaving a red comma shape on the wood-laminate flooring.
What has he done to Sofia?
She stepped inside the flat, closing the door behind her. For once, she was glad that her emotions didn’t show in her voice.
‘Where is our daughter?’
But Sofia answered the question for him, voice clogged by tears and muffled by wood. ‘Mummy!’
The closet.
Carrie’s eyes stayed on the blade as she answered. ‘I’m right here, sweetheart. Are you OK?’
The sound of sobbing ripped at Carrie’s heart.
‘I want to come out, but Daddy won’t let me!’
Simon’s face scrunched, his eyes screwing shut. ‘You need to stay in there a bit longer, poppet! For your own good.’ When he opened his eyes again, a bar of sunlight caught them, making them glitter. ‘They’re coming,’ he whispered, moving towards Carrie, raising the knife above his ear, poised to strike. ‘They’ll be here any minute.’
‘If that’s true, then Sofia needs to leave right away. Stand aside so I can take her to safety.’ He started grinding his teeth. Sofia had gone silent again, so Carrie could actually hear the sound of bone scraping against bone. Krrr-krrr-krrr. ‘No one’s here yet, Simon. So why don’t I bring her down the fire stairs and leave you to . . . to hold them back? You can buy us the time we need to escape.’
He was blinking fast, jaw still working. Side to side, as though his teeth were fighting each other. Krrrr-krrr. He closed his eyes and muttered something to himself. Drew in a deep breath and released it forcefully, inflating his cheeks.
Then slowly – agonisingly slowly – he lowered the knife.
Carrie stepped past him and opened the closet door. Sofia was curled up on her side with her eyes closed, the fan of lashes lying against her pale skin. She didn’t move and, for a moment, Carrie felt a blast of fear so powerful it turned her bones to liquid. Then the fan fluttered.
‘Mummy!’
‘Come, darling. Time to go.’
Sofia’s arms looped around Carrie’s neck as she was lifted from the floor. She turned her head, revealing the other side of her face. Carrie’s heart lurched. Blood was trickling out from beneath the curly fringe, flowing down her cheek like dark tears.
Carrie turned to Simon with Sofia clutched tight against her chest.
‘What did you do to her?’
His mouth opened and closed as he stared at the red trail.
‘Nothing, I swear!’ Then his eyebrows drew together, creating a crease between them. ‘There was something on her head, a spider. I had to get it off her; it might have been venomous, so I killed it with the knife.’
‘There wasn’t a spider!’ Sofia was crying again, her arms tightening around Carrie’s neck, making it difficult to breathe. ‘He said there was a spider and he was going to get it but it was just maginary and he cut my head and it really, really hurts!’
Simon held the knife in front of his eyes and stared at it, as though he had only just discovered it in his hand. His mouth kept opening and closing, but Carrie didn’t stay to find out whether any words came out. She carried Sofia past him, out the door and down the stairs to the hospital, where she told the doctor her daughter had got a hold of a kitchen knife and cut herself accidentally. She had lied, not to protect Simon, but to protect herself. Because the truth might have cost her Sofia. Doctors had to report parents who placed their children in harm’s way. And she had left her daughter with a man who was dangerously psychotic. So social services would have stepped in and handed Sofia over to someone better equipped to protect her – someone who could see danger when it was staring them right in the face.
Anyone can see he’s not right in the head.
Anyone can see.
Anyone.
Carrie didn’t tell the officer about lying to the hospital. She couldn’t see how it was relevant, so she ended at the point when she’d carried Sofia out of the flat.
The policewoman put down her pen. In the pause that followed, Carrie had time to register that more journalists had arrived, their mingled conversations filtering through the closed windows. A TV reporter was talking in that voice they used when they were on air. The soundproofing wasn’t up to much in this house. Normally it wasn’t a problem; this was a quiet cul-de-sac.
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
Carrie blinked, trying to work out where the comment had come from. She hadn’t said anything about her feelings of guilt and failure. Of shame.
‘I didn’t say that it was. I simply recounted the chain of events as accurately and objectively as I could.’
‘Yes. But you blame yourself. I can tell.’
Carrie stared at the woman across the table, really seeing her for the first time: the liquid brown eyes and golden-brown skin, the wild hair pinned into submission.
‘Can you? How?’
Dark eyes narrowed beneath a forehead that was crinkling slightly.
‘I don’t know. I just . . . sense it.’
Carrie took a sip of water as she absorbed this statement. A guess. That’s all it was. The policewoman must be imagining how a mother in her position was likely to feel. Because aside from Sofia, no one could read Carrie. Sometimes she tried to make it easier for people, pulling her face into the right positions, manufacturing smiles and frowns to match her emotions, attempting to look normal. But it never quite worked.
‘What’s your name?’
As soon as the question left her lips, Carrie realised the policewoman would have introduced herself when they’d first met, the information bouncing off the surface of her shock-numbed mind.
She expected the woman to briskly re-identify herself as DCI something-or-other. Officer somebody.
But, instead, she said simply: ‘I’m Juliet.’
A ringing sound startled her: the officer’s mobile. Carrie’s pulse jumped. Was it news about Sofia? Had she and Simon been found? Maybe her daughter was in the back of a police
car right now, wrapped in a blanket, on her way home. Carrie leaned forwards to eavesdrop, but, infuriatingly, the policewoman rose and said: ‘Please excuse me for a moment.’ She began walking towards the front of the house as she answered it, identifying herself as ‘DCI Campbell’. It looked as though she was heading towards the door, intending to take the call outside. But then she must have remembered the reporters now lying in wait, because she stopped halfway there – on the edge of hearing range. Carrie strained to catch the words.
‘What?’ Pause. ‘Where?’ Another pause. ‘You’re sure?’ The DCI turned and glanced back at Carrie, lips pressed together, one eyebrow dipping below the other. Damn it, what did that mean? ‘And you’ve searched the entire area?’ A longer pause. Then she ended the call and walked briskly back to the table. Sat down. Placed her fingertips against each other. ‘I have news.’ She inhaled through her nostrils, letting the air escape through her mouth in an audible puff. ‘Simon has been located, in a pub not far from Clearbrook. He was creating a disturbance so the pub owner called the police.’
Carrie felt as though something was stuck in her throat, like a cork in a bottle swirling with volatile chemicals.
‘Sofia?’
The DCI shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but she wasn’t with him. The train ticket in his pocket shows he had already arrived at the station nearest Clearbrook around the time she went missing. Of course we’ll check the CCTV footage and phone records to be sure, but’– she took Carrie’s hand, clasping it firmly – ‘it looks as if it wasn’t Simon after all. Someone else took Sofia.’
Six
Sofia’s throat was starting to hurt from all the shouting. She kicked the door again and again, but it wouldn’t move.
‘Mummy!’
Where had she gone? Mummy never went far away. She was like a helicopter, that’s what she’d told Sofia once. People called her a ‘helicopter parent’ because she was always floating around watching. Sofia had thought that was a funny idea, picturing Mummy circling around up there like a giant bee or maybe a hummingbird. But she wasn’t being a helicopter now.