by C J Parsons
Sofia began to cry. Just the snuffling kind at first, but after a while she started making a wailing noise that scared her because it sounded loud in her own ears. Big and serious. Snot was flowing down her face, mixing with the tears trickling towards her chin. She was stuck inside this hot place and it was starting to get dark and she wanted to go home. She threw herself down on the blow-up mattress and lay there sobbing, wishing with all her might that she was in her own house right now, playing with Penguin Pete and listening to Mummy moving around in the kitchen making something for dinner. Pasta maybe. Spaghetti bolognese. She screwed her eyes tight shut. Maybe if she wished hard enough, pictured it hard enough, her house would actually be there when she opened her eyes again.
But it didn’t work. When she peered out between her lashes, she could still see the stupid old shed, with its dusty tools and empty spider webs. She pressed her hands against her eyes, feeling a new wave of tears building. But before they could come out, she heard something.
Footsteps. Moving closer. Moving right up to the door of the shed. Then a scraping noise. Sofia jumped to her feet. The handle shook. Someone was coming!
‘Hello!’ Sofia shouted. ‘Mummy? Let me out!’
There was a clang of metal so loud it made her jump, like a hammer hitting something. Then the door flew open really fast so that the handle banged into the wall, making the whole door wobble.
A man was standing there. Taller than Daddy, with rectangle-shaped glasses. Sofia didn’t recognise him, which meant he was a stranger. She wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers. But this man had opened the door, so he was helping her, so that must mean he was nice and wasn’t going to make any ‘stranger danger’.
Sofia looked at the man and the man looked at Sofia.
It wasn’t Simon.
The words kept wailing in Carrie’s head like a siren as she sat on her sofa, falling quiet for a moment only to scream back out again. Like an alarm she couldn’t switch off.
It wasn’t Simon.
A few hours ago, the thought of Sofia being held captive by her psychotic father had seemed like a nightmare made real. But she could see now that, from the moment Sofia went missing, it had been the best-case scenario. And this was the worst. A stranger had stolen her baby. A predator who might be doing something unspeakable to her at this very moment. While Carrie sat uselessly in front of the television, totally helpless.
It wasn’t Simon.
Who, then? Who had taken her daughter and where was she now?
Carrie stared dully at the screen, which was showing BBC footage of the investigation: a line of police officers moving slowly across the grass on their hands and knees, gloved fingers spread, combing the ground for clues. The sun that had felt so warm and inviting when she’d headed out to the park two days ago glared down malevolently, bathing the searchers in pitiless light. Carrie had seen enough of these scenes on the news to know how they played out. First there was the search, then the police re-enactment. The officers vowing to leave no stone unturned. And somewhere along the way, the bewildered parents, seated behind a spikey nest of microphones, tearfully begging for their child’s safe return. But none of it ever seemed to do any good. It was all just a ritual that changed nothing. It couldn’t alter the bone-cold fact that a child had been taken, stolen away to some hideous fate. Leaving the parents to their nightmares, in which a young voice screamed for a mother who never came. And to their days, marooned on the sofa through all the bloated hours of waiting.
Waiting, waiting.
Until the body showed up.
Please, not my baby. Not my little girl.
The policeman who had broken the vase was now standing in front of her bookshelf, scanning the spines (Modern Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright: A Retrospective, A Parent’s Guide to the Early Years, Raising Girls). She saw him pull out a book and scan the back. She could tell which one by the cover: How to Read Faces.
Her eyes returned to the television, which administered a small jolt of pain as Sofia’s image appeared there: the photo Carrie had taken on their day trip to Brighton, the wind whipping up her hair. Why had the police chosen that picture, she wondered, with her curls all blown out of place? It wasn’t as though they’d lacked options. Sofia’s image was everywhere, framed on walls and angled on shelves: baby Sofia smiling on a blanket; toddler Sofia in the bath squeezing a rubber duck; schoolgirl Sofia on her first day of reception, proud in her uniform. Carrie was an avid photographer where her daughter was concerned, phone-camera forever poised to catch the next fragment of childhood. But now she saw these images for what they really were – just coloured bits of paper: a futile attempt to dip a net into the rush of time, when all you could really do was watch helplessly from the shore as it swept past, carrying away everything you held dear.
Carrie stared at her daughter’s TV-smile, gripping one of the dry tissues the family liaison officer had thrust at her. The woman had put boxes of them all around the house, clearly anticipating an emotional deluge. If only that were possible. What a relief it would be, to transform all this grief and horror into liquid and let it flow out of her body. But Carrie hadn’t cried since she was three years old. A psychologist had once told her that all those unshed tears were still inside her somewhere, behind a dam buried deep in her subconscious, a lifetime of sorrow trapped behind it.
The presenter’s voice droned sombrely as Sofia’s face was replaced by a shot of Carrie’s house, zooming in on the blue door before panning along the postage stamp of a garden, where the carnations Carrie and Sofia had planted in tubs were already starting to wilt.
What was happening to her daughter right now? Was she screaming? Was she even alive? The questions had been torturing Carrie for two days. She would fling them away in horror, only to have them come slithering back. The not knowing was driving her mad, making her want to tear at her own skin. She felt a powerful desire to do something. To run through the streets calling and searching. But the police had told her that, for now, the best thing she could do was sit here and wait.
‘You should go to bed.’ The family liaison officer – pony-tailed, petite, soft-voiced – appeared in front of her. She always seemed to be popping up unexpectedly, full of advice about coping strategies and staying healthy ‘for your daughter’s sake’. Carrie had to keep reminding herself that the officer was only trying to help, because for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, the woman really set her teeth on edge. Right now, she was blocking the television screen: inner eyebrows curving upward, lips puckered slightly. Carrie had no idea what that expression meant and found she didn’t much care. ‘You haven’t slept. You should go to bed. I’ll wake you if there’s a development.’
‘No. I’m not tired.’ Pause. ‘Thank you.’
The truth was, Carrie didn’t feel she was allowed to go to sleep. She needed to remain vigilant for as long as Sofia was out there. Alert and waiting.
But the mention of bed must have tripped a switch inside her, because she could feel her blinks growing longer. Carrie’s thoughts turned blurry and began to swirl. She was being carried off on a warm, dark tide. She tried to pull herself free, but the current was too strong. She managed to force her lids up once. Twice. But after that they wouldn’t open and she slid down into blackness.
Carrie dreamed she was with Sofia at the fun fair, the one that sprouted up on their local green twice a year. She could feel the tug of her daughter’s small hand, towing her towards the trampolines, where harnessed children were bouncing to impossible heights, propelled upward by elasticated bonds.
‘No, you’re too little,’ Carrie told her. ‘You don’t weigh enough for that one.’
But Sofia kept pulling, watching the older children doing mid-air somersaults in slow-mo, as though they were underwater.
‘Please, Mummy, just one go?’
Her face glowed with anticipation. Carrie loved the way Sofia’s life force h
ummed through her body like an electrical current, making her jump up and down with the sheer excitement of what might happen next, so that Carrie half expected to see rays of light escaping through the seams of her eyes. Love swelled inside her and she knew that her daughter had won, that she would give in. She gave in far too often, the parenting books warned about that; she was in danger of spoiling her. The day suddenly grew darker and she looked up, a hand shielding her eyes. Was there a storm coming? The sky had been perfectly blue a second ago. When she looked down again, she discovered that Sofia was already on the trampoline, strapped into the harness, waving cheerily. But there was something about the fairground worker Carrie didn’t like. His face was round as a pumpkin with a few greasy strands of hair painted across the forehead. He grinned, exposing a row of sharp, yellow teeth. Fear clutched at her and she tried to shout ‘stop’. But the word came out as a whisper. Then Sofia started to jump, bouncing higher and higher, a bright smile covering her face.
And now Carrie saw that the fairground worker was yanking her harness downward, sending her crashing into the trampoline so that she ricocheted higher and higher. Impossibly high. She was flying up into the stormy sky, her summer coat a pink splash against the grey.
And then the cords snapped. Carrie ran towards her, screaming silently. Up she flew, higher and higher. Until finally gravity reasserted itself, pulling Sofia back. Except she wasn’t above the trampoline any more, she was plummeting towards cold, hard concrete, so Carrie ran, arms held out to catch her. But suddenly there was nothing above her but dark, empty sky.
When she woke up, something was happening. She could sense it – that same feeling she got when she woke before her alarm, knowing it was time to resurface into the world, that she was needed in it. She was lying on her own bed; one of the officers must have carried her here. The one from the bookcase, probably: the vase smasher. She threw back the duvet. Light no longer rimmed the curtains, so the sun must have set. She stood beside her bed, blinking, trying to decide what to do next. Then, quite suddenly, the noise of the reporters changed. The mutterings and chatter were replaced by a surge of sound. A roar went up, shouts Carrie couldn’t make out. Excitement.
What’s going on?
She ran downstairs to find the family liaison officer peering out through a gap in the curtains: eyes wide, mouth open.
‘What is it?’ Carrie’s voice made the woman jump and turn. She looked from Carrie, to the window, and back again. The doorbell rang. The officer held up a palm, signalling for her to stop. Why? What had she seen?
‘Who is that? What’s happening?’
The woman tried to block her path to the door, but now she could hear the press roaring like a wild beast, see camera flashes stuttering against the darkened curtains and she was overwhelmed by the feeling that she had to take control of this situation. That whatever was coming, she must meet it head on. She pushed past the liaison officer, knocking her off stride. Threw open the door.
A man was standing on the doorstep. He was about Carrie’s age, tall with dark hair, eyes framed by rectangular glasses. He looked familiar: perhaps one of the plainclothes officers who’d passed through earlier. She was dimly aware that he was saying something, but the words seemed to take a long time to reach her, like the pause between lightning’s flash and the slow plod of thunder. Because, right now, all she could take in was the child in his arms. The grubby back of a silver top. The spotty pink skirt propped on a supporting forearm. The curly head against his shoulder, turning slowly. Then those dark eyes found hers, and there was a lightning storm of cameras flashing all at once. Carrie’s arms opened even as her legs unhinged, dropping her to her knees.
And then the man’s words finally arrived, like a low boom from a great distance.
Is this your daughter?
But by then Sofia was already in her arms, pressed against her chest, filling her face with those wonderful curls. Clinging to her neck and saying ‘Mummy!’ Then: ‘Not so tight! You’re hurting!’ And she sounded so fine, so uncorruptedly herself, that Carrie actually laughed, right out loud, so that her whole body shook. The tremor passed right through her, down through all the dark, walled-off places, until finally it must have reached that buried dam, because she felt something inside her give. A wave surged outward, rising through her chest and up her throat, flowing out through her eyes. It poured down her cheeks to land in Sofia’s curls.
So Carrie laughed and cried as the cameras whirred and the shutters clicked and the sun-baked concrete bit into her knees. And through it all, the dark-haired man stood over her, watching, his words still rolling in her head like a miracle.
Is this your daughter?
Yes, it’s her. Yes, she’s mine. Yes-yes-yes.
Seven
Sofia banged her head against the wall behind her hospital bed in frustration. Why wouldn’t everyone stop bothering her and let her go home? They’d already done a million tests and asked a million questions and there was nothing wrong with her. She looked at Mummy, sitting next to the bed on a purple chair (almost everything in the room was purple, even the wall mural of a mummy elephant showering a baby elephant with her trunk).
There were two other people in the room, besides Sofia and Mummy. One was a police lady with kind eyes and lots of hair clips shaped like diamonds. Sofia had heard someone call her ‘D-C-I’, even though those letters didn’t make a proper word. She was holding a pen and a little notebook, waiting for Sofia to say something good enough to write down. The other police person was short with freckles and her special job was talking to children. Except she called talking ‘interviewing’, which was the same as talking except mostly questions. She had a sing-songy voice, like a storyteller. It sounded nice. But her questions were annoying.
‘You’re sure you didn’t see anything, even the toe of a shoe in the bushes, or the finger of a hand?’
‘No, I already told you a million times. I didn’t see anybody.’
Mummy gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. She had been holding on to her hand for a long time, as if Sofia was a balloon that might float away if she let go.
‘Detective Sergeant Dutoit is just trying to work out how you ended up in that shed. She has to double check to make absolutely sure you aren’t forgetting anything. That’s her job.’
‘Well, I’m not forgetting.’ Sofia could feel her lower lip sticking out, but that was just too bad. Everyone kept asking the same things over and over, and it was stupid and boring. ‘I didn’t see anyone when I picked up the penguin and I didn’t see anyone in the shed.’
‘What about a smell?’ the special detective asked. ‘Cigarette smoke or a food smell or aftershave. Aftershave is kind of like perfume but for men.’
That question was new, so Sofia thought about it for a moment. But then she shook her head.
‘No, the smell of the stuff that made me sleepy was really strong. I couldn’t smell any other smells. And the shed just smelled of being old.’
The special detective gave her one of those smiles that meant she wasn’t really happy but was trying to be nice.
‘What about the man who came and let you out of the shed?’
‘His name is Josh.’
‘Was there anything . . . familiar about him? Had you ever seen him anywhere before?’
‘No.’
The other police lady undid one of her hairclips and then did it back up again. Sofia noticed a few springy tufts sticking out here and there, like the hair didn’t like being stuck in those clips and wanted to get out. Sofia knew how it felt.
‘Can you tell us exactly what he said?’
‘He asked me if I was OK, and what I was doing inside the shed, and I told him I got locked in there and I wanted to go home. He asked me if I knew my own address and I do, so I told him 14 Croyhurst Avenue, and then he carried me to a taxi because my legs felt wobbly and he brought me home. And that’s it.’
The D-C-I police lady crinkled up her face in a way that meant she was thinking a lot about what Sofia had said, even though Sofia had said all those things before.
‘Do you know your mother’s mobile number?’
‘Yes, it’s 079001—’
‘That’s fine.’ She interrupted Sofia in the middle, which was rude. ‘Did Mr Skelter . . . did Josh ask if you knew your mummy’s number?’
‘No. He just asked about my address.’
‘But surely it would have made more sense to call your parents or the police, so an officer could be dispatched to collect you?’
She was using a different voice when she said that, as if she was talking to herself instead of Sofia. But Sofia answered anyway, because she didn’t want the police lady to think bad thoughts about Josh.
‘I didn’t tell him I wanted to call my Mummy. I told him I wanted to go home. So he got a taxi and took me home right away. He was nice.’
That must have been a good answer, because the creases went out of the police lady’s face.
‘Yes, of course. I’m just trying to understand exactly why Josh did what he did.’
‘If you want to know that, why are you asking me? Why don’t you ask him?’
‘Oh, believe me, I will.’ She said that part in a funny, soft voice.
Usually Sofia was pretty good at working out what people’s voices meant. But not this time.
‘So you just hailed a black cab and brought her home?’
‘Yes.’
Juliet looked across the table of the interview room. Josh Skelter was handsome in a bland, unmemorable sort of way: broad-shoulders and a square jaw, medium-brown hair framing medium-brown eyes. He was wearing a freshly laundered shirt and a necklace – or, rather, a ring on a chain. He had taken off his glasses and was polishing them with the tail of his shirt, staring at her with an unwavering gaze. Eye movement was what gave most suspects away. It was a simple fact of neurology that people tended to look right when accessing memory, up-and-left when thinking on their feet: one simple, tiny movement that could separate memories from lies. But his eyes stayed locked front and centre.