by Tudor, C. J.
This café was about a third full, the other tables occupied by a mixture of travelers: a couple of young laborers tucking into bacon sandwiches and studying their smartphones; a group of pensioners chatting over tea; a young mum with a toddler in a high chair.
Customers came and went here with more regularity than in a high-street café. A constant stream of strangers. That was what Katie was counting on. Somewhere safe, anonymous, well populated. So she could have some time to think. To recalibrate.
She had bought activity books and coloring pens from the shop, plus some ibuprofen and bandages for her swollen nose. Then she had fetched milkshakes and chocolate cake and settled the children at a quiet table in a corner.
For now, they seemed to accept the situation. Children did. They were able to adapt, to just get on with the moment in hand. Of course, they still had questions, which Katie had attempted to field as best she could.
Why did we run away? What happened to Uncle Steve? Wasn’t he a policeman? Are we going to jail?
She had told them that Steve was a bad man, even though he was dressed as a policeman. They had to run away until the good police could sort things out.
“Like the Terminator?” Sam had asked. “He pretended to be a policeman, but he wasn’t. He pretended to be John Connor’s mum, too, and put a spike through his dad’s eye.”
“Something like that,” Katie had said, and then told him not to talk about spikes through eyes in front of his sister (and wondered at which friend’s house he had seen Terminator 2).
While they ate their cake and slurped milkshakes, she texted the school to say that Sam and Gracie were sick and wouldn’t be in today. And then she texted Louise.
“Are you okay?”
“No, Steve broke up with me last night.”
“Good.”
“Thanks.”
“Steve is dangerous. He came to my house and attacked me this morning.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No joke.”
“WTF?”
“Are you at home?”
“Lucy’s.”
Lucy was Lou’s oldest friend. Sensible, mumsy, the complete opposite of Lou. Katie felt relief wash through her.
“Can you stay there tonight?”
“Suppose.”
“Steve doesn’t know where Lucy lives?”
“No.”
“If he calls, don’t answer. Don’t tell him where you are.”
“Scaring me.”
“Good. Promise you won’t speak to him?”
“Promise.”
Katie just hoped she would keep her promise. She took a sip of coffee. Alice was helping Gracie color a trio of Disney princesses. Sam doodled superheroes while picking at a piece of chocolate cake with his fingers, hardly any of the crumbs making it to his mouth.
Despite what she had told them, she didn’t know if she could call the “good” police. What if they didn’t believe her? Whatever else he was involved in, Steve was still one of their own. They would take his word over hers.
She couldn’t go home. Couldn’t call her mother. It struck her that she didn’t really have any other people she could turn to. No friends, not even any casual acquaintances. She was always so busy working, looking after the children, getting by, she had no time left to form relationships.
Plus, she wasn’t built for emergencies. She was a creature of routine. She didn’t have a panic protocol. Fran did. Fran had always been the rebel. The one who skirted trouble. Headstrong, impulsive. She had had the hardest time from their mum, perhaps because they were so alike. Both always sure they were right; quick to anger, slow to forgive. Katie could still remember the blazing rows, the slammed doors and screaming, Dad trying to play peacemaker between his favorite daughter and his wife.
Yet she also remembered Fran defending her when their mother had had too much to drink. And when some older boys once gathered around to torment her on her way home from school, Fran had waded in with a hockey stick, laying into the boys with such ferocity that Katie had to beg her to stop.
Where are you, Fran? What the hell would you do to get out of this mess?
“Mu–um?”
She looked up. Sam wriggled on his seat. “I need the toilet.”
“Okay.” Katie glanced at Alice and Gracie. “Can you go on your own?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course. I’m ten.”
“Well, be quick, don’t talk to any stran—”
“Strange men. I know.” He slipped from the table.
Katie immediately felt anxiety kick in. The toilets were only just along the corridor. But what if someone snatched him? Suddenly, everything and everyone around her seemed suspicious, full of threat. Other people, she thought. They were everywhere. And you never knew which ones were dangerous.
She realized that Alice was watching her warily.
“Are we running away again?” she asked.
“What? No. We’re just working out what to do next.”
“That’s what Fran used to say.”
“Right. What else did Fran say?”
“That we just had to get far enough away, and we would be safe.”
“And were you?”
“For a while.” Alice looked over at Gracie, who was still intent on Rapunzel, Jasmine and Belle. She lowered her voice. “Then a bad man came.”
Katie felt herself tense. “When was this?”
“A long time ago. Fran thinks I was asleep, but I woke up. He came to the house at night. They had a fight and Fran got rid of him.”
“How d’you mean?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I crept downstairs and saw her put him in the trunk of the car. The old one she kept locked in the garage.”
Katie swallowed. “Then what happened?”
“I went back to bed and pretended to be asleep. Fran came up and said we had to leave. We drove the car to a hotel, a long way away. Fran went out for a bit. The next day, the car was gone.”
Katie thought about the boys and the hockey stick. How far Fran would go to protect those she loved.
But she wasn’t Fran. So, what should Katie do?
And then she knew. There was really no choice.
“No more running.” She reached out and took Alice’s hand. “We’re going to sort this mess out.”
She picked up her phone.
He hadn’t driven this way for a long time. All the miles he had covered, all the treks up and down the motorway, this was one road he had not been able to bring himself to travel.
The road back home.
Woodbridge, Nottinghamshire.
He and Jenny had bought the rambling Victorian vicarage at an auction, sight unseen. When they got the keys, he realized that they had not only paid over the odds for what was essentially a derelict wreck held together by woodworm and rat droppings, but that the meager budget they had set aside for renovation wouldn’t even cover the cost of replacing the roof.
Jenny had wanted to ask her parents for help. Gabe had said no. Harry and Evelyn’s wealth had always been a bone of contention between them. Harry had paid for their wedding, a lavish affair which had made Gabe feel a little uncomfortable at the time. But he reasoned that Jenny was Harry’s only daughter and it was tradition. However, he didn’t want accepting their money to become a habit. For Jenny, it was too easy. She was used to being given everything she asked for. Gabe didn’t want to be a charity case. He had worked hard not to owe anybody anything.
It became their first real argument, and it had festered for weeks. Eventually, just to cease the hostilities, he had acquiesced, on the condition that they pay back every penny.
It had taken them several years to turn the house into something not just habitable but beautiful. A labor of love, and Gabe had been so proud of their achieve
ment. The hours they spent together covered in plaster and paint. Cuddling around the real fire while it snowed outside and plastic sheets formed makeshift windows. The house that Gabe and Jenny built.
It was a dream home, at least for him. Red brick, draped in a glossy shroud of ivy, sash windows, a long gravel driveway and gardens that surrounded it on three sides. When Jenny fell pregnant, life seemed complete.
They had put a trampoline and a swing out the back for Izzy. In summer, they filled a huge paddling pool and the slide became a water flume.
A home for their family. A home Gabe had hoped they would grow old in, watch Izzy grow up in, maybe even welcome grandchildren into.
And they had been happy there. Mostly. He had tried so hard to believe that. To put aside the dark feeling that the house had come to represent everything that was so very different about Jenny and him: their backgrounds, their wants, their hopes for the future.
For Gabe, it was the pinnacle of his achievements. For Jenny, it was the sort of home she had grown up in, the sort of home he felt, sometimes—uncharitably—that she expected.
Jenny was a kind person, a brilliant mum, a saint for putting up with him, but he could never quite shake the feeling that he would never be good enough for her. He would always be the boy from the estates who got lucky. One day, his luck would run out.
And he was right.
The home he built for his family might as well have been made of straw. All the time, there was a big, bad wolf lurking in the shadows, just waiting to blow it all down.
* * *
—
THE HOUSE HADN’T changed that much. The driveway had been paved, two Range Rovers parked outside. The garden, where Izzy used to love to run and play, had been landscaped, with new decking and a hot tub.
It had been sold to a professional couple in their forties with no children. Gabe didn’t understand why two people needed a five-bedroomed house with grounds. But then, all the people with families had pulled out of buying it once they found out what had happened there. As if the house’s grim history could somehow rub off on them. As if tragedy were contagious.
He stared up at his former home. When the police had arrived that evening, the electric front gates and the rear patio doors were both open. Jenny always shut the front gates. They were both security conscious, Jenny because of growing up with parents who wanted to safeguard their wealth, Gabe because he grew up in a place where people would steal the glue from your gran’s false teeth, so you protected what little you had.
Now he wondered if someone had ensured those gates were open. Had that been the woman’s role? To get Jenny to let her guard down, leave the gates open and let the real killer in? But something had gone wrong. Jenny had died, the woman’s daughter had died, and she had run, with Izzy.
The police had spoken to everyone at Izzy’s school, other mums, colleagues at work. Everyone she knew. Or, at least, everyone they thought she knew.
Could your wife have let the killer into the house?
Had she arranged to meet someone?
Do you know the names of her friends?
And of course, he didn’t. He had never realized what a stranger his wife had become until she was gone. He didn’t know her friends, her routine. They shared a house, a bed, but at some point, they had stopped sharing their lives. When did that happen? he wondered. Maybe that was why the word “divorce” was never spoken. They didn’t need to. They were already retreating, ending their marriage stealthily, slipping away from each other so slowly that neither even noticed the other one was disappearing.
His phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out.
“Hello.”
“Gabriel, it’s DI Maddock.”
“Yes?” He waited.
“Just to inform you—your father-in-law presented at the police station, he’s being interviewed now.” A pause. “I also wanted to let you know that we have revisited blood and forensic samples taken from the body of the girl we found at your home.”
Blood and forensic samples. Such cold, clinical words. He swallowed. Not Izzy, he reminded himself. But she had been somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s little girl. And, just like Izzy, she had probably giggled at Peppa Pig, written letters to Father Christmas and cuddled a favorite toy to ward off bad dreams. He hoped she was sleeping soundly now. He hoped, despite him never having been big on God or religion, that she was somewhere safe and warm.
“Gabriel?”
“I’m here,” he croaked through a hot, hard lump in his throat.
“It confirms that she is not your daughter, Gabriel.”
“Okay.”
It should have felt good. He should have felt vindicated. But he didn’t. Izzy was still lost and, even in death, this other little girl was being discarded and abandoned all over again.
“There’s something else,” Maddock said. “The woman we found—”
“Do you know who she is yet?”
A longer pause. “That’s why I’m calling.” The silence echoed down the line. “I just spoke to the hospital. She never regained consciousness. I’m afraid she died fifteen minutes ago.”
He let this sink in.
“What about the man in the trunk?”
“Forensics are still working on it, but no luck yet.”
“So, there’s no way of knowing what’s happened to Izzy?”
“There may be one thing. Does the name Michael Wilson mean anything to you?”
“No. Why?”
“He was killed in a burglary gone wrong nine years ago. When we searched the database for familial matches to the samples taken from the girl’s body, his name came up.”
“He’s her father?”
“More likely, grandfather. And our records show that Michael Wilson has three daughters.”
He tried to process the significance of this.
“We are now comparing his DNA with the unidentified woman,” Maddock continued. “I’m pretty certain we’ll get a match.”
The girl’s mother, her grandfather. Both dead. But…
“You said three daughters. What about the others?”
“Trust me, Gabriel. We are pursuing every lead.”
“Not quickly enough.”
“If Izzy is out there—”
“If? Izzy is out there, and you have to find her!”
“We are doing all we can.”
“Right—along with pursuing every lead. Are lessons being learned along the way, too?”
“Gabriel—”
“I don’t need platitudes and clichés. I need you out there, searching for her.”
“We don’t have unlimited resources.”
“You think she’s dead, don’t you?”
“No. I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“We are doing our best. I am doing my best. Is there anything else you can tell us that would help?”
He hesitated.
“Until the day one of you dies. Do you understand?”
“I’ve told you all I can.”
“Right. Then let us do our job.”
He ended the call, just about resisting the urge to hurl the phone out of the window. So near, he thought. So near to finding all the answers. And yet, so far. He had pieces of the story. Fragments. But only one person knew the truth, and she wasn’t talking to anyone. And if the woman had, as Harry said, been caring for Izzy, looking after her all this time, who was doing that now? Who had his daughter?
Could he face more years of not knowing? Worse, could he face knowing? Could he face the crushing inevitability of that call when the police told him that they had found her, they had found Izzy’s body?
He brought up the photo of Izzy on his phone. Have you seen me? Yes, sweetheart, he thought. I see you all the time. In every dream. In
every nightmare. But there’s so much I didn’t see. I never saw those first adult teeth come through. I never saw your hair darken and thicken. I never saw you learn to swim or stop saying “lellow” instead of “yellow.” You’re fading, slipping from my memories. Because memories are only as strong as the people who hold onto them. And I’m tired. I don’t know if I can hold on for much longer.
He let the tears slip from his eyes. They hit the screen, blurring the picture, until he could barely see Izzy at all. Going, going, gone.
And then his phone buzzed with a text.
She sleeps. A pale girl in a white room. Around her, machines whirr and buzz and an alarm flashes red. The window bangs open and the conch shell lies on the floor, shattered into sharp shards. The air resonates with the discordant chime of the piano keys.
This is what alerted Miriam first, even before the alarm on her pager. She runs into the room and takes in the scene. Her heart is pounding, legs trembling from where she has scrambled up the stairs from the kitchen. She stares around at the mess, the shell, the open window. What on earth is going on?
Then, as always, practicality takes over. She goes to the girl’s side, checks her pulse, heart rate, fluids. She resets the machines, presses buttons, makes adjustments. The machines resume their steady whirring.
She breathes a small sigh of relief. She’s getting too old for this, she thinks. It’s time she retired. But she can’t. She has a responsibility here. But sometimes she feels so weary. The burden of it all too much to bear.
She touches the soft piece of paper in her pocket again. He gave it to her when he first started searching for his little girl. She kept it to remind herself how much he has lost, too. Sometimes, she finds herself looking at it and wondering if it’s true—if his daughter really is out there, somewhere, just as she stares at Isabella and wonders if she is inside there, somewhere. Two young girls. Both lost. Except, as long as someone is still searching for you, you are never really lost. Just not yet found.
She brushes a tendril of hair from the girl’s face. It feels damp. Sweat? But Isabella doesn’t sweat. And, there’s a smell. Seawater, she thinks. Isabella’s hair smells of seawater. It must be from the open window.