Lost Daughter

by Ali Mercer

  Lost Daughter

  An utterly heartbreaking and unforgettable page-turner

  Ali Mercer

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Afterword

  Ali’s Email Sign-Up

  A Letter from Ali

  Acknowledgements

  For my dad

  Prologue

  Rachel

  The day of the loss

  She waited for what seemed like forever before they came back. The daylight lost its brightness and the shadows lengthened, and still they weren’t home. She carried on sitting at the kitchen table staring at the birthday cake in its box in the corner where she’d left it that morning, several lifetimes ago.

  She sent messages, but there was no reply. She couldn’t bring herself to call. Neither of them would want to hear from her.

  There was plenty of time to think, and remember.

  The broken glass… the scream… the blood.

  So much blood.

  I don’t want her to see…

  You did this? How could you? I hate you!

  You could have killed him. You stupid bitch.

  She had been so sure. And she had been so wrong. But even if she had been right, there was no excuse and no justification for what she’d done.

  Eventually she heard a car outside. A key turned in the door and she heard Mitch say to Becca: ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and get changed out of your school uniform?’

  He must have decided it would be better if Becca was out of the way when he confronted her.

  She couldn’t blame him for treating her as a risk.

  He came into the kitchen. There were splashes of dark dried blood on his clothes. He stood there and gave her a long, hard stare.

  She said, ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Mitch… I—’

  ‘It’s too late, Rachel.’

  The car outside started again and was driven away into the distance.

  Rachel whispered, ‘Did she bring you back?’

  ‘She did. She stayed with Becca in the waiting room. She helped me take some pictures, too. I thought I’d better keep a record of what you did. They might be useful evidence. In court. I don’t imagine that they would help your case if you were to apply for custody.’

  Her face was wet. She looked up at him and he was distorted by tears, as if he was dissolving.

  ‘Oh, no, Mitch, please—’

  ‘Save your breath. This isn’t right, Rachel. I don’t want you here any more, and neither does Becca.’

  The door opened and Becca came in. Mitch said, ‘It’s all right, Becca. She won’t be staying.’

  Becca stepped closer to her father, as if being at his side would protect her. Her face was like a closed door.

  Rachel said to her, ‘Is that what you want? For me to go?’

  And Becca said, ‘I want to stay with Daddy.’ Her voice seemed to come from very far away as she added, ‘You should leave.’

  Mitch said, ‘Are you going to respect our daughter’s wishes?’

  Rachel took in the two of them, standing there side by side: the big, wounded, protective father, and the just-teenage girl, angry and defensive and loyal – to him. Becca folded her arms and lifted her chin in defiance, as if to challenge Rachel to deny her what she’d asked for. Her dear, familiar face was a hard little mask, but Rachel knew what she was thinking as clearly as if she’d said it: Please, just go, just go, just go…

  Rachel had to be calm, to stop crying. To think. There was a right thing and a wrong thing to do here. She had to get it right.

  But she couldn’t think. She could barely breathe. And so she said what she knew her daughter wanted to hear.

  ‘All right. If you want me to go, Becca, I’ll go.’

  One

  Leona

  The first odd thing about the temp is that she’s waiting out front in the cold, instead of staying in the warm in the main reception for the business park. Perhaps she likes her own company, though she doesn’t seem to be enjoying it much today. She looks as if she’s worrying about something. Something big.

  But as Leona approaches, her expression becomes a careful blank.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect you quite so early,’ Leona says. ‘I’m Leona Grey – I’ll be taking care of you while the boss is away.’

  ‘I’m Rachel Steele,’ Rachel says.

  They shake gloved hands. Rachel returns Leona’s smile without conviction, and her eyes flicker away from Leona’s gaze. Well, that’s OK. It’s not necessarily evasive. Not everybody is confident in their body language.

  Rachel is wearing a mask-like layer of foundation, through which it is still obvious that her nose is red with cold. The make-up doesn’t disguise the bags under her eyes, either. It wouldn’t be unfair to say she looks like death warmed up – but then, who looks their best first thing on a December morning?

  ‘Welcome to Fun-to-Learn,’ Leona says, punching in the key code that gives access to the office. ‘I should be here at nine tomorrow, but I’ll give you the code so you can come and go.’

  She holds the door open for Rachel to go through. Rachel is wearing a plain navy-blue coat and high heels; she’s smart but inconspicuous, like a court scene extra in a legal drama. Clothes that don’t give a whole lot away. Her CV is probably in the boss’s desk drawer, shoved in there with other stray bits of paperwork before he went on holiday; Leona could have a rummage round later, find out a bit more about her. Or she could ask the temp agency to send it over again, though she probably won’t get round to it.

  Rachel looks as if she’s a bit older than Leona, probably in her mid-thirties. Chances are she’s one of those former professional women who have spent several years away from office life, being run ragged by small children. This might be her first venture back into the workplace she’d abandoned for marriage, several versions of Microsoft Office and a recession later. Yes, that must be it. A stay-at-home mum who can’t afford to stay at home any longer.

  Sooner or later she’ll put out a framed picture of her family on her desk, a reminder to herself and everyone else that her life doesn’t stop here.

  ‘It’ll warm up when the heating gets going,’ Leona says.

  She flicks on the fluorescent lights, illuminating a bank of six white desks topped with slightly dusty computers; the boss’s desk has a separate spot in the corner, in a glass-walle
d cubicle. The surfaces are littered with the detritus of office life; files, a birthday card with flowers on it, a stray mug. A strand of purple tinsel has been taped along the top of the padded divider that splits the bank of desks into two separate sides. It isn’t quite long enough to reach.

  ‘You’re here,’ Leona says, showing Rachel to her place and feeling a little bad for her, because it’s the worst desk in the office. Rachel will be in the middle of a row with her back to the door, at a distance from the nearest window, facing a whiteboard listing sales targets (decorated today with an additional sketch of slightly forlorn holly leaves), a clock and a pinboard. The chair is a killer: the one no one else wanted.

  ‘Hang up your coat if you like, though I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to keep it on,’ Leona says, indicating the wooden coat stand in the corner. Rachel complies. Leona moves round the office, pulls up the blind next to her desk; wintry sunlight streams in.

  As Rachel settles into place opposite her Leona sees that her hands are ringless. No wedding ring. No engagement ring. Nothing.

  Perhaps Leona has got her all wrong.

  Leona takes off her own coat, a big mock-astrakhan number. She’s of the belief that coats should be fun, if possible. She hangs it up; her silver bangles chime, and the sleeves of her patchwork top fall back to reveal her wrists.

  She turns just in time to catch Rachel staring at her, and it’s the first time their eyes have met.

  The look on Rachel’s face is knowing, sharp with recognition, not sympathetic so much as battle-hardened. It says, I see you’re someone who knows a little something about pain: the kind you choose for yourself because it’s a distraction from the kind you can’t forget.

  And she’s right. Leona doesn’t want to forget. She doesn’t deserve to forget. There’s no hope for her at all unless she remembers.

  And Rachel clearly understands that. But how could Rachel possibly know about that kind of pain?

  Two

  Becca

  The lecture theatre, where they are spending the whole day listening to various awful talks, is exactly the kind of facility that had convinced her parents the fees for St Anne’s were worth it. Becca has to admit, the school is pretty impressive, as is the indoor swimming pool, the gleaming, state-of-the-art science and language labs, the large, hushed, well-stocked library, and the girls themselves. In their uniform of winter tartan and crested jerseys, they have an air of health and confidence that whispers what the whole school boasts: money.

  But Becca has always been conscious of not quite matching up to the template of the ideal St Anne’s girl. If that was what her parents had hoped she’d become, their hard-earned cash has been wasted.

  Her hair is thin and mousy, just curly enough to fluff up and not straight enough to shine; she’d been fair when she was little, then ended up an unremarkable shade of brown. She has only just graduated from a 32AA to a 32A, and she isn’t skinny, which would at least be some kind of excuse. She isn’t popular, or sporty, or outstandingly clever; she has never had a whole-class party for her birthday, she doesn’t have a pony (and has never ridden one), and she doesn’t live in a house with two staircases.

  And she doesn’t have a mother in the way the others do.

  Not that anyone really knows about that, except for Amelia Chadstone, whose inside knowledge makes her even more intimidating to Becca.

  Becca has known Amelia for years. Back when they were little, Amelia had been cast as the Virgin Mary in the St Anne’s nursery school nativity play; Becca had been a sheep. Now Amelia is the ideal St Anne’s girl: hockey demon, top of the class, popular and blessed with a long, blonde, swishy mane of hair that she fiddles with almost constantly, as if to ensure that everybody keeps noticing it.

  If Becca was pretty or funny or interesting it might be different, but she’s not one of those girls, like Amelia, who can command the attention of the class, both in lessons and outside them, and who is already beginning to boast about boys.

  As if the whole concept of sex wasn’t completely disgusting! And as for love and marriage – why would anybody want all that, if they had even the faintest understanding of what it might lead to?

  That morning’s speakers have been invited to talk to Becca’s class on the theme of ‘Keeping Calm and Carrying on – Resilience in the Teenage Years’. It’s embarrassing, on a par with sex education and the policeman who had come to warn them about drugs and the kind of men who might offer them lifts. Becca is not at all sure she’s in danger from the kind of threats the school keeps inviting people in to warn her about. What she’s learned, and the others seem not to have realised, is that the people who are closest to you are the ones to watch.

  Before the morning break they’d heard from a nervous lady in a purple dress, who had talked to them about mindfulness. Amelia had been scathing about purple-dress lady during the break, as a bunch of her friends listened and giggled and Becca hovered somewhere just outside the group with her water bottle.

  ‘If grown-ups have time to sit around thinking of nothing, that’s all very well for them,’ Amelia had said. ‘But the rest of us have things to do! Anyway, if anybody thought this was actually important, we’d be taking exams in staring into space.’

  Becca had felt a bit sorry for the purple-dress lady, who must have been through something awful to need mindfulness so much, but she hadn’t said so. She had got used to keeping things to herself.

  In a way, it is just as well that she is regarded as dull, because otherwise her classmates might be more curious about her family situation than they are. But as it is, her invisibility is a kind of shield.

  Amelia has never acknowledged what she knows. But then, why would she? In the normal way of things, they barely speak. However, Amelia could have told other people, and Becca is pretty sure she hasn’t. That means Becca is indebted to her, which only makes her even more impossible to talk to.

  She ends up just behind Amelia as they pile back into the lecture theatre after the break, and finds herself sitting next to her at the end of a row. Amelia pays her no attention, though; she’s busy talking to Millie Parker-Jones, a curly-headed girl who has the distinction of having briefly dated an older boy. Snogging but that’s it, as Millie had put it. That’s the kind of thing they know about each other. There are few secrets at St Anne’s. Apart from Becca’s. Which is Amelia’s, too.

  Miss Finch, their class teacher, shushes them sharply before introducing the second and final speaker, a neat little blonde woman in a white shirt and dark-blue trousers.

  ‘Kind of boring, but at least she isn’t trying to be fit like the other one. It’s so tragic when older women get their legs out. Or their boobs,’ Amelia mutters to Millie.

  And Becca thinks of her mother, as she had been in the old days – all sharp lines and edges in her red wool suit and boxy handbag, and the heels that clicked as she walked along – or trim and elegant in an emerald-green cocktail dress, smelling of glamour.

  Miss Finch tells them all to be quiet once again, and the woman introduces herself as Sophie Elphick, a specialist in cognitive behavioural therapy who previously worked in the probation service. She says, ‘I know that today is all about wellness, but I’m here to talk to you about what happens when things go wrong.’

  A projector clicks and a PowerPoint slide is displayed on the blank wall behind the nurse. A single word, in black type, in a circle: HARM.

  The mood of the lecture theatre abruptly changes. It’s like when they were about to watch an ox’s heart being dissected in biology: the girls are all torn between apprehension and bravado, the instinct to recoil and the equally strong instinct to act indifferent, to shrug it all off.

  ‘We are all vulnerable, and we can all come to harm in many different ways,’ Sophie says. ‘We could be harmed by another person, or by something else – something such as disease or an accident of nature. We may even harm ourselves.’

  A phrase appears, next to an arrow pointing to the circle: WHO OR W
HAT CAUSED THE HARM?

  ‘Things don’t just happen; they happen for a reason. Even accidents have causes. When it’s a case of one person doing harm to another, and the outcome has been a crime, we describe this as a motive.’

  A single word joins the others, forming the second point of a triangle around the central circle: WHY?

  Sophie goes on, ‘All kinds of harm cause damage, and until there’s some kind of resolution – until the original harm is understood and forgiven – the damage will always live on. It might be hidden. It might be recreated in some form by the person who was damaged in the first place, in an attempt to regain control. Or it might be denied or distorted. It could be lied about. But it won’t go away.’

  The final phrase, the third point of the triangle, appears: HOW IS IT REMEMBERED?

  ‘Now, we’re going to talk about the kinds of harm that are most commonly experienced by your age group,’ Sophie says.

  The next slide is a list of problems. Bullying, loneliness, self-harm… difficult family relationships.

  Becca feels herself beginning to sweat, and suddenly her heart is beating so loudly that she can hear the blood rushing and swooshing round inside her head.