Her One Mistake

by Heidi Perks

  The drive passed quickly, but as soon as she turned onto her street, her foot slammed hard on the brake. Blue and red lights flashed ahead, and even though the road was long and lined with cars on either side, she knew the bursts of light were directly outside her house because they were immediately in front of her neighbor’s wretched van.

  Cautiously she eased her foot onto the accelerator until forced to stop again to let a car pass. “Come on,” she muttered, craning her neck to see if she could see anyone outside the house. Her fingers drummed impatiently on the wheel. The other car slowly trundled by. She could feel her heart pounding and pressed a hand against her chest. One. Two. Another missed beat.

  Eventually Harriet pulled into the small space between the police car and Brian’s silver Honda and saw her husband standing in the front garden, one hand clutching tightly around his fishing rods, the other roughly rubbing his stubbly chin.

  A policewoman stood on the grass beside him. Harriet could see her lips moving, but her face was impassive. She held up both her hands and indicated with one toward the house, but Brian stayed stubbornly rooted to the spot.

  Now Harriet could only see the back of his head, but he was shaking it and had raised it high, looking up to the sky, his shoulders clenched tight.

  Harriet didn’t move. She didn’t want to get out of the car. She could hear her breaths filling the silence, too deep, too fast, but as soon as she stepped out she’d have to listen to what Brian had been told. She didn’t need to see her husband’s face to know the policewoman had told him something bad. Just the way his body was arched, taut with tension, she knew.

  Harriet’s fingers shook against the key as she slowly turned it and the engine cut out, the policewoman and Brian turning to look at her. Still she didn’t move.

  Brian mouthed her name slowly, as if it suddenly dawned on him that whatever he had just learned he was going to have to pass on to his wife. His eyes were wide with fear as he stared at her, before he slowly walked down the sidewalk toward the gate, dragging his fishing rods behind him.

  Harriet shook her head at him from behind the safety of the glass. Don’t say it, don’t you dare say it, because if you don’t then I don’t have to hear it.

  The day she’d turned up at the hospital and saw her mum’s empty bed, she’d run from the ward and huddled in the corner of the hallway with her hands clamped over her ears. She knew her mum had passed away. Harriet had been told to expect it for weeks, but still she didn’t want to think it had finally happened. And she figured if no one actually told her, then she just might be able to believe her mum was still alive.

  Harriet hadn’t taken her eyes off Brian, yet the click of the car door still startled her when he opened it.

  She closed her eyes. “What’s happened?”

  “Come out, my love.” His voice was lifeless but unnervingly calm. “Please come out of the car.”

  “Tell me what’s happened. What is she doing here?” Harriet nodded toward the policewoman.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said, holding out his free hand.

  “No. Tell me now.”

  “Mrs. Hodder?” The policewoman appeared by his side. “I think we should go into the house.”

  “I don’t want to,” Harriet cried, but she took Brian’s hand and allowed him to pull her out of the car.

  He gripped her tightly, brushing his thumb across the top of her hand. “Darling, I really think we should just get inside,” he said, managing to get her onto the front stoop before Harriet stopped. Her legs felt like they would give way beneath her if she carried on.

  “Will one of you just tell me what’s happened?”

  The policewoman stopped beside her. She had a pudgy face and small eyes that flicked nervously between her and Brian. Harriet looked up at her husband. Over the years she had learned to read him well. She knew every expression by heart. Before he’d even opened his mouth she’d known when something was worrying him, but never more so than in that moment.

  “Mrs. Hodder.” The policewoman cleared her throat as she spoke again. “I’m afraid we’ve had some bad news. Mrs. Charlotte Reynolds has reported that—”

  “Alice is missing,” Brian interrupted, throwing the words out. Harriet could almost see the letters spilling out of his mouth, reshaping in the air, making no sense. Then slowly her husband’s words trickled down until one by one they landed on her.

  “No.” Harriet’s voice was a whisper. “No, don’t say that.” She shook her head almost manically, even though her body was so tense it pained her to move.

  “Let’s go inside,” Brian said quietly.

  “Alice,” Harriet said, looking about as if she might find her in the front yard and all of this was some sick joke. “Alice!” She cried her name, this time in an earsplitting wail, and with it her legs buckled and she fell to the ground. To anyone watching it looked like the air had been sucked out of her in one breath as she crumpled into a ball on the hard concrete of her front path.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Hodder,” the policewoman was saying.

  Of course this is not okay, a voice screamed inside her head. How could it possibly be okay?

  Brian’s precious fishing rods clanked against the path as he threw them down, looking from the policewoman to his wife, his face startled and searching for one of them to tell him what to do. He didn’t know whether to drag Harriet into the house or leave her there to punch out the ground as she had started doing.

  “What happened?” she cried. “What happened?”

  “I really think we should get inside,” Brian urged, looping his arms under his wife’s and pulling her up and into his chest. Harriet allowed herself to sink into him; his arms swallowed her up as he tugged her along. With one hand he searched for a key in his back pocket and fumbled it into the lock. “This is Officer Shaw and she’s going to tell us everything,” he said.

  • • •

  THE HODDERS’ HOUSE was unfailingly dark. Despite the bright afternoon, Brian needed to switch on a light in the hallway. The door to the kitchen at the far end was closed, as was the one on the right, making the small hallway even pokier.

  Brian opened the door on the right, gently maneuvering Harriet into their neat, square living room and onto the sofa. Officer Shaw followed them, and even with only the three of them in it, it felt cramped.

  “Will someone just tell me what happened?” Harriet said.

  The policewoman sat in the armchair and shuffled to its edge so she could face Harriet and Brian, who were now side by side on the sofa. “Your friend, Mrs. Reynolds, was looking after your daughter today?”

  Harriet nodded, feeling her husband wriggle awkwardly next to her. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him looking at her quizzically but she kept her gaze on Officer Shaw, who had paused momentarily, distracted by Brian’s jerky movements. “I’m so sorry.” She turned back to Harriet. “I know how difficult this must be to hear, but Alice has disappeared from the school fair. We have officers looking and—”

  “When? When did she disappear?” Harriet asked.

  “We received the call at one fifty this afternoon.”

  “And what happened?” Harriet demanded. She felt her hand shaking inside Brian’s tight grasp.

  Officer Shaw inhaled loudly through her nose, and didn’t appear to exhale. “Your daughter had gone on an inflatable obstacle course. She ran around the back and that was the last Mrs. Reynolds saw of her.”

  “I don’t understand,” Brian said. “You mean like a bouncy castle? What was she doing at the back of it? Alice wouldn’t do that.”

  “No, it wasn’t a bouncy castle. It’s called a Jungle Run,” the policewoman said.

  “But Alice hates anything like that.” Brian shook his head. His grip on Harriet’s hand tightened. “She’s never been on such a thing. Why would she go on one today?”

  Officer Shaw pressed her lips flatly together. It was obvious she couldn’t answer his question.

  Brian contin
ued to stare at her. “She probably got scared,” he cried. “She’d have hated it.” Harriet felt his shoulders rise and dip with his deep breaths. “But maybe that’s a good thing?” he said. “It means she probably ran off rather than someone took her?”

  “We are trying to ascertain what happened, Mr. Hodder.”

  “I want to go,” Harriet said. “I need to see it.”

  The policewoman shook her head. “It’s better if you’re both here right now.”

  “No. My wife’s right,” Brian said. “I want to see this thing too. None of this makes sense.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Hodder, please,” the policewoman urged, “you’ll be helping much more if you stay put. We need you at home for when there’s news.”

  Brian tensed beside her but he didn’t persist. “Where was Charlotte when all this happened?” he asked instead, his gaze drifting over to Harriet and then back to Officer Shaw. “When she was supposed to be looking after our daughter. I mean, how did Alice even manage to go anywhere without her seeing? She should have had her eyes on her the whole time.” Harriet could almost feel his rising panic; his breaths had become more rapid. The thought of a mother not watching a child—it was something she knew filled Brian with dread.

  “Charlotte couldn’t see the back of it from where she was,” the officer said. “And when Alice didn’t come off, they searched the fields and then raised the alarm. I believe she did everything she could to—”

  “To what?” Brian cried out. Officer Shaw dropped her eyes. “She did everything she could to look for her, is that what you were about to say? She should never have lost her in the first place!” He shook his head and slumped back into the sofa, pulling his arms away from Harriet and cradling his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” the policewoman said. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Mr. Hodder. The area is being thoroughly searched and everything is being done to ensure Alice will be brought home safely.” She paused, her eyes flicking nervously between the two of them again, making Harriet think the officer didn’t believe her own words. “We are doing everything we can,” she said more quietly.

  Brian’s body was hard and heavy and uncomfortably close against Harriet. She could feel the tightness of his muscles. Fear seeped out of him and bled into her until she wanted to move away so she didn’t have to feel it. Every so often his eyes glanced toward her. She knew there was something he needed to get off his chest.

  Instead he placed his right hand over her knee and said, “They’ll find her, my love. They will. They have to.” His hand squeezed her and he eventually turned back to the policewoman. “Oh God, you don’t think it’s the same guy, do you?” he asked suddenly. “The one who took that little boy?” Harriet felt the pressure of his hand harden against her leg. She tried to inch away from him. She couldn’t bear that he was asking this already. Her left hand gripped the leather cushion beneath her until her fingers began to burn from where she was holding so tight and she had to let go.

  Officer Shaw drew another deep breath. There was already too little air left in the room to go around.

  “We don’t know, Mr. Hodder. At this stage we are still assuming Alice has wandered off from the fair on her own.” She gave a thin-lipped smile and dropped her gaze so she was no longer looking either of them in the eye.

  “Do you really think that?” He inched forward until he was perched on the edge of the sofa. “Or are you already linking this to Mason Harbridge? Because seven months have passed and no one has any clue what happened to him.”

  Harriet saw flashes of little Mason, the boy the press had described as having vanished into thin air. “I’m going to be sick,” she cried, and rushed to the kitchen where she leaned over the sink and retched into the basin.

  Any moment Brian would be right behind her, rubbing her back in an attempt to soothe her. She wiped a hand across her mouth and rinsed it under the tap. She wanted to be left alone, just for a bit, before he started asking questions she didn’t want to answer.

  “Just a moment, Mr. Hodder.” Officer Shaw’s voice murmured through the open door of the living room, obviously stopping him on his way out. Their voices were low, but once Harriet turned off the running water she could just make out what they were saying. “I know this is a shock for you.”

  “It is.”

  “How well do you know Charlotte Reynolds?”

  There was a pause. “Personally, not well. She’s Harriet’s friend, not mine.”

  “And is she a good friend of your wife’s?”

  “Well, clearly not.”

  “I mean, are they close?”

  Harriet waited for him to answer, and eventually he spoke. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose they are.”

  NOW

  Tell me more about your friendship with Harriet,” Detective Rawlings says. “How did you first meet?” It’s hard not to forget we aren’t on the same side when she softens like this.

  “Harriet was working at St. Mary’s,” I say. My mouth feels dry and I sip the last drop of water from the glass, hoping she might offer me more. She told me I can take breaks, but I haven’t yet found the courage to ask.

  “The school where your children go?” she asks. “The same school that held the fair?”

  “Yes. Before Harriet had Alice she worked part-time as a teaching assistant.” I tell her I had been called into the school because there had been an issue with Jack, but I resist the urge to tell her it wasn’t anything my son had done. “I’d seen Harriet around before then, but that was the first time we spoke.”

  An image of Harriet flittering nervously across the playground pops into my head and I can hear Audrey’s voice saying, “She scuttles around like a mouse.” I may have sniggered because, as always, Aud’s observation was spot-on, but I had also felt something else as I watched her. Pity, perhaps?

  “She’s probably just shy,” I’d muttered, looking back at Jack’s small head. Another note had circulated about lice and Jack had already had them four times. I wasn’t prepared to accept a fifth. “Or she doesn’t want to be bothered by any of the parents.”

  “Hmm. She’s a little odd,” Audrey had said. “She doesn’t look anyone in the eye.”

  At that I’d looked up to see Harriet darting into the main building and wondered what she must have made of us mums all huddled in a group, heads close together as we gossiped and laughed loudly. We were a pack, and most of us took comfort from that, even if we didn’t say it aloud.

  I didn’t tell the detective any of this. Instead I told her that Harriet had been honest and open with me and very easy to talk to. As she told me about her concerns for Jack, I had watched her fingers play with the seams of her A-line skirt. Her fingernails were bitten low, a hard nub of dry skin clutched onto her thumbnail. At one point I had focused on that, willing her to stop talking about my son with unsettling accuracy, for fear I would start crying.

  “Charlotte?” Harriet had said softly. “If you think I’ve gotten this wrong, then please tell me.”

  I shook my head. “No, you’re not wrong,” I’d said. She had been the first person to get it so very right, to see Jack for the little boy he was.

  “He’s very bright,” she went on. “Academically he’s miles ahead, but socially he doesn’t always cope with things as well as he should at this age.”

  “I know,” I’d said with a nod.

  “There are assessments we can look into, help we can get.”

  “I don’t want any labels,” I’d said. “I’m not embarrassed, but—”

  “It’s okay, Charlotte, you don’t have to make any decisions right now, and you certainly don’t need to worry about considering a different school if you don’t want to.”

  “She was so caring about the children,” I tell the detective. “She gave me time. We talked and I realized we had things in common.”

  “Like what?” she asks. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this.

  “At first it was our pasts,” I say. “We spoke
about—” I stop abruptly. I was about to say we’d spoken about our fathers, that we had shared confidences. Even though the meeting had started off about Jack, I’d somehow veered into the course of my own childhood and shared with Harriet the story of my father. Well, some of it. But I’d told her more than I had anyone else. I told her how he’d walked out on us when I was still a child.

  But then Harriet told me hers had died when she was five and I immediately felt a pang of guilt, because surely that was so much worse than what I went through?

  “It was years ago,” she’d said as she pressed her hand into mine. “Please don’t feel bad.”

  But despite her smile and the way she looked at me so assuredly, I had seen a glimmer of tears in her eyes and knew she was just trying to reassure me I hadn’t upset her. Deep down I could sense she was still hurting at the loss and, even then, right at the start of our friendship, I’d felt guilty.

  “Time is a great healer, isn’t it?” she’d said. “Don’t they say that?”

  “They do, but I’m not entirely sure I agree,” I’d mumbled.

  “No.” She’d smiled. “I’m not sure I do either.”

  It was only after the briefest of pauses that I’d found myself asking her to join me and my mum friends for coffee the following week. Harriet looked taken aback and I’d assumed she would turn me down.

  But instead she had thanked me and told me she’d love to, and while I smiled at her and said that was wonderful, I immediately wondered if I’d been too hasty with my invite. The other mums wouldn’t like that they couldn’t talk freely about the school, and Harriet would be my responsibility, and I didn’t think I needed any more of those.

  When I told Audrey what I’d done, she’d raised an eyebrow.

  “Give her a chance. I think you’ll like her,” I’d said. “Besides, she doesn’t know anyone else in the area.”

  Harriet didn’t have any other friends, I’d realized early on. Tom had called her another of my pet projects, which had disproportionately annoyed me, but there was something about Harriet that made me want to take her under my wing. I’d decided I could help her. First step—she needed to meet more people.