Her One Mistake

by Heidi Perks

  He said he knew I was leaving him and taking Alice. He didn’t have to add that she was shivering when he got there, that her little body was drenched, but he said it anyway. Brian grabbed my arms and pressed his thumbs into my skin.

  I cried out that I couldn’t do this anymore. He looked at me like he had no clue what I was talking about. I said I couldn’t live like this.

  Brian asked me how I supposed I could live without him.

  I didn’t have an answer to that. When I’d packed a suitcase and hauled Alice to the station, telling her we were going on holiday, I hadn’t thought through what we would do. Not long term. All I knew was that we needed to get away from Brian.

  He reminded me that he’d found me and that he always would. He took a step back and said he couldn’t shake the image of us both standing so close to the edge, and that he’d need to talk to the doctor about this and see what he suggests. Brian added that he’d hate him to say I needed a stay in a hospital, but maybe it was for the best. He told me again I was turning into my mother.

  I can’t stay but I don’t know how to get away. I can’t risk him having me put in a hospital. He’ll be watching me even closer now.

  HARRIET

  In the lead-up to Christmas, as Charlotte became embroiled in the aftermath of her sister’s wedding and plans to take the children away for the holidays, I found myself increasingly dependent on my father.

  We met up in various places over Dorset, each time somewhere new. With him living in Southampton, he wasn’t so close that Brian would ever bump into him, but he was near enough to see us for a day. I hid our meet-ups from Brian, always arranging them when my husband was at work. Seeing my dad was an escape from the downward spiral of life at home, and I began to look forward to watching his blossoming relationship with Alice.

  There were times when I was resentful, particularly when I watched him running away from the waves with a squealing Alice or making her cars out of sand.

  “Why didn’t you try harder?” I’d asked, when he’d insisted on buying us ice cream in the middle of January. I had missed out on so many moments like this. I’d been fine not knowing what I hadn’t had, but now that he was back in my life, a hole had opened up that I hadn’t realized was there.

  Then I would watch Alice curl up on his lap like a contented cat, in awe of his card tricks, and I wondered if it really mattered what had happened in the past. It was more important that I didn’t let it ruin the future. Alice had a grandfather in her life now, and one she doted on. And secretly I was excited at the thought of having my dad again.

  Les felt like a world away from my real life and I began telling him snippets about the man I had married, certain he would never meet Brian. It was good to finally share the truth with someone, and even more when that person was my father. Eventually I told him how Brian had led me to believe I was crazy.

  “I can assure you, you are not crazy,” he said.

  “He drops it into conversations that I’m like Mum.”

  “He never even knew your mother,” my dad said angrily. We were sipping hot chocolates in the café of a National Trust house watching Alice play outside. “And she wasn’t crazy. She just had a lot of anxieties.”

  I didn’t tell him I was more like her than I liked, but it was what I was thinking.

  “Besides,” he said, “being like her is not a bad thing. She was a very good mother and in her own way she always put you first.”

  I dropped my head so he couldn’t see the tears that had sprung into my eyes. “I can’t see a way out,” I said.

  “There’s always a way out.”

  “I have no money. Not a penny of my own. I don’t even have my own bank account. If I walked out, I wouldn’t be able to buy us our next meal.”

  “Well, I can help,” he offered.

  “Thank you, but with what? You’ve already told me your state pension barely gets you through the week.” He didn’t have his own house and was still in the rented flat he and Marilyn had lived in for years.

  “So you need to go to the police,” he persisted.

  “And say what? I have no scars to show them,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. “No bruises. I’ve no way of proving he’s abusing me.”

  “But somehow you need to get away, take Alice and—”

  “I’ve tried,” I cried. “Brian finds me. He’s done it before,” I told him. “Somehow he manages to track me down and haul me home, and I know he’ll take Alice away from me. He’ll prove I’m crazy, that’s the beauty of what he does,” I said sarcastically. “Brian has it all worked out.”

  “You really think he wants to take her from you?” my dad asked. “I don’t get the impression he has much of a relationship with Alice.”

  I watched Alice pick up a leaf and carefully tuck it into her pocket. “He loves her,” I said. But I also saw the way their conversations looked awkward, that he didn’t always know how to talk to her. That when the three of us were together, Brian often hung on the edge like an outsider. Surely he must have noticed that too, though I’m not convinced it would matter in the end. “I have no doubt he’d make sure she was taken from me,” I said. “If he thought it was what he had to do.”

  “Let me help,” my father pleaded. “At least come stay with me while you work things out. You can both have my bed and I’ll sleep on the sofa. Let me do this for you and Alice, please.” He took hold of my hand and squeezed it tightly. “I want to.”

  “But everyone thinks you’re dead,” I cried. “Don’t you see? If I suddenly announce I’m off to stay with my dead father, who I’ve been seeing for the last few months, Brian will have a ball. I write ‘mother and father deceased’ on forms. My best friend thinks you died when I was five. If they find out I’ve been lying to them all this time, Brian will be shouting from the rooftops that this is exactly what he means.”

  “But there’s got to be something I can do for you,” my father said.

  “Maybe there is one way.” I took a deep breath and told him about the Harbridge family and the idea Charlotte had put into my head.

  “You want me to abduct Alice?” He looked aghast.

  “Shh.” I looked around but the café had emptied out. “Let’s go outside.” We grabbed our coats and went out, waving at Alice who was still busy stuffing her pockets with leaves and twigs that she’d make into something later. “It would only be temporary, and you’re not abducting her. You’d be keeping her in a safe house for me while I figure out a way to expose Brian.”

  “No, Harriet. I don’t like it one bit.”

  “No one will suspect you because you don’t exist,” I went on.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Too many things can go wrong. The police won’t see it that way.”

  “If anything went wrong I’d tell them it was all my idea,” I promised him.

  “It’s ridiculous. You’d go to prison. Have you even thought of that?”

  “Yes,” I lied. I hadn’t thought of much more than getting away from my husband.

  “And how do you suppose it ends, Harriet? What are you planning? That you’ll run away with Alice and live abroad?”

  “No.” I’d thought about that, but I couldn’t contemplate us living the rest of our lives in hiding. In some ways it would be no better than what we had now. “No,” I said again carefully. “What I’ve been thinking is that when the time is right, you leave her somewhere. Somewhere safe where there are people and you could tell her to call the police.” I spoke with as much conviction as I could. We both needed to believe it was a plausible outcome. “By then you’ll have gained her trust and she’ll know not to say it was you. All anyone will have is her description of the man who took her. She’s four, they’d expect inconsistencies, they wouldn’t expect her to know exactly where she’d been.”

  “Yes, she’s four,” my father said. “You’re entrusting a toddler to carry this lie. It’s so wrong, I can’t believe I’m hearing it.”

  “Alice trusts me. And yo
u,” I add. “She’s bright. She’d understand if we told her this was the only way to be safe.”

  “Oh, Harriet,” my dad sighed, shaking his head. “This isn’t the way.”

  “Do it for me,” I pleaded, ignoring him. “If nothing more than because you owe me this.”

  “Don’t put that on me.”

  “But that’s what you said. The first time I met you, you told me that whatever I wanted you to do you’d do it. This is what I want,” I said. “You can either walk away or be in our lives,” I tried as a last-ditch attempt.

  He walked away.

  • • •

  I HAD LOST my only hope of a future and my dad. He still turned up at the museum where we’d arranged to meet the following week as planned, but there was a distance between us. We reverted to being more like the strangers we were two months ago than the father and daughter we’d become.

  Over the following weeks the gap widened. The only times I saw flashes of the father I’d grown to care so deeply about were when I watched him playing with Alice. He’d throw her into the air and spin her around and tickle her on the ground until she begged him to stop because she was laughing too hard. Only in those times did he look like he’d almost forgotten what I’d asked of him.

  One Wednesday in mid-March we took a ferry to Brownsea, an island that sat in nearby Poole Harbour. I sat on a log while my dad took Alice to show her the peacocks, but when they came back he had a grave look on his face. “We need to talk.” He joined me on the log as I watched Alice run across the grass. “If you’re adamant it’s the only way, I’ll do it.”

  “Are you serious?” I gasped.

  “There are many things we need to sort out.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” I leaned toward him and wrapped my arms around his waist, though I felt him stiffen. “Are you sure about this?” I asked, pulling back.

  “For what it’s worth, I think it’s very risky, Harriet. Many things could go wrong.” He took my hands and peeled them off his waist. “And if anything bad happens, I need you to promise me something.”

  “Okay?”

  “It’s me who takes the blame. Not you.”

  “No way. I can’t let that happen.”

  “That’s one of my conditions,” he said firmly. “It’s up to you to ensure no one knows you had anything to do with it. I won’t let Alice be taken away from you.”

  “But—”

  “I mean it,” he said. “If you can’t promise me that, we don’t do this.”

  “How would I ever be able to do that?” I asked him. “Alice will say she knows you and then it’ll be clear I’ve been meeting you for months.”

  “I’ll come up with something,” he said. “But for now it’s best we don’t see each other again.”

  I gaped at him. “Why can’t we see each other?”

  “We can’t risk anyone seeing us together while we work out what to do. But I’m deadly serious, Harriet. You need to promise me you’ll never let anyone think you had anything to do with this if it all goes wrong.”

  I stared at my father, whose eyes hadn’t once strayed from Alice. “Okay,” I said in a whisper. “I promise.”

  He nodded.

  “What made you change your mind?” I asked.

  “I just did,” he said shortly.

  “Dad? What is it?” I followed his eye line to where Alice played, running after an unsuspecting peacock. “Has Alice said something to you?”

  He squirmed beside me, never taking his eyes off my daughter.

  “If she has, please tell me.”

  “I said I’ll do this, Harriet, so let’s just focus on what we do now.”

  • • •

  FROM THE TIME we agreed to this plan, I’d known there were many what-ifs. I was well aware everything could fall apart at the slightest crack, but by then I was desperate. I picked out parts that needed slotting together and forced them into place. I ran my fingers over the points where something could go horribly wrong and I knew I was taking a leap of faith, but faith was all I had.

  “I trusted you, Dad,” I said aloud as I drove on toward Cornwall, hands trembling against the wheel. “I trusted you.”

  But then, deep down, didn’t I still?

  Yet if I did, all I was left with was the unsettling worry that something must have happened to them to stop him from answering my calls.

  HARRIET

  Four days after Alice was taken I called the pay-as-you-go cell my dad had bought, as we’d agreed. I told Angela and Brian I needed to get some fresh air and stopped at a pay phone three streets away. My hand was shaking as I tapped in the numbers, praying I’d remembered them in the right order.

  As soon as my dad said, “Hello,” four days of tension flooded out of my body.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. She’s asking for you, but she’s okay.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I breathed. “Can I speak to her?”

  “She’s outside but I don’t think it’s right that you do anyway. She’s more settled today.”

  I tried to imagine Alice through the pictures of the house I’d seen online. It was my dad’s idea to take her to Elderberry Cottage, a holiday home in the tiny village of West Aldell in Cornwall. He and Marilyn had stayed there twice and we were both comfortable that he knew the area. He assured me that they had never been bothered, that during both stays they’d barely seen anyone in the area, at least no one who took any interest in them.

  “But she’s okay?” I asked him. “She’s well?”

  “Alice is doing fine. I’ve told her it’s a little trip. She thinks you’re not feeling well, like we said.”

  “And how was she at the fair? She wasn’t frightened?”

  “No. She was surprised and confused, but I told her what we agreed, that I’d spoken to Charlotte and told her you weren’t well. Then she was just worried about you, but once I assured her it was nothing serious—” My dad broke off. I felt our deception cutting through my skin and I knew he did too.

  “It’s so good to speak to you, Dad,” I said.

  “Right.” He sounded flat.

  “Dad? You sound strange, what is it?”

  “It’s nothing, Harriet.”

  “Tell me. What’s the problem?”

  I heard his large intake of breath. “Where do I start? You’re all over the news. Alice is too. Her picture is everywhere. I worry about leaving the cottage in case someone sees her.”

  “I know, but it’s not going to be like that for long,” I said, sounding more determined than I felt. “You have to do this now, we can’t turn back.”

  “I know that. But it doesn’t feel right anymore. Hell, what am I saying? It never did.”

  “You’re scaring me,” I said, pressing my hand against the glass of the phone booth.

  “I am scared,” he said in a whisper. “And I have a very bad feeling this isn’t going to work out the way we want it to. Listen, we need to keep these calls short. Just let me get on with it here and we’ll keep our heads down.”

  “Okay, but I’ll call you again next Wednesday as agreed.”

  “Fine.”

  “Keep her safe, Dad. Don’t take her anywhere.”

  “We have to go out sometimes.”

  “Well, nowhere anyone sees you.”

  My dad sighed again. “We go to the beach, but that’s all. Like I told you, it’s deserted most of the time and the cottage has a fishing boat I can borrow, so I’m going to take her out on that.”

  “Okay. That sounds good,” I said, thinking no one is likely to spot them in the middle of the sea. “Thank you, Dad. You know I couldn’t do this without you.”

  I hung up, the tension already seeping its way back inside. It was a relief to know Alice was safe, but what if my father couldn’t hold out?

  I’d go through the motions until I’d arranged to call him again. Just to hear him tell me they were both okay was all I needed to get me through. If I knew then that when I called the
following Wednesday he wouldn’t answer, I would have driven to the cottage to get my daughter back straightaway.

  • • •

  I HAD JUST passed the halfway mark on my journey to Cornwall when a warning light flashed on the dashboard. The car started to slow and as much as I pressed my foot on the accelerator, I could feel it losing power until it stuttered to a stop three hundred feet from a gas station. Grateful for its proximity, I asked the assistant if he knew a number for a tow truck and waited in the stark light of the convenience store for an hour until help arrived.

  The mechanic said he would tow me to a local garage, adding that of course no one would be able to look at it until the following morning.

  “I can’t wait until then,” I cried out.

  The mechanic shrugged as he wiped his hands on an oily cloth. “I’m afraid you don’t have much choice. No one will be there tonight.”

  “What do I do?” I couldn’t leave my car there and I certainly couldn’t turn back.

  “Well, if you want to come with me while I tow the car to the garage, I can take you on to my brother’s bed-and-breakfast if you like?” he suggested. “I’ll call him now and make sure they’ve got a room, but I’m sure they will,” he added softly, eyeing the tears cascading down my cheeks. “Thursday night, so he won’t be busy and he’s very cheap. He’ll take you to get your car in the morning.”

  It was the only realistic option. We left my car at the garage, where the mechanic posted a note with his brother’s number on it. Then he drove two miles through narrow country lanes to the shabby B&B, which was nothing more than a house with a handwritten VACANCIES sign stuck to its latticed bay window.

  As darkness crept in, the idea of being so isolated without a phone made me physically tremble. “It’ll be warm inside,” the mechanic said, mistaking my fear for cold as he pressed the doorbell.

  I could never explain to him that this was so much more than the inconvenience of a faulty car. I had no idea what I’d walked away from and even less what I was walking into, and the thought of being trapped midway between the two was terrifying.