I bent over the pushchair. ‘What shall we have to eat?’
‘‘Getti,’ she said.
‘That is a great idea,’ I said. ‘And Grandma’s bought buns.’
Chloë kicked her feet, a little one-two motion, a sign that she was happy. And my heart lifted.
Part Two
2013–17
Chapter Twenty-seven
‘Just leave your bags in the living room,’ I said to Bel and Freya. ‘We’ve put you in there. God, they’re enormous.’
‘They’re American. Everything’s enormous,’ Bel said.
‘Where’s Mac?’ He’d collected them from the airport.
‘Gone to the corner shop.’
‘For milk,’ Freya added.
‘Look at you!’ I gave Freya a hug. ‘How tall are you?’
‘Five foot one.’
‘She’s catching me up,’ Bel said. ‘Ten years old and we’re shopping in the women’s section now.’
‘Come through,’ I said. ‘Tea, coffee, food? Or do you want to sleep?’
‘I could eat,’ Freya said. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘You’re always hungry,’ Bel said.
‘Same as me,’ I said. ‘Like a gannet, that’s what my mum says. We’ve got some chilli – I’ve done a veggie one too.’
‘Cool. Thanks,’ Freya said.
‘Bel?’
‘Just a drink. Red, if you’ve got some.’
‘When did you set off?’ I asked Bel.
‘Eleven this morning.’ She yawned and pulled out a chair.
‘Twenty-three hours with stops and all,’ Freya said.
‘Three flights, LA to Vancouver, then Heathrow, then Leeds-Bradford,’ Bel said. ‘Town’s still booming, then, I see. More luxury flats for young professionals, office blocks going up.’
‘Yes, the bigger the better. You should see what they’ve done around the docks,’ I said.
‘Money coming in,’ Bel said.
‘In certain places. Not much sign of it filtering down to anyone who really needs it.’
Mac came in with the milk.
‘Where’s Chloë?’ Freya said.
‘In her room,’ I said. I exchanged a glance with Bel. ‘She had some food earlier. I’ll fetch her when we’ve eaten, if she’s still awake.’
‘Is that right?’ Freya pointed to the wall clock. Eight-thirty in the evening.
‘Yes,’ Mac said.
‘Santa Monica is what?’ I said.
‘Like eight hours behind. We flew through five different time zones,’ Freya said.
I passed over a bottle of wine and took out glasses.
‘You’ve got a right Yankee accent,’ Mac said to Freya.
‘Have not.’
‘Yes, you have,’ I said.
‘Not according to the Yanks,’ Bel said. ‘They’re always taking the piss.’
‘They do not!’ Freya said crossly. ‘They’re nuts for my accent. They think I’m like a lady or royalty or something. They think it’s all like the olden days over here.’
‘Whatever.’ Bel poured the wine. She looked amazing. Her dark hair was cut short and choppy and she had bleached the tips. She was tanned. I thought back to that summer all those years earlier, sunbathing topless on my parents’ lawn.
I put the serving dishes in the middle of the table and let people help themselves.
Bel’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it. ‘Wank-face.’ Ethan, I guessed, the man she’d followed to America four years ago.
‘Mom!’ Freya protested. ‘Quit the swearing.’
‘Sometimes only swearing will do,’ Bel said.
‘You swear all the time. You do it to bug me.’
‘Freya, it’s not about you.’
‘There’s more chilli,’ I interrupted their bickering.
Bel sighed theatrically. She held up a packet of fags.
Freya opened her mouth.
‘Don’t.’ Bel pointed a finger at her.
‘Backyard,’ I said.
‘You jet-lagged?’ Mac said to Freya.
‘Kinda.’ She nodded. ‘You can like dehydrate on a plane. And people have these DVTs, like when you don’t move and you get a blood clot and drop down dead when you get off the plane. So you have to move your feet, and keep getting up, and do all these exercises.’ The same old Freya, bright and precocious. She must be more than just jet-lagged, I thought. Wrenched away from her school friends so suddenly. Her life disrupted yet again by one of Bel’s moves.
The first I’d heard of the break-up was a Skype video call from Bel asking to stay for a few days until they could sort out somewhere to live.
‘What happened?’
‘He wants to get married.’
‘So you’re fleeing the country?’
‘If he’d asked me three years ago I might have gone for it. But he’s getting like some old fart. We don’t do anything, we don’t see anyone.’
Was she exaggerating? Ethan was a respected choreographer, who’d worked in London’s West End, Hollywood, and on Broadway. When Bel had first gone out there she was full of stories about fascinating people and the buzz of something new every day. She’d worked as his PA.
‘He’s toxic. His last show bombed and now he wants to retreat. Hide away and start some academy. Anyway, it’s over.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No.’ She’d waved a hand at me. ‘Narrow escape. I can’t stay on here without a job. He’s my sponsor. So, time to come back. Green and pleasant land and all that.’
‘Have you seen any news recently? They’ve opened a food bank down the road. Cutting everything to the bone. Half the country’s snowed in, power cuts, no trains, nothing.’
‘Home, sweet home.’
Now Bel came back in. ‘It’s freezing.’ She shuddered.
‘You’ve gone soft,’ I said. ‘Too much sunshine. Did you hear back from any schools?’
‘A couple replied. Where’s Chloë going?’
‘Lawnswood. It’s the nearest.’
‘Mom wants to send me to Cardinal Heenan, which is so totally wrong,’ Freya said. ‘Like, I’m not Catholic. I’m not even baptised. They won’t let me in.’
‘I don’t want to send you there. We’ll go with anyone who’ll have you. Everyone else has already got their places,’ Bel said.
‘I’ll see if Chloë’s coming down,’ I said.
Upstairs I knocked on her door and went in. Bracing myself as I always did in case she’d done something stupid. Gone too far and hurt herself really badly this time. The blade too deep.
She was sitting on her bed and the small TV was on, Casualty just finishing.
‘Bel and Freya are here. You going to say hello?’
She gave a small sigh, pressed the remote and pulled on her slipper boots.
Downstairs she slid onto one of the chairs and replied to Bel’s hello with a quiet ‘Hi.’ She got out her phone and put it on the table.
‘Is it a smartphone?’ Freya said.
Chloë shook her head.
‘I’m getting a smartphone for my birthday,’ Freya said.
‘You hope,’ Bel said.
‘You promised!’
‘I did not.’
‘You did so. That is so typical, Mom. You promise things and then—’
‘Chill!’ Bel held up her hands. ‘Be nice.’
‘What – like you?’ Freya spat.
The spiky atmosphere made me uneasy, and it wasn’t good for Chloë.
I’d always found Bel’s attitude to Freya difficult. ‘Be kind,’ I’d told her once.
Freya was seven and wanting to make her own birthday cake. Bel had ridiculed the idea. ‘I’ve better things to do, and it’ll cost twice as much and probably taste revolting anyway.’
‘You treat her like shit sometimes,’ I said.
‘Don’t tell me how to be a mother,’ Bel said sharply. ‘I don’t go in for the self-sacrificing, martyr act. I’m honest with her.’
‘Listen to yourse
lf. She’s seven. That girl didn’t ask to be born. However tedious you find it, it’s your job to care for her. To make her feel good about herself, not rubbish her when you’re feeling fed up.’
‘Spare me the preaching. She’s fine! It’s just how we are with each other. She doesn’t need special handling, like Chloë.’
I had stared at her, furious. She still needs love, I thought, your approval, your praise. But before I could continue my arguments Freya had come back into the room with a recipe she had printed off for a cake, clearly determined to prove Bel wrong.
Now I made an effort to separate them. ‘You want a shower, Freya? Before bed?’
‘Sure. Yeah. OK. Thanks.’
‘Remember the way?’ I said.
‘I’ll get my PJs.’
Chloë stayed with us for a few more minutes, making herself as invisible as possible. Replying to any questions with a monosyllable or a nod. On edge.
‘You want to go up?’ I said.
She nodded. Stood up. I went and kissed the top of her head. ‘Night-night.’
‘Hey,’ Mac called, as she turned to go. He proffered a fist and Chloë touched knuckles with him. A tentative hand jive.
‘She been any better?’ Bel asked, when she was out of earshot.
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a referral from the GP. On the waiting list to see someone at CAMHS – child mental health. School – they just don’t get it. She did see an educational psychologist but they’d had no training in adoption, didn’t know anything about attachment issues or any of that. They just didn’t understand.’
Plenty of adoptions went well. The kids settled in without problems. They were happy, loving families, like the ones in the adverts and the brochures. How I envied them. But that’s what people expected, wanted to see. Not us, failing, aberrant, not up to the task.
‘And social services?’
I laughed. ‘Same as ever. Social services washed their hands of us as soon as the ink was dry. You remember how I used to ring them, leave messages begging for help? No one ever rang back. Nothing’s changed. Occasionally there’s some waffle about doing more to support families in crisis, but when you actually ask for anything, forget it.’ I could feel my throat tightening with the frustration of it. ‘They won’t even give us a week’s respite, a weekend. Nothing.’
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Bel said.
‘What choice do we have? You just keep going. You have to.’
I left the rest of them sleeping to start my shift, earlies, six-till-twelve. Mac would take Chloë to school on his way to work, and I planned to get more food for our visitors and call at the post office to renew the car tax before I picked her up.
Dealing with transfusions, work was steady at first, but at eight o’clock we were notified of a seven-vehicle pile-up on the M62. As we were a major-trauma centre, the injured were coming to us. Everyone wanted cross-match supplies at the same time. The phone was ringing off the hook.
I was in the middle of logging the latest requisition I’d fulfilled when my screen went blank. I tried rebooting but nothing worked. The screen was unresponsive. The Telepath system refused to load.
I checked with Clotting and Coagulation: the same with theirs. I rang through to A and E and told them our computers had crashed.
‘It’s the whole hospital. Everything is going to have to be done manually,’ they said.
Jesus Christ! ‘How can the whole system fail?’ I said.
‘Don’t ask. It’s old, it needs replacing. Should have been updated years back.’
Even with extra staff being pulled in from the main lab, and others coming from home, we were stretched to the limit, porters rushing in bearing handwritten notes for bloods and plasma, requesting tests, and us having to manually double-check patient ID, date of birth, and the request against the product before signing it over. We had to keep written records of every transaction and photocopies of all the blood units issued so that the system could be updated if and when it was revived. A queue was waiting at Reception to rally the bloods to Intensive Care and Theatre.
In the middle of it all a doctor rang me, insisting on a whole bevy of tests for a patient whose surgery wasn’t due until the day after tomorrow.
‘It’ll have to wait,’ I said. ‘We’re up to our necks here – the Telepath’s down.’
He swore at me. ‘Fucking pathetic. I need those results now.’
Prat. I hung up and returned to the crisis.
Snippets of news about the incident filtered through to us. A family of six en route to the airport had been involved, only one survivor. An HGV had mounted the central reservation. Five fire tenders were in attendance at the scene. The motorway was still closed.
All those lives, I thought, most of them on the morning commute, the same old routine, radio or CD on to stave off boredom, mind circling on their work ahead or looking forward to the end of the day, worrying about troubles at home, or remembering last night’s television. Then bang.
I cleared my last two requests, bags of A positive and some platelets, and handed them through to reception. It was twelve-fifty-five.
My head felt spacey from the adrenalin buzz and the lack of food or drink. So before leaving I called at the café for a portion of fish and chips. Ravenous, I rushed to eat it and burned the roof of my mouth on a chip. A blister formed. I kept running my tongue over it.
The sky was overcast; clouds threatened rain. Another unwelcome reminder for Bel and Freya.
I’d only just begun shopping, was picking up a bag of potatoes to add to the onions in the trolley, when my phone rang. School.
‘Mrs Kelly? Bev here. I’m afraid Chloë’s left school. I wanted to check that you or your husband haven’t collected her without us realising.’
The skin on my scalp tightened. ‘What? No. When did she go?’
‘She wasn’t here for afternoon registration. We think she must have left during lunchtime play. We’ve made a complete search of the whole school.’
‘Oh, Christ. I’ll go and check at home. And I’ll ring her dad. I’ll call you back straight away.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
I realised I wouldn’t need to drive home if Bel was still there. I abandoned the trolley and rang her as I hurried out of the store. It was spitting rain.
‘Has Chloë come home?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Can you just double-check? Look in her room. And the garden.’
‘Sure. What happened?’ I could hear her breath change as she took the stairs.
‘She’s walked out of school.’
‘Shit. No sign here. Hang on.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Freya in the background.
‘Chloë’s gone missing,’ Bel said.
There was the sound of Bel unlocking the back door. ‘No. She’s not out the back.’
‘Thanks. Can you stay there for now?’
‘Sure. Have you asked her friends?’
‘Chloë doesn’t have any friends,’ I said. I pressed my tongue hard against the roof of my mouth. Felt the sting. ‘I’ve got to go.’
School didn’t allow phones but I tried ringing Chloë’s – she might have sneaked hers in. It went to voicemail.
‘Chloë, we don’t know where you’ve gone. We’re very worried. If you get this please call me. I’ll come and pick you up. You’re not in any trouble. We just want you home safe.’
Mac took time to answer my call. I pictured him bent over someone, inking a petal, a Gothic letter or a tiger’s tooth. ‘Lydia?’
‘Chloë’s left school, and no one knows where she is.’
‘Aw, fuck.’
‘I’m going there now. Bel’s staying at the house just in case.’
‘I can be with you in fifteen minutes,’ he said.
‘No, stay where you are. She might be on her way to you.’
‘Ring me.’
‘Yes.’
In the car, I called school and asked them to go ahead
and alert the police. Then I started the engine and left the supermarket.
My heart was beating too fast and my mouth was parched. Where would she be? Had she any money? She usually had a couple of pounds on her. Not enough to get far. She was ten years old and looked younger. The thought of her wandering around on her own . . .
Chloë hadn’t run away from school before. But there had been several occasions when she’d disappeared on us. I’d been half mad with fear, especially the first time, when we were on a day out to try canoeing. I was close to exploding when I spotted her on the riverbank half a mile from where we’d been. She was just sitting there, hugging her knees, and I wanted to yank her upright and shake her.
On another occasion we’d been visiting Terese’s lot in York. We were packing up the car ready to drive back and Chloë was nowhere to be found. That time Mac discovered her about a quarter of a mile from their house near a row of shops. She was sitting on a bench outside the post office.
We’d never worked out why she did it, whether there was a trigger.
My phone rang and I slammed on the brakes. The car behind screeched to a halt. The driver sounded her horn and mouthed obscenities, her face a mask of rage.
Cheeks hot, I inched my car forward to park, ignoring the double yellow lines.
‘Mac?’ I said.
‘I’m thinking, could she have gone to your mum’s?’
‘I don’t know. I’d rather not worry her.’ My mum was ill with breast cancer and had recently finished a course of chemotherapy.
‘But it’s a possibility and if Chloë is headed there . . .’ he said.
‘I’ll ring her.’ My mum was someone Chloë was close to. As close as she ever got to anyone. There was no answer. The voicemail kicked in. I explained that Chloë had left school, trying my best to sound calm, not wanting to panic her. Phrases of reassurance ran through my head, She can’t be far away . . . probably on her way home . . . but they were tempting Fate. Instead I said, ‘I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve found her.’
At school, I was shown into the office. The head, Sandra Kent, was there with Chloë’s teacher, Lisa Hathaway, and a police officer, who introduced herself as PC Ingle.
‘We’ve notified the neighbourhood team and I’m going to get out there and help the search,’ PC Ingle said. ‘We’re starting with main roads and sectors off them. Does Chloë have a mobile?’
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