“Do you want to come in?” Mrs Upton asked.
I stepped into the same hallway, lit with the same twig lights and hung with the same tasteful pictures. It felt warmer now. There were boots at the bottom of the stairs, and a child’s coat flung carelessly across the bannister and now these things didn’t feel so sad. I once again felt a surge of frustration that Marion hadn’t shared her suspicions about Grace’s father sooner. I wondered whether they would prosecute him, although to his knowledge he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Grace?” Adelaide called.
I followed her through to the kitchen, where a girl sat at the kitchen table with an iPad and a bowl of cereal in front of her, mostly untouched. She looked up, and I was overwhelmed by the uncanniness of it all. The face that had haunted my dreams – it was right here. And yet not quite the same.
I was often struck, when meeting people for articles and stories I was writing, how different they looked when compared to their photographs. I would interview grieving widows, having only seen a quick snapshot of them, and I was always surprised by their vigour – how alive, and often happy, they looked when I finally met them in person.
And missing persons – they were often the opposite. Drained of the excitement they had held in their faces and bodies when photographs were taken. Because undoubtedly their families always chose the “best” pictures, the ones they thought were the most flattering. People would be out in the streets looking for rosy-cheeked cherubs, and not for the real children out there in the world, frightened and alone.
Grace was no different. In her photographs she had seemed angelic. Smiling, always smiling, with a gap between her front teeth and her silver-blonde hair framing her childish face. But in person she seemed older. Sullen, almost. She was skinnier than she had been in her school photo, and I could see already within her the young woman she was becoming.
“Sweetheart, this is one of the ladies who was helping me look for you,” Adelaide said. Her voice was soft, relieved, but the tension in her body betrayed the anger she felt at having believed her daughter had been abducted for seven long days.
“Thanks.” Grace didn’t look up this time, just avoided my eyes and stared at the screen in front of her without moving.
“Mrs Upton,” I said, “could I bother you for a drink? I’d like to talk to Grace, if I may.”
Adelaide thought about this but only for a second.
“Tea?” she asked.
I nodded and she headed over to the other side of the kitchen to switch on the kettle.
“If you’re going to tell me how glad you are I’m not dead, I’m listening.” Grace stared at me defiantly.
“Oh, Grace,” her mother said from across the kitchen. “Manners.”
“Well, really.” Grace sighed. “I’m sorry, but I’ve had loads of people telling me that. I was never gone, okay? I’m fine. I had a nice holiday with my dad and—”
“I’m not here about that. Is there anywhere we can go to talk? Just for a minute? It’s about Bella.”
Grace stopped. She stared at me, and then looked at her mother. But Adelaide just uttered a small sigh, and I took that as agreement.
“We have a den,” Grace said eventually.
She left her cereal bowl and iPad on the table and I followed her into another room off the kitchen.
“So, why are you here?” Grace turned on me, her arms folded across her chest defensively, as though she expected me to lunge at her any second. I stayed near the door.
“You’re Bella’s friend,” I said slowly, gauging her reaction. “Her best friend.”
Immediately Grace’s frown deepened and I could see that she was burning with it all. With anger, and frustration, and maybe guilt too. She wouldn’t look at me, but her blue eyes were focused on the bookcase behind my head and I resisted the urge to check what she was staring at.
“Do you have anything you want to talk about?” I prompted gently. “About Bella? And what happened?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Grace said. “I didn’t know she was going anywhere. She’d have told me. Bella… She hasn’t got anywhere else to go. I mean, I know I went away without telling anybody and people said, ‘Oh I don’t think Grace would do that.’ But I was just so sick of not getting to see my dad and I knew that Mum wouldn’t let me go in the holidays. And I told Bella that I was going. Bella wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me.”
I didn’t say anything. Whatever Grace wanted to tell me was going to come out all on its own.
“Look,” she said. “I’m sorry about what I did. I didn’t think Mum would get so pissy with me. I just thought she’d know I was with Dad, or she wouldn’t care. I didn’t even think about school. Bella covered for me because I asked her to – because she’s a good friend. We had a deal – a week. She had to give it a week before she told an adult where I was. So if Bella wanted me to say anything to you right now, then she’d have told me to.”
Grace’s bottom lip stuck out, and I realised what was going on here. She wasn’t guilty, or sad. She was angry that Bella hadn’t told her anything, and angry because that meant maybe they weren’t as close as she thought. I realised now why Bella had wanted to meet me yesterday – exactly a week after Grace left for her holiday.
“Do you think Bella would want you to tell me about the ring? The one she was given and didn’t want? I saw you wearing it in the photos your mum took.”
“It’s just a ring,” Grace said defensively, her eyes still fixed somewhere behind my head. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Well, I think it does. I think Bella not coming home has made you feel weird about it. And that’s the reason you’re not wearing it any more.”
“I lost it,” Grace said quickly. “When I was camping. She didn’t want it and she gave it to me but I lost it.”
I waited a second. Watched Grace’s expression shift, worry making her lips thin as she pressed them together.
“So it’s not on the shelf behind me.” I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “And if I turn around I won’t see it?”
“Fine.” Grace glared at me, and I glanced upwards to thank my lucky stars that the gamble had paid off.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s so important about this ring that you two fought over it?” I asked. “What’s so important about it that your teacher thought the police needed to know about it?”
“It’s not… It’s not important.” The kid shrugged, her blonde hair slipping over her shoulder. “Bella just thought it was ugly and I liked it. So she said I should go back and get it if I liked it so much.”
“Where did it come from?” I asked. I had to try very hard to keep my breathing even.
“She said she got it from a man.” Grace wouldn’t look at me. She was still staring at the ring. I imagined I could almost feel it behind me. The power, the darkness in that little silver band. The circle reminded me of the eclipse and when I blinked I was sure I would see it.
“A man?” I pressed.
“She wouldn’t tell me who gave it to her. She wouldn’t tell me anything about him. And then when Mr Howden took it off her – she said she was glad it was gone. That it could go back to where it came from for all she cared.”
“And Mr Howden, did he… seem overly interested in it? Or in Bella?”
Grace shrugged. “Only as much as normal. She’s his favourite so he probably took it because he knew she was upset and he wanted her to go back and get it later so he could ask her if she was okay.”
Not because he had given it to her in the first place and he wanted to have a reason for it to be back in his possession…?
Grace’s face blanched as she continued to stare at the ring, as though she knew it was wrong but she didn’t know why. I wanted to ask her about the threat we could both feel, about Bella’s fear and refusal to wear it and Grace’s own desire to keep the ring, perhaps searching for the same attention Bella had been given by the gift-giver.
With a
jolt I realised that this was the same wrongness I recognised – recognised because I remembered it from that summer. That sick feeling and the fear that something was happening but being powerless to stop it. A feeling I hadn’t even realised I’d had, deep down inside me, when Olive started to keep secrets.
And I knew I couldn’t say it aloud now any more than I could back then.
I turned slowly, my whole body taut and screaming. Just leave, just walk out now and you wouldn’t have to face it. But I knew I had to. The shelf behind me was cluttered with books and hideous holiday memorabilia. And there, perched among it all… I let out a hiss of breath.
There it was.
It was so small: a thin silver band, a mermaid with a crooked tail and a clouded black gem in the centre. It was such a nothing thing – but it could mean so much. I felt my fingers itching to pick it up, to take it with me. I reached out, my skin not quite brushing the cool metal.
Olive’s ring. I missed her so much it hurt.
She said she got it from a man.
And now he had her, just like he’d taken Olive.
27
31 December 1999
NEW YEAR’S EVE. OLIVE was celebrating. He’d missed her Health and Hygiene check yesterday. And she knew he wouldn’t risk coming today. He’d said something about his wife. About celebrating with her.
Olive found it hard to believe that he had a wife. That he had somebody in his life aside from her. He told her that he’d met his wife when they were very young. That she understood him – understood that he was trying to save Olive. From life, from the horrid world outside.
Olive didn’t believe that his wife knew about her. It wasn’t possible. Was it? She knew Sandman chose his wife’s clothes, just like he chose Olive’s. She knew his wife was younger, that she made his lunches and did as she was told. Perhaps she did know, and she chose to say nothing. Perhaps she was afraid.
But tonight Olive was celebrating for another reason. He’d finally let her have a TV. It had been a gift, for Christmas – a day which otherwise had passed the same as all the others except that she sang Christmas carols to Mickey and gave him a slice of carrot as a present.
They’d got a new TV – Sandman and his wife. This one was old, fuzzy, tiny. The aerial only found one channel. Or it did inside the room, anyway.
Olive didn’t care. It was a link to the outside world, wasn’t it? It gave her something else to focus on. Something other than counting up and down inside her head. Something other than drawing stupid picture after stupid picture She thought of all the hours she had spent with her grandad as he taught her to draw horses and dogs and people using circles layered on top of each other. The TV let her stop thinking about grandad. And it gave her the news.
She wasn’t news any more. Not compared to the big stuff. Like that guy from the Beatles getting stabbed. Like the stuff in London for the millennium.
People seemed to have forgotten about Olive.
But she wasn’t going to let it upset her. Not tonight. Mum and Dad and Cassie wouldn’t forget her. She wondered if they were going to watch the fireworks on TV like they always used to.
She hoped they would. She glanced down at her Mickey Mouse watch. The battery was running low, though, because it said it was already two in the morning. The TV was still counting down to midnight.
Mickey the mouse sat on her lap, tonight. He was quieter than usual. Lethargic. She couldn’t work out whether he was poorly or if he was just cold. Even now, Olive had the blankets around them both and she wasn’t warm.
The fireworks started. A new year. A big year, too. When Olive thought about the year 2000, it still seemed like it was so far away. Like it would never happen. But of course, that was in her other life. Before. Now it was happening and she couldn’t even be outside to see it.
At least, she thought, she could pretend. So as the fireworks popped and blasted their way into a new millennium, Olive closed her eyes and pretended she was at home. In front of the fire. Arguing with Cassie about something. Anything.
She missed them.
But at least she hadn’t had this week’s health test. At least she had the TV. At least Mickey was here, warm in her lap. At least Sandman hadn’t hurt her. At least she had electricity, paper, pens.
At least.
28
ROGER UPTON WAS IN the lounge when I walked past. I ducked in and shut the door behind me. He glanced away from his phone but didn’t get up.
“Miss Warren.”
“I don’t want to intrude,” I said, “but while I’m here – there are some things I want to say.”
Roger raised an eyebrow, suspicion etched into his expression, but he nodded.
“Okay.”
“I haven’t told anybody – about your past. That’s not my place. I haven’t written anything about you, either.” I waited for his reaction. Instead of anger, or frustration, or even sadness, I was met by a blank face. His eyes seemed hollow, even.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” I continued. This was the first time I’d apologised about an article I hadn’t written. “Not for the information I found, but for how I carried myself. It’s my job to hold people accountable but I didn’t communicate properly—”
“You were right.”
I paused, stunned at his honesty. I knew I was right to question him, given what I’d learned about his past, but I hadn’t expected him to admit that.
“What?”
Roger put his phone on the arm of his chair.
“About me. I... When it happened, I didn’t think it was a big deal. I mean, I knew that I’d caused trouble, stirred shit up. But I never really thought it was… that bad? At the time I was more upset that I was in trouble. She was a nice girl, and she liked me – and she’d assured me she was older than she was. We never slept together so what was the big deal, right?” He paused. I waited. “Now I have Gracie… I’ve been thinking about it more and more. Sometimes, I look at Gracie and I just feel – so much shame. It was stupid, but more than that, it was dangerous. So dangerous. And I should have known better. Been more responsible.”
Roger paused and swiped a hand across his face, dislodging what may have been tears. He sighed.
We sat in silence for a long time. I watched the way Roger’s hands kept returning to his phone. It made me realise just how little I knew about the people around me; how badly people were affected by the things I couldn’t see.
I thought of Ady and his dead wife, that sadness that seemed to follow him. I thought of Olive, all those secrets she’d kept.
“I’m sorry for my behaviour,” I said again, although I couldn’t deny I’d repeat my actions given what he had done. “I’m like a bull with a red flag sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Roger said. “Well. I won’t say I’m glad you did it, but I’m glad we had this talk.”
* * *
As I was putting my jacket on by the front door, I heard a voice. Small, quiet.
“Do you think… do you think she’s okay?”
I turned around and noticed Grace sitting on the stairs. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, a baggy hoodie now covering much of her upper body in a way that made her seem younger than she was. She looked like she might have been crying, but her face was dry and pink now. She watched me as I finished getting ready to leave. I shook my head.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s why I’m doing everything I can to figure out what happened.”
“Mum said you work for a newspaper. That you were writing a story about me. Is that true?”
With Bella missing I knew I had another opportunity to claw back some semblance of normalcy, to treat this as a profession again. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to think about Bella as a job. The shine had long rubbed off and I had to face the fact that maybe the job wasn’t for me any more.
“Something like that,” I said. “I’m not doing very well.” I paused to watch Grace for a second. She was eyeing me with cautious curiosity
, as though I might morph into a monster at any second. But she was curious. “I don’t know if your mum told you,” I said, “but I have sort of a personal reason to be asking you all these questions. And that’s why my writing isn’t working out.”
Grace frowned and shook her head. “No. She didn’t say.”
I didn’t want to scare Grace – but I also knew this was my chance. To gamble on gaining her trust.
“When I was a little bit older than you are now, my sister was abducted. During a solar eclipse.” I let this sink in, watched Grace’s breathing quicken as she considered what this meant. “I’m trying to make sure that nothing bad happens to Bella, just like I was trying to make sure nothing bad happened to you. I thought that by… by writing – about you – then whoever took you would realise that you were somebody’s daughter. That somebody missed you and wanted you home. And that having you home was more important than being afraid or angry, so maybe they wouldn’t hurt you.”
“But I didn’t need protecting.”
“I know,” I said softly. Grace’s posture slumped, the fight going out of her. I continued, “But maybe Bella does need protecting. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
I let this thought hang in the air for a moment. Grace was sniffling, her forehead dipping down to touch her knees. When she looked up again, her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
“She didn’t tell me who she got the ring from,” Grace said eventually. “I’m not lying about that. I asked her and asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me. She said it was… a gift. I asked her if she had a boyfriend, but she said no. When I asked her if it was a grown-up she said no at first. But… I could tell she was lying about that. You know? Like, I could just tell. So I pushed her until she told me she got it from a man. I didn’t have a go at her, but I wish I had.
“She was just so… happy at first. Like, buzzing. Excited a lot. She would be late to meet me for the last bit of the walk to school sometimes. I knew she was seeing somebody but she wouldn’t talk about it. The ring – when Bella didn’t want it, I – I don’t know. I wanted it. I wanted to feel how she felt, at first, when she was happy and excited and I just… She was acting weirdly for ages before I said anything, and then I just took the ring and kept it rather than having a go at her again. What if…?”
After the Eclipse Page 18