Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

My patients do this all the time, blame themselves for the suffering inflicted upon them by others. I tell them it isn’t their fault, that no-one asks or deserves to be a victim. Sometimes I am irked when I see no sign of their self-confidence springing back to life as a result of my wise, encouraging words. Now I know that wisdom and insight only go so far. They can help you to understand why you have contempt for yourself, but they cannot take that contempt away. I don’t know if anything can.

  ‘So. Because you were scared of coming to us, you abducted your own daughter,’ says Simon woodenly. ‘You knew that if you and Florence went missing, the police would look carefully at your close family, discover that there was already a connection to a serious crime and investigate further. Which we did.’

  ‘I took Little Face and ran away,’ I say carefully. ‘Someone else abducted my daughter.’

  He ignores me. I don’t know why I am still bothering, at this stage. Is it habit? Fear of his ridicule?

  ‘You took Florence and ran away, knowing we’d look into Laura’s murder again. Correct?’

  ‘No! I took Little Face and ran away, so that then, by anybody’s definition, even your sergeant’s, Florence would be recognised as missing. I wanted you to look for Florence.’

  ‘That’s shit and you know it. You probably heard me saying that to Briony, when you were hiding in the kitchen. Now you’re rehashing it, thinking I’ll be stupid enough to believe it because it was my theory.’

  He is far from stupid. He’s cleverer than I realised.

  ‘Trouble is, it never was my theory. I’d worked out the truth by then, all of it. I just wanted to make Briony think, about why you might have run off with a baby who supposedly wasn’t yours. Don’t you feel guilty for lying to her, treating her like an idiot? After everything she’s done for you?’

  Tears well in my eyes. Briony, unlike Simon, understands that I have to do whatever I feel it takes to protect my daughter.

  ‘You wanted us to know Vivienne had killed Laura,’ he continues compassionlessly. ‘You left that brochure, with the Post-it note, hoping we’d pick up on it. What was the original plan? You and Florence run away to Briony’s and we look into your disappearance, get suspicious about Laura’s death, start to suspect Vivienne? Then we find the brochure . . . If we put Vivienne away for Laura’s murder, you and Florence would be safe, wouldn’t you? How were we supposed to prove it, though? Did you think about that?’

  I shrug helplessly. ‘You’re the police. You were more likely to find a way of proving it than I was.’

  ‘Smart move, leaving that note on the school brochure. You’re pretty good at indirect communication, aren’t you? At manipulating people. You worked out that we’d only get the message we were supposed to get from that Post-it note if we already suspected Vivienne. Otherwise we’d have assumed F stood for Florence and seen it as irrelevant – just a harmless note to yourself, about the practicalities of getting your daughter into the school. We’d never have known you suspected Vivienne unless we suspected her, unless we were beginning to realise how dangerous she was – and if we realised that, we’d know not to let her get a whiff of your suspicions and make you her next target.’

  I am thrown by his accuracy. It is as if he has been living inside my head. And yet he still resents me. ‘I had to be so careful,’ I say. ‘I hoped that you’d speak to Darryl Beer again and he’d tell you he didn’t do it. Then, since David and I were in London on the night Laura died, you’d have to think of Vivienne. So I made sure to be disparaging about Stanley Sidgwick in front of you whenever I could. I hoped that, once I’d disappeared and you’d found the brochure, you’d wonder why I was so keen to put Florence’s name down for a school I hated.’

  ‘Well, I did think that. Like a trained fucking seal, I thought everything you wanted me to think . . .’

  ‘Simon, don’t . . .’

  ‘. . . until now.’

  My heart stops. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m intrigued. Why the change of plan? You and Florence were going to run away to Briony’s, then on from Briony’s to somewhere more secure – it was all arranged, it’s all in Briony’s statement. So what changed?’

  ‘Someone took Florence . . .’ I begin.

  ‘Lie, tell the truth, it doesn’t matter any more. I know what happened. Florence happened, didn’t she? Florence was born, and suddenly, unexpectedly, the plan wasn’t enough, was it? You needed a deeper cover. You didn’t feel protected any more by the idea that in due course you and Florence would run away. What you felt was sheer terror. Vivienne was on her way to the hospital, she was about to meet her granddaughter for the first time. You couldn’t stand the thought of it, could you? A murderer, touching your daughter, bonding with her.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ I feel raw and exposed, as if my brain and heart have been cut open.

  ‘Vivienne – the killer in your family – was on her way to meet your baby. You wanted to run away then, to hide then, prevent that meeting from ever taking place, that contamination of your child – the loving attention of a monstrously evil woman.’ I begin to cry as he describes my feelings to me. I wish he were less articulate, less precise. ‘But you couldn’t hide, could you? You couldn’t hide Florence. David was there, looking forward to showing her off to his mother. You had to stay put, endure it. So you started to think about other ways to hide. About how to hide from somebody even when you’re right in front of them.’ Simon looks up. ‘Feel free to take over the story at any point,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ he says quietly. ‘You know, I haven’t told Charlie . . . Sergeant Zailer that you and Briony knew about Vivienne. I’ve said nothing about your call to Stanley Sidgwick. I’ve protected you both from a variety of possible charges. I could lose my job, if anyone ever finds out.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I wipe my eyes. I still cannot work out what Simon feels about me. A lot of things, probably, but I would feel more comfortable if I could identify a dominant emotion.

  ‘If you want to pretend you’ve been suffering from postnatal depression and that’s why you went temporarily mad, that’s why you failed to recognise your own daughter and wasted a load of police time . . . well, I might even let that pass. I might not tell Sergeant Zailer – or even Briony – the truth. I’ll carry on protecting you, if you ask me to.’ He sighs heavily. ‘But in return, I want the truth. I need to hear you say it. And if that’s too much to ask, you can go fuck yourself.’

  The walls of Briony’s lounge close in on us. Something, right from the start, has been pushing us together, towards this moment. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘I want the full story, the truth. Am I right?’

  Towards this moment.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Everything you’ve said is true.’

  Simon closes his eyes, leans his head back against the chair. ‘Tell me,’ he says.

  ‘I was scared.’ In many ways, this is the only thing that needs to be said. It’s certainly the main thing, the factor that dominated all other considerations. ‘I realised, once Florence was born, that if Vivienne knew I’d taken her and run away, she’d have looked for us. Even if she’d never found us, I’d have been nervous, always looking over my shoulder. I suppose I sort of knew all this before Florence was born, but at that point it didn’t occur to me that there might be anything more I could do to protect us.’

  ‘And then?’ Simon prompts. His voice sounds faint, as if he’s lost all energy.

  ‘You put it better than I could have. I needed a deeper cover, and I had this . . . this thought. It seemed so crazy, but . . .’ I shrug. ‘I hoped it might be crazy enough to work. If I could make Vivienne believe that the baby in her house was not her granddaughter, even before she disappeared . . .’ I falter. I’ve never put any of this into words before. I feel as if I’m learning a new language, one that can only just describe the primal, instinctive thoughts and feelings I had after Florenc
e was born.

  ‘Vivienne trusted me. I was counting on her believing me. Not only to make things easier.’ How can I explain to Simon that, even knowing Vivienne was a murderer, I still needed her support? I was not free of her, emotionally. I don’t even know if I am now. ‘I hoped she wouldn’t just assume I was mad. She’s too scared of losing her grandchildren, after the battle over Felix. However impartial she pretended to be while she waited for the DNA test, I knew that part of her believed me. What I was saying had the horrible ring of truth, because it chimed in with all her worst fears. It’s human nature. We find it all too easy to believe in our most dreaded nightmares come to life. What I was saying about Florence struck a chord with Vivienne because it mirrored her own anxieties.’

  ‘If Sergeant Zailer had believed you, there would have been a DNA test straight away,’ says Simon. ‘What would you have done then?’

  ‘I’d have had to move quicker, stall for as long as I could to give myself a chance to escape. I knew Vivienne’d arrange a DNA test, if the police didn’t. I knew I’d have to take Florence and go to Briony’s before the test. As it turned out, I had nearly a week to prepare. Do you remember our second meeting at Chompers?’

  Simon doesn’t respond. Of course he remembers it.

  ‘When you arrived, I was on the pay-phone. I’d just phoned Briony. I was in such a state, it was hard to think strategically, but I had to. I even tried to send Briony a friendly but distant e-mail, saying something about getting together soon, to make you think I couldn’t possibly be with her. I knew you’d look at David’s computer.’

  ‘We didn’t find any e-mail.’ Simon frowns.

  ‘I was interrupted.’

  ‘When did you tell Briony about Florence’s fictional abduction, then? On the phone?’

  ‘I wanted to put that in the e-mail too,’ I remember this as I say it. ‘No. I told her when she came to pick us up. On the night we . . . left The Elms.’

  ‘Why not tell Briony the truth? You trust her completely, don’t you?’

  I nod.

  ‘So why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I mutter, staring at my lap. I really don’t know. I could have told Briony everything – about my sudden desperate need for a deeper cover. She’d have understood. I could have told her. I chose not to.

  ‘You didn’t want her to think you were crazy,’ says Simon. ‘Oh, you don’t mind her thinking you’re crazy now – post-natal depression crazy, ordinary crazy, imagining your baby is a stranger. You were happy for us all to think that. And then, no doubt, you’d have made a brave and relatively quick recovery, and suddenly recognised Florence again – a happy reunion, though you’d never really been apart. Was that the idea?’

  Again, I nod.

  ‘That sort of delusional madness is easy to own up to, isn’t it? Because there’s no responsibility attached to it. It’s helpless, not deliberate. You’ve lost your grip on reality and you’re just flailing around, hallucinating. No-one could blame you for that, could they? Whereas a carefully-thought-out plan to pretend your daughter isn’t your daughter. It may be mad, but it’s knowing, it’s precise. Some might say it’s just plain wrong.’

  ‘I wasn’t afraid of blame,’ I tell him. ‘You’ve just made me realise what I was scared of, though. I was scared of explaining something that made perfect sense to me, something I had to do, that felt so logical and inevitable, so right – I was scared of sharing that with someone else, even Briony, and having them tell me I’d lost my mind. Because I knew, you see. I knew that however freakish it sounded at first, it was the only thing I could do. I had to do it.’

  ‘I can see the logic in it. Maybe Briony would have too. Crazy enough to work, you said. I can understand that. You wanted Vivienne to think that David was the one who was keeping her grandchild from her, not you. When you and Florence disappeared, she was supposed to think David had disposed of you and the so-called other baby just before the DNA test, so that it couldn’t be proved that he’d been lying about Florence’s identity.’ Simon sounds as if he is reading out a list of charges against me. Perhaps, in his head, there exists such a document.

  I wonder if Vivienne could ever have believed her own son to be capable of such ruthlessness, or whether she would always have made excuses for him. ‘I didn’t only want Vivienne to believe me,’ I say. ‘I hoped I could convince David, if I seemed sure enough. It was like . . .’ I finish the explanation in my head: I was trying to make Florence mine and mine alone by influencing David and Vivienne’s thoughts, their most fundamental perceptions, so that when they looked at her they saw not a daughter, not a granddaughter, but a stranger’s child. Florence would have been right in front of them, yet at the same time hidden. The incongruity appealed to me. It was how I would protect my daughter, until we managed to escape.

  ‘I didn’t really want to tell Briony the whole truth,’ I say. ‘Somehow it felt . . . too personal. There was only one person I wanted to tell everything to, and that was you, Simon. There was no evidence to support my insistence that Florence wasn’t Florence, but you almost believed me, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did believe you,’ he corrects me.

  ‘You never said so. You never said, unequivocally, “I believe you, Alice”. If you had, I’d have told you everything. Laura, everything. I was just waiting for that sign, to let me know I could trust you, that you trusted me no matter what . . .’

  ‘Please.’ A look of disgust warps his face. ‘That’s a bit hard to take, from someone who’s done nothing but lie to me from the moment we met.’

  ‘I’m not lying now, am I?’

  ‘I gave you no choice.’ He coughs, sits up straight in his chair. ‘Missing people, unless they’re experienced at eluding the police, are usually found. You and Florence would have been.’ I realise that he is trying to put me back in my place, to put a suitable professional distance between us. ‘Vivienne would have insisted on her DNA test then, and the game would have been up. And if we hadn’t looked into Laura’s death again, or if we’d reached the same conclusion we reached originally, you’d have been back at square one.’

  ‘Maybe I could have stayed hidden. The case would have stopped being such a high priority. You’d have had other, more urgent cases. You’d have scaled down your efforts.’

  ‘You were staying at the home of a friend and colleague. We’d have found you.’

  ‘I’d have moved on. Sooner rather than later. But you’re probably right. I’m not the sort of person who knows how to disappear and start a new life abroad, like people do in films. I had to try, though. And I know the police give up eventually. They have to, because they’re needed elsewhere, on other cases, new missing people. Whereas Vivienne would never have given up, never. That’s why I lied, about Florence being . . . swapped. I couldn’t have lived happily or easily, knowing that Vivienne knew I had her granddaughter, that she knew exactly what I’d done to her. I’d have spent Florence’s whole childhood waiting for my punishment to find me. I know it sounds insane, I know she’s not some all-knowing, all-seeing God-like figure, but . . . well, I just couldn’t help feeling she’d find a way of getting to me, somehow.’

  Simon nods. ‘So you tried to make sure she wouldn’t care enough to look for you. And there was only one way that was going to happen – if she didn’t believe the baby you had with you was Florence. But that part of the plan was shaky as well. Vivienne wanted to find you, all right. She wanted to get her DNA test and her proof.’

  I sigh. ‘I underestimated her. I didn’t take into account how much she would want Little Face to be Florence. I thought that by the time we disappeared, she’d believe me, wholeheartedly. She’d still want the DNA test, just to be certain, but I was pretty sure she’d make up her mind in my favour long before the test. And then, I guessed, she would be almost relieved when the “other” baby disappeared. Vivienne would hate to have a child in her house who she perceived as an impostor. She did hate it. And I thought, when she looked for Florence – a
s I knew she would, she’d never stop looking – she’d look for just Florence. She wouldn’t look for me and the other baby.’

  ‘Alice, there is no other baby.’

  I shake my head. Simon mustn’t misunderstand me, not now. ‘I also wanted Little Face to be Florence,’ I say quietly. ‘But only with Vivienne out of the way, only if I could be sure she wouldn’t hurt us.’

  ‘You knew she was Florence.’

  ‘Yes, but . . . in my heart, I didn’t feel I was lying. Everything I said felt true. Florence was my baby, definitely mine. Little Face was quite different. Little Face was the baby who might have been stolen from me at any moment. Or I might have been stolen from her. I didn’t know whose she would turn out to be. Do you understand?’

  ‘You disowned your own daughter. You’re the best liar I’ve ever seen in action.’

  ‘Because it didn’t feel like a lie! It was agony,’ I say, my eyes filling with tears. ‘Do you know what the worst part was, the absolute worst? Destroying all the photographs, the only photographs of Florence.’ That awful moment, when I opened the back of the camera, feeling as if what I was letting in was not light but the worst sort of darkness. ‘I did it, though. I had to, Simon. It was like I was being driven by this . . . this force, and I had to do everything I did.’

  ‘You lied to me. I trusted you.’

  I do not ask: then why did I never feel I had your trust? Why did you never once say, ‘I believe you’?

  ‘You have to try to understand what I did,’ I tell him.

  ‘What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing? I think I’ve done well, all things considered. I think I’ve done pretty fucking well. Not perfect, though, not by a long shot. There are still some things I can’t get my head round.’

  ‘Simon, the details don’t matter . . .’

  ‘The details are all that matter. Why all that bollocks about Mandy Buckley, from the labour ward? Why ask me to look for David’s father?’

  ‘Because he was married to Vivienne, and they split up! Something made him so desperate to get away that he didn’t even keep in touch with his son. Contact with David would have meant contact with Vivienne. I guessed – maybe wrongly – that he was bound to know what she was really like, and maybe he’d even wondered, when he read about Laura’s death in the papers . . .’