Stranger Child

by Rachel Abbott

  David guided Tasha across to the dining table at the far end of the room and pulled out a chair for her to sit down. ‘I wish your mum was here, Tasha. She never knew I’d lost you, of course, but she would be so happy for both of us today.’

  Tasha still hadn’t spoken, but Emma was shocked at the look the girl flashed at her father. Was that anger she saw?

  ‘David, I’m sorry – but do you think we can have a word for a moment?’ She smiled at Tasha, but got a stony stare in response.

  The kitchen suddenly felt oppressive and dark, even with all the lights on. It had always seemed like a haven of warmth on even the coldest, dullest days, but the dark skies had finally given way to heavy rain, which was pounding on the glass skylights that ran the length of the room.

  David turned his head and gave Emma a slightly puzzled look, but he knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t be asking to speak to him for no reason. He leaned across the table and stroked Natasha’s upper arm.

  ‘Back in a moment, sweetheart.’

  As he made his way round the kitchen island to where Emma was standing, she thought about her next words.

  ‘If Tasha’s staying, we’re going to have to think about some clothes for her and getting a room ready. I can sort all that. What do you think?’ Emma felt a moment’s shame at her desperate need to escape the stifling atmosphere of the kitchen, to get Ollie somewhere safe where they could relax and breathe more easily.

  ‘What do you mean, if she’s staying?’

  ‘David, of course we want her to stay. But I don’t know how these things work, and neither do you. We don’t even know how she got here. I don’t know what social services will say about it, that’s all.’

  ‘You’ve phoned social services?’

  ‘No,’ Emma swallowed her irritation. ‘I haven’t called anybody. I was going to call the police, but …’

  ‘Police?’ David turned to Emma, and she flinched slightly at his tone. ‘Why were you going to call the police?’

  Emma closed her eyes for a second.

  ‘There was a girl in my kitchen. A girl I didn’t know, who refused to speak to me. I assumed she was lost, or had been in an accident, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. Of course I thought I should call the police, but Tasha took the phone, so I couldn’t.’

  ‘She did what?’

  Emma couldn’t bring herself to mention the knife, sitting harmlessly on the worktop. Had she overreacted?

  ‘Never mind that now. But we do have to call them. She’s thirteen – and only just. We don’t know if any harm has been done to her. We don’t how she got here today, where she’s been living, or what happened to her on that dreadful night six years ago.’

  David ran his fingers through his fair hair, pushing it back from his forehead – a classic sign of tension that Emma recognised only too well in her husband. ‘I just need a bit of time with her, Em. Is that too much to ask?’

  Emma didn’t know what to think. Perhaps if Natasha had been her child she might have felt the way that David did. Maybe she was placing too much emphasis on understanding all that had happened, rather than celebrating Natasha’s return, but she was still a missing person as far as the police were concerned.

  ‘She’s a child, darling, and the police need to know she’s home. They’ll help us to find out what happened to her, to understand what we need to do to help her.’

  David reached out and pulled Emma close.

  ‘I know you’re right. I’m just scared they’ll take her away again. But I won’t let them. Will you make the call? I want to be with Tasha.’

  ‘Of course I will.’ She hugged her husband tightly and felt his body relax against hers. ‘I’ll do it now.’

  Emma gently let go of David and turned round.

  Tasha was leaning against the door to the hall with her arms folded.

  ‘No police,’ she said, her eyes like marbles – hard and shining.

  7

  ‘No police,’ she said again. ‘Call the police and I’m out of here.’

  Those were the first words they had heard Natasha speak, and Emma could see the fear in David’s eyes that she meant every word of it. It was ridiculous. They had to tell the police.

  Since Tasha’s pronouncement, Emma had managed to persuade her to sit back down at the table, but she had failed to persuade her to take her coat off, even though in the warm kitchen she must have been far too hot. It was as if she wasn’t yet sure she was staying.

  ‘I need to make Ollie’s tea,’ Emma said, leaning forwards to give her son a gentle kiss on his cheek. ‘Come on, little man, I’ll make you your favourite, shall I?’ She nuzzled his neck with her nose, wanting to hear him giggle. He smiled, but it was a much more muted response than normal. Poor Ollie. He wasn’t used to unrest in this house where calm usually reigned.

  She walked across to the iPod on its speaker stand and switched it on. As the opening bars of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ filled the room, Ollie started bouncing around in his chair. David and Tasha could think what they liked. It was time to focus on what her son needed.

  ‘Can you give me a hand with something, please, David?’ Emma asked. She had to speak to him. They had to decide what to do.

  She could tell from the way that David looked at her that he understood her ruse, but with the music playing and Tasha seated at the other end of the room, they should be able to speak in private. David walked over and dropped his arm around Emma’s shoulders, giving her a brief hug.

  ‘It’ll get easier in a day or two, I promise.’

  Emma smiled at the typical David response. Ignore things, and they’ll go away.

  ‘We have to tell the police right away, David.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s actually worse than you think. That’s why I was home so soon. There’s something I need to tell you. But not here, Em. I don’t want Tasha to hear.’

  ‘Well I’m not leaving Ollie on his own with her.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Emma, what is the matter with you? What do you think she’s going to do to him? He’s her brother.’

  Emma didn’t know how to explain it to David, but it wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t leaving Tasha with Ollie.

  ‘Turn to face me, speak quietly, and Tasha won’t hear you.’

  David leaned back against the kitchen units and spoke in a voice so low that Emma could barely hear.

  ‘I had a visit from the police. They found the body of a young girl earlier today, and they thought it might be Tasha. They took my DNA to check.’

  Emma stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘What? Oh darling, that must have been terrible for you.’ She reached forwards and gave him a hug then leaned back, her hands still holding his waist. ‘So it’s even more important that we ring them – tell them that it can’t be Tasha because she’s sitting in our kitchen? Some other poor parents have just lost their daughter, and the police need to focus on who the girl really is, rather than wasting time on checking if it’s Tasha.’

  David closed his eyes briefly and nodded.

  ‘Look, why don’t you give Ollie his tea and I’ll have another ten minutes with Tasha, then we’ll tell her together why we need to call the police. Is that okay, Em?’

  Her arms slipped behind his back again and she pulled him close to her. She felt the warmth of his skin through his thin shirt, but his lean body seemed vulnerable, insubstantial, and she held him tighter.

  8

  The drive home from his office should have taken Tom about twenty minutes, but tonight it was a stop-start marathon. It was all about timing, and this evening he’d got it wrong. Some boy band was playing at the Manchester Arena and the streets were heaving with young girls, giddy with excitement, practically skipping towards the venue with tolerant parents trailing disconsolately in their wake. He looked at their laughing, happy faces, and an image of another young face, distorted by the ravages of death, forced itself to the forefront of his mind. Whatever had happened to the child they had fou
nd that morning, he was going to get the bastard that did it to her.

  Becky had volunteered for the awful job of visiting the families of the two girls that fitted the age profile. David Joseph had been easy to find, and Becky had seen him at his company offices earlier that day. However, Amy Davidson had been in care since she was two, and nobody knew who her father was. Her mother was in Styal Prison, and she had shrugged when told that the police were checking if a child found dead in suspicious circumstances could be hers. She hadn’t seen the child since she had been taken into care and had never shown the slightest interest in her daughter. Nevertheless, hers was the only DNA they would be able to use for identification.

  David Joseph had been a different matter. He had begged to see the body – to check for himself if it was his daughter – but Becky had, of course, refused. They had promised to rush through the DNA comparison, but she had been at pains to explain to him that there was every chance that this was some other child. Still, the sooner they could put the man’s mind at rest, the better.

  If the child did turn out to be Natasha Joseph, though, it would send the investigation in a different direction entirely, because when she had disappeared aged six she was definitely not a runaway and he didn’t like to contemplate what might have happened to her in the last few years.

  While Becky was out, Tom had made a call. ‘Jumbo, sorry to disturb you. I’m sure you’ve got your hands full – but Becky said you worked on the Natasha Joseph case six years ago. I’ve read the file, but I thought it worth tapping into your encyclopaedic memory.’

  ‘I don’t know about the encyclopaedic bit, but I do remember that case well. Man lost his wife and child in one night. We got called out to examine the car when they knew a child was missing. But I’m not sure I can help, Tom, because there was nothing to find – no blood, for sure – other than the mother’s, of course. And she had catastrophic injuries; her neck was broken.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering how the girl got out of the car, because presumably the child lock was set. What conclusion did you come to?’

  ‘We never got any real answers to be honest. The door next to the kid’s seat did have the child lock set, but the other side didn’t, so she could have got out that way. We did wonder if somebody had rescued her and maybe kept her – but we didn’t find any evidence to support that theory, so we concluded that she must have got out of the car to try to find help and then wandered off.

  Jumbo hadn’t been able to offer any more insight than that, which was more or less what Tom was expecting. Had there been anything else, it would have been in the file.

  So where the hell did the child go?

  He still had no answers as he pulled into his drive and noticed with a twinge of disappointment that Leo’s car wasn’t there. She must be running late. Tom grabbed his things from the back seat, walked briskly up to the front door and put his key in the lock, listening for the beep of his alarm. He walked to the control box and switched it off.

  Ever since a break-in at his cottage in Cheshire the previous summer, Tom had become extra cautious. It had seemed at the time that the burglars were after something in his brother Jack’s papers, and now those same papers were here – in this house.

  Tom knew he was never going to be completely relaxed until he had bitten the bullet and been through the papers to see if he could work out why anybody would want to steal them – unless, of course, he was too late, and they had found what they were looking for back in the summer.

  He went to the kitchen cupboard and grabbed a glass, poured himself a generous measure of Glenmorangie and took it through to the sitting room. He sat on the sofa, but quickly abandoned the comfort of its soft cushions and slid down onto the rug, his back propped against the seat he had just vacated. He reached out to the coffee table for a remote control and pressed a button to choose a song at random.

  Tom had Jack to thank for his eclectic taste in music. From Tom’s early teens to the day Jack died the two brothers had enjoyed many a heated discussion about which genre of music was the best. Tom could remember clearly the first night that Jack had told him to come to his bedroom to be ‘educated’. He had sat cross-legged on the bed trying to argue that Jack’s taste in music was terrible, until in the end Jack had pulled out a couple of cans of beer from under his bed and thrust one into Tom’s hand.

  ‘Drink that, chill and listen,’ he’d said to a slightly surprised but delighted thirteen-year-old Tom.

  It was a habit that had stuck with them for the rest of Jack’s life. A couple of times each year they would get together, drink beer and listen to music. Tom rarely drank beer on any other occasion. It was a Jack ritual, and somehow the taste went with the event.

  He took a sip of his Scotch. He seldom allowed himself time to think about Jack, and he was afraid that scrutinising his brother’s papers would open a kind of Pandora’s box. The documents had been with Jack’s solicitor for years as Tom continued to ignore them, and he was wary of the memories – not all of them positive. Memories were the hardest thing to deal with.

  The truth was that Jack had been a law unto himself. He had abhorred any kind of discipline or control, and his staggeringly astute brain was constantly searching for the next challenge – until finally he found the one thing that would continue to grow in complexity and stimulate his fertile mind. The computer. As he got older, it became an obsession. From the day he bought himself a ZX Spectrum Jack rarely left his room.

  Tom had been in awe of him. This boy with the wild black hair tied back into something approximating a ponytail, with pale-blue eyes that seemed to burn every surface they touched, was actually his brother. Jack was only three years older than Tom, but he seemed light years away in attitude. He always called Tom ‘little brother’ – almost as if he couldn’t remember his name. But those special nights when Tom was allowed into the secret world of Jack’s bedroom where clothes lay in heaps on the floor and AC/ DC blasted out from homemade speakers were never to be forgotten.

  Tom took another mouthful of whisky, forcing his mind away from Jack and onto things that mattered now – like a young girl who had suffered God knows what and had been left to die in a cold, damp wood.

  He pulled his phone out from his trouser pocket and pressed a key.

  ‘Lucy? It’s Dad. I thought I’d give you a quick call and see how you’re doing.’

  9

  Ollie sat quietly in his chair, munching on his favourite cheese on toast – for the moment oblivious to the tension around him.

  Tasha hadn’t spoken again, but they had to get through to her somehow.

  ‘Tell her the truth,’ Emma said. ‘Explain to Tasha why we have to tell the police that she’s home.’

  David put his head on one side, as if to say ‘Must I?’, but he knew he had no choice.

  ‘Tasha, the police came to see me today, to ask me about you.’

  Tasha’s eyes were instantly round with fear, her eyes flicking between David and Emma.

  ‘I’m not supposed to tell anybody about this, because the news isn’t going to be made public until tomorrow, but a girl’s body was found this morning in some woods. The police thought it might be you.’

  Tasha dropped her head. Her hair fell forwards to cover her face, but Emma was sure she had glimpsed what looked like tears in the girl’s eyes. She made a noise that sounded like a hiss.

  ‘Hey,’ Emma said, ‘it’s okay, Tasha. They just didn’t know who it was, and the girl was about your age so they wanted to check with your dad. That’s all.’

  Tasha didn’t look up.

  ‘Tasha, what is it, darling?’ David said, standing up and moving towards her.

  As he leaned forwards to put his arm gently round her shoulders, Tasha threw herself to one side.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said. She kept her body angled stiffly away from her father until he withdrew his arm. If there had been tears in her eyes, there was no trace of them now.

  Emma felt David’s hurt
as if it was her own, but her biggest concern was Ollie. He shouldn’t be here for this. He looked startled for a moment, then his face crumpled and his mouth turned down as fat tears slid down his flushed cheeks. He should have been in bed ages ago, but Emma hadn’t wanted to be separated from him even for a moment.

  ‘Tasha, I’m really sorry that you’re upset, but I am going to have to take Ollie out of here. All of this is so distressing for him and he’s not coping well. He looks feverish. I won’t call the police. Okay? Not until we’ve worked things through with you. I promise – and I don’t break promises.’

  Without waiting for anybody’s permission, Emma lifted Ollie from his chair and pulled him close.

  ‘Come on, little man. Let’s get you all snuggled up in your cot. It’s okay. Shhh, sweetheart.’ Emma kissed his hot skin.

  As she turned towards the door, Tasha jumped up.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she said.

  Emma was about to object, but one look at Tasha’s face and she knew she couldn’t. The girl was determined to follow her. Emma shook off her anxiety and told herself Tasha was just a child.

  What would Caroline do?

  ‘Why don’t we all go? We can show you where you’re going to be sleeping, and you can have a look round with your dad while I get Ollie settled.’

  ‘Good idea,’ David said, seemingly grateful to be doing something that gave Tasha’s presence a sense of permanence.

  There was one tricky moment when they reached the top of the stairs. The spare room where Natasha would be sleeping was the first door on the right, but when Emma opened it with a smile, saying, ‘Here you are, Natasha,’ the girl walked straight past her and along to the next room – now Ollie’s. She pushed the door ajar and stood still – looking in.

  David ran his hand through his hair again, his face etched with guilt. ‘We should have put Ollie somewhere else – left her room as it was,’ he whispered. ‘That was a mistake, Em. She’s going to feel that I’d forgotten her.’