Found

by Erin Kinsley

The three chairs are arranged with equal spacing round the table: no obvious divide.

  ‘Come in, Evan,’ Rose is saying. ‘Have a seat, sweetheart.’

  Naylor doesn’t stand up, but turns in her chair and smiles. Evan looks much better than when she last saw him – he’s put on weight and grown a little, and the anaemic pallor she remembers in his face has become a healthy pinkness, probably due in part to his embarrassment in this situation. He’s better dressed too, in clothes that fit, and yet there’s still something unnatural about him. Naylor knows he’s twelve, but if you saw him in the street you’d take him for an oversized nine- or ten-year-old. Most kids his age want to dress older, growing up too fast. Evan seems the opposite, wearing clothes which are too young. And there’s something else: he doesn’t have a phone. What kid these days isn’t always on a phone? But Evan’s hands are empty.

  ‘Hi, Evan,’ she says. ‘It’s nice to see you again.’

  Evan doesn’t reply, but sits down next to her, Rose taking the third chair.

  ‘You remember Rachel, I expect,’ she says. ‘She was with us when we spoke a few months ago.’

  Very briefly, Evan looks at Naylor, before his eyes return to a spot on the floor.

  ‘I want to start by saying thank you for coming to meet us,’ says Rose. ‘I think you’re already aware of the reason we want to talk to you, but before we get to that I just want to emphasise that you’re free to go at any time. Your mum’s waiting downstairs, ready to whisk you away as soon as we’re finished. But we’re hoping you’ll stay with us for a little while at least.’

  There’s no reaction from Evan, except that his foot is tapping rapidly on the floor. He looks so keyed up, so uptight, Naylor won’t be surprised if he makes a run for the door. Somehow they have to secure him in place, get him settled down.

  She lifts the cover of the file that’s on the table. Rose won’t approve of what she’s about to do, but she hopes she’ll understand the rationale behind it.

  She slides a copy of Liam Keslake’s photo under Evan’s nose. Evan glances at it, then whips his head away, as if taking a sudden interest in the picture of moorland heather. But Naylor sees his eyes come back to it. Then they’re back on the floor.

  ‘When those men took you, Evan,’ says Naylor quietly, ‘one of the first things we did to try and find you was to put your picture everywhere we could. Newspapers, TV, magazines, everywhere we could think of. Thousands and thousands of people saw your picture, so if they got even a glimpse of you, they’d call us. This picture is of Liam, and I’m very sorry to say we believe he’s in the same place you were, not very long ago. That’s why we’re asking you again to talk to us about that place, difficult though we know it is for you to remember. Because you can do a good thing by talking to us, Evan. You might be the key to finding Liam, and to finding the men who hurt you, and if we can find them, we can punish them, and put them in jail for a very, very long time.’

  She waits, and Rose waits with her. Evan doesn’t speak.

  ‘Please, Evan,’ says Rose. ‘Please help us. Please help Liam.’

  The silence goes on, and on. Naylor is about to shake her head and signal to Rose that they should give up.

  But then Evan speaks.

  ‘I want to help Liam,’ he says. ‘But I can’t.’

  Rose meets Naylor’s eyes, signalling her to keep quiet.

  ‘Why do you say that, Evan?’ she asks.

  ‘Because if I tell you anything, my mum will know and my dad will know. They’ll know what happened. And my grandpa.’

  Tears are running down Evan’s face. Rose passes him a box of tissues.

  ‘Is that what’s worrying you, Evan, your mum and dad knowing?’

  Evan nods. ‘Mostly.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve been so quiet?’

  He nods again.

  There’s a lump in Naylor’s throat, stemming from her pity and compassion for this boy in his embarrassment, and she tries to imagine how she’d have felt at his age, with the threat of revelation of the details of the abuse hanging over her.

  ‘You were afraid if you spoke to them, they’d ask you about it?’

  He nods.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart.’ Naylor can tell that, like her, Rose is aching to put her arm round Evan, but distance must be maintained.

  ‘That won’t happen,’ she says. ‘We give you our word that nothing you say to us – nothing, not one word – will be discussed with your mum, or your dad, or your grandpa or anyone else who knows you. You won’t have to show your face in court and you won’t set eyes on those men. And when we catch them, I’ll make sure your mum and dad come nowhere near the court while your case is being heard. They’ll know nothing you don’t choose to tell them, and if you choose for them to know absolutely nothing, then that’s how it’ll be. You’ll be anonymous to everyone except us and the judge. How does that sound?’

  Evan blows his nose.

  ‘Could you agree to work like that, Evan?’ Rose persists. ‘I’m sure your mum and dad will understand. I’ve got kids and I know if any of them felt like you do, I would absolutely respect their wishes. Any mum and dad would. So if we talk to your mum and get her agreement, will you talk to us then?’

  Evan looks at her and nods his head. Yes.

  ‘I’ll go and have a word with her,’ says Naylor.

  Claire is sitting on a hard, lime-green sofa facing a window with a view of leafless trees and melancholy sky, asking herself how their lives ever came to this. The feelings she has – of unwanted disconnection, of loss of control, of fearfulness, of deep, aching love – she’s experienced before, though at a much lower pitch. She cried on Evan’s first day of kindergarten, and again when he had his first sleepover, on his first trip to scout camp and when he started his last school, which in relative terms was only a short while ago, but as things have turned out, was in another life. What came after that, while he was really gone, was wholly different. That was wailing, primal grief, which put anything she’s feeling today into telescopic perspective. What is it they ask in hospitals? The pain scale, one to ten. Today she’d give an eight or nine. The grief while he was gone, in the low twenties.

  Now here they are, Evan’s first day in the Vulnerable Witness Suite. She’s fighting the instinct to run to that room, to barge in and grab her son’s hand and haul him out of there, and tell those women with him to send apologies to the Keslakes but they must get through it as best they can, as she and Matt did. Evan’s been through enough, God knows. He doesn’t deserve to be reliving it.

  He might say that for himself. He might still refuse them. But just as she’s hoping that’s what he’ll do, the swing doors to the reception area where she’s waiting open, and Naylor’s walking towards her.

  Evan’s only been in there ten minutes. He must be refusing to speak.

  Naylor gives her a smile that’s a long way from her usual efficient, put-you-at-ease, I’m-in-charge professional greeting. This smile is diffident, uncertain, the same smile of empathic sympathy undertakers wear. She sits down next to Claire, slanting herself towards her, and in an unprecedented move, gives Claire’s hand a squeeze.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asks.

  ‘Not really,’ says Claire.

  ‘There’s good news,’ says Naylor, and Claire thinks what’s good news for Naylor is probably bad news for her, and she’s right. ‘He will talk to us, but only on condition . . . I’m sorry, Claire.’

  ‘On what condition?’

  ‘Only on condition that you and Matt stay well away from all this. He’s told us why he hasn’t been speaking.’

  Claire has never asked herself why Evan stopped speaking. She’s assumed it was down to some manifestation of shock, an understandable reaction to a horrific situation, like in the French Revolution when Marie Antoinette’s hair turned white before they chopped off her head.

/>   ‘This may be hard to hear,’ Naylor goes on, ‘but he thought the only way to stop you asking about what he went through was to keep silent. He’s desperately, deeply ashamed about the abuse. It’s not an uncommon reaction. But he doesn’t want you to know what happened to him.’

  Claire bursts into tears.

  As she scrabbles in her handbag for tissues, Naylor puts a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry, Claire. I’m so sorry to put you all through this. But if we’re to have a chance of catching these men, this may be the only way.’

  Claire dabs her eyes and blows her nose.

  ‘What’s he said, exactly?’

  ‘He wants to know that you won’t get to hear anything he has to say. That means you staying away from the trial – assuming we get that far – and not asking him anything about our meetings with him.’

  ‘He wants to exclude us.’

  ‘He wants to protect you, and himself. He’s afraid if you get to know what he’s been made to do, you’ll love him less.’

  Claire begins to cry again.

  ‘That’s not possible. Please tell him that’s not possible.’

  ‘I will,’ says Naylor. ‘And I have to say, I think his approach is the right one. Trust me. Some things it really is better not to know. What he wants from you is acceptance of his need to keep this private, between him and us.’

  Claire wipes her eyes again.

  ‘I don’t know what Matt will say. All he talks about is our day in court. He wants to know who did it. He wants to kill them.’

  ‘Better he’s not there, then. But I have to ask you to trust us to guide Evan through this process, to take a step back. To just be his mum and dad and leave the crime and punishment to us. Can I tell him you’ll do that? I know how hard it is, Claire. I really do.’

  ‘Is that what he wants?’

  ‘It’s what he needs.’

  ‘There’s no choice, then, is there? OK.’

  Naylor pats Claire’s shoulder.

  ‘Thank you. So on that basis, we’re going to talk to him now. Probably not too long. We’ll be taking it at his pace, and if he becomes at all distressed, we’ll stop. Why don’t you go and find yourself a cup of coffee in the cafeteria, and plan to be back here in an hour or so? The latte’s not bad if that’s your thing. I’ve got your mobile. If we need anything, I’ll give you a call.’

  When Naylor leaves her, Claire visits the sanitised toilets and splashes cold water on her face. She doesn’t want Evan to know she’s been crying, but with a lipstick top-up and a line of eye pencil she doesn’t look bad. No one interrupts her while she’s in there, so she thinks it would be a good place to have a private conversation with Matt.

  When he picks up, she can hear noise in the background, the hiss of a coffee machine, a cashier’s voice asking for money.

  ‘It’s me,’ she says. ‘Can you talk?’

  ‘I’m in Costa. I’ve been thinking about you both. How’s it going?’

  She gives him a précis of her conversation with Naylor. When she stops talking, Matt doesn’t speak.

  ‘What do you think?’ she presses him.

  ‘I get it,’ he says, and then with the phone held away from his mouth, he says Thank you to the barista. ‘I get what he wants and I get why, but we’ll be so in the dark.’

  In the dark.

  As soon as the words are said, they resonate with them both, how appropriate they are for the place their son has been.

  ‘Maybe they’re right,’ says Claire. ‘We’re not the people to bring him back. They know what they’re doing, and we’ve just been floundering.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ She hears him take a gulp of his coffee. ‘I think he’s doing OK, considering where he’s been.’

  ‘I worry this will set him back, making him relive it.’

  ‘Or maybe it’ll help him come to terms with it. A bit of therapy. And anyway, if he gets set back, we’ll just bring him forward again.’

  ‘I wish you were here.’

  ‘So do I,’ says Matt. ‘Will you ring me later, let me know how he is?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We can do this, you know. We got him back, and that’s all that matters.’

  A few short months ago, Claire would have questioned that. Now, she thinks he’s right.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she says. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’

  ‘Love you,’ says Matt.

  Jack’s taken advantage of Evan’s rare absence to pay a visit to Helen Trewitt, his bee-keeping neighbour. He takes the Freelander to the bottom of the Trewitts’ lane, but finding the gate closed, he parks up on the rough ground, and sets off to walk up to the house. The day is bright, biting cold, and Jack feels every breath of frigid air deep in his lungs. A third of the way up the track, he stops to rest, telling himself it’s to get a look at Andrew Trewitt’s Blackface ram. A few paces further on, he feels the need to stop again, fighting against a rising feeling of nausea. The track’s somehow grown in length since he was last here – how is that possible? – but only months ago he ran up here like a young man. By the time he reaches the farmyard, he’s feeling very unwell, fighting for breath and his heart-rate unsteady.

  Pulling himself together as best he can, he knocks at the farmhouse door.

  ‘Jack! Come in!’ Helen’s always welcoming, but she takes one look at Jack and makes him sit down.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asks. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea.’

  ‘A glass of water,’ says Jack, hunting in his pockets for his tablets and inhaler, but he’s left them in the glove-box of the Freelander.

  ‘Tea’s good for everything,’ says Helen, and she finds fruitcake to up Jack’s blood sugar. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t drive up. At our age, who wants to be slogging up that track? How are you anyway, Jack? How are you getting on?’

  ‘I miss her,’ he says, repressing the pricking tears, as he seems to do constantly these days. ‘It isn’t easy, not easy at all. But I’m soldiering on, for Evan’s sake.’

  ‘He’s a worthwhile project, that boy.’ Helen pours tea and cuts the fruitcake. A cat lying on the windowsill above the Aga gets up from its blanket, turns round and settles back to sleep. ‘He’s a credit to you, Jack, he really is.’

  Jack tells her about the police intervention and how he fears a backward step.

  ‘I wouldn’t be too worried,’ says Helen. ‘It had to come sometime. They were always going to need some kind of statement, and it might do him good to actually talk about it. It’s not good to keep things bottled up.’

  Jack doesn’t agree, though he doesn’t say so. He has no wish to know what Evan went through.

  ‘Anyway, we’re thinking about Christmas now,’ he says, ‘and I’ve been wondering what to get the lad. Thanks to you he’s very taken with the idea of bees, so I thought I might get him one of those outfits, you know, the white overalls and the mask.’

  Helen laughs.

  ‘A bee-suit. That’s a very good idea.’

  ‘It is if you’d agree to tutor him a bit before we get a hive. Bees are well outside my remit. Would you take him under your wing, Helen, show him the ropes?’

  ‘It’d be my pleasure,’ says Helen.

  ‘And where would I get one of these bee-suits? I don’t suppose you’ve one to fit him?’

  ‘’Fraid not. But you could get one off the internet.’

  Jack waves a dismissive hand.

  ‘We don’t have anything to do with technology at our house. Dora and I, we’re . . . At least, I’m too old a dog to learn that new trick. I could ask Matt, I suppose.’

  ‘Would you like me to get one for you?’

  Jack smiles.

  ‘Mrs Trewitt, you’re a godsend. If you wouldn’t mind, that would be champion. I’ll leave you some cash
to pay for it.’

  Helen laughs.

  ‘Pay me when it arrives. And would you like me to wrap it for you?’

  Jack smiles again.

  ‘You read my mind. Dora always did all the wrapping and labelling. To be honest, I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘You’re an old dinosaur, the same as Andrew,’ says Helen. ‘He can lamb two hundred ewes, but reckons he couldn’t wrap a box of chocolates.’

  ‘It’s the male temperament.’

  ‘It’s laziness. But under the circumstances, you deserve a break. I’ll give you a ring when it arrives.’

  Jack finds the going easier on the way back down, but still takes it steady. In this direction, the view’s spread before him, familiar yet unique in its changeability. Isn’t that what Dora used to say, never the same view twice? And it’s true: the light, the colours, the sky mean that though there are constants in the land and its features – the walls, the valleys, the track-ways – everything else is always changing, an eternal dance of infinite variety.

  Close to the gate, he looks across the valley towards the gritstone edge at Ainsclough Top. It’s a bleak spot from here, a castle on its hill, a bastion as he described it to Evan, and he wonders about him and how he’s getting on. Then he thinks how empty the house will feel when he arrives back there, how there’ll be no one in the kitchen to make him a cup of tea or hear how he got on with Helen.

  Maybe he shouldn’t go home quite yet. Maybe he should drive into town and buy a paper. Maybe he’ll find something for Evan there, a little treat to welcome him back. So, climbing into the car, he turns it round, but instead of heading up his own lane, he stays on the road, leaving Ainsclough Top to its own brooding isolation.

  The lanes are dark and slushy with the remains of winter’s first snow, which melts on contact with the roadside puddles and is too wet to make an impact on the tarmac. Claire wonders if Evan’s sleeping, but he’s still and quiet much of the time these days, and stillness and silence are indicators of nothing.

  The headlamps light familiar landmarks. A stand of trees too large to be a copse but not quite big enough to be a wood – which Evan knows is a perfect place to look for owls – looms up out of the dusk, just before the lopsided milestone Jack says has been there three hundred years, its guidance – Harrogate 27 miles – barely readable for its covering of moss.