Perfect Little Children

by Sophie Hannah

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Dom and I are sitting in his car outside the police station. “I think that went pretty well,” he says. “Better than I expected. It’s a relief to hand it over to the professionals.”

  Not for the first time in our twenty-three-year marriage, I wonder how two people can live happily side by side and sleep in the same bed every night—two people who would probably die for each other if necessary—and yet see the world in such profoundly different ways. I try to imagine how I might feel if I believed Paul Pollard was capable of resolving the problem. Why don’t I believe it? Maybe I should try to.

  Dom starts the car and we pull out of the car park and set off for home. “Beth, I need to tell you something,” he says. “I don’t think it means anything—beyond what we already know, that something messed up’s going on—but I wouldn’t feel fair keeping it from you. I was going to tell you last night, but then—”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Yesterday, all the Braids’ social media accounts disappeared. Every last one.”

  “What do you mean? Why would they disappear?”

  “It’d only happen if they’d been deliberately deleted by their owners.”

  I swallow hard. “And . . . you didn’t think this was worth mentioning to PC Pollard?”

  “No,” says Dom. “Because about three hours later, they all reappeared. I looked through them all—Lewis’s Instagram and Twitter, Thomas and Emily’s Twitter. Nothing looked different. All the stuff that had been there before was still there, so it’s not like they did it because they wanted to delete stuff. You don’t need to deactivate an account to delete individual posts anyway.”

  “How certain are you that nothing was different when the accounts reappeared?”

  “Not infallibly certain, but I’m pretty sure.”

  “I didn’t realize you were familiar enough with their social media accounts to know what was on them. I assumed you’d found them, had a quick look, then not looked again.”

  “Yeah, well.” Dom smiles sheepishly. “You’re not the only one who’s curious.”

  Of course. Who wouldn’t be curious? He’s just given himself away. “You’ve been downplaying your level of interest in the hope of getting me to ease off,” I say.

  He doesn’t deny it.

  “If you’re interested in how I feel about that? Not great. You could have saved me a few sleepless hours of wondering if I’m crazy because you, a normal person, just didn’t seem to care that much.”

  “You’re right. I’m—”

  “What time did all this happen, the social media stuff?” I ask quickly, so that there’s no time for him to apologize. Probably soon I’ll forgive him for trying to manage me instead of communicating honestly, but not yet. Not for at least an hour.

  “I noticed the accounts were gone early yesterday—nine-ish. By noon they were back up.”

  “And then later that same day, Flora rings up, supposedly for a friendly, news-swapping chat? What does that tell you?”

  Dom shakes his head with a shrug.

  “They’re panicking. Whoever’s running the show can’t decide on a strategy. First it’s ‘Disappear, delete everything,’ then it’s ‘Act as normal as possible, phone, pretend all’s well.’ There’d have been no point in telling Pollard about it because it’s not a direct lead to a crime.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “We’ll never hear from him again,” I say. “If we chase him for updates, he’ll avoid us.”

  “I disagree,” says Dom. “He’s going to do something, and he’ll let us know the upshot, once he has. But whether he does or not . . .”

  “What?” From his tone, it sounds as if he’s about to make another attempt at managing me.

  “We’re agreed that we’re leaving this now, right? You and me. We take no further action. We don’t even look at Lewis’s Instagram. For us—apart from gratefully receiving any updates PC Pollard chooses to give us—this ends here. Yes?”

  Bearing in mind his views about the benefits of avoiding a hard “no,” I say, “I can’t give you an unconditional guarantee that I’m not going to look at Lewis’s Instagram and Twitter again. I’m sorry.”

  “And if I ask you to promise that’s all you’ll do? No more than that?”

  “I could make that promise and then end up breaking it because of . . . something I can’t foresee at this precise moment. Like: more and worse sinister shit happens, and PC Pollard turns out to be useless.”

  “You don’t have to be the person who deals with every problem in the world, Beth.”

  “Really?” I snap. “Just remind me what global problems you’re dealing with, currently?”

  “I’m dealing with trying to keep our family in one piece.”

  “That’s so unnecessarily dramatic! Our family’s fine. Stop reciting lines you’ve heard in bad films that have nothing to do with our situation.”

  Dom takes a deep breath and goes on. “I’m trying to make sure that Zannah passes her exams, that you and I continue to do our jobs and earn money, that our life stays on track. I’m sorry if that doesn’t feel like an ambitious enough project for you.”

  “I care about our family as much as you do, Dom. And I know we’re okay and will remain okay. Caring about your own family doesn’t have to mean turning a blind eye to something terrible that’s happening in another family. I know it’s not my job to make sure the Caters’ kids are safe. It’s Pollard’s job. And if he does it . . . great.”

  Dom says nothing. He doesn’t like any of my answers. Not one bit.

  Gerard Tillotson’s words come back to me: “Lewis won’t have liked that at all.”

  By the time we turn onto the A14, I’ve worked out what it means—why it snagged in my mind as sounding strange at the time, though I couldn’t work out what the significance was.

  I say to Dom, “When Zannah and I were at the Tillotsons’ house, he said something weird—Flora’s dad.”

  Nothing. No response.

  “I told him I’d asked Lewis on the phone how old Georgina was now, in a ‘doesn’t time fly’ sort of way, and he said, ‘Lewis won’t have liked that at all.’ As soon as he said it, I thought, ‘No, that’s wrong, there’s something off about it,’ but then the conversation moved on and I forgot about it until just now.”

  “Doesn’t sound strange to me,” says Dom. “If one of your kids is dead and you’ve decided to pretend they’re still alive—though God knows why you would, but anyway—you’re hardly going to welcome being asked about them and having to spout a load of bullshit to maintain the façade, are you?”

  “You didn’t hear how Flora’s dad said it. It wasn’t like ‘Lewis will have found that deeply uncomfortable or upsetting,’ it was more . . . wry and knowing. ‘Lewis won’t have liked that at all.’ Almost as if he was thinking that, for Lewis, it would be more of a PR or image failure. Someone’s seen through the image he was hoping to project and that’s a disaster for his ego. Or maybe it was ‘Lewis will have hated to learn that something he thought he’d gotten under control had escaped his control.’ Either way, trust me, it wasn’t Lewis’s grief that Gerard was thinking about.”

  I’m not expecting a reply, but eventually Dom says, “You don’t know Gerard Tillotson well enough to read his tone. His words make perfect sense in the context.”

  “The tone was unmistakeable. Whether he realizes it or not, Gerard knows that Lewis cares more about image management and controlling everything than he does about his dead daughter. Who isn’t dead, I don’t think.”

  “We don’t know if she’s dead,” says Dom. “And I don’t see how this gets us any farther forward. All right, Lewis is a control freak—everyone who knows him probably agrees, including Flora’s dad—but so what? What’s that bringing to the table? As people say in all the boring meetings I have to go to, where the only things brought to the table are boring ones. And the table’s also boring.”

  I smile, knowing
the joke is meant as a peace offering.

  “Lewis is a control freak,” I say. “He cares about image management and control. Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?”

  “The Tillotsons also said Georgina was born prematurely. She wasn’t robust, they said. She had various health complications. What if that wasn’t good enough for Lewis, to have a not-perfect child?”

  Dom frowns. “That baby that came around to ours was fine looking.”

  “But she had health complications from being premature.” I think back, trying to remember the details. “I’m pretty sure Rosemary said she was going to need an operation of some sort. What if, for Lewis, that sort of imperfection was intolerable? He decided he’d rather pretend she was dead and just . . . get rid of her. He nicknamed her Chimpy because he didn’t see her as fully human, and they put her in some kind of home, or care, or with a foster family.”

  “That’s horrific.” Dom grimaces. “No. That’s not what happened.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s too horrible. It’s not just Lewis, Beth. He might be capable of God only knows what, but what about Flora? Can you see her treating a child that way?”

  “Not unless forced to by Lewis, no. That’s why she was crying when she was speaking to Chimpy on the phone.”

  “You’re making me feel slightly sick,” says Dom. “And . . . you’re making all this up, Beth. Sorry, but it’s morbid and depressing and there’s no reason to think any of it’s true.”

  “It would explain Peterborough too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A city north of Cambridge.”

  He gives me a look.

  “I heard Flora say ‘Peterborough’ on the phone. Maybe that’s where Georgina is.”

  “Yes, because when you ring someone, you always randomly announce the name of the place where they are. If someone rang me now, they’d suddenly say ‘the A14’ in the middle of the conversation for no reason.”

  As if on cue, my phone starts to ring. I unzip my bag and pull it out. “Hello?”

  “Is that Beth Leeson?”

  “Speaking.” I know the voice, but I can’t place it.

  “This is Louise. Lou Munday. We met when you came into the school.”

  “Of course, I remember you.” I didn’t give her my mobile number. I gave her the landline.

  “Can we meet?” she says. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  14

  Dom wasn’t happy about handing over his car to me, once I’d dropped him at the Huntingdon station.

  “Why am I the one who has to get trains and taxis home?” he asked.

  “Please, Dom.”

  “I understand why you want to talk to this receptionist, but why do you need my car for that? Why can’t I just drop you at the school? I assume this Lou woman has a car—can’t she drop you at the station once the two of you have had your chat?”

  “I don’t know how it’s going to go. If the conversation ends badly, I’ll be in no position to ask favors by the end of it. I don’t want to risk being stranded,” I told him, wondering if he’d see through the excuse.

  I’m meeting Lou after school finishes for the day. That’s an hour from now. It means I can get to the car park well before that and be in position to catch another glimpse of Thomas Cater, and maybe Emily too, if she comes with whoever’s picking her brother up today. Dom’s car has tinted windows, making it unlikely that I’ll be noticed inside it, though there’s a chance that if Kevin Cater or “Jeanette” turns up, they’ll recognize the car as the one that was parked on their driveway while they lied to us.

  There’s nothing I can do about that. I’m not sure it matters, in any case. I’ll be there legitimately, to meet Lou, which I can say if anyone bangs on my window and gives me a hard time; I’ve been invited. Whether I’m watching or not, Thomas will have to walk out of the building and over to the car park area. No one will be able to stop me from seeing him. They’re hardly going to put a blanket over his head so that I can’t catch a glimpse of him.

  Who is “they”?

  Who will come to collect Thomas? I’ve got a strange kind of premonition in my mind, as I pull into the school car park, that I’m about to see Flora again. It doesn’t strike me as impossible. Either Lewis could have worked out a way to make a phone call seem as if it’s coming from America when it’s not, or he drove Flora straight to an airport after they made that call together. She could have flown at nine or nine thirty in the evening, Florida time, and landed before midday UK time. She’d probably be jet-lagged, but it would be just about possible for her to get to Thomas’s school by three thirty.

  I pick a parking space at the center of a grid of white-painted rectangular boxes on the ground. As and when other cars arrive, they’ll have to park all around me, hemming me in. That will provide some cover.

  I use my phone to send some basic, easy chore emails while I wait for school to finish: yes, Ben can go and see a production of Len and Ezra, whatever that is, and I’m willing to pay £30 for him to do so; yes, I can confirm that I’m expecting Pam Swain for a back, neck and head massage on Monday and that, no, I definitely won’t need to cancel her again.

  At three fifteen, other cars start to join me in the car park. I sit up straight in the driver’s seat when I see the silver Range Rover, which is one of the last to arrive, at three twenty-eight. I haven’t decided what I’ll do if it’s Flora. Will I get out of the car, walk over, try and talk to her? If I did, would she run away from me again?

  It’s not her. It’s the woman who pretended to be Jeanette Cater. She steps out of the Range Rover, slams the door behind her, then walks briskly over to two other women, both younger than her, who are standing behind a larger group of waiting parents. Either Emily’s not with her or she’s waiting in the car. Today Not-Jeanette is wearing leopard-print leggings, a black V-neck sweater with a thick gold belt, and flat slip-on shoes that look as if they came from a child’s fancy-dress box: glittery and gold, with bows on them and no visible soles.

  I lower my window an inch or so and take a few photos of her with my phone. They’re not great, but they’ll do. I edit the best one to enlarge her face. Ideally, I’d like a photo of Flora too, to show Lou Munday. I do a Google image search for Flora Braid, Flora Tillotson and Jeanette Cater, but each one yields only photos of people I’ve never seen before.

  I hear the muffled sound of a bell. A few minutes later, there’s a burst of purple blazers rushing out of the building. Some of the children run to waiting adults, their faces lighting up with joy. Others slump and limp along, looking down at the gray concrete.

  There he is: Thomas Cater. I recognize him immediately.

  No, you don’t. You recognize five-year-old Thomas Braid. That’s who this is. That’s the face you know, the same face you saw last Saturday, and twelve years ago. Isn’t it?

  I stare at his face, wishing he’d keep still so that I could see it better. Is it identical, or slightly different? Is this the boy who came to my flat in Cambridge in 2007, who pulled the skin off a blister on his foot and needed a Band-Aid?

  Why am I allowing myself to think this way? I know it can’t be the Thomas I knew, still five years old. Then I notice his shoes and feel as if I’ve caught my heartbeat in my throat.

  I know those shoes. They’re horribly scuffed after so many years. One of the soles has partly come loose and flops to the ground with each step Thomas takes. It’s the same pair of shoes that Thomas Braid wore twelve years ago: black with a white star on the side and the lowest point of the star hanging down and curling under at the bottom, like a tail. I can picture them on my living room floor, amid the plastic toys, and Thomas next to them, barefoot, crying because he’d just pulled off his blister and now it hurt more and was bleeding.

  Emily Cater, when I saw her outside the house on Wyddial Lane, was wearing hand-me-downs too: the “Petit Mouton” top I’d seen before on Emily Braid.

  A
ll parents know shoes are different. You don’t pass them down from one child to another. If you care about your child’s feet, you have them properly measured and buy shoes that are a perfect fit, unless you’re too hard up and can’t afford to. When you live in an enormous house on Wyddial Lane, you don’t send your son to school in twelve-year-old shoes that are falling apart—not unless . . .

  I can’t bear to think about what the “unless” might be. An urge rises inside me: to leap out of the car, grab Thomas and take him home with me, where I can make sure no one harms or neglects him.

  All the other children are coming out in groups, but Thomas is alone. He looks neutral—not happy or sad—and walks at a steady pace, neither quickly nor slowly. He seems unaware of his surroundings, and more focused on whatever’s happening inside his head.

  The two young women that Not-Jeanette is chatting to look more like au pairs than mothers. That might be why they’re standing apart from the larger group of adults: the help in one cluster, the parents in another, no mixing.

  Thomas eventually comes to a stop next to the glittery gold shoes. He doesn’t do or say anything to attract attention. He stands and waits. Fake Jeanette, if she has noticed his arrival, shows no sign of it. Eventually one of the other two women nudges her and nods to indicate that Thomas is there.

  Even now, there’s no communication at all between the two of them. Pretend Jeanette hugs one of the women good-bye, then sets off walking toward the Range Rover, trailing her arm out behind her and waving her hand as if to say, “Come on, this way.” Thomas follows her, but he hasn’t looked at her, not once, and nor has she looked at him. They haven’t spoken at all. It’s as if there’s no relationship between them, only indifference that goes both ways. The sole of Thomas’s damaged shoe continues to flop beneath his foot.

  I duck down in my seat and cover my face with my hand, so as not to be seen as they pass me.

  Not-Jeanette opens the back door of the car and Thomas climbs in. She closes it. Still, there has been no interaction or eye contact between them.

  She’s going to drive away with him . . .