by Elle Croft
We rummage through Imogen’s clothes and her desk drawers. I thought the police might have wanted to search through her belongings, but when I asked them, they looked at me like I was crazy.
‘This isn’t some TV show, Mrs Braidwood,’ the younger one had said. ‘There’s no reason to suspect foul play, and running away isn’t a crime. Talking to her friends is a much better use of our time.’
I’d been too dazed at the time to feel embarrassed by my naivety, but now, replaying the exchange in my mind, my cheeks burn.
I sigh, taking another sweeping look around Imogen’s room. For her sixteenth birthday, we gave the space a makeover, and in one weekend we removed any evidence of a little girl – the pink bed frame, the Disney posters and the stuffed animals – and replaced them with the markings of a young woman – lots of white and grey and gold, at Imogen’s request. There’s a wall hanging that looks to me like it’s straight out of my grandma’s front room, but which my daughter assures me is cool. There’s a grey throw at the end of her pristine white bed, and black-and-white photos in gold frames of various sizes. The whole effect is trendy and grown-up, and whenever I come inside, I get a pang of nostalgia for the cotton-candy pink of days gone by.
I sit heavily on the bed, waiting for some kind of answer to come to me. Nothing appears. My strength wavers, the lump in my chest moving rapidly to the surface, on the verge of spilling over in an uncontrollable tide.
‘Mum,’ Jemima says, stopping her search and looking squarely at me, ‘Imogen’s not a little girl, you know. She’s pretty smart. She can look after herself.’
My darling Jemima, so rational and calm, even when it would be perfectly natural for her to be the one breaking down. She’s inherited her dad’s steady nature, and right now I couldn’t be more grateful that she’s not driven by her emotions, like I am.
‘Can I go make a sandwich?’ she asks. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Of course, baby,’ I say, giving her another hug. ‘I’ll be there in a sec.’
She leaves Imogen’s room and I stay where I am, the white bedcover soft beneath my fingers. I stare for a second at a photo on her bedside table: Imogen and her best friend, Paige. Laughing, happy. Innocent. I open the top drawer. It’s filled with charging cables, pens, a notepad emblazoned with the words ‘Good Vibes Only’ in gold. I flip through it, but there’s nothing. A few pages have been torn from the middle, but it’s otherwise blank. I place it back and close the drawer, moving methodically to the next one, and then back to her desk. I’ve already searched it, but I know I have to be missing something.
After looking through her entire desk, I run my hand under her mattress, peer beneath her bed, and then pull her wardrobe apart. I find schoolbooks filled with her neat handwriting, a stack of old Girlfriend magazines, and a secret stash of Picnics at the back of her wardrobe. I sit at her desk, tear the wrapper off one of the chocolate bars and tuck in, smiling at my daughter’s act of rebellion. Well, not so much rebellion as possession. She knows that with Jemima and me in the house, any easily accessible chocolate will be sniffed out and eaten immediately. She’s smart enough to keep her own stock, away from her sweet-toothed family.
Feeling sick from the sugar in my otherwise empty stomach, I open her laptop and stare at the password screen for a few seconds. Then I type RoaringTigers, the name of Imogen’s beloved volleyball team. It doesn’t work. I try again, in various upper and lower case combinations. When that doesn’t let me in, I try her friends’ names, her favourite band, combinations of Dylan’s, Jemima’s and my names. Nothing works. Frustrated, I stand up.
I glance at my phone. There are messages from friends and fellow parents offering to help, but nothing telling me where my daughter is. Sighing, I throw the chocolate wrapper at the gold waste-paper basket beside Imogen’s desk, cursing when I miss. I bend over to collect it, but it’s just out of my reach. Stretching over her desk chair, my fingertips brush the wrapper, failing to grip it, and I lose my balance, tipping the empty basket over.
Swearing, I steady myself on the edge of the bed, then kneel down to reach the chocolate wrapper. As my fingers curl around it, I notice a scrap of paper stuck to the bottom of the wire basket. I dislodge it from the rim and tip the waste-paper bin back upright. I throw the wrapper in and move to do the same with the scrap paper, when three letters catch my eye.
It’s a logo, the bright blue shape sparking a memory from high school. A helix, I think it’s called. Two parallel strands, twisted around, with rung-like lines between them. The small piece of paper is the top corner of what looks like a letterhead, but the rest of the page is gone, presumably in another week’s recycling.
But this scrap I’m holding, with the blue helix, and the company name underneath, sets every nerve in my body on high alert. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle and stand to attention, and my mind is wiped clear of everything but the words I’m reading, black and bold against the pure white, glossy paper.
SureDNA, it reads.
My hand shakes.
She knows. Imogen knows.
And that changes everything.
Chapter 14
IMOGEN
Imogen strained her ears, but all she could hear was booming silence.
The absence of noise.
An abyss.
She thought that maybe she was plunging through time, through space, infinite falling, spinning, weightless; her stomach lurching and twisting. Then a jolt, her limbs forcing her back into fleeting consciousness, her eyes flinging open, only to snap closed against the light.
Was she alone?
She couldn’t tell. There was so much she didn’t know: how long she’d been in the same tiny bed, on that lumpy mattress, staring at the stained ceiling. How she got there. Who brought her. What was making her feel so disconnected, so weightless and yet so leaden at exactly the same time.
All she knew for certain was that every time she rolled towards the wall, a spring in the bed frame squealed, triggering a slicing pain behind her eyes that left her moaning and writhing. But movement meant nausea, and she’d emptied her stomach long ago. Now, her ribs screamed and her throat burned, and she was too tired to expend any unnecessary energy.
So she’d learned not to move. Instead, she’d laid there, still as a corpse, her eyes firmly closed as the colour behind her eyelids morphed from bruised purple to angry red to bright white and all the way to black, when the silence fell on her like a blanket, comforting her. Suffocating her.
A magpie warbled, its melody echoing and building, coiling around her, finding her ear, a thread of silver that wound its way into her brain, tighter and tighter, a nightmare of minor notes she couldn’t stop, couldn’t control. Moving slowly, cautiously, her muscles protesting with every millimetre, she drew her hands up towards her face, pressing them against her ears, pushing harder, wincing as the melody turned into a cacophony of screams inside her head.
She needed it to stop. She had to find a way to stop herself from hearing it. She was spinning again, spiralling into blackness, but she didn’t want the magpie’s taunts to follow her to that place where time stretched and snapped. She opened her lips and screamed, the pain that she forced from her lungs drowning out the mayhem in her mind. It poured out of her, a battle cry, and as she squeezed every last drop of volume from her lungs and gasped to fill them once again, she heaved where she lay, her battered ribs howling, her throat clawed by invisible nails.
Blinded by the pain, by the fear, by the onslaught on her senses, she didn’t see the long, silver point of the needle. She didn’t hear the soothing voice, the one she couldn’t place but which was oh-so familiar. She didn’t feel the pinprick of pain in the crook of her arm, right beside the tiny day-old wound, insignificant against the agonising symphony she was drowning in.
And, all at once, the hateful music playing around her was snipped mid-bar, the notes falling to the ground in a pile of black shapes, a pitiful patter against the carpet, and Imogen’s body slumped into
the mattress, sensation melting into nothingness, silence enveloping her, beckoning her back to obscurity.
And so she fell, once again, her lungs emitting a small, surprised breath of surrender.
Chapter 15
KAT
My hand is shaking as I search for the company on my phone. I try to come up with any other explanation that could make sense. Maybe she doesn’t know and this tiny scrap of paper doesn’t mean what I think it means. Maybe it’s for school – a biology project, perhaps.
I click the first link that appears in the search results. It loads in the blink of an eye.
Discreet DNA testing, the website reads. Paternity, maternity, ancestry and more. No blood required. Private, fast and reliable. Send an enquiry today or read our frequently asked questions here.
My head spins. I blink back the darkness that hovers in my peripheral vision. Is it really possible that she found out?
I navigate through to the contact information page and tap the call button. I will them to answer the phone, will them to have real people, not voice-activated robots, at the other end of the line.
‘SureDNA customer service, how can I help?’ an overly cheery woman answers.
I take a breath.
‘Hi, I think my daughter used your services, and I’d like to find out if she’s a customer please.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t give out details of our customers. We take privacy very seriously.’
‘My daughter is sixteen, and she’s missing. This could help find her. Please.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, but I’m afraid I still can’t help you,’ she says. ‘Not without a police warrant.’
I hang up and redial the same number right away, tapping my screen furiously.
‘SureDNA customer services, how can I help?’
It’s the same voice. I hang up again and swear loudly, hitting redial once more. I close my eyes and mutter ‘Be someone else, be someone else’ as the phone rings.
‘SureDNA customer services, how can I help?’
My shoulders drop in relief at the deep voice.
‘Hi, my name is Imogen Braidwood,’ I say, affecting a higher-pitched, girlier tone. I sound nothing like my daughter, but I don’t need to. ‘I lost the information you sent me and I was wondering if you could email it over please?’
‘Sure,’ he says brightly. ‘I just need a few details from you first.’
My stomach clenches. I think I know my daughter, but the next few moments will prove whether I really do, or if she’s a complete stranger.
‘OK,’ I say, my mouth claggy, like I’ve gargled glue. I clear my throat.
‘Could you confirm your date of birth, please?’
I almost laugh. Easy. I offer the date confidently.
‘Thank you. And your mother’s maiden name?’
I open my mouth, the name Crouch on my lips. I stop and clamp my mouth shut. They don’t want my mother’s maiden name. They want Imogen’s mother’s maiden name. My maiden name. I mentally pinch myself. I need to concentrate.
‘Heppner,’ I say.
I hold my breath as I wait for confirmation that I’ve passed this test.
‘Great, thanks. Just a couple more,’ he says, and I silently empty my lungs.
I breeze through the remaining security questions. Address, phone number, first pet. No problem.
‘OK, what email address shall I send this to?’ the man asks.
I rattle it off, grateful that he doesn’t question the fact that it’s Kathryn, not Imogen, in the email address. I thank him and rush down the hallway to the living room, where my laptop is sitting on the small desk in the corner.
I open the lid, my heart pounding, and type in my password. The screen springs to life. I open a browser window and click on the tab that’s displaying my inbox. There’s nothing new. I click refresh. And then again. I keep clicking furiously, until, finally, a bold message appears at the top of the list. I hold my breath as I wait for the email to load.
Dear Imogen, it reads. Thank you for choosing SureDNA. Please find attached the results of your recent DNA test. If you have any questions …
I stop reading and scroll to the bottom of the message, where a PDF file is attached. As I click on it, and a new window pops open, my throat closes over, stopping me from taking the breath I need. My world, once wide and full, has now been narrowed down to a tiny pinpoint, my vision laser-focused. Nothing else matters. Nothing else exists. I wheeze, trying to fill my lungs, blinking back tears.
A document appears on my screen, and for a second my brain struggles to unpack the information I’m seeing. There are four columns, all filled with numbers that mean nothing to me. The first column, the header of which I don’t understand, is also filled with codes. I suddenly wish I’d paid more attention in school all those years ago. Panic washes over me. I need to understand. I need to know.
I close my eyes for a second and tell myself to concentrate. I open them again and focus.
I ignore the first column and keep reading. The second column has the title CHILD. The next, Alleged MOTHER.
The word ‘Alleged’ is like a punch in the stomach, but I resist the urge to dwell on it, and read on frantically, desperate to get to the part where I understand. Where I know what Imogen knows.
The last heading reads, Alleged FATHER.
Underneath all of the columns are the words that make the walls of the living room feel like they’re closing in, imprisoning me, smothering me. I take a shaky breath and read the two simple lines again, just to be sure. But there’s no mistaking what they say.
Probability of paternity: 0%
Probability of maternity: 0%
It was all for nothing, I realise as my heart tumbles behind my ribs, tearing itself free and plummeting towards the ground. All these years of well-intentioned lies, all that time spent worrying and watching, looking for signs, imagining I’ve seen a likeness, a resemblance in behaviour, and telling myself that of course I haven’t, that she doesn’t know, that it’s not in her DNA.
All of the heartache and lying awake at night desperately hoping we’ve done enough to change her future, to rewrite her fate. All of the energy we spent to protect her from the truth. It was all for nothing.
She knows. And she’s gone. And even if we find her, we might have lost Imogen forever.
Chapter 16
SALLY
It doesn’t happen often, but on the rare occasion when it does, there’s nothing I hate more than being pitied. I can handle being hated. But pity is intolerable.
Sure, I had a terrible childhood. My dad didn’t love me, he passed me around like a cigarette, he sold me to his colleague, he might have killed my mum. I know it’s tragic. But I am not tragic. I made my own choices, and I stand by them.
Well, most of them. I don’t regret what I did – I was doing my best – but suppose I regret what happened as a result of some of my actions. Or maybe I regret what could have been, if things had been different. I loved those kids. I love all of my kids. And I’m proud of the fact that I’m nothing like my waste of space of a father. He used me. He opened his home and let just anyone come in and use me, too.
When I found out that I was pregnant with my first, with my beloved Tim’s child, I was scared. I was only fifteen. I didn’t know anything about taking care of a baby. The only thing I knew for certain was that I’d never do anything like what my dad did to me, to any of my own kids. And I never did.
I didn’t let anyone near them. Didn’t allow anyone into our home, didn’t expose my children to others, didn’t put them in that awful, vulnerable position that I knew all too well. I protected them.
I did the best I could. I was so young when I had Jared. I didn’t know what I was doing; didn’t have anyone to teach me. I loved that boy so much that my heart hurt when I looked into his big golden eyes. My eyes. My mum’s eyes.
Those first few years were brimming with joy. The day Tim saved me was the happiest I’ve ever been,
but the year after Jared arrived, and then the first couple of years of his brother Anthony’s life, came pretty close. I couldn’t believe how perfect they were, my little ones. So innocent, unblemished by life and all that it could throw at them. They were completely pure.
And then, slowly, gradually, things changed. Well, the children changed. Jared became stubborn and wilful. He’d try to get out of the house, wouldn’t listen when I told him it was dangerous outside of our four walls. I had to teach him, had to make him understand. Home was the only safe place for him, the only place in the world where I could protect him. But he didn’t listen, wouldn’t respond to my pleas, my shouts. I had to resort to methods that couldn’t be ignored. But it was for him. For his safety.
It was hard, at first, to watch my little angel crying, screaming, begging. But it got easier every time. And then – there’s no point denying it, at this stage – I realised that it wasn’t so hard after all. I loved when my children behaved themselves, when we could all sit around together in the evening playing board games or poring over a puzzle. But I also felt a pull inside me, a yearning to continue what I’d started. It became necessary, a way to keep my children the way I loved them the most: pure, innocent, unsullied by the world.
I know that things went too far. At least by the world’s standards. I was overcome with grief when Jared left us. We buried his little seven-year-old body in the back garden, and I planted a rose bush above him, a bright and cheerful Love Always. I tended to him every day, watered him. Kept him safe. Cared for him. At first I didn’t want to go on. I’d lost my precious child. My firstborn. But Tim helped me to see. He helped me to remember how much I loved having babies, how much I enjoyed it when they were pure and blameless. And malleable. He reminded me that I was still young, that we could have as many babies as we wanted. That’s when I saw. That’s when I understood. I could have everything I wanted. I could have my babies, and I could enjoy every moment of their first few years. I could protect and teach them when they became unruly and stubborn. And then, when they couldn’t be controlled, I could take care of them forever. I could prune them and fertilise them and water them.