False Hope

by Lynne Lee

  The ghost of that baby haunted me for a very long time. That baby – who was never even more than an intention, just a plan for the future subsequently crossed off on a mental calendar – followed me around like a thread clinging to a coat hem.

  You could still try. It kept telling me this long after the point at which Matt and I had drawn a line – and drawn it for all the right reasons, as well. It would be logistically complex and emotionally exhausting; didn’t we have enough on our plates as it was, caring for Dillon? Wouldn’t another baby make everything even more difficult?

  It was a boy, this non-baby, this baby whose very existence we had rejected. And he haunted me because he was a different boy.

  There is sudden stillness in the hamster cage. Mr Weasley has done with exercise. And in the quiet I have a small but comforting revelation. The horror that’s pulsating in every pore of me has a tiny light shimmering within it too, because I know for sure now that the ghost of that much-wanted baby has gone. Been gone a while. Slipped away without my even noticing. I want my baby back. My Dillon back.

  And that’s all I want.

  I had always thought that the years of being on call – not generally known for having any unexpected benefits – had, as well as giving me that sixth sense that my phone’s about to ring, also inured me to the existential dread of the 4 a.m. phone call. Or at least shortened, and blunted, that period of raw terror that a ringing phone in the small hours always evokes.

  But I’m not on call tonight. And I immediately know this, even though I’m still floundering in that place between sleep and full consciousness. And then I realise where I am – still on the sofa in the conservatory, and it all comes crashing in again. Dillon’s missing.

  I reach for my phone. Which isn’t there. It must have slipped off while I’ve slept. I have slept. How have I slept when Dillon’s out there somewhere, missing? It feels like a terrible betrayal. I kick off the blanket that Matt must have thrown over me at some point, and see the phone, still bleating urgently, face down on the floor. It’ll be the police, I think. To tell me what? It’s the middle of the night. If they’d found him, they would have just brought him home, surely? So what then? I pick it up, scared, bleary-eyed, fingers fumbling.

  It’s not the police. The display says Jessica Kennedy. It’s 6.40 a.m.

  ‘Mrs Hamilton?’ It’s a whisper. ‘Have they found Dillon yet?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say, rubbing my eyes, trying to clear them. ‘And it’s Grace.’

  ‘Okay, look, so I just thought of something, okay? Norma has a caravan – a static, over in a holiday park near Pevensey. And I just had a thought – might she have taken him there?’

  I clamber up to consciousness, hearing low mournful sounds. A small child whimpering, I realise, and in my mind’s eye I see them – those two little girls, sleeping with mum, in her friend-in-Hove’s spare bedroom. ‘Shhh,’ I hear her cooing. ‘Shhhh, now, it’s okay. Mummy’s here.’

  I swing my legs down to the floor. The darkness is absolute, both inside and outside. ‘Whereabouts? Do you know?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been there. I took the girls there for a couple of days the summer before last. It’s on the Pevensey Bay Road. I can’t remember the name of it but it’s big, so I don’t think you could miss it. And her van’s one of the ones on the edge, by the shingle, about halfway along – it looks straight out to sea. She’s had it for years. She calls it her bolthole. And I know she still has it, because I remember her talking to Aidan about paying this year’s ground rent. I don’t think the park’s officially open yet, but I don’t think that would mean she couldn’t go there. I don’t know if it’s any use to you, but I just wanted to tell you. It might help? Look, I’d better go—’ The whimpering is escalating to a cry now. Those poor babies. That poor woman. I’m close to tears again and I know it’s as much for them as myself.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I say. ‘Thank you. Take care of yourself.’

  I’m just hanging up when a dark shape approaches. It’s Matt. In his jacket. Come in from the cold. Frigid air swirls around him and strokes my bare ankles. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Just walking around the garden – I needed some air. Who was that on the phone?’

  ‘Jessica Kennedy. She’s had an idea.’ I tell him about the caravan, my thoughts rabbit-hopping ahead of me. Kangaroo-hopping ahead of me. Olympic long-jumping ahead of me. I’m fully awake now. Fully present. Locked and loaded. ‘I’m going to get my boots,’ I say, decided. ‘I think we should go there.’

  ‘No. We should call the police, hen. Have them go.’ He’s already turning around as he says this.

  I follow him. ‘But—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But—’

  He turns around. ‘No. No, because we don’t know what we’re going to find when we get there. What we’re dealing with.’ His tone is pointed. ‘Okay?’

  Which makes it not at all okay, because fresh images – there is an inexhaustible supply of them, I’m learning – burst immediately into terrifying, technicolour view.

  It’s an effort of will to banish them, while Matt stabs the numbers on his phone screen. A bolthole. For a woman who has nothing left to live for. Bolthole. Or bunker. Oh God. This urge, I think, to just take him with me.

  To keep hands and brain busy, I fire up the coffee maker. Get mugs out of the dishwasher. Find pods and fetch milk. Pull out the cutlery drawer. Snatch up a teaspoon.

  ‘Okay,’ Matt is saying. ‘Right, yes, okay. Okay, we’ll do that. Okay, thanks, if you could.’

  ‘So?’ I ask, when he’s done.

  ‘So they’re going to send someone out there.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘So he says. And they’re going to speak to Jessica Kennedy again, see if she can tell them anything else. And in the meantime—’ He is clearly reading my expression. ‘There is nothing we can do except wait.’ He puts his arms around me, then. Rests his chin on my head. ‘You know what I was thinking? When I was out in the garden? That big oak down at the end would be the perfect place to build that tree house I promised the boys. It has exactly the right arrangement of branches,’ he continues. ‘And I’ve already worked out the best place to put the ladder, and if we make it big enough, I think we can put a window in such a position that there’ll be a sea view from up there as well. No, seriously,’ he adds, ‘I know what you’re thinking, but there will be, at least in the winter months, at any rate. Tell you what, while I deal with the coffee, why don’t you go and get your coat as well? Then you can come down the garden and take a look with me?’

  ‘You worked all that out in the dark?’

  ‘No. I used my phone torch.’

  As I hurry out to grab my coat, I reflect that everyone has their own ways of managing darkness. And right now, in the absence of any other useful strategy, I am happy to cling to his, and hang on for grim death.

  And that’s what I do.

  We’re still outside in the garden when Isabel arrives. It’s getting on for seven thirty now and the dawn is beginning to break, on what looks like being another cold but clear day.

  Isabel doesn’t ask if there is any news, because it’s obvious there isn’t, and when we head back indoors, the walls start closing in again. If the police had dispatched someone to the caravan park straight away, as they promised, then surely we’d have heard something by now?

  ‘So why don’t you call them again?’ Isabel asks, when Matt poses that question. ‘I mean, I know you say they say they’ll call you if they have any news, but that doesn’t mean they’ll call you if they don’t have any news. Or maybe they have some news, but it’s still an ongoing situation. And I’m not sure they prioritise keeping people in the loop to that extent. They’ll be too busy actually conducting the investigation. And they’re bound to be short-staffed and working on multiple cases . . . and there’s always a chance they haven’t got anyone to send there as yet. But at least you’d have an idea, wouldn’t you? I’m sure they won’t m
ind updating you if you ask them.’

  Matt looks astonished. And then the penny drops, for me at least. I keep forgetting Isabel’s father is a policeman.

  And as if to prove the point, when Matt calls DS Winters it goes straight to voicemail. ‘That’s it,’ he says, in an about-turn that I think surprises even him. ‘I can’t sit here doing nothing any longer. I’m going to drive down there.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ I say.

  ‘Hen, you can’t. What about Daniel? If he wakes up and neither of us is here—’

  ‘I’m here,’ Isabel points out. ‘He’ll be fine with me.’

  And as if to prove another point, Daniel then appears in the kitchen. ‘Come here, DI Dan,’ she says. ‘I think we both need a hug, don’t we?’ And when she holds out her arms, he immediately runs into them. ‘Mum and Dad are going out,’ she tells him, ‘to try to find Dillon. And find him they will,’ she adds firmly.

  I try to keep that in mind as we drive out of the village, because it’s got to be better than endlessly moving worst-case scenario pieces around a mental chessboard. We will find him and he will be okay. I keep reminding myself of what Jessica Kennedy told me, that Norma wouldn’t harm a hair on Dillon’s head. But every time I bring it to mind, it comes with an unwelcome companion – one with a louder voice, which keeps reminding me that such absolutes can never truly be absolutes. The dog that never bites who one day turns on its owner, the starry-eyed bride who swears undying love and then leaves, the functioning brain that inexplicably malfunctions, the brilliant mind that starts unravelling before your eyes. Nothing about this can be certain.

  Matt’s phone remains stubbornly silent, as does he, while I use mine to search Google Maps for local caravan parks, of which I’m sure there will be several. But only one fits the description Jessica Kennedy gave me, a big sprawling site on the beach, just as she described, with rows of statics lined up like white dominoes.

  It feels almost inexplicable that while we’re in the middle of such a nightmare, the day is simply going about its business. We emerge on to the A27 to find it already thick with rush-hour traffic, which is only going to get worse. I glance across at Matt. See the tic that is pulsing in his jaw. And it strikes me that my own murderous rage at Norma Kennedy would be as nothing, if played out, compared to my husband’s. ‘He’s going to be okay,’ I say. ‘He is. She won’t hurt him.’

  We continue in this vein, shoring one another up, as the traffic stop-starts its way east, down to Pevensey, and then on, past the village, on to the coast road. But once we’ve driven up the track that leads to the park’s reception building, I see something that dashes every last hopeful thought. I see a police patrol car, and three men, one of which I recognise as DS Lovelace, and, in his hand, a flash of something purple.

  A purple I recognise.

  It’s the colour of Dillon’s school sweatshirt.

  Chapter 25

  The reality hits me then, not so much as a punch in the gut as a tsunami, and as I get out of the car, I think my legs are going to give way beneath me. I have to grip the door and take several deep breaths to try and steady myself before I dare let go.

  All three men have turned around and, as they watch us approaching, I see there’s a supermarket carrier bag hanging from DS Lovelace’s arm as well.

  ‘Dillon’s parents,’ DS Lovelace tells the other two. ‘Mr and Mrs Hamilton, this is Detective Sergeant Winters. Mr Carter here is the owner of the park.’

  Matt nods in acknowledgement. ‘What’s happening?’ he asks. I cannot take my eyes off Dillon’s sweatshirt.

  ‘They’re not here,’ DS Winters says. ‘But they’ve been here. Overnight, by the looks of things. We’ve found these . . .’ He lifts the sweatshirt, and then unhooks the bag from his arm. Opens it out for Matt to look in. ‘Your son’s school uniform, yes? It was sitting by the door.’

  I take the sweatshirt from him and put it to my face. Stifle a sob. Mum, my clothes smell of flowers. Pleeeease. Can’t you wash them in something that doesn’t smell of flowers?

  ‘Anything else?’ I hear Matt saying. ‘Any other clues?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ DS Lovelace says. ‘Only that they’ve slept here, and eaten. And they’ve not been gone long. Mr Carter here is fairly certain he saw Mrs Kennedy’s car leave the site around twenty, thirty minutes back, and the kettle in the caravan was still warm.’

  Mrs Kennedy, I think. How can they dignify such a monster with the name Mrs Kennedy? And why the hell didn’t we just go there as soon as we knew? We were nearer. We would have got there before they left. Guilt and terror make my gut roil, my legs even shakier. I try to slow my breathing. In – pause – and out – pause – Dillon is still alive – pause. But a car. He saw a car. He didn’t actually see Dillon.

  ‘So what now?’ Matt asks. ‘What happens next?’

  ‘We continue our investigations,’ DS Lovelace says. ‘Now we’ve traced them to here—’ No, I think, Jessica Kennedy did, then correct my wayward thoughts. This is how policing works. Obtain evidence. Act on it. Detect. Get a grip, Grace.

  ‘Do you need this?’ I ask, holding out Dillon’s sweatshirt.

  He nods. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ He holds the bag open, so I gently fold it and place it on the nest already in there, made from Dillon’s grey school trousers and white Aertex polo shirt. This, I realise, is what they must mean by a living hell.

  ‘So you’re confident she’s left with him?’ Matt asks, gesturing towards the bag. He is voicing my own unspoken terror.

  ‘We can’t be confident of anything, Mr Hamilton,’ DS Lovelace says. ‘We’ve alerted the Officer In Charge, and we’ll step up the appeal on social media, and as soon as we’ve taken a full statement from Mr Carter, we’ll be better placed to decide on next steps.’ He gestures to the bag himself now, then looks at both of us in turn. ‘This counts as positive news. There’s no evidence, as far as we can see, of any mistreatment or violence. No evidence that anything untoward has taken place.’ Yet, I want to scream at him. The word you need is yet. ‘And wherever they’ve gone now, we will find him. It’s just a matter of time. Traffic have her number plate on their watch list, and they are actively looking out for her. And now she’s mobile—’

  ‘And what can we do?’ Matt asks. ‘There must be something we can do to help.’

  ‘Just think,’ the policeman says, ‘of anywhere else you suspect she might have taken him.’

  I have a memory, one of a select few that I try never, ever, to pull out for inspection if I can help it. Of a trauma case that came in a couple of weeks after I took up my post here. Five a.m., Caucasian male, twenty-seven, barely alive, brain-stem injury, multiple compound fractures, query attempted suicide. He died in A and E half an hour later. It was me who declared him dead.

  So I can immediately think of two: Birling Gap and Beachy Head.

  I keep my mouth shut. I cannot, will not, say them.

  With little choice but to leave the police to go about their business, we climb back into the car, and into our own personal chambers of imagined horrors. They would not let us go down to the caravan (preservation of potentially vital evidence) and not let us have Norma’s car registration number, either (preservation of Matt’s liberty, or so goes my reading of the situation, in the event of him finding Norma Kennedy before they do).

  The silence is broken by Matt thumping the steering wheel. ‘What the fuck do we do now?’ he says.

  ‘Go home and wait.’ Now Matt’s beginning to lose it, we automatically change places. I also fervently wish to be gone from this place. If I don’t, it won’t be long before I jump out of the car again and wrestle Dillon’s clothing out of the officer’s hands. If I don’t, I will scream. I fear I might scream anyway. Instead, I chant in my head to make the noise go away. She wouldn’t harm a hair . . . she wouldn’t harm a hair . . . Because I do not dare to let my terror take further root. ‘Go home to Daniel,’ I say. ‘What else can we do?’

  He starts the
car. Bangs the gear lever into first. Skids away. ‘Well, we could drive around ourselves, for one thing. Back to near where she lives. What’s to say she isn’t heading back there? Where does she live now anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere near Patcham. But I don’t know the exact address. And no one’s going to tell me that, are they?’

  ‘What about Jessica Kennedy? Why don’t you just ring Jessica Kennedy and get it from her instead?’

  ‘Matt, let’s drive to Beachy Head.’

  ‘What? Oh, fuck, hen. You—’

  ‘Because the police won’t do that, will they? Not specifically. Not as in sending a car to sit there on the off-chance.’

  He’s driving but I can feel him staring, as if I’ve just unleashed a monster. ‘You don’t really think—’ he begins. But he doesn’t get any further. His car display flashes up Isabel’s name.

  It goes straight to loudspeaker. ‘Matt?’

  ‘Yes, we’re here,’ he says.

  ‘I have amazing news – Dillon’s come home!’

  The traffic is even heavier on the return leg of the journey. The same journey Norma Kennedy took to bring Dillon home? Almost certainly. Odd to think that we may well have passed her on the road. Dillon’s fine, Isabel has told us. A bit tired and teary (‘But you’re absolutely fine, aren’t you, DS Dill?’) having been dropped, or so he’s told her, at the same place she picked him up from. And looking forward to us getting home, so he can tell us all about his ‘little adventure’.

  I make calls while Matt drives. First to the police, to let them know. Then to Jessica, who bursts into tears when I tell her. ‘I knew,’ she said. ‘I knew she wouldn’t hurt him.’ I then text Siddhant, and post a message on our consultants’ WhatsApp group, to let them know too. And that I’ll be back in tomorrow. Panic over.

  And is that what this was? A lot of overblown panic?

  Possibly. Because when we get home, Dillon – perhaps through shock, or perhaps not – does indeed seem barely any worse for wear.