Secrets of the Tides

by Hannah Richell

  As Richard wound up the telephone conversation and turned to them in shocked disbelief, a more pressing question flew at Dora: if Cassie wasn’t in Edinburgh, then where on earth was she?

  ‘What do you mean “there’s nothing you can do”?’ Richard sat opposite a police officer – distressingly for them all, the same one that had handled Alfie’s disappearance the previous year – and wrung his hands in frustration. ‘Our daughter is missing.’

  ‘I understand your concern, sir, but Cassie is eighteen years old. She’s an adult now, in the eyes of the law. She can leave home any time she chooses, and while I understand it is upsetting for you to not know where she is, it is, unfortunately, her prerogative. Do you have any reason to suspect criminal activity or foul play?’

  Helen looked to Richard who shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s very out of character.’

  Dora thought of all her sister’s long solitary walks, her late nights and the broken curfews. Then she thought of the violent scratches she’d seen on her sister’s arms, when Cassie’s careful cover-ups had lapsed for a moment and her bare arms had flashed their painful secrets. Cassie didn’t know she’d seen the marks, but the sight of them had haunted Dora. She wondered now whether to mention it, but decided against it and bit her tongue.

  ‘But you don’t have any reason to believe a crime has been committed?’

  ‘How would we know, we have no idea where she is! That’s why we need your help.’

  Dora flushed with shame at her mother’s rudeness; the policeman was only doing his job, even she could see that.

  ‘Did she give you any indication or clues as to where she might have gone? Does she have any friends or family she could be staying with? Any boyfriends she might be with?’

  Richard shook his head.

  ‘Do you remember what sort of state she was in when she left? Did she seem upset? Might she be capable of hurting herself?’

  Dora swallowed hard.

  ‘Of course not!’ exclaimed Helen indignantly. ‘She was looking forward to starting university.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘All we know for sure is that she left on a train to Waterloo. She was supposed to arrive in London around midday and then take the Underground to King’s Cross, for a connection to Edinburgh.’

  The policeman cleared his throat. ‘London’s a big city.’

  Dora realised it was time to pipe up. ‘She said something to me.’ She could feel her parents’ eyes boring into her but she continued, regardless. ‘The night before she left she said something a little strange. She said university wasn’t “real freedom . . . a real escape”. I didn’t think much of it at the time but now it sort of makes sense. I think maybe she wasn’t planning on going to university after all.’ She paused. ‘I think perhaps she was having second thoughts about it all.’ Dora looked up at her mother and felt daggers.

  The policeman nodded encouragingly. ‘That’s good information, Dora. Did she say anything else? Does she have any friends you can think of, friends in London, or elsewhere who she might want to stay with?’

  Dora shook her head. ‘Only the friends we used to have way back when, before we moved here. But we lost touch with all of them years ago. There’s no one.’

  The policeman sighed. ‘Well, I could ask the London Transport police to review their security camera footage for Waterloo station, around the time Cassie’s train was scheduled to arrive last weekend. We might get lucky. Perhaps we’ll be able to see if she met up with someone. Or which direction she went in. It’s a long shot, but I can certainly ask the question.’ He paused momentarily. ‘You might want to phone round the hospitals too.’ He didn’t meet their eyes.

  ‘Is that it?’ Helen was aghast. ‘Once again a child goes missing and you lot do nothing?’

  ‘Helen!’ snapped Richard. ‘I hardly think that’s fair.’

  Dora noticed the policeman flush slightly. ‘I understand your distress, Mrs Tide. I’ll do what I can, but in the meantime, you could consider a private investigator – someone who can trace your daughter’s movements independently. You might have some luck that way.’ He was standing now, preparing to leave. ‘I’m sorry, there’s not a lot else I can do for you. I’m sure she’ll turn up. From what I remember of Cassie she seemed pretty streetwise. Try to keep your phone line free and your spirits up. I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear anything.’

  And with that he was gone.

  The hours that followed carried with them the painful echoes of Alfie’s disappearance. Richard was frantic. He tore around the house, making urgent telephone calls and conducting intense, emotional conversations with Helen behind closed doors, all the while berating himself at every available opportunity for missing the signs that something was amiss with Cassie. Had she run away? Was she being held against her will? Perhaps she’d been taken ill? Or worse, was lying in a ditch somewhere, undiscovered. He shoved furniture, slammed doors and lashed out at inanimate objects. He was wild and terrifying and virtually unrecognisable in his panic.

  By comparison, Helen was quiet, seemingly in shock. She sat on the sofa, her hands clasped around her knees as she rocked over and over to some inaudible internal rhythm. Her lips moved, but Dora never heard the words she whispered; frankly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Instead she stayed at arm’s length, circulating carefully around both her parents, bewildered and scared and riddled with disbelief: could it really be happening all over again?

  As if on some strange autopilot, the three of them gathered together in the kitchen at dinnertime. Richard told them about the investigator as they pushed uneaten food around their plates.

  ‘He seems very competent – the agency has a ninety-eight per cent success rate when it comes to missing persons and he’s promised to handle Cassie’s case himself.’

  Helen nodded, cleared her throat as if to say something, but then fell silent, twisting her water glass around and around on the table. It made an annoying grating sound on the wooden surface and Dora saw her father throw Helen an irritated glance.

  Richard pushed his plate away. ‘I just feel so utterly helpless. I don’t know what to do.’ His voice cracked painfully. ‘Tell me, what am I supposed to do?’

  Helen looked up then and stared at Richard, as if really seeing him properly for the first time. Slowly, she reached a hand across the table towards him. Dora could see a strange softness in her face, a vulnerability in her eyes that told her how scared she was too; but at the exact same moment Helen reached out to him, Richard, unseeing, pushed back his chair and stood from the table.

  ‘Sorry, but I can’t just sit here, eating dinner, playing happy families, pretending nothing’s wrong.’

  Dora saw her mother flinch and retract her hand.

  He turned to them both at the door. ‘I’ll be in my study if you need me.’

  They sat in painful silence as the door swung shut behind Richard’s retreating back.

  True to his word, the police officer phoned twenty-four hours later. Dora held her breath as he relayed his findings to a grim-faced Richard.

  ‘What is it?’ Helen whispered. ‘We’ve lost her too, haven’t we?’ Her knuckles were pressed against her mouth.

  Richard quietly replaced the handset and turned to them both.

  ‘I don’t know, love. I honestly don’t know. They think they’ve found her on their CCTV footage.’

  ‘Where? What was she doing?’

  Richard carefully explained how the Metropolitan police had found a grainy image of a girl matching Cassie’s description getting off the train at Waterloo around midday. Instead of making her way into the Underground, as intended, she had exited the station by foot. The cameras lost sight of her at the turning for Westminster Bridge, but the evidence was damningly clear: Cassie had left the station of her own free will and the police were no longer invested in the problem: there was nothing more they could do.

  ‘At least we know she’s OK, right?’ Dora asked, nervously biting at her fingernails. ‘I mean
, she’s clearly run away, not been . . . not . . .’ Her words petered out.

  Richard sighed. ‘I just don’t know, Dora.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’

  ‘But we’ll find her, right? It’s just a matter of time.’

  For once Richard couldn’t answer. Instead, he reached for the telephone. He had only one purpose: finding Cassie.

  It was the anger that surprised Dora. It welled up inside her like white-hot lava. How dare Cassie run away like that? Wasn’t it enough to be able to leave for university in a blaze of glory? She’d had the perfect excuse to escape and still it hadn’t been enough. She’d had to go one better and disappear without a trace, leaving them all worried and distraught. How dare she be so selfish? It was so pointed, so cruel. Surely her sister would know better than most people how that would bring the anxiety and pain of Alfie’s vanishing flooding back to them all? Didn’t she care how they suffered? Were they not worth one phone call, one email, just to put them out of their misery?

  And more to the point, why hadn’t she told Dora about her secret plans? Why hadn’t she treated her as a confidante? For Cassie to have planned her escape and not breathed one word of it to Dora, after all they had experienced together, well, it felt like the ultimate abandonment.

  What about all that rubbish Cassie had spouted a few years ago? What had happened to the sister who solemnly told her, ‘it’s you and me against the world . . . we’ve got to stick together, haven’t we . . . it’s what sisters do.’ What a load of crap! Her sister was full of it; the memory of those words made Dora’s blood boil even hotter, for it only served to remind her, once again, how alone she truly was. Dora wasn’t sure she would ever truly be able to forgive her sister for that.

  An eerie atmosphere descended on Clifftops, like a thick winter fog rolling in off the sea. Things were painfully tense; Helen closeted herself away in her study while Richard seemed to come and go from the house at odd hours. Neither of them, it seemed, were much concerned with Dora’s whereabouts and with both of them so distracted, she found herself wandering the corridors of Clifftops like some ghostly orphan. She made her own meals, dug around in the washing basket for clothes and went up to bed each night watching her mother’s shadow moving in the gap beneath the closed study door.

  As the hours ticked slowly by Dora struggled with the monumental loneliness. She considered calling Steven, wondering if it was too late to take him up on his offer of escape, but she could never quite bring herself to pick up the telephone; a creeping self-doubt paralysed her from contacting him. In the end, it was her mother she reached out to, daring to knock on her study door one morning before school.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Helen asked, eyeing her wearily from the door. ‘Did your father ring?’

  Dora shook her head. ‘I thought you might want this.’

  Helen looked down at the cup of tea Dora held in her outstretched hands as if it were a strange, unidentifiable object. ‘Oh, thanks.’ She took it and placed it carefully behind her, on the edge of her desk.

  ‘I think the milk’s on the turn, sorry,’ Dora added. Neither of them had thought to go shopping.

  Helen nodded. ‘You off to school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Helen was clearly distracted. ‘Did you find something for your packed lunch?’

  Dora nodded. She’d rifled through the cupboards until she’d found some sultanas and an old packet of cereal bars.

  ‘Good.’

  They stared at each other for a moment and Dora could see the pain and worry etched in the violet shadows under her mother’s eyes. It was like looking in the mirror. She wanted to reach out and touch her, to be pulled into her mother’s embrace and feel the warmth of her arms around her, to breathe in the fresh, clean scent of her. At that moment, she realised, she would have given anything to be held by the woman who had comforted and soothed her as a little girl – the woman who had always chased away the nightmares and reassured her that everything would be all right. She felt the tears welling up in her eyes and forced them back.

  Helen looked back at her desk. ‘Well, thanks for the tea . . .’

  ‘Mum . . .’ Dora tried, desperate to keep the chink of communication open for a moment longer. ‘Cassie’ll be OK, won’t she? I mean, she’s eighteen, and tough. She can look out for herself, don’t you think?’

  Helen studied Dora for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she agreed finally, ‘I suppose so. She’s not exactly a baby, is she?’

  Dora didn’t know if Helen had intended to reference Alfie but she recoiled at her mother’s words. Alfie. It was always going to be there, between them. Would they never get past it? Would she never let her in?

  Dora turned silently and headed towards the front door, hearing the gentlest of clicks as Helen closed the study door behind her.

  It was four o’clock the following afternoon when Richard burst through the back door.

  ‘Helen! Helen, are you here?’ Then, seeing Dora emerge from the living room, ‘Dora, quick, where’s your mother?’

  ‘In her study, I think. What is it?’

  ‘Go and get her. Go!’

  Dora was turning on her heel as ordered when Helen appeared in the hall. ‘What is it? Have they found her?’

  Richard went straight to his wife and took her hands carefully in his. ‘You need to stay calm, OK?’

  ‘What is it, Richard? For God’s sake, just tell me.’

  ‘They’ve found her.’

  Dora felt her stomach plunge. It was obvious it wasn’t good news.

  ‘Tell me, Richard, you’re scaring me.’

  ‘She . . . she . . .’ Richard seemed to struggle with the words.

  Dora noticed his hands were trembling. She swallowed.

  ‘She . . . she threw herself off a bridge,’ he managed finally, ‘into the Thames.’

  ‘What?’ Helen looked at him, aghast.

  Dora suddenly felt as though she had slipped into some other world; the day had taken on a surreal, shimmering quality.

  ‘Is she . . .?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, she’s alive. She’s in hospital.’

  Helen gave a small sigh of relief. Dora thought she looked as though she might collapse.

  ‘Oh thank God.’

  Silence filled the room as they all processed the enormity of Richard’s words.

  ‘What do you mean “threw herself off”?’ Helen asked finally. ‘You mean . . .’

  Richard nodded. ‘Yes . . . she tried to kill herself.’ His face was white and Dora could see how hard it had been for him to even say the words out loud.

  Helen shook her head. ‘No, it’s not possible. Cassie would never do that.’ She bit her lip. ‘No. It must have been an accident. Perhaps she fell?’

  As the three of them stood in silence once more, an image of Cassie’s ravaged arms swam before Dora’s eyes.

  ‘No, it’s true,’ Richard continued. ‘Someone saw her jump – thank God – and they were able to fish her out, just in time. They took her to St Thomas’s. She was resuscitated and treated for pneumonia. She picked up a nasty water-borne infection too. They’ve kept her in all this time. Seems she gave a false name. That’s why it’s taken us so long to track her down.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘The investigator I hired just called me with the news. I’m going to head up there right away and meet him.’

  ‘I’ll come too,’ said Helen immediately.

  ‘No, love,’ Richard urged gently. ‘I think you should stay here.’ Dora saw the meaningful nod in her direction. ‘Anyway, this chap has suggested we take things slow with Cassie, and for what it’s worth, I think he’s right. We don’t want to overwhelm her. He seems to know what he’s talking about. I’ll try and see her tomorrow, have a gentle chat with her then and convince her to come back with me.’

  Helen shook her head. ‘This just doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘I know, love.’

  ‘You’ll bring her home?’

&nbs
p; ‘Yes,’ said Richard.

  ‘Good, she should be here with us, at least until she’s feeling well again.’ Helen seemed to think for a moment. ‘I’ll call the university. I’m sure they’ll keep her place on hold. We can bring her home, get her strong again and then take her up there ourselves in a few days. She shouldn’t miss too much of the first term.’

  Dora stared in disbelief at her mother. She couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. It seemed her father couldn’t either.

  ‘Helen, do you understand what I just told you?’ He seemed visibly shaken. ‘Cassie has tried to commit suicide. I hardly think a place at university is the priority right now, do you?’

  ‘Well she can’t just throw away her future.’ Dora winced, but Helen was oblivious to the sad irony of her words and carried on. ‘We need to get her back on her feet. This is no time for self-pity or silly stunts. She’s got a future and a career to think of.’

  ‘Silly stunts?’ The colour was flooding back into Richard’s face. ‘I hardly think throwing yourself off a bridge into the Thames can be classified as a “stunt”, do you?’

  ‘What else is it?’

  ‘I’d say it’s a cry for help . . . or worse . . . a sign that she doesn’t think life is worth living any more.’ Richard ran his hands through his hair again. ‘I just don’t understand how we could have missed this. Certainly she’s been quiet . . . more withdrawn since Alfie . . . but I really thought she was doing OK. I just didn’t see what was going on . . .’ He shook his head in anger. ‘How could I have been so blind?’

  ‘This isn’t about you, Richard,’ Helen spat. ‘This is about Cassie. And I just want her home. I think I should come up to London too. If we caught the evening train—’

  But Richard cut her off. ‘No, stay here with Dora. I can handle it.’

  Helen shook her head again. ‘What on earth was she thinking? I’ve been going out of my mind with worry . . .’