The Stolen Child

by Sanjida Kay

  Evie looks at me as if I’m daft. ‘Mummy! I’m not five years old!’

  ‘Okay, but don’t run too far ahead. And make sure I can see you!’

  She skips, scuffing the first leaves that have fallen. She jumps in a puddle and black mud splatters over her tights. Ben chortles. She tries to make him laugh again by tossing handfuls of dead horse-chestnut leaves in the air and finding another puddle to leap into. She’s all angles – thin arms and legs, bony joints. I don’t say anything. I want her to stay close to me and if I tell her off about everything else she’s doing, that one instruction will be drowned out.

  It’s quiet in the suburbs. It’s too cold for people to be in their gardens; and it’s not a thoroughfare so few cars drive by. I look past decaying roses and through the first flush of Michaelmas daisies, blazing a glorious purple, into the darkened windows of the houses we walk by. Who lives here? Are they watching us? Did one of our neighbours do something seven years ago that he now regrets? How little we know of the people who surround us.

  I use the traffic when we reach Cowpasture Road as an excuse to get Evie to hold on to the buggy and she does it without complaint because she wants to wave a dirty leaf over Ben as she whispers a spell. Her feet get in the way of the wheels and she trips Bella up too but I bite my tongue. I wish she would hold my hand. When we reach school, she waves goodbye without letting me kiss her and runs off.

  Ben calls, ‘Bye bye bye,’ after her, but she ignores him.

  Hannah White is at the door to her classroom and she smiles warmly at Evie. ‘Is that a magic wand?’

  ‘Yes! I’ve turned my brother into a toad!’ she says.

  ‘Oh, I can see that! I love his golden eyes!’

  She’s on Evie’s wavelength. I would have told her not to drag a muddy leaf into the classroom.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Morley,’ she says to me.

  ‘Hi, Miss White. Is it possible to speak to Jack? Sorry, Mr Mitchell.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, he’s in a meeting until around eleven. Is there anything I can help you with?’

  I hesitate and then say, ‘Actually, yes. It’s to do with Evie so it would be good if you knew too – and you can pass it on to Mr Mitchell.’

  ‘Of course.’ She steps to one side so that we can talk without anyone overhearing us. ‘What is it?’

  She looks concerned. She seems to have such natural empathy – even though it must be overwhelming sometimes, being surrounded by so many children and their concerns, not to mention their parents’. She brushes her hair over her shoulder and fixes me with her large green eyes. She’s wearing the same brocade dress as the other day, but in a different colour and with sheer tights. I try not to dwell on how mumsy I feel compared to her.

  ‘We’ve discovered a card from her father – her biological father, that is. And a present.’

  ‘Oh, how upsetting for you. Is Evie okay?’

  ‘I’m so worried. I spoke to the adoption agency.’

  ‘Were they helpful? What did they say?’

  I shake my head. ‘They don’t know who the father is or how he could have got in touch. I mean, we can’t even find out who her mother is, so—’

  Hannah puts a hand on my arm. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She hesitates. ‘Have you—?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve called the police. I haven’t seen anyone yet. I’ll let you know what they say.’

  She says, ‘Yes, do. I’ll keep an eye on Evie.’

  I nod my thanks. Hannah squeezes my arm and smiles, then bends down to talk to Ben.

  That afternoon, when we get back from school, two police officers are waiting outside the house. They introduce themselves as PC Ian Carr and PC Harry Priestley. They look as if they’re in their early twenties and my heart sinks.

  ‘She doesn’t know about the latest development,’ I say, inclining my head towards Evie, hoping they’ll get the hint.

  PC Carr has thick dark hair; his black eyebrows, almost meeting in the middle of his forehead, crease.

  Priestley nods. ‘No problem, Mrs Morley. We’ll wait until you’re ready to answer questions.’

  I sit Ben in his high chair and give him a bag of apple crisps and a box of raisins, which will occupy him for a short while. He starts counting them but he doesn’t know his numbers yet, so he sounds like a small sergeant major, muttering, ‘One, two, one, two,’ under his breath. I send Evie up to her room with a glass of milk and a slice of bread and honey. She doesn’t make a fuss as normally I don’t let her take food out of the kitchen.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Only if you’re making one,’ Priestley says, as Carr cuts in, ‘Milk and two sugars.’

  Priestley is not as striking as his fellow officer; he has a round, pudgy face and pale blue eyes, but he seems sharper. I talk as I brew the tea – telling them about Evie’s adoption and the gift from my daughter’s ‘real’ father.

  ‘Can we see where you found them?’ Priestley is on his feet immediately.

  I slide open the French windows and lead them into the garden.

  ‘She was playing with the first card out here, and then yesterday I found a present addressed to Evie that she doesn’t know about.’ I show them the broken tree. ‘He pushed them through a hole in the fence,’ I explain.

  It’s been mended. Someone has bent the metal strands back and fastened chicken wire over the top. I feel a surge of relief and love for Ollie – he must have done it after I’d gone to bed. I picture him at night, clutching a torch and secateurs, his breath in a freezing cloud around him.

  ‘No other cards or gifts?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Could anyone have seen the intruder,’ asks Carr, ‘other than yourselves?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not from here. The neighbours might have noticed someone on the bridle path, but that wouldn’t be suspicious. It’s a right of way and it leads to the golf course and then the Cow and Calf rocks.’

  They both look up. There’s a man standing on the top of the granite block, stark against the sinking sun. As we watch, he turns and walks back towards the moor.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have CCTV?’ Carr asks, and I shake my head again.

  After we’ve returned to the kitchen and they’ve exhausted their questions over the cups of tea, Priestley asks if they can speak to Evie. I hesitate.

  ‘I don’t want her to know there was a present,’ I say, trying to keep the agitation out of my voice.

  ‘We won’t mention it, Mrs Morley,’ Priestley assures me.

  I go and fetch Evie. She sits on the sofa next to me and holds my hand. Priestley crouches beside her and Carr takes the armchair opposite. Ben is delighted to have two men in the room and brings Carr a stream of trucks, diggers and trains. Priestley is holding the card we found on Saturday.

  ‘I was admiring your lovely card,’ he says. ‘Who’s it from?’

  She gives him one of her hard stares.

  ‘My real daddy,’ she says. ‘It says so inside,’ she adds, in case he’s illiterate as well as dim.

  ‘And who is your real daddy? Do you know?’

  She shrugs. ‘My daddy’s called Ollie, but I don’t know who my real one is. The one that gave me away.’

  I think about the story I always tell her – of the kind lady who gave her to us. I suppose that must be how she imagines her father – as a kind man who gave her away too, as if she were a gift. Only now he wants her back.

  ‘Can you tell us how the card got there?’ asks Priestley.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘And have you found any other cards, or anything else, in your special hiding place?’

  ‘Mum, can I watch CBBC now? You said I could.’

  ‘If someone you don’t know tries to give you a card or a present, please don’t take it. Can you be very grown up and tell an adult straight away? Like your mum. You won’t get into trouble.’

  She nods and squeezes my hand, looks up at me beseechingly. I put the TV on. It’s the Waybuloos,
cartoon characters with enormous eyes who do yoga and float about and I’m reminded again of how unnaturally far apart Evie’s eyes are and what could potentially have caused her to look the way she does.

  At the door, Priestley says, ‘We’ll alert the community police team and get them to do a routine patrol round here. We’ll speak to all your neighbours, see if they’ve seen anyone acting oddly round your house. Keep an eye out for anything unusual and get in touch if you do notice something out of the ordinary. Or if another package turns up.’ He glances towards Evie, but she’s too engrossed in the television to pay him any attention. ‘You might want to think about security – getting some kind of alarm and CCTV installed. And,’ he hesitates, and then says, ‘I’m sure you do it anyhow, and I don’t need to tell you this, but I’d make sure you know where your daughter is, and who she’s with at all times.’

  I nod. ‘Is there any way to track him down? Her biological father?’

  ‘From what you’ve said, it doesn’t look likely,’ says Carr. ‘We need to see if we can catch him – if he does come back. With an increased police presence in the area, he’ll most likely be deterred from approaching you again.’

  Priestley gives me a card with the Ilkley police station number and address. It’s just round the corner from the school. I lock the door behind them. I’m shaken by our conversation. The officers have confirmed that this is serious and I’m not worrying unnecessarily, but they haven’t made me feel safer or given me any confidence that they’ll find the man who’s stalking us.

  WEDNESDAY

  I’ve just dropped the children off at school when the text comes through:

  Coffee? I’m in the cafe on Back Grove Rd. H.

  I hurry there as fast as I can. I want to see Harris, feel his reassuring presence. There’s a strength about him that makes me feel secure, if only temporarily. When he sees me, he grins and kisses me on the cheek. It’s as if something has unlocked inside him since our walk through Heber’s Ghyll: he’s warmer, more at ease.

  ‘Zoe,’ he says, and just the way he says my name makes me feel special.

  For the first time since I met him, he seems tired.

  ‘I’ve a commission to make a sculpture that’ll go on the moor,’ he says, when I ask him if he’s still working on his exhibition. ‘It’ll replace the cairn above the Valley of Death.’

  He starts to talk to me about the link between art and walking. He quotes Richard Long and someone called Rudi Fuchs. He says he wants to create something that isn’t separate from the landscape, but is part of it and over time it’ll alter and change as the world around it changes. At least, that’s what I think he’s saying, but I feel giddy on caffeine and his passion. He’s leaning towards me, his hands sketching patterns through the sugar grains on the table, and he’s so close I could touch him if I moved slightly.

  He stops talking abruptly and gazes at me. A blush starts to flare across my cheeks. He picks up my hands in his.

  ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ he says slowly. ‘Something’s still stopping you painting.’

  I nod. And then it all pours out. About Evie. Her adoption. How her real father has found her and is sending her these creepy messages and has left her a present. That he’s been watching us, he’s broken into our garden and formed some kind of bond with Evie. He could be involved with drugs. Prostitutes. Or he could be anyone. A nice middle-class man with a seedy habit. The police arriving yesterday.

  ‘Like two boy scouts. What do they know?’ I say.

  He listens carefully and doesn’t interrupt. He’s still holding my hands and he squeezes me so hard it almost hurts. He says, ‘You know the man that’s leaving these things for your daughter might not be her father?’

  It’s my worst fear. I’ve been trying not to think about it. He grips me tighter, forcing me to face it.

  ‘You said it would be hard to track Evie down. Her own mother doesn’t know where she is. This man may not be related to her at all.’

  The implication – that a paedophile could be stalking our daughter – becomes more concrete when Harris spells it out. He’s right. We have no way of knowing if he’s her father or not. Have the police considered this possibility? I try to calm down. Boy scouts or not, I’m sure they will have, it’s probably part of their training.

  ‘Keep her close,’ Harris says. ‘I’m sorry to hear some bastard is targeting your daughter like that. But you have to channel what you’re feeling into your work.’

  He interlaces his fingers between mine.

  ‘You are beautiful, Zoe,’ he whispers.

  The desire and rage in his eyes is so fierce I think that he’s going to yank me across the table towards him and kiss me. Tears fill my eyes. I can’t remember the last time Ollie told me I was beautiful. But although I want Harris, I have to think of Evie. I sit back and slide my fingers from his.

  I need to move the canvases Harris recommended I buy out of my studio so they don’t get paint on them. After I’ve picked Ben up from nursery and given him his lunch, I make sure he has plenty of toys in front of him. I carry the canvases up to Evie’s room. I’m going to store them in the attic, out of the way of sticky fingers, until I need them. I have to do three trips, piling them next to her bed. Ben starts crying when he notices that I’m not with him so I heft him upstairs too. Evie’s Meccano sculpture is still lying on the floor from when he broke it and he starts to play with the pieces. I must remember to help her rebuild it. I open the cupboard door under the eaves that leads to our storage space and switch on the light.

  I crouch to get inside. Ollie has put some plywood boards over the joists near the door. It’s a temporary solution and they wobble slightly. I don’t want to overbalance and land on the insulation. My materials for creating canvases are already stored here – the wood for the frames, a roll of ten-ounce cotton duck, a tin of acrylic primer. I ferry the canvases in, one at a time, and stack them up like giant playing cards. There’s not enough room on the plywood board – I’m going to have to shift the roll of fabric over to one side. I peer through the open cupboard door to check Ben is still okay and then I restack the canvases so I can reach the cotton. As I pull it away from the wall, something tumbles out. It’s a Princess Elsa doll in a frost-blue dress. There’s something else there too. I run my hand down the gap between the roll and the wall and pull out toys. Toys that I’ve never seen before. A flat tin box filled with colouring pencils. A teddy with a handkerchief neck-tie. A pink purse with a felt flower sewn on the front. My breath quickens. I back out, leaving everything else where it is, banging my head. How long has this been going on for? Not only has Evie been receiving these presents but she’s deliberately been hiding them from us.

  I grab Ben and run downstairs with him, slipping on the last step, twisting my wrist as I grab the bannisters to stop myself falling. I have an overwhelming need to have Evie close to me, to hug her hard. Instead, I cuddle Ben and kiss him. He wriggles and giggles, trying to escape.

  ‘Evie, love,’ I say, taking both her hands in mine. ‘I found some toys in the attic. I won’t be cross. Please tell me where you got them from.’

  She snatches her hands away and wraps her arms round her scrawny chest. We’ve just got home from school and we’re sitting in her bedroom, fixing her Meccano sculpture. Ben is doing laps of her bedroom and the landing outside, chugging like a steam train.

  ‘They’re mine. You shouldn’t have been looking at them.’

  ‘I was putting my canvases away in the attic and I saw them. Where did you find them? Did someone give them to you?’ She doesn’t say anything. ‘Were they in the tree?’

  She nods. ‘They’re from my daddy. The real one.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart. Why didn’t you tell me? Or the policeman when he asked you?’

  ‘I didn’t lie,’ she says with spirit.

  I’m about to tell her off when I realize that’s she’s right. She didn’t answer PC Priestley, and none of us noticed. She bursts into te
ars and throws her arms around my neck. I think of the pile of presents, next to Evie when she’s lying sleeping in bed. I want to throw them out. They feel poisonous.

  ‘It’s okay.’ I try to soothe her. ‘Your daddy, your real, true daddy is Ollie. He loves you more than anything in the whole world. Did you see the man who left those things for you?’

  Her hot tears trickle down my neck when she shakes her head. ‘I hid them because I didn’t want Ben to get them,’ she sobs. ‘I want them to be special, just for me. You make me share my toys with him and he spoils everything.’

  I look up in time to see he’s stopped running round the room and is concentrating on pulling the arm off one her dolls. I let go of Evie and snatch the doll from Ben before he can do any damage and he starts to scream. He’s so loud, I barely hear Evie.

  ‘And he’s not, you know.’

  ‘Who’s not what?’ I ask, trying to contain Ben and keep the toy out of his reach.

  In a small, tight voice, she says, ‘Ollie’s not my real daddy. And you’re not my real mummy.’

  Evie’s words hit me like a blow to the solar plexus. I want to take her in my arms, but I’m wrestling with Ben.

  I’m still thinking what to say to her, when she tilts her chin defiantly and says, ‘I want my other mummy.’

  I’ve worked myself into a fury. It doesn’t help that I had a glass of wine while I was trying to get Evie and Ben into bed, as I thought it would help me calm down. What it actually meant was that I couldn’t be bothered to cook tea and I’m now at the end of a second large glass on an empty stomach. I want to shout and scream at Ollie; that he’s never here, that he’s not protecting Evie, that he’s not being a proper father. I’m taking my rage and my hurt out on him, I realize that, but why is he not here to soothe my feelings after my daughter can so casually dismiss me and all the love I’ve given her? I think of all those nights at the hospital, watching over her as she slept in the incubator. It hits me, as I’m tidying away Ben’s toys, and wiping gunk off the table, that maybe Ollie is having an affair after all. It would explain why he’s always home so late. The weekends. His distraction. Maybe even the new suits.