by Sanjida Kay
Once you’ve explored my flat, you start asking questions. About your mummy. I tell you that the woman is a fake. The man is also a fake. It’s much better to be with your real parents, who love you more than life itself, who love you to the moon and back.
You giggle and say, ‘To the end of the universe and back?’
‘I love you to the end of the universe and back,’ I tell you.
I’ll put you to bed tonight and I’ll watch you fall asleep. I’ll be with you in the morning. I will be the last thing you see at night and the first person you see when you open those beautiful eyes of yours.
For now, we have to hide. I don’t want them to take you away from me again. I cannot lose you. But it won’t be long. We’ll be able to escape and start a new life. Our own little family.
SATURDAY: THE DAY AFTER
I’m numb with fear. I’m walking across the moor, searching for my daughter. We started below White Wells, at the bottom of the path I took with Ben to meet Jack and Evie, a week ago today. Police officers, sniffer dogs and volunteers all spread out in a line and we began slowly trudging up the hill, through rank grass and rush, until we reached the ragged line of heather. The scale of the operation, the number of officers and dogs, is impressive.
My heart sank when I saw the weather: it’s cold and foggy. Ruby is next to me but I can only see a couple of the other officers, everyone else is lost in the mist.
Last night I lay on my bed in all my clothes and I must have slept but if I did, I don’t remember. I only recall weeping until my eyes were raw, and throwing up. I rose at 5 a.m., layered on warm clothes, made a flask of coffee and packed more warm clothes and waterproofs in a rucksack for me and for Evie to wear when we find her. Ruby tried to persuade me eat a bowl of Weetabix and to stay in the house.
‘She might come back here,’ she said.
‘I have to look for my daughter,’ I said.
Ollie called to say he was on his way home with Ben and he’d join me as soon as he could. His money ran out before he could give me any more details so I’m hoping that meant Dr Kapur was happy for Ollie to take Ben out of hospital. I feel a tug drawing my child to me; I wish he were here with me, in my arms.
Occasionally, there’s a break in the fog, and I catch sight of people I know – parents from school, Kate Stevenson, Andy. I’m grateful they’re here, looking for Evie, but I don’t want to speak to anyone. I have to hope and pray that we find her, but my mind, as cloudy as the day, can’t take it in – that my child could be out here, on the moor. I’m shaking. If we find her, what state will she be in? If, somehow, she got lost, and ended up on the moor, could she have survived a night in October? Yes, I tell myself fiercely, yes. It was cold but it wasn’t freezing. She will be alive. And if someone took her and discarded her afterwards, what kind of state would she be in then? I try and make my mind blank. I don’t want to think about the possibilities. What someone might have wanted with a seven-year-old girl. What he might have done to her. I have to focus on here and now, one foot in front of the other, on finding my daughter.
‘I keep imagining I’ll see her,’ I say to Ruby, ‘like she’s suddenly going to appear through the mist.’
I think of her gorgeous, snaggle-toothed grin, long dark hair sparkling with beads of moisture, her green eyes wide and excited. I can’t hold onto the image. It shivers like a mirage and disintegrates.
‘We’ll keep looking until we find her,’ says Ruby.
I can’t remember what Evie was wearing the last time I saw her. Hysteria threatens to overpower me. I keep my eyes on the ground, searching for any trace of her. Searching for her. My boots are coated with dead heather blossom. Tears leak out of the sides of my eyes.
‘Zoe. Zoe!’
It’s Ollie’s voice. I turn, elated, expecting to see him holding our daughter in his arms. He’s on his own, tripping over heather roots and bilberry tussocks. He’s out of breath. Once Ollie was fit – he used to row and play five-a-side football with Andy. He hugs me awkwardly, conscious of Ruby and the other officers stealing sidelong glances at him.
‘No sign?’ He doesn’t expect an answer. ‘Ben is okay,’ he adds quickly. ‘I couldn’t leave him there on his own – and he’s fine, he really is. You’ll see.’
‘But he almost died! What did Dr Kapur say? Exactly.’
‘Same thing as before. It’s too early to tell, but he’s optimistic he’ll make a full recovery.’ Ollie hesitates and then says, ‘He didn’t want me to take him home, but he said he could see that under the circumstances we couldn’t stay in hospital with him and we would want our son with us. He said if anything changes, no matter how slight, to call him and bring Ben in. And he also wants to see him for a check-up tomorrow. Hannah is with him now.’
‘How does he seem to you?’
‘Okay, honestly. Don’t worry. Hannah is giving him breakfast. You wouldn’t know he was unconscious for several hours yesterday. I mean, he’s tired but—’
He doesn’t want to say what we’re both thinking – there are no signs of brain damage. He falls into step a metre or so away from me, taking the place of an officer who moves further down the line. I comfort myself with the thought that Dr Kapur would never have let Ollie remove Ben from hospital if there was a concern. I wish I was with Ben. I haven’t been apart from him for a whole night before.
‘I keep remembering the last time I saw Evie,’ I say miserably. ‘I told her off. I shouted at her. I said—’
‘It’s not the last time you’ll see Evie,’ Ollie interrupts. ‘There’ll be many more occasions where you’ll scold her and where you tell her how much you love her. She knows you love her, that we love her.’
His mouth is turned down as he speaks. It’s an effort to be this kind and reassuring towards me. We’ve done nothing but snap at each other lately. I stretch out my arm and he stretches his and we touch fingertips.
‘If she’s with her father—’ I start to say.
‘I am her father!’
‘Sorry, love, I’m sorry. I mean —’
The fight leaves him quickly and he looks beaten: sallow and unshaven in this unkind light.
‘If she’s been abducted by her biological father, then we’ll find her,’ he says. ‘She can’t leave the country. They’ve alerted all the ports and the airports. No one can hide for long. They’ll trace his credit cards, they’ll catch him on CCTV.’
If they knew who he was, I think, but I don’t say it. We have to hope that she is with her father because he’ll love her and he’ll care for her, won’t he? Until we can track her down and take her back. Take her home. I don’t say this either because I don’t want to hurt Ollie’s feelings even more. I dig my nails into my palms. I never used to censor myself in front of him. I always said the first thing I was thinking and waited for him to be my sounding board, my voice of reason, my rock in the middle of the night. But, recently, he’s stopped being so patient with me. And, most of the time, I’ve felt so angry with him, I’ve been suppressing my feelings in case I lash out.
I look ahead but the fog isn’t clearing. This is not the kind of day where it’ll lift to reveal bright blue sky. It’s dark, grey, the air is heavy with moisture so that there seems no difference between the damp fog and the fine drizzle that has started. I want to stamp my foot, shake my fist at God. Or someone. We’re covering so little ground and so slowly, I start to despair.
We reach White Wells, the spa where Darwin is said to have taken the waters. There’s a small cafe here and the owner must have been informed about the search because he comes out with free tea and coffee for the police and volunteers.
‘I’m sorry about your little girl,’ he says, as he hands me a cup. ‘I hope you find her, love.’
I can’t meet his gaze. I don’t want to see his pity or my own wretchedness reflected back. I turn away so he won’t see my tears.
Ollie puts a hand on his shoulder and says, ‘Thanks, mate,’ and the poshness of his London accent here, in th
e middle of the Yorkshire Moors, as we accept kindness from strangers, grates on me.
I sit on a low stone wall facing towards Ilkley, though I can see nothing more than a few yards of shorn grass. I feel a stab of envy when I think of the families below me; even though I can’t see a single house, I know they’re watching television, cooking breakfast, their children are doing homework, playing in their gardens – they’re unaware of the bliss in the everyday, oblivious that I’m outside, raging and crying because someone has stolen my child.
Ruby sits a little distance away on the same wall. It’s as if she’s my minder. Does she suspect me as well as Ollie? I suppose increasingly people have become aware of the violence within women too: in mothers. I remember my disproportionate fury with Evie simply because she didn’t get ready for school on time. How I made her destroy her beautiful sculpture...
‘How are you doing?’ Ruby asks.
I give a juddering intake of breath and I try to answer but words fail me. If a child was lost here, or had been left on the moor, what would the chances be of finding her? Finding her in time. Finding her alive. I take a sip of my tea and throw up over my boots.
‘Oh, Zoe, love,’ says Ruby, and hands me a paper napkin.
I wipe my mouth and say, ‘Why isn’t there a helicopter searching for her?’
‘The weather’s too bad. Even if the pilot used the thermal-imaging camera, we wouldn’t detect her.’
‘Why not?’ I rinse with my lukewarm tea and spit but I can’t get the taste of vomit out of the back of my throat.
Ruby looks away from me as if she’s embarrassed.
‘A small child is about the same size as a sheep.’
I pour the rest of my tea away. I could kill every single one of those sheep with my bare hands.
By midday we’ve checked the Valley of Death, with its treacherous cliffs and rocks, sharp as shark’s teeth, above which, one day, Harris’s sculpture will stand, and we’re slogging through the bog leading up to the Twelve Apostles. Someone emerges from the mist and comes towards me, her hands outstretched. She grasps mine. Her eyes fill with tears. It’s Mandy Kilvington’s mum. Mandy is in Evie’s class, but I can’t think what her mum’s name is. There’s a terrifying blank where the answer should be.
‘We are all so sorry. Evie was a precious child. We all loved her. Such a talented little artist.’
I can’t stand her tone of voice and I snatch my hands away.
‘Thank you for coming to look for her,’ I say through gritted teeth.
‘We couldn’t possibly stay away. Julie, Heather and I, we’re all here. Our daughters played with Evie all the time at school. We couldn’t imagine – if my Mandy – if one of our children —’
I can feel Ruby’s presence. She’s hovering just behind my shoulder. Now she leans forward and offers her hand.
‘I’m Ruby Patel, the family liaison officer. Thank you for coming to help, Mrs…?’
‘Mrs Kilvington,’ Mandy’s mum says. She wipes her tears away with a tissue. ‘The first twenty-four hours is crucial, isn’t it? That’s why everyone from Evie’s class has come to help. Because we simply have to find her—’
I’m going to be sick again.
‘Thank you,’ says Ruby. ‘It’s actually forty-eight hours. But, as you say, time is of the essence. Shall we get back to looking for Evie?’
Mrs Kilvington narrows her eyes at Ruby and sniffs. ‘If there’s anything you need, anything at all, please call,’ she says, seizing my wrist.
‘Thank you,’ I manage before turning away.
Ruby puts her arm around me and squeezes. ‘There’s always one, wants to turn everything into a drama all about them.’
‘She said “played”. Past tense.’
‘Evie is missing, that’s all we know,’ says Ruby gently.
I look into her large, almond shaped eyes with their thick lashes. I can’t read her, I can’t tell what she really thinks. Evie has been missing for almost twenty hours.
‘You could do with a break. We’ve got plenty of officers out here who are trained to do this job.’ I’m about to protest, when she says, ‘You can always rejoin the search party later. But you need to keep your strength up. I’ll go and get your husband, he can walk you back.’
I haven’t seen Ben since yesterday afternoon and I nod wordlessly. Ollie and I head towards the Cow and Calf rocks and then we drop straight down Hangingstone Road and along the bridleway to the back of our house. There’s a litany running through my mind, ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ over and over. I bite my lip to stop myself from saying it out loud. Ollie doesn’t hold my hand, or help me, as he normally would when I stumble on the uneven path, he’s so wrapped up in his own grief.
He doesn’t speak until we can see our house and then he says, ‘I’m going to kill Jack Mitchell.’
I touch his arm. ‘We just need to talk to him. There’s something we’re missing. It doesn’t make sense – Jack saying you collected Evie.’
He nods and a muscle fires in his jaw.
Hannah is standing outside. Her face is white and pinched. She looks anxious. Ben is bundled up in his all-in-one suit, playing in the sandpit. Hannah must be cold. Then I realize – she’s worried too, she’s fond of Evie. As her teacher, she spends hours with her, she knows a different side of my child, a part of her personality we don’t see.
‘Is Ben okay?’ I ask when we reach the wire fence.
‘He’s been on good form,’ she says. ‘I’ve tried to keep him quiet and not overtire him. But I thought he could do with some fresh air, you know, after being in the hospital for so long.’
Ben sees me and comes running over, his arms outstretched, and starts to wail, ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.’
I can’t reach him – the fence is too high to climb or to lift him over. He has a bluish tinge to his skin and there are dark purple thumbprints beneath his eyes. The backs of his hands are crisscrossed with plasters. I crouch down and put my fingers through the mesh. I’m so relieved to see him – I can’t believe we nearly lost him yesterday – that I cry too.
‘Any sign of her?’
Hannah looks at Ollie instead of me and he shakes his head.
I run along the path next to our garden – I’ll have to go through the house to get Ben. Ollie follows more slowly. My son staggers after me, on the other side of the fence, howling as if I’ve abandoned him again. When I reach the front garden, I pull up short. There are two satellite TV vans parked outside. Someone gives a shout and a mob of people with cameras swing towards us. Men start shouting, ‘Mrs Morley, Mrs Morley, Zoe – how are you feeling? Any sign of your daughter? Mr Morley? Ollie?’
How does it feel to know that your seven-year-old daughter has been missing for an entire day? A child you love so much you cannot breathe, a child who has only ever been out of your sight for a few hours whilst she was at school? Ollie pushes past and takes the key out of my trembling hands. He slams the door behind us and I run through the house to reach Ben. I can still hear the journalists clamouring outside. I pick Ben up and cuddle him and gradually his sobs quieten.
‘Thanks, Hannah,’ Ollie says, and takes out his wallet.
She shakes her head and her long straight hair falls in front of her face.
‘No, I couldn’t possibly.’ She looks at me and her expression is almost desperate. Her green eyes fill with tears. ‘If you need me again – tomorrow – just call. But I hope…’
She doesn’t finish the sentence. I can’t look at her as she turns to pick up her bag. I can feel my face tightening, aching.
I carry Ben to the window to wave goodbye to her, but he won’t; he snuggles into my neck instead. Hope. Yes, we have to be hopeful. We will find our daughter. I stare into his blue irises. Is it Ben in there? Or have we brought a shadow-version of our child back from the hospital?
I watch Hannah pull her scarf over her face and burrow through the mass of press camped outside our house. As she drives away, a patrol car pulls up and
Collier, Clegg and Ruby get out.
‘Ollie! It’s the police. Maybe there’s news.’ But then my heart sinks. If they’d found Evie, she’d be with them.
Ollie has already figured that out and curses under his breath as he opens the door.
‘Mr Morley,’ says Collier, heavily, as he enters. He’s being formal. This can’t be a good sign. ‘We have a few questions for you.’
Ollie swears out loud. ‘Have you found Jack Mitchell yet?’
‘We will. Shall we?’
He indicates the dining-room table. The four of them sit down and I extricate Ben from his outdoor clothes, wincing at the bruises on his arms. Collier turns a tape recorder on.
‘You said yesterday that you had two meetings at work. You had your phone switched off from around twelve until four when you picked up your wife’s messages and then you went straight to Airedale Hospital.’
‘That’s right. We’ve gone over this already. We’re wasting time. You haven’t even found Mitchell, the last person to see Evie!’
Collier ignores him. I join them, holding Ben on my knee. I don’t want to let him go. I don’t understand why Collier hasn’t moved the investigation on. ‘We checked your phone records. You made two calls from your mobile at two seventeen and two twenty-two p.m.’
‘Haven’t you got more important things to do than look at my fucking mobile?’
‘You said your phone was turned off,’ Collier repeats. ‘At two thirty-six p.m. CCTV footage from your office shows you leaving the building. And there’s no footage of you returning or exiting your office just after four when you said you left to go to the hospital.’
There’s silence. Ollie looks startled. He glances at me and then away.