The Stolen Child

by Sanjida Kay

  ‘Evie?’ I whisper and then I shout more loudly, ‘Evie!’

  There’s a power cable snaking across the floor and Andy stamps on the round black switch attached to it. Suddenly the place is ablaze. There are four or five studio lights, the kind that you might find on a film set.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ says Andy.

  The room is filled with scrap metal: there are boxes of mattress springs, bolts, iron coils, chains and cogs and things that I have no name for nor knowledge of their origin. There are objects that look like instruments of torture: cutting blades and blowtorches. There’s a low trolley with a flat wooden bed that Harris must use to transport his finished sculptures back to the house and pickup truck. I can’t see Evie, but she could be hidden behind all this junk. I look at Bella to see how she’s reacting. She’s sitting next to me, half leaning against my leg. She’s hot and panting. She’s thirsty.

  ‘It’s Haris’s studio.’

  Andy starts tearing it apart, pulling away the sheets of metal, pushing over the boxes of scrap. There’s an opening in the wall and I walk swiftly over to it, tripping on an old trowel and a wrench, once yellow, the paint chipped from it. Haris has sectioned off part of his studio so that it’s almost like an office, running the length of the building. There’s a small table and a chair with a gallon of water next to it, and a camping stove with an espresso maker. There’s no sign of Evie. I slop some of the water into a mug and put it on the floor for Bella. As I rise to my feet, I notice the wall to my left. It’s covered in photos, like a montage. My first thought is that it’s a mood board to give Harris ideas for his sculptures, but the cold, sick feeling in my gut is telling me something different. I walk slowly towards it.

  The pictures are all of me. There are photos of me looking glossy and groomed, professional ones that are in the public domain: there’s the one taken for Jenny’s website, and those the photographer took in Ilkley for the Telegraph. I’ve never seen the other pictures before. There are snaps of me drinking a coffee in a cafe, reading a newspaper, studying a shop window, walking on the moor. I’m not wearing any make-up and yet I look prettier than in real life. They must have been shot with a long lens and then blown up when they were printed: my edges have been smoothed; the sun highlights my hair; my face is over-exposed.

  The noise stops.

  ‘She’s not here. I can’t find her.’ Andy’s breathing hard. He comes to a halt next to me. ‘Jesus Christ.’ A drop of blood hits the floor. He’s cut his hands searching for my daughter.

  There’s one photo, in the centre, where I’m pushing the buggy with Ben in it; his bright-blond hair gleams. I’m walking towards the photographer, my head turned away. But Evie is beside me and she’s looking straight ahead, directly at him. Her lips are parted as if she is going to speak or smile. As if she knows him.

  ‘The fucking monster!’ he roars.

  I hurtle back outside and take deep breaths as I wait for Collier to answer his mobile.

  ‘Zoe?’ Collier’s tone is brusque but he sounds concerned. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At Haris Agni’s house.’

  Below me are those twisted trees. I tell him where we are, what we’ve found.

  ‘Are you sure she’s not here?’ I ask Andy, although I’m pretty certain she isn’t. Bella isn’t responding as if my daughter is in the studio. As if she’s alive.

  ‘What the fuck is that all about? Those pictures?’

  I’m trembling. I don’t want Andy to lose it. Not now. Not here. I start walking down the path towards Haris’s house, hoping to meet Collier and Clegg on the way up. I don’t want to stay in that studio a moment longer, with the evidence of Haris’s obsession. He told me were kindred spirits, I remember now, and a taste of bile hits the back of my throat. He knew because he’d been watching me. Zoe Morley, he’d called me. He’d read that article in the paper, but it never mentioned my married name. Nor where my daughter was at school, and Ben had not even started at nursery then, yet he’d known where my children were: ‘It’s tough if you can only work in the mornings when your daughter’s at school and your son’s at nursery.’ He stalked me. He deceived me. He seduced me – in order to get to Evie.

  Andy runs after me. ‘Did you have any idea?’

  I shake my head. A small, hard part of me is thinking – did Andy know? He was the one who found the studio. Is he acting a rehearsed role? Perhaps he and Haris were working together. I can’t trust myself to speak. I’m not sure if I’ll scream or cry if I open my mouth.

  Halfway to Haris’s house, I spot something. I grab Andy’s arm. I can’t help myself. I can’t change the habits of friendship that have lasted my whole adult life. I point wordlessly at it. It’s a fragment of material that’s been snagged on a gorse bush. I pull it off and rub it between my fingers. It’s shiny, synthetic, ice-blue. It’s not from anything Evie wore to school on Friday. Andy’s holding me tightly, gripping my arms so hard, he’s bruising me.

  ‘It’s the dress,’ he says. ‘It’s the fucking dress she was wearing on the day of Ben’s party.’

  The princess dress from Frozen. The one I’d never seen before. I start to breathe faster, wheezing gulps that lacerate my windpipe. She’s out here. She’s out here somewhere. Andy holds me until the police arrive.

  It’s late afternoon. I’m crouching on the sitting-room floor, surrounded by tipper trucks and tractors, trying to play with Ben as if nothing is wrong. I’m failing and he’s being whiney and clingy. Ollie is clattering round the kitchen making coffee and sandwiches. The house smells odd. The breakfast bar is full of flowers. Carnations, chrysanthemums, lilies. Pity posies in hideously garish colours.

  ‘They arrived when you were out,’ says Ollie. ‘They’re from the parents in Evie’s class. One of the mums – Mrs Kilvington – brought them. And a casserole.’

  ‘A casserole?’

  ‘Yeah. Chicken in white wine with a mushroom glaze. I put it in the fridge. She wanted to stay and wait for you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The thought of chicken in white wine with a mushroom glaze made by Mandy Kilvington’s mum makes me feel nauseous. Or is it the flowers? The smell is cloying. I sneeze.

  ‘I told her she couldn’t. You didn’t want to see her, did you?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Do you want a sandwich?’ he asks.

  He has that peevish expression you get when you’ve slept in the middle of the day but the amount of sleep you’ve had is insufficient. I remember it from the time Ben was a baby, snatching scraps when I could and it was never enough. Collier said they haven’t found Haris: he’s not at home and his pickup has gone. Yet. They keep saying ‘yet’. Jenny says she doesn’t know where he is either. I feel as if something has curdled inside me and it lies thick and cold, like broken jelly. I can’t stop thinking about Haris and his creepy studio with the photo montage. How long has he been following me? Stalking me? Did he take Evie?

  Ollie opens a can of tuna and the smell makes me bilious. He spills some of the liquid on the work surface and I know he won’t wipe it up properly and will smear fish oil and crumbs across it and it’ll stink.

  I need to tell Ollie what I’ve found; it’s going to look odd if Collier or Ruby speak to him when I haven’t. I want him to comfort me. But I don’t want to say what my part in all this has been. That I met up with Haris as often as I possibly could. That I kissed him. That I almost loved him. So I’m smashing trucks with Ben and trying to find the exact words, the correct phrase, the right amount of courage. I hope to God that scrap of Evie’s dress is going to lead the police to her. Ollie is annoying me. He bangs every cupboard door, chinks each cup, rattles the spoons; the bread knife grates against my teeth. I can feel my migraine, blooming just behind my eyes.

  ‘You need to eat,’ he says. ‘When was the last time you ate anything? I’m going to make you one anyway.’

  The thought of a tuna sandwich makes me want to retch.

  ‘I said no thanks.’


  ‘Cheese then.’

  ‘No!’

  And now I definitely can’t say anything because it will come out as a shout or a scream. I know it’s not wholly rational but right now I believe that none of this would have happened if Ollie hadn’t been working so hard, if he’d been kind to me, if he’d been a proper father to Evie. If he’d been present I wouldn’t have looked twice at Haris fucking Agni and Evie would never have started obsessing about her real parents.

  I can hear myself speaking and for a moment I think I must have started talking to Ollie. I sound odd – like myself and unlike myself. And then I understand. I look up and see a picture of Evie on the TV and I put my hand over my mouth because how could I forget my gorgeous girl for even a second? Here we are, squabbling over tuna fucking sandwiches and there she is – almond-shaped green eyes, snub nose, lopsided grin, the hint of a dimple in her cheek. ‘MISSING’ is stamped over her face in large black letters.

  The image cuts back to me and Ollie. I’m talking. I look terrible: the perfect image of a distraught mother: haggard and white as paste, hair like straw, eyes wild. This is the bit where I’m going to start to cry, any minute now, the end of this sentence… I get up to switch off the TV and then I notice Ollie sitting beside me in that room full of journalists. He’s looking off camera. He’s shaved and neat. You can’t see the blood on his neck, where he nicked himself, or the grease in his hair. He looks presentable and completely detached. I never doubted my husband when Collier and Clegg made their accusations. But now, seeing his remote expression, I start to wonder. Could he have hidden Evie somewhere? Is the guy who owns The Ormond Gallery in on this too and is he covering for him? It would explain why Ollie didn’t come rushing when Ben was in hospital. What kind of man puts his career before his son’s life?

  The screen goes blank. Ollie is standing beside me with the remote in his hand.

  ‘I was watching that!’ I yell. ‘Did you see yourself? You looked like you couldn’t care less about our daughter.’

  ‘What the hell? What do you think I’m doing right now? I’m going back out on that bloody moor to keep searching for her.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have to look for her if—’

  ‘If what? If you’d arranged for someone trustworthy to pick our daughter up from school?’

  I’m so shocked I’m speechless. Is that what he thinks? And why is it my responsibility – to be in hospital with our son as his heart is failing and organize childcare for our daughter too?

  ‘I did. Her teacher. Who’s been looking after her since she was tiny. Who could I have found that would have been more responsible?’

  ‘Clearly you didn’t because he’s fucked off God knows where after letting our daughter be abducted by a fucking psychopath. Or else he’s the psycho.’

  Ollie starts cramming sandwiches into the plastic bread bag and stuffing them in his rucksack. His face is flushed. I’ve never seen him this angry before. I want to shout at him, for abandoning us during all the months leading up to Evie’s disappearance, letting me struggle at home on my own – but I turn away; tears are running down my face.

  ‘And as for that bloody press conference, I told you it was going to be a waste of time and you fucking insisted – you put us through it! What good has it done? It hasn’t brought Evie back. The police are inundated with time wasters, reporting sightings of girls who look nothing like her. The paedophiles of Yorkshire are getting off on it as we speak. My Twitter account is jammed full of trolls telling me all the things they want to do to our daughter.’

  He shoves his feet into hiking boots and grabs a jacket. As the door slams behind him, I hear the journalists, who are still camped outside, start to bay like a pack of hounds. My hands are shaking. Ollie has never spoken to me like that before. He’s barely ever raised his voice. The unfairness of his outburst makes me want to punch him. I take Ben upstairs for a bath and try to calm down.

  I’ve left the car on the farm track near the Doubler Stones, but, with Ollie gone, I won’t be able to retrieve it. As Ben splashes, I think about Haris again. I have no idea where he could be. I really didn’t know him well at all. I’ve called and texted him, asking him to get in touch, but he hasn’t replied. How can I find him? And then I remember that he’d said he has a sister with a child the same age as Ben. Haris comes from somewhere around here originally. I grab the iPad and start googling Agni and Leeds and then Bradford. If she visits him, perhaps she lives close. Of course, if his sister has a son, she’d be married: she might have a different surname. I almost give up before I’ve started, but then three names come up and only one of them is a woman’s – a Yasira Agni at Bradford University. Maybe she kept her maiden name, or she’s a single mother? I click on the link. She’s a post-grad in the English department, studying, ‘W. B. Yeats: A Psychoanalytic Approach’. I try to enlarge her photo but it won’t increase in size and it’s hard to tell if she could be Haris’s sister. I search for her on Facebook. She hasn’t made her account private and I’m able to look through her photos.

  Ben is flushed pink from the water and is taking full advantage of my lack of attention. He’s making Captain Jack and his crew jump from their pirate ship and dive-bomb into the bathwater.

  ‘Ben!’ I shout, but he ignores me and continues to splash and shout.

  I retreat to the far end of the bathroom to avoid the iPad getting wet. Yasira Agni is pretty. She has long, black, curly hair and pale green eyes; her skin is much darker than Haris’s and the shape of her face is different – rounder, less defined, with a sharper nose. Could she be his sister? I can’t tell and I’m starting to feel jittery. I should stop this and get Ben ready for bed. He’s making booming and whooshing noises as his pirate ship blows something up. He’s so loud, I can’t think straight.

  And then I find something. It’s a photo of a child’s birthday party – Yasira has her arms round a little boy. His face is lit up by two candles on his cake. His cheeks are full of air, ready to blow them out. I scroll to the next picture. The candles have been extinguished and Yasira is cutting the cake. It’s a wider angle and you can see some of the guests sitting round the table – it’s one of those mainly adults-only parties you can only get away with when your child is small. I’m about to give up and shut down the iPad, when I see him. He’s on the far right-hand side of the picture, smiling at his sister and holding a glass of red wine. I enlarge the photo. It’s definitely Haris.

  I quickly put Yasira Agni’s name into the search engine and, this time, 192.com comes up with her postcode. She’s on the electoral register and if I sign up to the website, I’ll be able to access her full address. I do it quickly. I can’t believe I’m able to find out this much information about a complete stranger. Well, not quite a complete stranger any more. I know where she works, who her brother is, the age of her son, the poetry she likes to read, and that she’s the same size as me with a similar taste in clothes. And now I know where she lives – 3, Stonechat Place, Little Horton, which is just behind the university. Yasira could walk to work.

  I lift Ben out and dry him. There’s no time to waste. Ollie may stay out with the search party all night. I put Ben into his pyjamas, plus thick socks and a fleece. I call a taxi.

  Ben is excited to be going out at night, and points at the street lights, shouting, ‘Moon. Stars.’

  Once the taxi has dropped us off at the farm track where I left my car and Ben’s buckled into his own car seat, he quickly falls asleep. I follow signs for the Alhambra and the university. We pass Bombay Stores. I remember going as a teenager and falling in love with the saris, reams and reams of tropical colours, shimmering with gilt and sequins. They seemed impossibly bright for someone like me to wear. I get lost in the maze of side streets. I wonder if Ruby lives round here too. I’ve barely asked her a thing about herself. It’s not like me – but the truth is, I don’t care. I want to find my daughter. I don’t want to make small talk. But I ought to find out more about her, for Evie’s sake. Haris is
Muslim, Collier says. Ruby might be too and, who knows, there could be a conflict of interest; it might cloud her judgement.

  It’s early evening and it’s cold: there’s hardly anyone around, no kids playing out, no one I’d want to stop and ask for directions. I follow the birds: left onto Wheatear, along Plover, right on Curlew, a false turn down a dead end, before I find Stonechat. I park outside number three. The light is on, so I imagine Yasira must be home. Perhaps she’s putting her little boy to bed or maybe he’s already asleep. I unbuckle Ben and lift him out. He’s hot and heavy. He nestles his head into the crook of my neck and snores softly.

  I stand on the pavement. Sweat prickles across my chest, under my arms. I’m on my own with a sleeping two-year-old, about to knock on a stranger’s door. I’m in a predominantly Muslim area and that alone makes me feel as if I’ve entered a foreign country. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I can’t help my unease. I look at the rows of houses either side of me. They’re short, thin, crammed close together, built of millstone grit; they’re no different to the house I grew up in, the kind of house my working-class mum lived in all her life and thought grand. These people might have originally come from somewhere else, but they’re as Yorkshire as I am now.

  My shoulders relax and I take a deep breath and knock on the door. There are footsteps and I wonder if Haris is here; if he might answer. My breath is light and shallow, mere sips of air. I hug Ben tightly. The door opens and Yasira Agni looks out. She stares at me and then glances up and down the street and then back at me. She looks tired. Her hair is caught in a messy bun. She’s wearing shapeless jeans and a Breton top with worn Converse. I could have plucked the same outfit from my wardrobe and it reminds me that I still have her clothes at home.