by Heidi Perks
‘I’ll come with you, darling.’ He was already reaching one arm across her for his jacket.
‘No. Please. I just need to be on my own for a bit.’ She didn’t want him with her, step by step at her side, clutching her hand as he led her round the block. That wasn’t her idea of getting out and being able to breathe.
‘Harriet,’ he held on to her arm like a child who wouldn’t let go of his parent. ‘If you go alone I’ll worry about you. I’ll feel awful if I’m left here not knowing where you are.’
How would she ever be able to escape now? With him looking at her, that forlorn expression hanging on his face. As soon as she stepped outside the house he would follow her, she wouldn’t be able to stop him.
‘Just let her go,’ Angela said softly from behind, wiping her hands on a towel. Harriet released a deep breath that made Brian stare at her. ‘It will do her good,’ Angela continued, nodding at Brian, and as she gently took hold of his arm Harriet grabbed the chance to leave.
Brian remained rigid in the hallway. She felt him behind her but didn’t dare look round. Instead she hurried down the path, her heart beating fast, expecting any moment he would break free.
‘Like I said, I won’t be long, I’ll just walk round the block,’ she called back, turning right out of the gate. She could have cried with relief as her legs carried her as fast as they could away from that house.
Charlotte
I couldn’t face going into the office that week and my manager quickly told me to take as long as I needed. How long will I need? I’d thought, putting the phone down on Monday morning. Two days had passed since Alice had disappeared but it already felt like weeks. There was every possibility that nothing would return to normal ever again.
For the next couple of days I twisted myself into knots over what I could do to help. I walked up and down the roads that surrounded the field in the hope I would see Alice, even though I knew my search was futile – the area had been meticulously covered in the hours after she disappeared.
I called DCI Hayes and offered to find money to help the search.
‘What for?’ he asked me.
‘I don’t know, PR, any kind of publicity. I can get whatever is needed,’ I said, sure my stepfather would hand it over unquestioningly without expecting a penny back. Funds had been set up for missing people before, appeals for contributions; surely the police would be grateful for the help. Hayes told me there was no need but I was getting desperate.
‘What can I do, Aud?’ I screamed down the phone. ‘I have to do something. I can’t sit around waiting for news.’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I think your priority has to be being there for Harriet.’
‘But she won’t see me.’
‘Maybe ask Angela what you can do,’ Audrey suggested, and I wondered if I could hear the tiredness in my friend’s voice or if I was imagining it. I’d lost count of the number of times I had called her in the last few days.
‘Yes, that’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Aud.’
Instead I focused on chores that didn’t require thinking, between taking Molly and Jack to school and picking them up again at the end of the day. I bought a new mop, a packet of dusters and spray for every surface and I cleaned my house from top to bottom. I scrubbed the back of cupboards, emptied, scoured and refilled the fridge, and scraped away remnants of stickers that were still stuck to the insides of new windows that had been installed two years ago. I sorted through the children’s clothes and I bought Jack a new pair of pyjamas.
On Wednesday I bought fresh ingredients from the butcher and the grocer’s. But by the time it came to cooking dinner, I was so tired with cleaning that I couldn’t concentrate. As I stood by the hob and prepared the ingredients for lasagne, I found myself thinking about Alice, the investigation and what was in the press, and I ended up throwing it all into one pan and serving it as a pile of mush that the children refused to eat.
‘This is really not nice, Mummy,’ Molly told me, pushing her plate across the table.
‘It’s ’sgusting,’ Evie added.
‘I know it is,’ I sighed. ‘Don’t eat it. I’ll put a pizza in the oven.’ I swept up their plates and tipped the food into the bin, trying hard not to acknowledge that everything I did was screaming out failure.
With my back to the children I tore into a pizza box and was only half-listening when Molly said, ‘Mummy, Sophie said something horrible today.’
‘Did she, darling, what was that?’ I traced my finger over the back of the pizza box until I found the oven temperature.
‘She said her mummy said she wasn’t surprised you weren’t watching Alice.’
I spun around, attempting to put the pizza on the counter, ignoring it when I missed and it dropped on to the floor. ‘What did you say?’
‘And she also said she wouldn’t trust you to watch the cat. That’s what Sophie told me today. I told her we don’t even have a cat, and they don’t either, but she said I was being stupid and that’s not what she meant. What did she mean, Mummy?’
‘Nothing.’ I forced a smile. ‘It sounds like Sophie’s just being silly.’
‘Sophie said that meant she won’t be able to come here to play on her own again.’
My fingers felt tingly. It spread quickly into my arms and down my legs. Please tell me Karen didn’t really say this, a small voice whispered inside me. Karen would call me up after the weekend to tell me she’d had another hellish couple of days because her mother-in-law had popped in again, uninvited. We’d laugh about it until we had tears rolling down our faces because she always made her stories so amusing.
But this wasn’t the kind of thing a six-year-old would make up.
I picked the pizza off the floor, checked it wasn’t covered in dust, and put it in the oven. ‘I’m sure there’s a mix-up,’ I said, smiling at Molly. ‘I’ll speak to Karen and sort it out.’
‘I want Sophie to come to tea again,’ Molly said, hanging her head so I couldn’t see her eyes.
‘Of course she’ll come again,’ I said, the smile still plastered across my face. ‘Now, you’ve got ten minutes to go and play and I’ll call you back when dinner’s ready,’ I added, my voice far too high-pitched. ‘Go on,’ I urged, practically pushing her out of the room.
My hands shook as they reached for the island to steady myself as I sat down on a stool. I’d been doing fine hiding myself away, cleaning and scrubbing and filling my day with mindless chores. One stupid remark and I was falling apart again.
Karen had sent me flowers on Monday with a card that said she was thinking of me. They were on the windowsill – tulips, in a variety of colours because she knows I like them.
I reached for my mobile, my finger hovering over it. I wanted to hear Audrey tell me I was being stupid, that no one was talking about me. I wanted her to say that Sophie misconstrued it and it was all a misunderstanding. I wanted to laugh and put the phone down with relief that my friends weren’t talking about me behind my back.
But on Wednesdays Aud went to rugby with her boys; she wouldn’t answer so I pressed another button on the phone and waited for the dial tone. I’d promised I wouldn’t do this, but I couldn’t help myself.
‘Hey,’ Tom said when he picked up. ‘Everything OK?’
‘No.’
‘Charlotte, what’s happened? Is it Alice?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘You’re crying. Slow down and tell me what it is.’ And so I told him what Molly had said.
‘Oh, Charlotte.’
The day we separated I swore I wouldn’t rush back to Tom when things got hard. ‘You make your bed, you lie in it,’ my mother said when I told her we were splitting up. ‘Your father left and tried coming back once and I was stupid enough to let him. And you know what happened then. Besides, the kids won’t thank you if you chop and change your mind.’
But then again, my mother had never lost someone else’s child.
‘Call K
aren,’ Tom said.
‘I can’t.’
‘Of course you can; she’s your friend.’
‘And say what? Do you not trust me any more?’
‘Ask her what she said.’
‘Tom, why do you have to make everything so simple? What if she tells me she did say it? What if she says she meant it?’ I cried.
I knew I shouldn’t have called him. There was no way I could ask Karen what she’d said. I’d sooner let the thoughts eat me up than confront her.
I stared at my phone, wondering what I should do. My mobile no longer felt like a lifeline between me and my friends. The initial flurry of messages I’d received in the aftermath of the fete had reduced dramatically. In fact it was pinging with alerts much less frequently than it had before the weekend and its silence was unsettling.
I clicked on WhatsApp again, something I’d been regularly doing in the previous few days, but there was nothing new since the fete. I scrolled up and down the various groups: Molly’s class, Jack’s class, book club … there were always messages waiting for me to read. Not a day passed without someone asking a question about homework or uniform or setting up a new group for a night out.
I pushed my phone away. I’d tried to ignore the thought that had begun to trouble me – the fear that new group chats had been set up without me, that my friends wanted to discuss things without involving me. But after what Molly had told me, I started to believe it was happening.
Since the appeal, when the journalist had pointed out that I’d been on Facebook when Alice went missing, I hadn’t been able to look at the web page and even removed the app from my phone. Somehow I’d convinced myself that simply logging on would create a trigger for my activity to be monitored. As if someone was waiting for me so they could say, ‘Hah, see. Here she is again, she can’t keep off it.’ I passed my theory by Audrey who told me it was ridiculous, but still I hadn’t chanced it.
Once the children were in bed that night I knew I couldn’t hold out any longer. I needed to face whatever was being said. I needed to know. I poured myself a large glass of wine, which I took up to bed, and with a deep breath, I opened up my Facebook page.
My pulse raced as I scrolled through posts about upcoming holidays and friends’ high-achieving children. Furiously searching – for what, I didn’t know. A post that stated what a dreadful mother I was? A high number of likes and shock-faced emojis attached to it?
The more I looked through, the more my heartbeat fell into an easier rhythm. I found nothing of the sort but then I did come across a ‘Help Find Alice’ page that someone had started, asking others to share and post if they had any news.
It had been set up by one of the mums I barely knew, though at some point we had become Facebook friends. I stared at the profile picture of her and her two girls. If I didn’t know her then Harriet wouldn’t either, which made me wonder why she was pioneering this campaign. If anyone was going to do it, it should have been me.
I skimmed over the comments that others had left, but there were so many that I couldn’t read them all. Many of them were messages of support and concern. Warnings to others not to let their children out of their sight when there was a monster loose on our streets. Prayers that had been copied and posted with attached personal messages of hope that Alice was found soon. Some chose to share their opinions on what had happened. Many thought it was most likely the same man who took Mason.
My name was mentioned a couple of times. People I didn’t know relayed how sorry they felt for me.
‘Just goes to show you can’t take your eyes off your children for one minute,’ they said.
‘You shouldn’t trust anyone, not even at a school fete.’
And, ‘Don’t know if it’s worse to lose your own child or someone else’s.’
I took a large swig of wine and placed the glass clumsily on my bedside table, almost knocking it over. I wanted to comment too. I had no idea what I’d say, but I wanted to let them know I was there, reading their thoughts, living, breathing, this hell they were talking about.
I closed my eyes, leaning back against the headboard, tears trickling out from beneath my lids. I could read between the lines; I knew they were all thinking the same thing – that it was my fault Alice was gone. They were careful with their words, but the sentiment was obvious: I was careless and I lost someone else’s daughter.
I know that’s what they meant because it was exactly what I would have thought if it were anyone else. It was what I thought about myself.
I should have stopped looking then and put my phone away, happy that I hadn’t found anything vitriolic, but instead I sat upright and tapped Alice’s name into the Google search bar. It was with a strange determination to punish myself that I knew I wouldn’t give up until the damage was done, and it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.
I first found my name in a comments section of the Dorset Eye website beneath an article written by Josh Gates, the journalist from the appeal. His vindictive piece had attracted the attention of locals. Names I didn’t know, some anonymous, all thrilled at the chance to let rip and confirm I must be an awful mother.
I should never have been allowed to look after someone else’s child, apparently. Mine should be taken away from me because quite obviously they aren’t safe. If I’d lost their child they wouldn’t be able to help themselves, one said. What he would do, he didn’t explicitly say, but the threat was clear.
I balled my fist into my mouth, gulping large breaths of air that I couldn’t swallow down. These were people who lived near me. They came from Dorset, maybe even from my village, and they hated me. Every one of them hated me.
I slid down under my duvet, pulling it over my head. Screwing my eyes tight shut, I sobbed and screamed under the covers until I must have fallen asleep.
The following morning I bundled the children into the car for school, hiding my red, raw, swollen eyes behind sunglasses. After leaving Jack at the school gate and taking Molly to her classroom I was walking back across the playground with Evie when Gail called out to stop me. ‘Hi, I’m glad I’ve caught you,’ she said breathlessly as she struggled to keep up.
‘Hi Gail, how are you?’
She flicked a long sleek black ponytail over her shoulder, pushing her own dark glasses on top of her head. After last night I was glad to have Gail search me out in the playground. I even felt guilty for the way I sometimes moaned about her. Gail wasn’t so bad even if she could be high maintenance.
‘Oh I’m fine, my lovely, I’m fine.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I just wanted to catch you because I don’t need you to take Rosie to ballet tonight.’
‘Wh-what do you mean?’ I stammered. ‘I always take Rosie to ballet.’
‘Oh, I know, but tonight she’s getting a lift with Tilly’s mum. She offered and you know – well, to be honest, I didn’t know if you’d be going or not so I said that would be fine.’ Gail flashed me a row of white teeth and took a step back, already preparing her exit.
‘I’m still taking Molly,’ I said. ‘So it’s not a problem for me to take Rosie too. And Tilly lives on the other side of the village.’
‘Oh, well, thank you, Charlotte. But I might as well let her go with Tilly as I’ve agreed it.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I see.’
‘Well, I’ll see you soon anyway,’ Gail said, waving a hand in the air and turning on her heel.
‘Gail!’ I called after her before I had time to consider what I was about to say. ‘Wait a minute.’ I dragged Evie across the playground. ‘Do you really think you can’t trust me to take your daughter to ballet? You’re worried I might come home without her?’ My voice cracked as I spoke and I knew I was going too far.
‘No! God no, my lovely, nothing like that,’ she said, smiling that smile again that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Like I said, I just didn’t know if you’d be going or not.’
‘You could have asked me,’ I cried. ‘That’s al
l you needed to do. You could have just asked first.’
‘Yes, I know; I realise that now of course. Silly me.’ She gave a small, stupid laugh and I thought if I reached out I could slap the fake smile right off her face. I whisked Evie towards my car as quickly as her little legs would take her.
‘She’s a stupid bitch!’ I cried down the phone to Audrey as soon as I got home. ‘What are they all saying about me? And don’t say nothing because I know they are.’
‘Take no notice of Gail. She’s narrow-minded and neurotic. She’s bound to overreact.’
‘You know that’s not true, she’s only saying what everyone else is thinking.’ I told her what Karen had reportedly said via the children. ‘Does everyone think I can’t be trusted?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Then why does it feel like that?’ I cried. ‘I’ve seen the comments online, Aud. Have you read them? I have. Look at them. Read the article on the Dorset Eye website. No, better still,’ I said, flicking up the internet, ‘I’ll send you the link.’
‘Charlotte, you need to calm down. Whatever these comments are saying, they’re just trolls. They’re nasty people with small-town attitudes and nothing better to do. These are not the thoughts of anyone who matters, and you know that deep down.’
‘But it’s about me. It’s personal. They’re talking about me.’ I slumped into a chair. ‘So it doesn’t matter what I know deep down because this is my life they’re discussing.’
‘I know, honey, I know,’ she said calmly. ‘But they aren’t your friends. They aren’t anyone who knows and loves you.’
‘Except they are. It’s Karen and Gail.’
‘Who haven’t said anything horrible about you,’ Audrey said. ‘They just act stupidly sometimes. They’re putting their families first, and maybe they don’t even know what to do for the best, but they’ll regret it if they know they’ve hurt you.’
‘Did they say anything about me before?’ I asked. ‘Was I judged before Alice went missing?’
‘Charlotte,’ Audrey sighed. ‘No, of course they didn’t. What happened to Alice could have happened to any one of us. It is horrific, but it didn’t happen because of you or anything you did.’